When President Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to become his secretary of health and human services, it was possible to conjure a few faint reasons for optimism. Yes, his well-known rejection of mainstream vaccine science and general penchant for medical quackery were frightening. But Kennedy also offered one fundamentally correct critique of America’s health approach: For years, we have done far too little to combat our country’s epidemic of chronic disease through prevention, instead relying on expensive treatments once people become sick.
To win confirmation, Kennedy gave some ground to his skeptics, promising Republican senators he would respect the government’s existing vaccine recommendation system and follow accepted science. Once in the cabinet, Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda was kicked off with the president signing an executive order vowing to tackle chronic illness through “fresh thinking on nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety.” On paper, all of these were worthy goals. If Kennedy had stuck to them in a remotely reasonable way, it was conceivable he might even have found bipartisan buy-in for parts of his MAHA agenda.
Unfortunately, Kennedy’s tenure at HHS has confirmed the worst concerns of his critics, and then some. He has thrown America’s major health agencies into turmoil by firing highly experienced scientists and health professionals, defunding vital medical research, and making unfounded claims about autism, all while emulating President Trump by ignoring checks and balances on his authority. His fixation on voodoo science and conspiracy theories is wasting the opportunity he had to make progress on a MAHA agenda that the country could overwhelmingly support.
In recent months, the Trump administration has made moves seemingly aimed at reining Kennedy in, due to the sheer unpopularity of his stances on issues like vaccines. Some Republican members of Congress have also started to push back against the secretary. But a new Congress will bring additional opportunities to hold him accountable for his record of broken promises. In this paper, we will review the most damaging aspects of the secretary’s record in depth, while outlining steps lawmakers should take to curb his abuses and prevent similar ones in the future. Those include:
While curtailing the secretary’s destructive overreach is essential, it would be a mistake to ignore the genuine grassroots political energy the MAHA movement has harnessed. Many of its goals command overwhelming support among voters, at least when framed in general terms. Rather than attempt to return to the old status quo of health, critics would be wise to divorce Kennedy from the concerns of MAHA champions and point out how Kennedy’s own management of HHS is foiling the ambitions he vowed to pursue. America’s legions of MAHA supporters have some valid concerns about our health system. But they need a different sort of champion.
