As secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made it his mission to “make America healthy again.” Yet so far—and you may want to sit down for this—it appears that Worm Guy’s actions, and those of the Trump administration, are at odds with that goal. And by “at odds” we mean they’ve done a whole bunch of stuff that may actually make the people of this country very sick. Sure, Kennedy is pushing to phase out artificial food dyes, but he‘s also undermining life-saving vaccines and spreading misinformation about medications that some people require to get out of bed in the morning—to say nothing of the fake studies in his big report on children’s health. Meanwhile, the Trump administration also wants to keep some forever chemicals linked to cancer in the drinking water, has refused to allow coal plants to close, and obliterated scientific research—the kind that makes breakthroughs and finds cures for diseases.
A running list of the not-so-healthy moves by Kennedy and Trump include:
Cancer-causing asbestos
In June, the Environmental Protection Agency said in a court filing that it would reconsider a Biden-era ban on chrysotile asbestos, which is known for causing numerous types of cancer, including of the lung, larynx, and ovary. And by the way, it’s not planning to be quick about it: The administration said it will take approximately 30 months to decide whether to roll back the ban (in the meantime, it will be delayed). Linda Reinstein, president and cofounder of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, told The New York Times the delay will “move the nation backward, once again putting lives at risk.”
Dirty (and entirely unnecessary) coal plants
The Trump administration is trying to keep open two Michigan coal plants that are responsible for nearly half of the state’s greenhouse gas pollution. According to The Guardian, “The massive and ageing facilities…release high levels of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and particulate matter into the air,” their “coal ash ponds leach arsenic, lead, lithium, radium, and sulfate into local drinking water and the Great Lakes,” and one of the plants “is responsible for more arsenic water pollution than any other power plant in the US.”
So why is Team Trump trying to keep them open? Is this something the people of Michigan are clamoring for? Would it surprise you to know they are not? While the Department of Energy told The Guardian keeping the plants operating is about grid reliability, the group that regulates public utilities in the state says that’s not true at all. “The unnecessary recent order…will increase the cost of power for homes and businesses in Michigan and across the Midwest,” Dan Scripps, the chair of the Michigan Public Service Commission, said in a statement. “We currently produce more energy in Michigan than needed. As a result, there is no existing energy emergency in either Michigan or [the regional US grid].”
And it’s not just Michigan: In April, according to the Times, Trump signed an executive order directing his energy department to come up with a plan to use emergency authority to stop coal plants across the country from closing, despite the fact that a 2023 study published in Science estimated that between 1999 and 2020, 460,000 deaths would not have occurred if pollution had not been emitted by coal plants.
Polluted drinking water
This spring, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin announced that his agency would shrink the number of US waterways that are protected by the Clean Water Act, after Joe Biden expanded the law’s scope to include protecting all “waters of the United States” from pollutants like construction runoff and livestock waste. (Kennedy, who took a Mother’s Day dip in a DC creek known for “high levels of bacteria and other infectious pathogens,” presumably had no problem with this.) In June, the administration said it would remove federal protections preventing road construction and development on 58 million acres of national forests, a move that, among other things, critics say could lead to wildfires and polluted drinking water.
In related news, the Trump administration also announced this spring that it would scrap limits on four “forever chemicals” that have been found in tap water and linked to, among other things, liver damage, developmental issues, and cancer.
Medicaid cuts
Going to the doctor is a pretty widely accepted practice when it comes to staying healthy and alive, and yet, Trump’s “big, beautiful” spending bill would cause approximately 10.9 million people to lose health insurance, according to the Congressional Budget Office. As a result, voters have warned, people “will die.”
Cancer Alley
In 2023, the Biden administration sued Denka Performance Elastomer, a chemical manufacturer, over its emissions of a toxic substance called chloroprene, which the EPA believes to be a carcinogen. In its suit, the EPA said Denka’s emissions posed “an imminent and substantial endangerment” to public health; Denka claimed the suit was “lacking scientific and legal merit.” The area in Louisiana where Denka is located is considered so polluted that it is known as Cancer Alley. In March, the Trump administration voluntarily dropped the suit.
Fresh food cuts
Kennedy talks a lot about how horrible processed foods are, so presumably he would refuse to work for an administration that would make cuts to programs designed to feed children the freshest food possible, right? Right?
Apparently not, because in March, the Trump administration canceled a pair of pandemic-era programs that allowed schools and food banks to purchase food directly from local farmers. “I think everyone can say that they want kids at school to receive the healthiest meals possible,” Caroline Trinder, food and nutrition services director for a Maine school district that took part in the program, said at the time. “It’s the least processed, and we’re helping our local economy, we’re helping farmers that may be the parents of our students.”
