In a vindictive move tied to vocal opposition to his anti-science agenda at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cut millions of dollars in funding for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on Wednesday.
Although administration officials cited a range of reasons for the grant funding cuts — including the AAP’s use of “identity-based language” and references to racial disparities and “pregnant people” — the move follows intense criticism by the group of Kennedy’s changes to federal vaccine policy.
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AAP joined a chorus of condemnation over Kennedy’s decision to stop recommending the Covid vaccine for children, and his firing of the Centers for Disease Control’s panel of independent vaccine advisors and their replacement with a hand-picked panel of vaccine skeptics.
“The majority of what we’ve seen from the secretary has been a pretty clearly orchestrated strategy to sow distrust in vaccines,” Sean O’Leary, a physician who heads the AAP’s infectious-diseases committee, told The Washington Post. “We make our recommendations based on what’s in the best interest of the health of children.”
In response, Kennedy blasted the group’s financial ties to pharmaceutical companies, demanding the organization disclose its “corporate entanglements” and conflicts of interest “so that Americans may ask whether the AAP’s recommendations reflect public health interest, or are, perhaps, just a pay-to-play scheme to promote commercial ambitions of AAP’s Big Pharma benefactors.”
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Kennedy terminated seven grants for AAP, including for initiatives on reducing sudden infant deaths, improving adolescent health, preventing fetal alcohol syndrome, and identifying autism early, according to documents obtained by the Post.
AAP received $18.4 million in federal grants from HHS for 2025, according to a federal grants database.
An HHS spokesman said the grants cut Wednesday “no longer align with the Department’s mission or priorities.”
“The sudden withdrawal of these funds will directly impact and potentially harm infants, children, youth, and their families in communities across the United States,” said Mark Del Monte, AAP’s chief executive and executive vice president. The group is considering legal action, he said.
Along with Kennedy, another anti-science, MAGA loyalist, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), targeted AAP, as she successfully promoted her bill to criminalize gender-affirming care for minors across the country. The measure passed the House on Wednesday, but will likely stall in the Senate barring Democrats’ support.
On Monday, Greene dragged the AAP to whip outrage and votes for her bill, with a tweet casting the group’s support for gender-affirming care as “fighting for” the “gender mutilation of children.”
Kennedy’s announcement pulling the AAP grants on Wednesday preceded another on Thursday for new HHS rules denying Medicare and Medicaid funding to all hospitals that provide gender-affirming care for minors.
Dr. Annie Andrews, a pediatrician and outspoken critic of Kennedy who’s running to unseat Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) in South Carolina, described the challenge to children’s health that Kennedy represents as existential.
“Children are not inherently politically powerful. They’re minors, they can’t vote, they don’t have money to donate to politicians. I think for a long time, people thought, well, in good faith, most leaders will legislate in a way that doesn’t harm children. That is not at all the case,” Andrews said.
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