Rich Danker, the chief spokesperson for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., resigned Wednesday, warning in a letter to President Trump that senior officials inside Kennedy's own office had worked to win federal approval for flavored electronic cigarettes that could hook children on nicotine.
Danker's departure came just one day after FDA Commissioner Marty Makary officially stepped down, and one week after the Trump administration approved the sale of blueberry- and mango-flavored nicotine vaping pods along with two menthol-flavored products. That approval marked the first time a fruit-flavored electronic cigarette received federal marketing authorization, The Hill reported.
The back-to-back exits raise hard questions about who, exactly, is steering health policy inside Kennedy's department, and whether the Make America Healthy Again agenda can survive the internal friction that keeps burning through its own senior staff.
Danker, who held the title of assistant secretary for public affairs, addressed his resignation letter directly to President Trump. He did not blame the president for the push to advance e-cigarette approvals. But his language left little ambiguity about where the pressure originated.
"Senior HHS officials in the immediate office of the secretary have in recent months sought U.S. Food and Drug Administration marketing approval of cigarette flavors that would appeal to children and expose them to nicotine addiction, lung damage and higher risk of cancer."
He went further, arguing that rubber-stamping these products would gut the FDA's own safeguards. His letter referenced the agency's "Flavored Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems Premarket Applications Considerations Related to Youth Risk guidance for industry," issued in March with White House support.
"Routine approval of these products would undermine the agency's Flavored Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems Premarket Applications Considerations Related to Youth Risk guidance for industry issued March with the support of the White House."
In other words, Danker says the administration published youth-protection guidance in March, then senior officials inside Kennedy's own shop worked to approve the very products that guidance was meant to scrutinize. That is a contradiction worth examining.
Danker is not the first spokesperson to walk away from Kennedy's HHS over policy disagreements. Tom Corry, a top spokesperson, resigned back in March 2025 after clashing with Kennedy over his approach to handling the measles outbreak in Texas.
Two spokesperson resignations in a matter of months, each citing substantive policy concerns, suggest something more than ordinary personnel churn. When the people paid to defend an agency's decisions publicly conclude they cannot do so in good conscience, that tells you something about what is happening behind closed doors.
The broader leadership picture inside HHS has grown even more turbulent. Fox News reported that Kennedy fired two additional senior aides, chief of staff Heather Flick Melanson and deputy chief of staff of policy Hannah Anderson, in a separate staff shakeup. Their biographies were removed from the HHS leadership page, and an HHS spokesperson confirmed the change was effective immediately, with Matt Buckham stepping in as acting chief of staff.
"Secretary Kennedy has made a leadership change within the Immediate Office of the Secretary," the HHS spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
HHS did not immediately respond to The Hill's request for comment on Danker's resignation.
Last week's FDA decision authorized products manufactured by Glas Inc. The company says it will block children from purchasing the vaping pods through age-verification methods, including checking government-issued IDs and using Bluetooth connections on a buyer's smartphone.
Whether those safeguards will actually keep blueberry- and mango-flavored nicotine products out of teenagers' hands is a fair question. Age-verification technology has a mixed track record across industries. And flavored vapes have been at the center of youth-addiction concerns for years, concerns that the administration's own March guidance acknowledged.
President Trump has made an explicit push to support the vaping industry. That is a known policy position. Danker's letter carefully avoids criticizing Trump himself, instead pointing the finger at "senior HHS officials" who he says pursued the approvals. The distinction matters: Danker appears to be arguing that certain officials inside Kennedy's office went beyond what even the White House's own guidance framework contemplated.
The ongoing reshuffling of Trump's public health leadership, from the CDC to the FDA to HHS itself, means these internal policy fights are playing out against a backdrop of constant personnel turnover.
Kennedy built his political brand around the idea that the federal health establishment had been captured by industry interests at the expense of American families and their children. That message resonated with millions of voters who felt the public health bureaucracy had lost its way during COVID and beyond.
But a spokesperson resigning because he believes Kennedy's own inner circle is greenlighting flavored nicotine products that target kids cuts directly against that brand. If the Make America Healthy Again movement cannot hold a clear line on keeping addictive flavored products away from minors, voters will rightly ask what, exactly, the movement stands for.
The broader influence of the MAHA orbit continues to ripple through American institutions. Even the private sector has taken notice, Steak 'n Shake recently created a "Chief MAHA Officer" role and hired a former HHS adviser to fill it. That kind of cultural reach only holds if the movement's own house is in order.
The tension here is not between left and right. It is between a health-first message and the commercial interests that inevitably press against it. Every administration faces that pressure. The question is whether Kennedy's team can manage it without hemorrhaging the very people tasked with communicating its mission to the public.
Danker's letter names no specific officials. He refers broadly to "senior HHS officials in the immediate office of the secretary." That leaves open the question of whether Kennedy himself directed or approved the push for flavored-vape approvals, or whether subordinates acted with more autonomy than the secretary intended.
The timing of Makary's departure from the FDA, just one day before Danker quit, also invites scrutiny. Were the two exits connected? Did Makary share Danker's concerns about the approvals? Neither man's public statements, as reported, answer those questions directly.
Internal conflict at federal agencies is nothing new. The DOJ's recent indictment of a former Fauci adviser for allegedly destroying COVID-19 records is a reminder that the federal health bureaucracy has deep accountability problems that predate Kennedy's tenure. Cleaning house is necessary work. But cleaning house loses its moral authority if the replacements cannot agree on what the house rules are.
Kennedy's team now faces a practical challenge: finding senior communications staff willing to defend policies that two predecessors found indefensible. That is not a recruiting problem money can solve. It is a credibility problem.
The legal and regulatory battles over federal health policy show no signs of cooling, either. Courts continue to weigh in on administration actions across the board, and judicial challenges to Trump-era health policy remain a persistent factor in how these decisions ultimately play out.
Rich Danker did not leave HHS because he disagreed with the administration's broad direction. He left because he believed specific officials inside Kennedy's office were undermining the administration's own youth-protection guidance to benefit the flavored-vape industry. His resignation letter is a public document, addressed to the president, making claims that HHS has so far declined to address.
Two spokesperson resignations. Two fired senior aides. An FDA commissioner out the door. All within months. That is not a policy shop finding its footing. That is a department in disarray at the very moment it needs a steady hand.
If the Make America Healthy Again agenda means anything, it means putting children's health ahead of industry convenience. The people who were supposed to carry that message keep walking out the door, and they keep saying, on the record, why.
