President-elect Donald Trump wants to let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “go wild on health.”
Mr. Kennedy is filling in the contours of his vision as he prepares for confirmation hearings as health and human services secretary. He plans to eliminate processed foods in school lunches and target the cozy relationship between industry players and the federal agencies that regulate them.
Mr. Kennedy, a 70-year-old environmental lawyer, pledges to crack down on pesticides and seed-based cooking oils. He says too many Food and Drug Administration employees are worried about their next jobs instead of the public interest.
Although Mr. Kennedy built his public reputation as a vaccine skeptic, he has pledged to leave vaccines on the market and is simply seeking data on how they are approved.
He wants municipalities to stop fluoridating water supplies immediately after Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Other tasks, such as finding the root causes of childhood illness, would be long-term projects.
Mr. Kennedy, a son of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, ran for president as a Democrat and then an independent before supporting Mr. Trump. He has the full confidence of the president-elect.
Given his unorthodox theories and positions, he faces a bruising confirmation battle in the Senate.
Lobbyists are also preparing for a fight. Mr. Kennedy’s pledge to take on Big Food and Big Pharma could clash with Mr. Trump’s pro-business agenda.
Pharmaceutical stocks dropped after Mr. Trump nominated Mr. Kennedy to his Cabinet, indicating investors were spooked.
Big businesses are concerned that Mr. Kennedy’s proposals could reduce the demand for certain profitable drugs.
“If someone doesn’t need insulin anymore, they’re not Type 2 diabetic anymore. That’s a customer that is gone,” said Ashley Tyrner-Dolce, founder and CEO Of FarmboxRx, which ships produce and other healthy grocery items to people based on their health care needs. “That’s where the pushback is going to come from.”
‘Pack your bags’
The Department of Health and Human Services is a sprawling agency that oversees a budget of more than $1 trillion, 13 operating divisions and more than 80,000 employees. Much of its funding is mandatory for insurance programs such as Medicare for seniors and Medicaid for the poor.
Most of Mr. Kennedy’s stated agenda is to reform the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. He says corporate interests are too intertwined with their operations and hundreds of employees and entire departments might need to go.
“Their function is no longer to improve and protect the health of Americans. Their function is to advance the mercantile and commercial interests of the pharmaceutical industry that has transformed them and the food industry into sock puppets for the industry they’re supposed to regulate,” Mr. Kennedy told a preelection roundtable hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican.
Mr. Kennedy plans to clean house at the FDA. He cited the department’s aversion to raw milk and COVID-19 treatments such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
He accused regulators of suppressing specific vitamins and psychedelics and “anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma.” Emerging research shows LSD and other drugs may benefit people with depression or substance abuse disorders.
“If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags,” he wrote on X in late October.
He has proposed banning pharmaceutical TV advertisements and eliminating fees they pay for the FDA to review their drugs.
Mr. Kennedy is also skeptical about popular weight loss drugs such as Ozempic. He said it pads drugmakers’ bottom lines instead of focusing on the root causes of obesity.
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) struck a collaborative tone when reacting to the Kennedy nomination. A statement by the major pharmaceutical trade group did not detail Mr. Kennedy’s record but agreed with his central talking point about the need to tackle chronic illness.
“This industry is a crown jewel of the American economy, giving American patients more medicine choices than anywhere else in the world and supporting millions of high-paying, high-tech jobs around the country,” PhRMA CEO Stephen J. Ubl said. “We want to work with the Trump administration to further strengthen our innovation ecosystem and improve health care for patients.”
Mr. Kennedy has said he will fire 600 workers at the National Institutes of Health, part of his push to have the institutes “take a break” from studying infectious diseases and pivot toward medical conditions such as diabetes and obesity.
“I’m going to say to NIH scientists, ‘God bless you all,’” Mr. Kennedy told the anti-vaccine nonprofit Children’s Health Defense — he founded the group and serves as chairman, though he is on leave — in November 2023 as a presidential candidate, according to NBC News. “Thank you for public service. We’re going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years.”
The comments unnerved scientists who said diseases don’t know when to take a break. NIH workers have civil service protections against outright terminations, though Republicans are considering ways to reclassify certain workers as political appointees.
“Trump also could fire people and force them to sue in order to reclaim their jobs. Since that costs money and takes time, some likely would accept their termination and simply leave,” said Darrell West, director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution. “Agencies could offer buyouts as an incentive to get people to leave voluntarily. Those are options the new administration could pursue that would not require legislative action.”
Mr. Kennedy says he is committed to an overhaul.
“I look forward to working with the more than 80,000 employees at HHS to free the agencies from the smothering cloud of corporate capture so they can pursue their mission to make Americans once again the healthiest people on Earth,” Mr. Kennedy wrote in a social media message accepting Mr. Trump’s nomination.
‘Health care’ over ‘sick care’
Mr. Trump said he expects Mr. Kennedy to revert health agencies “to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
Exploring rates of chronic illness among children is one of Mr. Kennedy’s less controversial tasks and could win bipartisan support.
Mr. Trump has proposed a “Presidential Commission of Independent Minds” to examine rising rates of chronic illnesses in children, though Mr. Kennedy has already named culprits.
“First and worst is ultra-processed foods. 70% of American children’s diet is now ultra-processed. … These foods consist primarily of processed sugar, ultra-processed grain and seed oils,” he told Mr. Johnson’s roundtable. “The second culprit is toxic chemicals in our food, our medicine and our environment. Pesticides, food additives, pharmaceutical drugs and toxic waste permeate every cell in our bodies.”
Mr. Kennedy recently told “Fox and Friends” that he would remove processed food from school lunches “immediately.”
