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After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his presidential campaign, he cozied up to the Trump campaign, which secured him a Cabenit nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services for the second Trump administration. Before the election, RFK Jr. had publicly said that the GOP nominee had promised him a place in his next administration. Still, many thought it would not be such a prominent post within the federal government. In announcing Kennedy’s nomination, the President-elect said that Kenndy would stand up to the “industrial food complex” and the “drug companies” that have “engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation.” Trump’s argument is not completely wrong, but many are questioning why an expert in public health would not be better suited to take on special interests that exploit their power in ways that impact the country’s health.
RFK Jr. has expressed his skepticism about vaccines and conspiracy theories about the origins of COVID-19. If the Senate confirms his nomination, these comments and perspectives will be of real concern to the career officials within the agencies that could fall under his purview, which include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. These institutions and several others make the Department of Health and Human Services the most critical public health organization within the government.
What RFK Jr says he would do as HHS Secretary
Kennedy has been highly critical of the CDC, FDA, and NIH. In an interview with NBC last year, he said he would “unravel the corrupt corporate capture of these agencies that turned them predatory against the American public. " As HHS Secretary, he has said he would get rid of the people running those agencies and surround himself with “dissidents.” When announcing his retirement from the presidential race, Kennedy said that under a Trump administration, those agencies would be staffed with “honest scientists and doctors.”
Kennedy’s anti-vax track record
Kennedy was a leading anti-vaccine activist who founded an organization to advocate his views on the topic called Children’s Health Defense. He and that group helped build vaccination hesitation among Samoans that contributed to a measles outbreak in 2019. He has peddled conspiracy theories and falsely claimed that vaccines “probably caused more deaths than they’ve averted.”
During his bid for the White House, largely supported by the anti-vaccine movement, he said he would stop the NIH from investigating infectious diseases and have the agency refocus its research on chronic diseases. He has also said that in the event of another pandemic, as president he wouldn’t prioritize vaccine research, manufacture, or distribution all of which helped save millions of lives during the covid pandemic and bring it to an end.
Donald Trump’s vision for education revolves around a single goal: to rid America’s schools of perceived “ wokeness ” and “left-wing indoctrination.”
The president-elect wants to keep transgender athletes out of girls’ sports. He wants to forbid classroom lessons on gender identity and structural racism. He wants to abolish diversity and inclusion offices.
Throughout his campaign, the Republicans depicted schools as a political battleground to be won back from the left. Now that he’s won the White House, he plans to use federal money as leverage to advance his vision of education across the nation.
Trump’s education plan pledges to cut funding for schools that defy him on a multitude of issues.
On his first day in office, Trump repeatedly said he would cut money to “any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content on our children.” On the campaign trail, Trump said he would “not give one penny” to schools with vaccine or mask requirements.
He said it would be done through executive action, though even some of his supporters say he lacks the authority to make such swift and sweeping changes.
Trump’s opponents say his vision of America’s schools is warped by politics — that the type of liberal indoctrination he rails against is a fiction. They say his proposals will undermine public education and hurt the students who need schools’ services the most.
“It’s fear-based, non-factual information, and I would call it propaganda,” said Wil Del Pilar, senior vice president for Education Trust, a research and advocacy organization. “There is no evidence that students are being taught to question their sexuality in schools. There is no evidence that our American education system is full of maniacs.”
Trump’s platform calls for “massive funding preferences” for states and schools that end teacher tenure, enact universal school choice programs, and allow parents to elect school principals.
Perhaps his most ambitious promise is to shut down the U.S. Education Department entirely, a goal of conservative politicians for decades, saying it has been infiltrated by “radicals.”
America’s public K-12 schools get about 14% of their revenue from the federal government, mainly from programs targeting low-income students and special education. The vast majority of schools’ money comes from local taxes and state governments.
Colleges rely more heavily on federal money, especially the grants and loans the government gives students to pay for tuition.
Trump’s strongest tool to put schools’ money on the line is his authority to enforce civil rights — the Education Department has the power to cut federal funding to schools and colleges that fail to follow civil rights laws.
The president can’t immediately revoke money from large numbers of districts, but if he targets a few through civil rights inquiries, others are likely to fall in line, said Bob Eitel, president of the conservative Defense of Freedom Institute and an education official during Trump’s first term. That authority could be used to go after schools and colleges that have diversity and inclusion offices or those accused of antisemitism, Eitel said.
“This is not a Day One loss of funding,” Eitel said, referencing Trump’s campaign promise. “But at the end of the day, the president will get his way on this issue, because I do think that there are some real legal issues.”
Trump also has hinted at potential legislation to deliver some of his promises, including fining universities over diversity initiatives.
To get colleges to shutter diversity programs — which Trump says amount to discrimination — he said he “will advance a measure to have them fined up to the entire amount of their endowment.”
His platform also calls for a new, free online university called the American Academy, to be paid for by “taxing, fining and suing excessively large private university endowments.”
During his first term, Trump occasionally threatened to cut money from schools that defied him, including those slow to reopen during the COVID-19 pandemic and colleges he accused of curbing free speech.
