Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s health secretary, has long cited the forms of radiation emitted by cellphones, power lines and home appliances as a probable cause of “many of today’s chronic diseases,” including brain cancer. His Make America Healthy Again campaign has called on federal agencies to assess whether safety rules on these everyday radiations should be tightened.
Mr. Kennedy may preside over the nation’s public health policies, but other parts of the Trump administration want to loosen federal restrictions on another type of radiation that is notorious for its powers to sicken and kill.
President Trump has backed both agendas. He supports Mr. Kennedy while also backing moves to ease regulations on the nuclear industry, which the administration seeks to revive after decades of decline. It wants power reactors big and small to electrify his MAGA vision of spurring American industry to greater success.
In a contest of MAGA versus MAHA, of lobbyists versus populists, it seems possible that Mr. Trump’s deregulatory push may prevail. That said, specialists in radiation regulation have doubts given the tangled intricacies of the field’s science and the history of false starts in the rewriting of its complicated safety rules.
Kathryn A. Higley, president of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, which has long advised federal agencies, described the Trump inconsistencies as a scientific challenge.
“Like everybody else,” she said, “we’re trying to learn how to navigate in this new environment and retain our integrity.”
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