Physicians with the Committee to Protect Health Care descended on Washington to fight Dr. Heidi Overton’s nomination to lead the FDA, and by most accounts it was a bad day for her. Miles Baker and Dr. Rob Davidson break down why the fight is far from over and how medical professionals can still sign the letter opposing her.

They also cover the week’s other developments: the White House dropping a planned order that would have put political appointees in charge of NIH grants, the new chair of the federal autism coordinating committee who co-founded a company selling leucovorin to families of autistic children, and reports that RFK Jr. pulled $12 million from the Office of Minority Health to cover his security costs. The CDC has also finally acknowledged measles deaths in Pennsylvania, where babies are now being born infected.

In the second half of the show, Politico healthcare reporter Carmen Paun joins us with an on-the-ground account of the MAHA conference in Washington, D.C. The conference, sponsored by UnitedHealth Group, came just as a group of MAHA leaders sent an open letter to Trump and RFK Jr. threatening to withdraw their support over the administration’s failure to remove the mRNA platform. It seems that the event was not very well attended, which raises the question of whether MAHA is fracturing, morphing into a corporate project, or both.

LINKS

* Learn about what you can do to fight the nomination of anti-abortion, anti-vaxx zealot Heidi Overton in the Committee’s Medical Professional ToolkitHERE.

* The New York Times: White House Moves to Take Control of N.I.H. Grants

* POLITICO: Trump asked budget chief to draft order bringing health research funding under his control

* Susan Collins’ letter to Kennedy and Bhattacharya

* POLITICO: Collins: White House drops effort to politicize health research grants

* MedPage Today: New Autism Committee Chair Founded a Leucovorin Telehealth Company

* The Washington Sun: HHS Cancels Infant Mortality, Postpartum Grants to Focus on Sperm Counts, ED

* POLITICO Pro: HHS is killing offices devoted to improving minority health and tackling HIV

* The Wall Street Journal: RFK Jr.’s Enhanced Security Was Funded With Money From Minority Health Office

* Joint Statement from the Chairs of the Congressional Tri-Caucus

* CDC: Measles Cases and Outbreaks

* The Hill: Pennsylvania surpasses 900 measles cases

* NBC News: America had wiped out measles. Now babies are infected at birth.

* Americans for Health Freedom: Open Letter Regarding the Removal of the mRNA Platform

* Carmen Paun’s bio at POLITICO

* Carmen Paun on X

* POLITICO: Vance, RFK Jr. and ‘Iron’ Mike to headline MAHA Summit

* AXIOS: 1 big thing: Insurers cast themselves as MAHA allies

* The Washington Sun: A Biological Age Test and Russell Brand: How Trump Officials Spent a Day With MAHA

* The Hill: 4 takeaways from the MAHA Summit

* The New York Times: A.I. Is ‘Better Informed’ Than Doctors, Kennedy Tells Industry-Backed MAHA Summit

* Food writer Helena Bottemiller Evich’s tweet

* STAT: At MAHA Summit, a grassroots movement goes corporate

* POLITICO: A cure for ‘medical tyranny’: RFK Jr. puts a positive spin on AI

Join the fight at committeetoprotect.org.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@pagingamerica

Subscribe, share, and leave a rating to help more people find Paging America.

Have thoughts, questions, or your own health care story? Email us at [email protected].

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.pagingamerica.org/subscribe