On Sep. 16, 2026, CSPI’s Litigation Department and its co-counsel at the ACLU, Protect Democracy, and Jacobson Lawyers Group sued the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the US DOGE Service, challenging NIH’s ideologically driven censorship and termination of biomedical research grants.
USDA’s final rule Expanding Fluid Milk Options in Child Nutrition Programs (91 FR 25073) seeks to codify the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, passed by Congress December 2025, and expand milk offerings to additional programs beyond NSLP, including SBP, CACFP and the Special Milk Program. In addition to providing these options, the rule exempts the saturated fat content in fluid milk from counting towards the weekly saturated fat limits school meals must follow.
In this comment, we make the following points:
1. CSPI opposes USDA’s decisions to remove dairy fat restrictions from the CNPs and exempt fluid milk from school meal weekly saturated fat limits.
2. CSPI urges USDA to include and specify the nondairy beverage access provisions included in the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act in future rulemaking and ensure these provisions apply to all CNPs.
3. CSPI requests USDA clarify that any flavored milk options, regardless of fat content, must meet per-product added sugar limits and weekly added sugar limits as established in the final rule, Child Nutrition Programs: Meal Patterns Consistent With the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
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Since early 2025, several large federal health grants to states have been suspended and then restored after legal challenges. Hundreds of millions of dollars that had already been allocated by Congress were briefly put on hold before the court intervened. From the outside, these episodes may look like routine disputes between states and the federal government, as such cancellations do happen. But inside state agencies and in communities, they create something more consequential: uncertainty that interrupts crucial public health programs–even if states ultimately get the money.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is spreading doubts about the safety of vaccines and considering changes that could prompt manufacturers to flee the U.S. market.
In March 2026, CSPI’s Litigation Department took a stand for scientific integrity and public health, filing an amicus brief to challenge a Trump Administration Rule that threatens to deny tens of thousands of women access to FDA-approved contraceptives under their employer-sponsored health plans. The brief, which was filed on behalf of three former FDA officials, addresses the misleading and cherry-picked data cited by the Administration, as well as the rigorous science that goes into vetting FDA-approved contraceptives.
The FDA has taken down a webpage warning about therapies and products making “false claims” of treating autism. It’s part of a series of actions the agency has taken under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to discredit long-established science.
In the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, USDA and HHS rejected many science-based recommendations and emphasized animal protein, butter, and full-fat dairy.