Cancer cures? Alzheimer’s research? Not on this admin’s watch
It’s hard to fully capture the scale of the cuts to scientific research the administration has enacted. According to The New York Times, the National Institutes of Health have canceled 1,389 awards and delayed funding for more than 1,000 additional studies. (To put that in perspective, between 2015 and 2024, an average of fewer than 20 grants per year were canceled, a former director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the NIH told the Times.) In Trump’s first three months in office, the agency awarded $1.6 billion less than it had during the same period the year prior. The cuts have affected research on everything from Alzheimer’s to cancer. And Trump wants to cut $18 billion from the NIH’s 2026 budget.
Meanwhile, thanks to Trump’s war with Harvard, grants totaling $2.6 billion have been canceled, according to the Times. Those grants included $715 million to study allergy and infectious diseases, $158 million to study neurological disorders and strokes, and $146 million to study child health and human development.
“I think people should know that research that they probably would support is being canceled,” Dr. Eden Tanner—whose NIH funding for research into a new way to treat glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer, was canceled in April—told the Times. “I would like to cure brain cancer. I think that’s not particularly controversial.”
Pandemic preparedness? I hardly know her
Why bungle the government response to one pandemic when you can bungle the response to two? Three? However many you can cram into four years? Per The Guardian:
Amid controversial dismissals for independent advisers and staff at health agencies, alongside lackluster responses to the bird flu and measles outbreaks, experts fear the US is now in worse shape to respond to a pandemic than before 2020.
H5N1, which has received less attention under the Trump administration than from Biden’s team, is not the only influenza virus or even the only variant of bird flu with the potential to spark a pandemic. But a subpar response to the ongoing US outbreak signals a larger issue: America is not ready for whatever pathogen will sweep through next.
“We have not even remotely maintained the level of pandemic preparedness—which needed a lot of work, as we saw from the COVID pandemic,” Angela Rasmussen, an American virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan, told The Guardian. “But now, we essentially have no pandemic preparedness.” Jennifer Nuzzo, professor of epidemiology and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health, told the outlet, “I’m concerned on a number of fronts,” citing public health cuts at the local, state, and federal levels, lack of information from government officials, and diminished virus-tracking systems. Noting how Kennedy has downplayed the severity of the measles outbreak, spread misinformation about the MMR vaccine, and pushed treatments like antibiotics (for a virus!), she added, “The communications on measles gives me deep worries about what would happen in a pandemic. If a pandemic were to occur today, the only thing we would have to protect ourselves on day one would be information.”
“Americans are going to die”
It’s hardly a surprise that Kennedy would undermine life-saving vaccines, but the amount he’s been able to “achieve” in just a few short months should terrify anyone who wants to live. Among other things, Kennedy has:
- Fired an entire panel of experts that makes recommendations on vaccines to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and replaced them with vaccine skeptics, at least one of whom is a board member of a group that “researchers consider a leading source of misinformation about vaccines,” according to NBC News.
- Hired David Geier, a discredited doctor and “anti-vaccine activist,” to work on a government study exploring a link between vaccines and autism—which countless studies have already shown does not exist. According to The New York Times, Geier “has published numerous articles in the medical literature attempting to tie mercury in vaccines to autism,” and in 2012, “state authorities in Maryland found that he had been practicing medicine without a license.”
- Pulled funding from a global vaccine alliance that works to get vaccines to children in the poorest countries in the world, a move the former head of global health at USAID said on X, “will cost 100s of thousands of children’s lives a year—and RFK Jr will be personally responsible.”
- Announced that HHS will no longer recommend that any “healthy” pregnant women and children receive the COVID vaccine, despite the CDC previously warning that pregnant people are at higher risk of becoming very ill from COVID and are at an increased risk of pregnancy complications—including stillbirth. (The CDC later said shots may be given to children six months and older in consultation with their doctor; a spokesperson for the agency similarly said in a statement that pregnant women should “talk with their health care provider about any personal medical decision.”)
- Canceled a nearly $600 million contract with Moderna to develop a bird flu vaccine and canceled “an agreement set up by the Biden administration in January to prepare the nation for a potential bird flu pandemic.”
Kennedy’s moves on vaccines have led to numerous resignations by government officials who have said they can no longer be party to what he is doing. Among those quitting in protest is Dr. Fiona Havers, who worked at the CDC as a senior adviser on vaccine policy and told the New York Times of Kennedy’s actions, “If it isn’t stopped, and some of this isn’t reversed, like, immediately, a lot of Americans are going to die as a result of vaccine-preventable diseases.”
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