American Academy of Pediatrics Loses Hhs Funding After Criticizing Rfk Jr.
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The US Department of Health and Human Services has yanked funding from the American Academy of Pediatrics after the organization criticized Robert F. Kennedy Jr., sparking a heated debate about government overreach and petty politics. Commenters are divided, with some labeling the move "petty government" and others pointing to the administration's alleged disregard for human life. The original poster, voxadam, wryly notes that the administration seems to be trying to surpass its pandemic-era "high score" in terms of harm caused. As the discussion unfolds, some commenters raise disturbing personal attacks on Kennedy, while others call for more transparency and documentation about the HHS decision.
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Dec 17, 2025 at 5:51 PM EST
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In their FYE 2025, the AAP spent 6% and 3% of its $113mm budget on advocacy and membership, respectively [1].
Most of its money goes to child health activities (43%), educational publishing (30%) and education activities (14%).
[1] https://downloads.aap.org/AAP/PDF/AAP%20Financial%20Statemen...
They don’t actually treat anybody. They spend $28 million a year on salaries and benefits for people who advocate for improving children’s health, not on treating children. And then some more on offices and software for those advocates to use, for meals and meetings attended by those employees, postage, freight, etc, etc. None of that is related to treating people.
Neither does a pathologist. Or, more removed, anyone in research. Not everyone in medicine who doesn’t see patients is fluff.
I’m open to the idea that they’re a BS organisation. But saying they’re upstream from patient care is naïvely obvious; not every engineer is a car mechanic.
The idea that it’s immoral for NGOs (much less professional orgs) to represent themselves to legislatures is unserious.
I’m so, so tired of people who think that building some shitty React apps, or whatever, means they’re experts in everything they’ve spent 12 seconds thinking about.
They’ve been oddly silent since liberals stopped being in power
They desire the ability to say the most atrocious shit to anyone without consequences but then want anyone who questions them immediately silenced.
Meeting a self described “free speech absolutist” with principles is as rare as meeting a self described libertarian with principles
I would not trust any corporation (sometimes it's profitable to remove something so they retain control of some market) or government (sometimes it secures their power to keep people unaware of some facts about their actions) to only censor what is "truly" good for us to have censored. Why would anybody? The free exchange of ideas is a prerequisite for a just world. You cannot build one without it, because to build a just world you must change what is unjust. To change what is unjust, you must remove power from those who unjustly hold it. You can't do that if you can't communicate the injustice. If you place limits on the free exchange of ideas "just for this one really bad thing" then you have forfeited your own future ability to resist when a good and true idea is wrongfully labelled harmful by powerful and corrupt figures. Every single authoritarian regime in history has made speaking ill of the leadership a crime, because speech control is powerful. The power to ban information is too great to be entrusted to any authority at all. Depending on how thorough the "ban" (web text filter at the ISP level? mandatory AR implants at birth filtering banned content? worse?), it's anywhere from an abhorrent violation of human rights and the principles behind scientific inquiry all the way up through literally the most powerful weapon which could even theoretically be designed.
Must we burn this book? No. The answer is always no.
I am in favor of extremely strong free speech, legally and more importantly morally, because there is simply no acceptable alternative.
Sure. Whatever. Irrelevant.
The point is the loudest voices in Silicon Valley who were all in on free speech, knowingly joined hands with an authoritarian who is trashing it in its most protected form, political speech.
For instance I used to be active in /r/Libertarian until the day the Mises Caucus took over and they banned anyone who said there were branches of libertarianism that were left leaning, for lying.
If, and I really stress the word "if" there, you are telling the truth, then cool, but you are exceedingly rare in that case
edit: Also lol, none of the "free speech absolutist" elon fanboys showed up, but my comments been flagged to reduce its viewership. Not really changing my mind on the opinion of people in this forum who wax poetic about free speech
I am just letting you know that that is where the bar is for belief, because so many people flying under the banner you claim, have never actually been principled and only used the ideals as a cudgel to achieve their goals.
I’m communist leaning myself so I understand the pain if you’re telling the truth as I get the same level of skepticism
Fair enough. To be fair to OP, the top-level reference to any “they” is to “Elon Musk fans.”
I'm with the other poster though, there is no nuance here. Sometimes a spade is just a spade, and the HHS is being run by an incompetent jackass with literal insane beliefs about reality who is now forcing those beliefs on us
The questions that come to my mind are:
1) Does the AAP have a case that RFK Jr. acted unconstitutionally?
2) Are these previously-approved grants that HHS (and by extension, the U.S.) is defaulting on? Or are these new grants they’re no longer in the running for?
3) Is Senator John Barasso, a pediatrician, a dues-paying member of the AAP?
[1] https://downloads.aap.org/AAP/PDF/AAP%20Financial%20Statemen...
Hmm, I think you’re correct.