“BS”: Former HHS Secretary blasts White House defense of false citations in MAHA report

The former Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra said the Trump administration’s explanations of how fake studies wound up cited in Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s “Make America Health Again (MAHA)” report is “BS.”

“This ‘formatting’ BS doesn’t sell,” Becerra said, referring to claims White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and an HHS spokesperson made when dismissing errors found by the news site NOTUS as only issues arising from document formatting. “You’re supposed to do that checking before you publish, at least if you’re a rigorous publisher.”

“We caught this one,” Becerra added, “which ones didn’t we catch?”

Becerra, who announced last month he has entered California’s gubernatorial race, made the comments in response to a question from Mother Jones at the Association of Health Care Journalists conference in Los Angeles on Friday.

NOTUS first reported on Thursday that at least seven of the more than 500 studies cited in the MAHA report, focused on improving children’s health, did not actually exist; later on Thursday, the New York Times reported that at least two additional citations featured in the report were also fake. Both news outlets also said that the MAHA report misrepresented the findings of cited studies that do exist. Experts said that the errors indicated artificial intelligence may have been used in the writing of the report.

Both Leavitt and an HHS spokesperson downplayed the errors as formatting issues and emphasized that the “substance” of the report—which argues that factors like over-processed food, environmental chemicals, social media, and prescription drugs are harming kids’ health—remained accurate. By the end of the day Thursday, the White House, which previously hailed the report as a “milestone” in a post on X, had updated the report to remove the seven fake citations, NOTUS reported.

This is far from the first time the Trump administration has relied on shoddy research or baseless claims to justify its policy positions. Just this week, for example, RFK Jr. announced he was changing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines so as not to recommend the COVID vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women, calling it “common sense and good science” without citing any specific data that had led him to make that decision. Leading public health advocates condemned the move, noting that evidence has shown that the COVID vaccine does not lead to adverse birth outcomes and, instead, offers crucial protections against the virus for babies, pregnant people, and kids.

Becerra said Friday that he had avoided publicly critiquing the administration thus far to give them “a chance to settle in,” but that by now, “they got their chance.”

“I’m going to start talking,” he added, “because to say that we should not recommend that pregnant women and children receive the COVID vaccine; to say that in Texas, it’s okay that there are measles spreading after we had essentially eradicated measles in America—we have an obligation to protect the health of the American people, and to be silent is to acquiesce. There are too many people acquiescing to what’s going on right now.”

“Two young children died in Texas this year from measles,” Becerra said later. “They should be alive today.”

As of last month, Kennedy claimed to endorse the measles vaccine, but has also boosted baseless treatments, as my colleague Kiera Butler and I have reported.

The former secretary also blasted “all these folks that are underneath Secretary Kennedy at HHS, who are allowing this to happen, who know better, who are watching some of their most experienced colleagues who have been involved in saving lives and making the right decisions based on the science, who are being shuttered.”

As my colleagues and I have reported, Kennedy’s HHS laid off 10,000 workers, in addition to another 10,000 who reportedly took buyout offers; those laid off have included people who were working to make IVF more accessible and monitor pregnancy outcomes, and others working on preventing and tracking opioid addictions, gun injuries, and intimate partner violence, just to name a few examples Mother Jones covered. Becerra also noted the administration abolished the CDC’s Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, which he helped establish under the Biden administration.

“As dangerous as the guy in the Oval Office is,” Becerra added, “I think the big danger is those who enable him to do this, because that’s how you end up with tyranny and dictatorship—when others follow and let it happen.”

This week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also said he may prevent researchers from publishing in medical journals, arguing that they are “corrupt” and that HHS will likely create its own publications instead. Seemingly responding to that news, Becerra said it was “dangerous” for officials “to say that you’re going to muzzle researchers if their data doesn’t conform to their White House’s view of life.”

Becerra also predicted that the GOP-backed Medicaid cuts proposed in the reconciliation bill could lead Trump voters to see how Republicans’ policies are directly harming them: “Medicaid is as important in red states, in red congressional districts, as it is in blue—in fact, maybe even more. Because when you live in rural America, if you don’t have access to a doctor who uses Medicaid services, you may not have access at all.” More than half of Democrats and more than 40 percent of Republicans say they or someone they know has been covered by Medicaid, according to a KFF poll, which also found large majorities in all political parties view it favorably.

In a statement provided to Mother Jones, HHS Press Secretary Emily Hilliard repeated prior claims characterizing the fake citations as “minor” and “formatting errors,” adding: “Under President Trump and Secretary Kennedy, our federal government is no longer ignoring [chronic disease affecting children], and it’s time for the media to also focus on what matters.” Spokespeople for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.