Gwen Traficant

[Secretary Kennedy @SecKennedy]

Sheryl. Your article exemplifies the biased reporting we have come to expect from you and @nytimes. It was unfair, inimical, and inaccurate. All one needs to refute your argument is to glance at my publicly available calendar and to review my unprecedented list of accomplishments on a wide range of issues, all of which I drove. You evidently never undertook these foundational due diligences. Why let facts obscure a good story?

You fault me for missing a couple of monthly counselor meetings. However, I meet one-on-one with my counselors every day to decide policy and strategy. We schedule the monthly meetings to give the divisions a chance to keep each other informed about HHS-wide policies with which I’m already intimately familiar. Had you read my calendar, you would have seen that I have back-to-back meetings all day, every day, with both career and political staff, with my counselors and with outside stakeholders, interspersed with press conferences and other policy announcements.

I am knowledgeable and active on every issue in every division of my department, and I always make the final decisions. I meet with the principals at FDA, NIH, CDC, and my senior counselor every morning, something, I’m told, is unprecedented in HHS history. I try to get out of the office between 4:30 and 6:00 PM, so that I can spend three hours, in quiet, responding to emails. I normally work until 11 PM every night, mostly on phone calls to staff.

In order to prove your preconceived case for my disengagement, you quote anonymous employees, some of whom I fired or who quit to avoid being fired. You also deceptively quote HHS employees without identifying whether they were among those I fired, thereby depriving your readers of the opportunity to make an independent judgment about their credibility.

I came into this job to change the culture of a broken agency that has presided over the worst decline in public health in American history. Of course I fired people—lots of them! It's an easy task for even the laziest journalist, to comb that flotsam and jetsam for malevolence toward the Trump administration. And of course, this species of journalist will always be able to find disgruntled individuals among the 70,000 employees of the Department from whom to cherry pick "facts" to flesh out a preordained hit piece. All that is required for this brand of journalism is the ethical elasticity that you seem to have in spades. You had a preconceived thesis, and you set out to prove it. This is a widely accepted technique in journalism today, but I grew up in an era when it would not have been tolerated by the New York Times.

Ultimately, God puts us all on this earth to search for existential truths. I've tried to instill this mission at HHS by implementing gold standard research to end the regime of politicized science that COVID exposed to the American public. There was a time that journalists were proud to be the fearless and uncompromising champions of truth. Standards have devolved, and journalism is dead. The Times now employs propagandists. Your capitulation to partisanship further compounds your journalistic challenges; since we all are aware of your predictable bias, we at HHS are unwilling to talk to you about the topics that are important. The fact that you have minimal access to decision makers leaves you covering trivia and relying on your own capacity for invention.

Btw. When I took this job, the building was empty. About 90% of the employees were not coming to work. I changed that, but your newspaper never covers my reforms. Nor did you cover the fact that my predecessor almost never showed up for work here during his four years in office. When we came in, there were still artifacts from the first Trump administration in many of our office drawers because no one showed up for work during the Biden years. Just as Rochelle Walensky spent her entire term as CDC Director in Cambridge, Xavier Becerra reportedly spent most of his term as HHS Secretary in California. (I live in California, but I’ve only been there once in fifteen months).

His only notable accomplishments here were losing 300,000 children, referred to HHS for custody and care, to human traffickers and drug runners, encouraging transgender surgeries, and disabling the entire program-integrity apparatus, allowing hundreds of billions of dollars of theft from my agency. I have set out to find the children Becerra lost. He is now the front-runner for the governor of California. These are not invented stories; they are genuine scandals that the Times will never cover, presumably, because the malefactors are Democrats.

Finally, you criticize me for spending time with the Indian tribes in Alaska. I consider that part of my job. I run the Indian Health Services, and I’ve had unprecedented success in transforming IHS from a backwater to a top priority for this department. I’ve made more trips to Indian country and to Indian health clinics and hospitals than any HHS secretary in history, and I’ve brought Indians into high positions on the sixth floor for the first time in agency history. This is another success story that the Times will never cover.

[HHS Rapid Response @HHSResponse]

🚨 BREAKING: @SecKennedy announces major Trump administration actions to combat Lyme disease ⬇️

“We’re launching one of the most ambitious federal efforts ever to undertake and combat Lyme disease, accelerate research, and improve care for parents and families.”

[U.S. FDA @US_FDA]

FDA is calling on patients, clinicians, and researchers to help identify drugs that could be repurposed to treat chronic and rare diseases and help address other unmet medical needs. Share your ideas to help advance new treatment options. https://t.co/qQPCrOfZwV

[HHS @HHSGov]

https://t.co/gEOaudmMUd is LIVE! Connecting pregnant women and new mothers with resources, information and assistance.