He vowed to target food additives in products sold exclusively in the U.S. and seed oils, such as canola and corn oil, as drivers of disease.
Some experts predict the food industry will limit Mr. Kennedy’s ambitions.
“If he succeeded in addressing the unhealthy ultra-processed foods, it would be positive for U.S. health. However, I do not believe he will do that but rather focus on some of his issues like removing one dye or a few additives from our allowable lists,” said Barry M. Popkin, a distinguished professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina.
He said Mr. Kennedy would not have direct influence over school lunch programs as secretary unless he imposed warning labels on unhealthy foods and persuaded the U.S. Department of Agriculture to ban the foods from school procurement.
Ms. Tyrner-Dolce said she hoped Mr. Kennedy would help HHS collaborate with the USDA to find solutions, given the intersection of food policy and health care.
“How is this trickling down in health care dollars that we’re spending?” she said. “By the way, Medicare and Medicaid are taxpayer-funded.”
She said Mr. Kennedy is signaling that he wants to treat health care “as health care, rather than sick care.”
“I think it’s fantastic he’s saying he wants to eradicate diet-related chronic diseases in this country. A lot of that begins with children’s food,” she said.
The food industry, like Big Pharma, defended the status quo and struck a collaborative tone after Mr. Trump named Mr. Kennedy to the HHS post.
“The federal regulatory agencies within HHS operate under a science- and risk-based mandate, and it is critical that framework remains under the new administration,” said Sarah Gallo, senior vice president of federal affairs at the Consumer Brands Association. “As the largest domestic manufacturing employer, supporting more than 22 million American jobs, we are prepared to work with the confirmed appointee and qualified experts within HHS to support public health, build consumer trust and promote consumer choice.”
Mr. Kennedy’s broad agenda seems to put him at odds with Mr. Trump, who loves fast food and generally espouses pro-business stances. Mr. Kennedy has downplayed a rift.
“When I was a kid, McDonald’s was made with tallow fat,” Mr. Kennedy told Fox News hosts. “That was good for you. Your body needs that.”
Days later, he was pictured eating McDonald’s with Mr. Trump and his entourage on the president-elect’s plane.
Reassurance on vaccines
Mr. Kennedy is best known for his scrutiny of vaccines, particularly the suggestion that they could cause autism.
Democrats are expected to point to fact-checkers who say he was involved in an anti-vaccine campaign in Samoa that led to a measles outbreak.
“Donald Trump’s selection of a notorious anti-vaxxer to lead HHS could not be more dangerous. This is cause for deep concern for every American,” said Sen. Patty Murray, Washington Democrat.
Mr. Kennedy says his words have been misconstrued and his children are vaccinated.
“People ought to have choice, and that choice ought to be informed by the best information,” Mr. Kennedy said in an NBC News interview. “So I’m going to make sure scientific safety studies and efficacy are out there, and people can make individual assessments about whether that product is going to be good for them.”
Jill Escher, president of the National Council on Severe Autism, said she is happy that Mr. Kennedy is looking at the sudden rise in autism rates, but “the key to progress is looking under new stones and putting the discredited vaccine hypothesis to bed once and for all.”
Fluoride in water
Mr. Kennedy threw a curveball at municipalities across America with a tweet shortly before the election: “On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water.”
Mr. Kennedy called fluoride an “industrial waste” that is responsible for a host of maladies, including bone cancer and IQ loss.
The American Cancer Society and others deny any convincing link between fluoride and cancer, but some experts point to a trickle of studies that show a connection between prenatal consumption of fluoridated water and lower IQs in children.
Other critics point to alternative sources of fluoride, suggesting that the general public shouldn’t have it foisted on them in the water supply. Dental groups were aghast at Mr. Kennedy’s suggestion. They said fluoridated water is a significant public health achievement that should be preserved.
For decades, local communities have made decisions about water fluoridation.
Roughly 70% of the population has access to fluoridated water. Some places do not add the compound to drinking water because of public objections or because their water has enough naturally occurring fluoride.
Jeffrey A. Singer, a surgeon and senior fellow in health studies at the libertarian Cato Institute think tank, said he thinks Mr. Kennedy is trying to influence local entities rather than mandate the elimination of fluoride.
“It’s more of the bully pulpit. These are all state matters,” Dr. Singer told The Washington Times.
Personal baggage
Senators will look beyond policy during the confirmation process.
The presidential race revealed odd facets of Mr. Kennedy’s behavior.
He apologized to a former family babysitter who accused him of sexual assault, writing in a text he had “no memory of this incident, but I apologize sincerely for anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable or anything I did or said that offended you or hurt your feelings.”
Mr. Kennedy told media outlets that the text spoke for itself and didn’t comment further.
He also sparked confusion with a public story about finding a dead bear in upstate New York that had been struck by a car and putting it into his vehicle to skin it later. Given other commitments in New York City, he dumped the bear in Central Park and made it look like it had been struck by a bicycle.
Mr. Kennedy also said a doctor told him a parasitic worm likely got into his brain and died.
Still, Mr. Kennedy’s support might have won Mr. Trump votes, including from liberals concerned about processed foods or corporate influence over what Americans consume. Although some Republican senators are reserving judgment, Mr. Johnson and others said they were thrilled with the nominee.
“The American people reelected President Trump by resounding margins because they trust his judgment and support his policies, including his promise to Make America Healthy Again alongside well-respected leaders like RFK Jr.,” Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said.
Democrats signaled they would portray Mr. Kennedy as out of step with Americans.
“Americans should not have to put their health in the hands of a man who has had a worm eat part of his brain,” Democratic National Committee spokesman Alex Floyd said. “Democrats are ready to fight every day against RFK Jr. and Trump’s dangerous agenda.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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