An official overseeing implementation of the Make America Healthy Again agenda at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been fired following the awkward rollout of a pivot away from mRNA vaccines, according to the pharmaceutical trade publication Endpoints News.
Gray Delany, head of MAHA implementation at HHS, has been let go, according to the report. Delany now describes himself as the “former director of MAHA implementation” at HHS on X.
The action caps days of confusion over the Trump administration’s position on federal mRNA contracts and apparent tension between HHS and the White House on pharmaceutical policy. The messy announcement prompted Trump advisor Steve Bannon to call for a “whole new comms” at HHS, according to Endpoints.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Aug. 5 that HHS was winding down the mRNA portfolio of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, the research and development arm of the pandemic response office. HHS said it was pivoting to other platforms it described as “evidence-based, ethically grounded solutions,” including whole-virus vaccines. The 22 stalled projects totaled nearly $500 million, HHS said.
HHS didn’t respond to a request for comment.
When asked about the pivot on Aug. 6, President Donald Trump signaled a desire for new approaches while praising Operation Warp Speed, the 2020 sprint in his first administration to develop vaccines against COVID-19. These investments included two mRNA vaccines manufactured by Moderna and Pfizer. Trump signaled there would be a meeting about the contracts on Aug. 7.
“Operation Warp Speed, whether you’re a Republican or Democrat, is one of the most incredible things ever done in this country: the efficiency, the way it was done, the distribution, everything about it was amazing. But that was now a long time ago and we’re on to other things,” Trump said. “We’re looking for other answers for other problems, to other sicknesses and diseases.”
While an initial press release referred to the cancelation of a contract with Moderna and the University of Texas Medical Branch on a H5N1 vaccine, an updated version of the release described a “restructuring” of that project and acknowledged it was jointly funded by the Pentagon, which is outside of Kennedy’s purview.
Bannon told Endpoints that he texted HHS Principal Deputy Chief of Staff Stefanie Spear on Wednesday morning to say the announcement was “suboptimal.”
“In Trump world … that means totally fu**ed up,” Bannon told Endpoints. “They need a whole new comms … Gray Delany is the only guy that, to me, had his act together.”
“The mRNA vaccines, we learned this with COVID, don’t work for upper respiratory infections,” Kennedy said at a press conference on rural health on Thursday.
RFK Jr. says mRNA vaccines may be helpful for some illnesses like cancer…
But for illnesses like Covid and the Flu it does more harm than good.
“The mRNA vaccines, don’t work against upper respiratory infections.”
“There are two problems with them.”
“One is they target a… pic.twitter.com/U7aOCTrkkS
— MAHA Action (@MAHA_Action) August 7, 2025
Kennedy also said that mRNA vaccines have unpredictable effects in the body and didn’t control sufficiently for antigenic drift, or viral evolution.
While critical of mRNA technology for infectious diseases, Kennedy said they could be helpful for cancer, according to an X post by MAHA Action, a Kennedy-aligned 501c4 organization.
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