The Trump White House is growing increasingly frustrated with the chaotic communications operation at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services, where dysfunction has reportedly reached such levels that West Wing aides have been forced to intervene directly. Multiple administration sources describe an HHS paralyzed by Kennedy loyalist Stefanie Spear’s iron grip on messaging – a control so absolute it allegedly caused the CDC’s vital Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report to miss publication for the first time in decades.
The situation came to a head during recent public health crises, exposing dangerous gaps in responsiveness. When a Texas child became the first measles fatality of the current outbreak, Kennedy remained silent for two full days before addressing it casually on social media – followed by an official statement another two days later, bookended by the secretary’s post celebrating a California hike. “CNN was blaring this chyron about how Kennedy was silent, and there was just nothing from the department because of Stefanie,” one exasperated White House official told Axios. The communications breakdown grew so severe that the West Wing has reportedly established a shadow press team to handle basic media relations that Spear’s operation has failed to manage.
Behind the scenes, tensions are boiling between Kennedy’s inner circle and both Trump loyalists and career staffers. The department is now riven by competing factions – career employees accused of leaking to undermine leadership, Kennedy’s tight-knit team resisting White House oversight, and administration officials scrambling to contain the fallout. This toxic dynamic recently exploded when the nation’s top vaccine official resigned with a scorching public letter attacking Kennedy’s policies, a crisis the White House had to manage directly after Spear allegedly went incommunicado.
The dysfunction extends to substantive policy as well. Kennedy’s signature “Operation Stork Speed” initiative to improve baby food safety has languished in obscurity due to botched media coordination, while leaked plans for a CDC study on vaccines and autism – a pet issue for the anti-vaccine advocate – had to be walked back by the White House. These episodes reveal an HHS where ideological obsessions and operational incompetence threaten to derail public health priorities, forcing Trump’s team to increasingly bypass Kennedy’s leadership altogether. As one White House adviser bluntly put it: “This shouldn’t be the White House’s job, but here we are.”