Most of the threats came to nothing, though he succeeded in getting Congress to add a tax on wealthy university endowments, and his Education Department made sweeping changes to rules around campus sexual assault.
Universities hope their relationship with the administration won’t be as antagonistic as Trump’s rhetoric suggests.
“Education has been an easy target during the campaign season,” said Peter McDonough, general counsel for the American Council on Education, an association of university presidents. “But a partnership between higher education and the administration is going to be better for the country than an attack on education.”
Trump’s threats of severe penalties seem to contradict another of his education pillars — the extraction of the federal government from schools. In closing the Education Department, Trump said he would return “all education work and needs back to the states.”
“We’re going to end education coming out of Washington, D.C.,” Trump said on his website last year. In his platform, he pledged to ensure schools are “free from political meddling.”
Rather than letting states and schools decide their stance on polarizing issues, Trump is proposing blanket bans that align with his vision.
Taking a neutral stance and letting states decide wouldn’t deliver Trump’s campaign promises, said Max Eden, a senior fellow at AEI, a conservative think tank. For example, Trump plans to rescind guidance from President Joe Biden’s administration that extended Title IX protections to LGBTQ+ students. And Trump would go further, promising a nationwide ban on transgender women in women’s sports.
“Trump ran on getting boys out of girls’ sports. He didn’t run on letting boys play in girls’ sports in blue states if they want to,” Eden said.
Trump also wants a say in school curriculum, vowing to fight for “patriotic” education. He promised to reinstate his 1776 Commission, which he created in 2021 to promote patriotic education. The panel created a report that called progressivism a “challenge to American principles” alongside fascism.
Adding to that effort, Trump is proposing a new credentialing body to certify teachers “who embrace patriotic values.”
Few of his biggest education goals can be accomplished quickly, and many would require new action from Congress or federal processes that usually take months.
More immediately, he plans to nullify executive orders issued by Biden, including one promoting racial equity across the federal government. He’s also expected to work quickly to revoke or rewrite Biden’s Title IX rules, though finalizing those changes would require a lengthier rulemaking process.
Trump hasn’t detailed his plans for student loans, though he has called Biden’s cancellation proposals illegal and unfair.
Most of Biden’s signature education initiatives have been paused by courts amid legal challenges, including a proposal for widespread loan cancellation and a more generous loan repayment plan. Those plans could be revoked or rewritten once Trump takes office.
President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday he will nominate anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, putting a man whose views public health officials have decried as dangerous in charge of a massive agency that oversees everything from drug, and vaccine and food safety to medical research, Medicare and Medicaid.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump said Thursday in a post on his Truth Social site announcing the appointment. Kennedy, he said, would “end the Chronic Disease epidemic” and “Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
Trump said Kennedy would target drugs, food additives, and chemicals.
As one of the most prominent anti-vaccine activists in the world, Kennedy’s nomination immediately alarmed some public health officials.
Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Associated Press, “I don’t want to go backward and see children or adults suffer or lose their lives to remind us that vaccines work, and so I am concerned.”
Trump also announced Thursday that he has chosen Doug Collins, a former congressman from Georgia, to run the Department of Veterans Affairs. Collins is a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force Reserve Command. The Republican served in Congress from 2013 to 2021, and he helped defend Trump during his first impeachment process.
Later Thursday, Trump said he was nominating North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to lead the Department of the Interior. After ending his own presidential campaign in December 2023, Burgum endorsed Trump and became an outspoken supporter, appearing on TV news shows and at rallies and other events. He was on Trump’s short list of potential running mates.
Kennedy hails from one of the nation’s most storied political families and is the son of the late Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy. He first challenged President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination last year. He then ran as an independent but abandoned his bid this summer after striking a deal to endorse Trump in exchange for a promise to serve in a health policy role during a second Trump administration.
He and the president-elect have since become good friends. The two campaigned together extensively during the race’s final stretch, and Trump made clear he intended to give Kennedy a major public health role.
“I’m going to let him go wild on health,” Trump said at a rally last month.
During the campaign, Kennedy told NewsNation that Trump had asked him to “reorganize” agencies including the CDC, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.
Kennedy has pushed against processed foods and the use of herbicides like Roundup weed killer. He has long criticized the large commercial farms and animal feeding operations that dominate the industry.
But he is perhaps best known for his criticism of childhood vaccines.
Again and again, Kennedy has made his opposition to vaccines clear. In July, he said in a podcast interview that “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” and told FOX News that he still believes in the long-ago debunked idea that vaccines can cause autism.
In a 2021 podcast, he urged people to “resist” CDC guidelines that advise when kids should receive routine vaccinations.
“I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, ‘Better not get them vaccinated,’” Kennedy said.
Repeated scientific studies in the U.S. and abroad have found no link between vaccines and autism. Vaccines have been proven safe and effective in laboratory testing and in real-world use in hundreds of millions of people over decades. The World Health Organization credits childhood vaccines with preventing as many as 5 million deaths a year.
