HHS is robbing minority health programs to pay for Kennedy’s security.
Previous HHS secretaries received protection costing roughly $5 million a year. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s security cost about $10 million in fiscal year 2025 and is expected to reach $17 million in fiscal year 2026. The increase is substantial. So is the decision to fund it by moving about $12 million from the Office of Minority Health rather than drawing on a discretionary pot in the secretary’s office, according to The Wall Street Journal’s reporting and a document it reviewed.
Security for a cabinet secretary is a legitimate federal expense. Kennedy’s family history, extensive travel, and documented threats explain why the cost is higher than it was for previous HHS secretaries. They do not explain why the Office of Minority Health was selected as the account to absorb the cut. HHS had another pot of money available. It chose this one.
The choice reached 16 nonprofits and universities. Their canceled grants supported fresh vegetables, chronic-disease screenings, and at-home nurse visits for new mothers in low-income communities. Those are not abstractions in a budget table. They are preventive services for families who have less ability to replace them privately. Black communities are among the populations the office was created to serve, and low-income mothers were among the people receiving the canceled services.
The Office of Minority Health was created after a Reagan-era report documented stark racial disparities, including higher Black infant mortality and shorter Black life expectancy. Its annual budget is roughly $74 million. HHS canceled grants representing about $9 million of spending in the preceding year while redirecting $12 million to security. The same communities whose unequal health outcomes justified the office now absorb the reduction in its work.
HHS says the cancellations reflect “HHS priorities and programmatic assessments—not the Secretary’s security needs.” That statement separates two decisions the department made together. The department selected the minority-health office as the funding source, and it changed the office’s priorities while canceling the grants. The explanation does not erase the choice.
The replacement priorities are “the root causes of infertility and reproductive health conditions,” including “low sperm count” and “erectile dysfunction,” along with physical activity. Those may be legitimate subjects for public-health research. The question is whether replacing chronic-disease screening and home visits for new mothers with those priorities fits the office’s mission of closing documented racial health gaps. HHS has supplied the new list. It has not supplied a public showing that the canceled services were less effective, less necessary, or outside that mission.
The administration had already sought to shrink the Office of Minority Health by 40 percent. It has also treated similar grants as diversity-related work. That context matters. An across-the-board budget cut can describe the pressure on an agency; it cannot turn a targeted transfer into an accident. The department had alternatives, a prior position on the office’s size, and a new account of what minority health should mean.
The proper budget decision is straightforward: protect the secretary, but fund that protection from the security or secretary-level accounts that serve that purpose. Preserve the Office of Minority Health’s preventive programs while HHS demonstrates, with evidence, that any change advances the racial-health mission for which the office exists. The $17 million security bill is a federal obligation. Making Black mothers and low-income families pay it through canceled care is a policy choice.