Rich Danker, the chief spokesperson for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., resigned Wednesday over what he described as an effort inside the department to push flavored electronic cigarettes onto the market, products he warned could hook children on nicotine.
Danker served as assistant secretary for public affairs at HHS. His departure came just one day after FDA Commissioner Marty Makary officially stepped down, making two senior health officials gone in 48 hours over the same policy dispute: the federal government's decision to authorize fruit- and menthol-flavored vaping products.
The back-to-back exits mark a widening fracture inside the administration's health apparatus. The fight is not over ideology in the abstract. It is over specific products, blueberry- and mango-flavored nicotine vaping pods, plus two menthol-flavored items, approved last week by the Trump administration. It was the first time a fruit-flavored electronic cigarette received federal marketing authorization.
Danker addressed his resignation letter directly to President Trump. In it, he laid blame not on the president but on unnamed senior officials inside HHS, specifically, those in the immediate office of the secretary.
"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."
That is a pointed accusation. Danker did not name the officials, but the phrasing, "immediate office of the secretary", leaves little ambiguity about the chain of command he held responsible.
He went further, arguing that the approvals directly contradicted guidance the FDA itself had published just months earlier. The agency released its "Flavored Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems Premarket Applications Considerations Related to Youth Risk" guidance for industry in March, and Danker's letter stated that document had the backing of the White House.
"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, the administration set the rules in March and then, by Danker's account, moved to break them within weeks.
Danker is the second HHS spokesperson to resign over policy disagreements with Kennedy's leadership. Tom Corry, another top spokesperson, left in March 2025 following Kennedy's handling of the measles outbreak in Texas. That earlier departure drew scrutiny to the secretary's management style and his approach to public health crises.
Now the same office has lost another senior communications official, this time over a regulatory decision with direct implications for children's health. The pattern raises fair questions about whether HHS can retain experienced staff when internal policy conflicts go unresolved.
The departure of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary adds another layer. Makary officially stepped down the day before Danker, and Newsmax reported that Makary had tried to block the flavored e-cigarette marketing authorizations but was overruled. His exit and Danker's, arriving in rapid succession, suggest the dispute was not a minor policy disagreement but a genuine fault line inside the department.
HHS did not immediately respond to The Hill's request for comment on Danker's resignation.
The products at the center of the controversy are manufactured by Glas Inc. The company says it will block children from purchasing the vaping pods through age-verification methods. But for critics like Danker, age-verification promises from a manufacturer do not address the core problem: flavors like blueberry and mango are designed to taste good to young users, regardless of what checkout procedures exist.
The approval is historic in a narrow regulatory sense. Before last week, no fruit-flavored electronic cigarette had ever received federal marketing authorization. That distinction matters because the FDA's own March guidance was written to impose a high bar on exactly these kinds of products, flavored nicotine delivery systems that carry elevated youth-risk profiles.
Just The News reported that the dispute centered on those blueberry and mango pods specifically, with critics inside HHS arguing the products could attract children and increase nicotine addiction risks. That framing tracks with Danker's own letter, which explicitly warned of "lung damage and higher risk of cancer."
The tension here is real and does not break neatly along partisan lines. President Trump has publicly pushed to "save vaping," and Danker was careful not to direct blame at the president. But the practical result is that officials who took the administration's own March guidance seriously found themselves overruled by colleagues in the same building.
Personnel turbulence is not unique to HHS. Reports of confusion surrounding Makary's departure from the FDA circulated before his resignation became official. President Trump himself downplayed early reports about the commissioner's status.
Other corners of the administration have seen similar friction. Internal disagreements and high-profile departures have surfaced across multiple agencies, a recurring feature of a second term that has moved fast on policy but sometimes struggled to keep its own appointees aligned.
The FDA itself has been at the center of several major policy pushes, including the administration's fast-tracking of psychedelic therapy reviews and commitments to ibogaine research for veterans. These initiatives reflect an administration willing to challenge regulatory orthodoxy, but the vaping dispute shows the cost when that willingness runs ahead of internal consensus.
Danker's letter names no specific officials. It does not explain whether he raised his objections internally before resigning or whether he was overruled in real time. The identity of the "senior HHS officials" who pushed the flavored vape approvals remains unclear.
It is also unknown whether HHS formally accepted Danker's resignation or whether any response from Kennedy's office is forthcoming. The department's silence, no comment to The Hill, no public statement, leaves a vacuum that Danker's letter currently fills alone.
The broader question hanging over this episode is whether the March guidance on flavored nicotine products still means anything. If the administration published youth-risk standards with White House support and then approved the very products those standards were designed to scrutinize, the guidance looks like a dead letter. That outcome would satisfy the vaping industry and frustrate public health advocates on both sides of the aisle.
Departures like those seen elsewhere in the administration are part of governing. People disagree. Officials leave. But when two senior health officials walk out the door in two days over the same issue, and the issue is whether the government should make it easier for kids to vape mango-flavored nicotine, the administration owes the public more than silence.
Accountability does not mean agreeing with every departing official. It means explaining the decision. So far, HHS has not bothered.
