The White House is delaying the release of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s latest Make America Healthy Again strategy to ensure it’s not “f—ed up” like an earlier one, according to a report.
A White House official told Politico the delay to the report on “making children healthy again” was simply to “coordinate officials’ schedules” before unveiling the plan. A HHS spokesperson, meanwhile, insisted the holdup was about “ensuring that whatever is in the report is the best possible product for the American people.”
But according to two people familiar with the situation, the real reasons for the holdup are more damning. “The delay is because the White House is taking time to review it to make sure it’s not f—ed up like last time,” a source told Politico’s Playbook. Another added: “The goal is just to get the damn thing right.”
The “last time” in question was the MAHA Commission’s earlier report—a 73-page Kennedy-led document riddled with broken links, misrepresented data, and citations for studies that don’t even exist, as the Daily Beast previously reported. It was published in May.
Epidemiologist Katherine Keyes told NOTUS that the earlier MAHA report had linked her name to a study on adolescent anxiety published in the 176th edition of JAMA Pediatrics. “It isn’t,” she said flatly. “No such study with that title exists.”
Virginia Commonwealth University confirmed a cited paper on “psychotropic medications for youth” was not authored by researcher Robert L. Findling.
Pediatric pulmonologist Harold J. Farber denied ever writing a study attributed to him on corticosteroid prescriptions for asthmatic children. NOTUS found at least seven phantom citations in the document’s 500-plus sources.
Some of the real research wasn’t spared either. Biostatistics professor Joanne McKenzie said the report twisted her findings, falsely claiming her team compared medication to therapy. “We did not include psychotherapy in our review,” she said. “The conclusions in the report are not accurate.”
Another cited expert, Mariana G. Figueiro, said her work was misrepresented—and that she had other studies that would have fit the topic. “I was not aware of the choice, or else I would have suggested one of the other ones.”
Despite the glaring problems, the Trump administration had touted the flawed document as “a clear, evidence-based foundation” for combating the rise in chronic disease among American children.
The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have been contacted for comment.
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