The Wall Street Journal reported on September 22, 2026 that the Department of Health and Human Services told congressional appropriators earlier this year it was moving about $12 million out of its Office of Minority Health to help cover the cost of security for Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The paper's account is based on people familiar with the matter and a document it reviewed but did not publish.
Sourcing note: this rests on that one story. No other outlet has independently confirmed the transfer, and every subsequent report credits the Journal. What is independently documented is the other end of it, and what HHS says about the connection.
The security figures, as the Journal reported them: Kennedy's protection cost roughly $10 million in fiscal 2025 and about $17 million in fiscal 2026. Previous health secretaries ran about $5 million a year. The transfer was larger than the increase, and the Journal's sources said the secretary's own office had “a large pot of discretionary money that it could have tapped” instead. HHS cut $12 million from the minority health office “rather than just the $7 million that represented increased security costs.”
Kennedy's security need is not in dispute. He stopped speaking at outdoor events after a man rushed at him last year, and HHS spokeswoman Emily Hilliard said he “faces a security environment that differs significantly from that of previous HHS secretaries.” The question is what was cut to pay for it.
On August 25, 2026, the Office of Minority Health terminated 16 grants to county, state and nonprofit programs, worth $38 million over four years, two years of which had already been paid. NOTUS obtained the letters, signed by acting chief grants officer Eric West and deputy assistant secretary for minority health Mahyar Mofidi. Among the terminated programs: postpartum nurse home visits in Colorado, hypertension monitoring and fresh-produce delivery in Brooklyn, cancer screenings, first-responder suicide prevention, and obesity reduction among Native American youth. The office's new stated priority is “reducing overmedicalization in health care by addressing the root causes of infertility,” a list that runs through endometriosis, uterine fibroids, low sperm count, low testosterone and erectile dysfunction, along with promoting “regular physical activity and exercise.”
The office was created under Ronald Reagan in 1986, after a federal report found that Black infants were more likely to die than white infants and that Black Americans lived shorter lives. Its annual budget is about $74 million. Kennedy tried to eliminate it outright in the 2025 reorganization that shed some 20,000 HHS employees, and Congress declined. The fiscal 2027 budget proposes cutting its funding by 40 percent and eliminating the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.
HHS denies the link between the two. Hilliard said the cuts “reflect HHS priorities and programmatic assessments—not the Secretary's security needs.” That is the tension in the record: the department told grantees their programs no longer matched its priorities, and, according to the Journal, told appropriators the money was going to the secretary's security. No source establishes that the 16 canceled grants are the same $12 million, and no official has been identified as the person who authorized the transfer.
The grantees learned about the cuts the way most people do. Christopher Joseph of EngageWell in Brooklyn said, “We thought we had weathered the storm,” and that when the health secretary's Make America Healthy Again push began, “we thought great, this aligns with their priorities.” Jillian Fabricius of Illuminate Colorado said, “It was news to us that maternal and infant fatality prevention wasn't a priority.” Rep. Diana DeGette, writing to the assistant secretary for health about the terminations three weeks before the Journal's story, said, “It is shocking that OMH under any leadership would prioritize erectile dysfunction over the health and wellbeing of infants and new mothers, yet that is precisely what you are doing.” No member of Congress had commented on the security transfer itself as of this writing.