Donald Trump has taken no time fulfilling his promises to the American people, launching executive action after executive action, uprooting the status quo, and daring the other branches of government to oppose him. Trump has signed over 70 executive orders thus far, more than any of our previous seven presidents through their first 100 days and easily surpassing Biden’s 42. The Gulf of Mexico is now the “Gulf of America,” government DEI programs are a thing of the past, and Trump’s cabinet confirmations have gone off without a hitch despite some highly controversial nominations, perhaps none more controversial than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary.
Kennedy has been an antagonist of the medical community for years. He has repeatedly questioned the efficacy of vaccines and falsely credited them with causing autism. He incorrectly claimed that COVID-19 was engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, harmful rhetoric that no doubt contributed to rising Asian hate crimes and the “conspiracy of Jewish immunity from tragedy.” University of Pennsylvania vaccinologist Paul Offit likened Kennedy’s heading of H.H.S., which oversees N.I.H., to “having somebody who believes the Earth is flat as head of NASA.”
Kennedy’s nomination is just a glimpse into the future of public health, a future where medical professionals are overlooked in favor of yes-men to protect the health of the American people. The results are exactly what you’d expect.
Last week, the Trump administration blocked the National Institutes of Health, which Kennedy oversees, from posting new notices in the Federal Register, the necessary first step towards approving N.I.H. grant proposals that go to more than 300,000 researchers at more than 2,500 universities, medical schools, and other institutions. The freeze delayed $1.5 billion in funding across 16,000 applications, and the exact timeline for approval panels to resume is unclear. On top of interfering with N.I.H. funding, the new administration fired 1,200 employees as part of an ongoing purge of government agencies. One N.I.H. principal investigator claimed the layoffs and associated fear within the agency “have set back N.I.H. science significantly.” The investigator tellingly opted to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.
Kennedy plans to politicize research further by allowing the Senate health committee to review all proposed N.I.H. studies to correct flaws at the outset; however, the potential risk of imparting political agendas is all too obvious. This unprecedented move could also expose “proprietary information and intellectual property that need to be protected” and lacks feasibility (N.I.H. funds over 58,000 grants per year), leading to further questions of Kennedy’s capacity to serve as HHS secretary.
In control of the N.I.H. directly will likely be Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford Medical School professor and no stranger to controversy. Bhattacharya rose to prominence in political circles after co-authoring the “Great Barrington Declaration,” a 2020 manifesto advocating for herd immunity measures and criticizing the global response to COVID-19.
Beyond N.I.H., Trump has withdrawn the U.S. from the World Health Organization in part due to their alleged mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, taking 20 percent of the W.H.O.’s budget with him and isolating the U.S. health system from its international counterparts. He has also attempted to withdraw funding for any institution that provides gender-affirming care, although a federal judge declared this act unconstitutional.
Global health is now reeling from a sweeping move to cut all U.S.A.I.D. programs because they fail to align with his “America First” philosophy. The State Department terminated funding for 5,800 projects providing lifesaving support, including “H.I.V. treatment programs that had served millions of people, the main malaria control programs in the worst-affected African countries and global efforts to wipe out polio.”
Every action pertaining to public health thus far has been politically motivated. Nominating Kennedy and Bhattacharya because of their extremist right-wing medical views, deserting global health institutions over COVID-19 gripes from a half-decade ago, and denying gender-affirming care to assure his party’s view on gender prevails over the well-being of America’s youth. We’ve only just begun down a dangerous path, led by conspiracy theorists and devoid of international support. The Trump administration has made itself clear — it’s politics over public health.
The Zeitgeist aims to publish ideas worth discussing. The views presented are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial board.