[Gwen Traficant @gwendrt]

@CommonSense3241 @TinMarkProd @DrMakaryFDA @realDonaldTrump @FrankLuntz @RickSantorum @SusieWiles47 @KushDesai47 @1klomp @WSJ The GOP is the only hope for the RD community. You don’t know or see the whole picture. There are better ways to advocate on behalf of these therapies and RD patients… RD wife and mom.

[HHS @HHSGov]

This week at @US_FDA:

✅ Two new first-of-their-kind drugs for children with rare diseases approved

✅ Opened new food testing laboratory in Atlanta

✅ Held public meeting on dietary supplement ingredients

Watch #FDAWrapped. 🎥

[HHS @HHSGov]

Real food is BACK.

America is facing a full-scale health emergency because junk food became the foundation of the standard American diet. That ends now.

📲 https://t.co/vNe7oMQgrE

[74th Governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin @GovernorVA74]

CHART OF THE DAY: When I ran for governor in 2021, I met Virginia families who were waiting for developmental disability services and had become incredible advocates for their children and the entire community. We promised we would help, and we fulfilled my 2022 pledge to fully fund the backlog of over 3,700 Priority 1 DD waivers.

This has been a cornerstone of our Right Help, Right Now transformation, ensuring these waivers are funded and that we support a growing capacity of providers to deliver those services.

[Dr. Marty Makary @DrMakaryFDA]

The new dietary guidelines, in a nutshell:

✅ More protein
✅ Healthy fats
✅ Intact whole grains
✅ Fruits and veggies
✅ Gut health
❌ Less ultra-processed foods
❌ Less sugary snacks and drinks

[74th Governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin @GovernorVA74]

Please join me as our Commonwealth comes together at noon for a moment of prayer and reflection: Right now Charlie Kirk’s family is in immense grief and our nation is in deep need of hope, healing and the peace not as the world gives, but as God gives. Prayer and faith in an almighty and loving Creator provides us what we need in times like this.

Wherever you find yourself, join your fellow Virginians across the Commonwealth in lifting up the Kirk family, our Commonwealth and our nation in prayer.

Since our founding, Americans have trusted in Providence and united around the power of prayer to guide our nation and strengthen the bonds of love and loyalty that unite all of us.

Right now America is too divided and our civic fabric too frayed. Nowhere is this more apparent than when someone believes that murder and violence are acceptable ways to resolve political disagreements. This is evil, not the American way, and is something all of us must reject unequivocally. Our God-given right to free speech and peaceful debate of our differences is part of what makes us quintessentially American. If we lose that ability, we will have lost what it means to be an American.

Throughout our history, our nation has come together to unite against darkness and evil. My prayer is that we do so again and can reignite the light that shines in the darkness, and that darkness will never overcome it.

[Ashley Traficant @ashtraf]

May we never forget September 11. May we return to who we were on September 12.

[74th Governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin @GovernorVA74]

Today, we remember the 2,977 lives taken on September 11, 2001 — including those lost at the Pentagon in Arlington, here in Virginia. We honor the heroes who rushed into danger, the service members who answered the call, and the families forever changed. May we never forget, and may God continue to bless their memory and our nation. 🇺🇸

[Glenn Youngkin @GlennYoungkin]

Suzanne and I are stunned and grief-stricken by the brutal murder of Charlie Kirk today. We are praying for his beautiful wife and young family. Their anguish can only be healed by the Lord. While the promise of the Lord is that God welcomed Charlie Kirk to Heaven with the words “well done my good and faithful servant,” we mourn together. May the peace of the Lord be with Charlie’s family.

[U.S. FDA Recalls @FDArecalls]

View the complete details on this recall at: https://t.co/BkojyNDoTN

[U.S. FDA @US_FDA]

LIVE NOW: FDA's Cell and Gene Therapy Roundtable
Captions available here: https://t.co/QyRYlaur9t
https://t.co/9KAwikJEiv

[Ashley Traficant @ashtraf]

May the memories of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim be a blessing. We will continue to fight the hate of antisemitism that fueled this heinous act of terror.

[74th Governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin @GovernorVA74]

Today, Christians throughout Virginia and the world recognize Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for our sins and are forever grateful for His resurrection and the promise for life eternal. Suzanne and I pray that our Lord’s peace will be with you on this Good Friday.

[FDA Drug Information @FDA_Drug_Info]

FDA published 2 case studies and a user guide as part of the ARC Program’s LEADER 3D initiative.

The studies highlight approaches successfully used by sponsors when designing and conducting #raredisease drug development programs.

Read the case studies: https://t.co/q11RzL1R7r