Trump during his first term launched Operation Warp Speed, an effort to speed the production and distribution of a vaccine to combat COVID-19. The resulting vaccines were widely credited, including by Trump himself, with saving lives.
Kennedy has also worked to shore up support among young mothers in particular, on a message of ridding the U.S. of unhealthy ingredients in foods, promising to model regulations after those imposed in Europe. His claims that the U.S. obesity epidemic, as well as a rise in chronic diseases like diabetes, are the result of processed and unhealthy foods have resonated on social media among fitness gurus and mom influencers alike.
It remains unclear how that will square with Trump’s history of deregulation of big industries, including food. Trump has pushed for fewer inspections of the meat industry, for example.
Kennedy’s stance on vaccines raises questions about his ability to get confirmed, even in a GOP-controlled Senate. He also has said he would make a controversial recommendation to remove fluoride from drinking water, although fluoride levels are mandated by state and local governments. The addition of the mineral has been cited as leading to improved dental health and is considered safe at low levels.
Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune would not comment on Trump’s pick of Kennedy or any other potential nominee. “I’m not going to make any judgments about any of these folks at this point,” he said.
But Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, R-MO, praised the HHS pick, posting on X: “Bad day for Big Pharma! @RobertKennedyJr.”
Several Democrats quickly condemned the selection.
Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the No. 3 Democrat, said that Kennedy’s confirmation would be “nothing short of a disaster for the health of millions of families.”
But not every Democrat recoiled from the news. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said he was “excited” for Kennedy to lead HHS. Polis said he wants to see Kennedy take on “big pharma” and hopes he will “lean into personal choice” on vaccines.
That idea is concerning to former New York Public Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan, who said that if people opt against vaccines, deadly viruses could run wild. He points to an uptick in measles outbreaks — 16 have occurred so far this year compared to four last year. “That’s going to continue if we have someone at the top of our health system that is saying, ‘I’m not so sure about the science here,’” Vasan said.
FDA could have one of the biggest shakeups, with Kennedy’s promises of more regulations — an action that would buck the moves that previous Republican administrations have made. He has promised a crackdown on food dyes and preservatives. And with pharmaceutical companies, he’s suggested that drugmakers be barred from advertising on TV, a multibillion-dollar enterprise that accounts for most of the industry’s marketing dollars. He also proposed eliminating fees that drugmakers pay the FDA to review their products.
He wants to weaken FDA regulations around a host of unsubstantiated therapies, including psychedelics and stem cells as well as discredited COVID-era drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
Kennedy also will focus on ending the “revolving door” of employees who have previously worked for pharmaceutical companies or leave government service to work for that industry, his former campaign communications manager, Del Bigtree, told the AP last month.
This past weekend, Kennedy said he wanted to fire 600 employees at NIH, which oversees vaccine research, and replace them with 600 new people. In separate comments, he has said that in his first week, he would order a pause in drug development and infectious disease research, shifting the focus to chronic diseases.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
Trump also announced Thursday that he will nominate Jay Clayton, who served as chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission during his first term, to serve as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
__ Seitz reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Mary Clare Jalonick, and Matthew Perrone in Washington, Mike Stobbe in New York, and JoNel Aleccia in Temecula, California contributed to this report.
Donald Trump met Thursday at his Mar-a-Lago club with Argentine President Javier Milei, the first foreign leader to meet with the president-elect since his victory in last week’s election.
The meeting was confirmed by a person who insisted on anonymity to discuss an event that hadn’t yet been announced publicly. The person said the meeting went well and said Milei also met with investors.
A short time later, Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist” and frequent recipient of Trump praise, addressed the America First Policy Institute gala at Mar-a-Lago. He spoke briefly in English, then gave a longer speech in Spanish, pausing to allow an interpreter to translate, in which he slammed left-wing ideologies and saluted Elon Musk, the owner of X, saying his social media site is helping to “save humanity.”
Milei criticized a political ruling class that he said was responsible for a system that used unfair tax systems to force “the redistribution of wealth at gunpoint.”
The president of Argentina also congratulated Trump on his “resounding victory” in the election, saying, “Today the winds of freedom are blowing much stronger” and calling the victory “proof positive that the forces of heaven are on our side.”
Trump also spoke to the gala crowd, congratulating Milei “for the job you’ve done for Argentina” and saying it was an “honor” to have Argentina’s president at his club.
“The job you’ve done is incredible. Make Argentina Great Again, you know, MAGA. He’s a MAGA person,” Trump said to applause. “And you know, he’s doing that.”
Shortly after Milei’s election in November 2023, Trump posted on social media, “You will turn your country around and truly Make Argentina Great Again!”
Milei first met Trump in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in the Washington area. He has openly declared his admiration for Trump and when he saw him, he rushed to him screaming “President!” and gave him a close hug before they posed for pictures.
The Argentine president is known for his eccentric personality and first made a name for himself by shouting against Argentina’s “political caste” on television. The right-wing populist campaigned with a chainsaw as his prop to symbolize his plans to slash public spending and scrap government ministries.