Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is getting some seriously expensive protection. Taxpayers are reportedly picking up the tab, and the money is coming from an especially awkward place: an HHS office created to address health disparities affecting minorities.
The Department of Health and Human Services expects to spend as much as $17 million over the 12 months ending in October 2026 to protect Kennedy, according to the Wall Street Journal. That’s a staggering jump from the roughly $10 million spent the previous fiscal year.
And here’s where things get particularly hard to swallow.
HHS reportedly had a large pool of discretionary money available to cover the additional $7 million needed for Kennedy’s protection. Instead, according to sources familiar with its spending, it pulled approximately $12 million from the Office of Minority Health.
In other words, money stripped from programs aimed at improving minority health was used to help cover the soaring cost of protecting the nation’s health secretary.
That office was created by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 after research showed stark racial disparities in American health outcomes, including higher infant mortality among Black babies and shorter life expectancy for Black Americans. Its mission has included supporting research and policies intended to reduce those disparities.
Now some of that money is effectively helping finance Kennedy’s security detail.
Kennedy’s security needs increased after a failed attack last year led him to stop appearing at outdoor events. His family history also gives the security concerns an obvious context: his father, Robert F. Kennedy Sr., and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, were both assassinated in the 1960s.
But that doesn’t explain why HHS reportedly chose minority-health funding as the source for the additional security expense when other discretionary funds were available.
And the optics get even more awkward when Kennedy’s own background is considered.
He is the heir to one of America’s most famous political families, with family wealth largely held in private trusts. His family’s fortune was estimated at roughly $1.2 billion in 2015, equivalent to about $1.7 billion in today’s dollars.
Yet the agency Kennedy runs is reportedly shifting money away from an office established to address racial health disparities to help pay for his increasingly expensive protection.
HHS says the cuts to the Office of Minority Health are part of broader changes to its budget priorities. In August, the department reportedly told about 16 educational institutions and nonprofits that its focus had shifted toward what it described as the “root causes of infertility and reproductive health conditions,” including low sperm count and erectile dysfunction.
There’s nothing wrong with protecting a federal official who faces a legitimate security threat.
But when the agency responsible for improving Americans’ health has a choice of where to find millions of dollars—and chooses money cut from programs specifically designed to address minority health disparities—the question practically asks itself:
Why should minority health programs take the hit to help pay for Kennedy’s protection?
