Main the Division of Well being and Human Providers appears, at first look, like a dream job for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., fairly presumably America’s most notorious anti-vaxxer. If confirmed, Kennedy will oversee the companies that play a central function in researching, reviewing, and recommending vaccines. However selling his personal vaccination views will probably be a protracted push for refined modifications—rulings that People might get vaccinated, somewhat than ought to—and he’s mentioned, no less than, that he’s not aiming to “take away anyone’s vaccines.” Based mostly on his latest public statements, he seems way more taken with chopping down on America’s consumption of seed oils, and frozen school-lunch pizza. In nominating Kennedy to steer the well being division, Trump is kneecapping one of many few bipartisan points he campaigned on this election: enhancing the weight loss program, and total well being, of People. If Trump actually needed RFK Jr. to meet these elements of their pledge to “Make America wholesome once more,” he ought to have picked a special job for the would-be well being secretary.
Since endorsing Donald Trump for president, Kennedy has pledged that he’ll “get processed meals out of faculty lunch instantly,” argued that the federal government should cease subsidizing the crops that make seed oils, and urged Trump to cease permitting folks to purchase soda with federal meals advantages. The “Make America wholesome once more” agenda additionally advocates for extra complete pesticide regulation, and for regenerative agriculture, which goals to enhance soil biodiversity and restrict chemical inputs. Kennedy received’t be capable to do any of this as the pinnacle of the federal well being division.
Trump has already signaled that the EPA, which has the facility to crack down on pesticides, is off-limits, as a result of RJK Jr. “would not like oil.” However Kennedy may have been an era-defining chief of the USDA, which regulates faculty lunches, doles out subsidies for oilseed crops, and units guidelines for public-assistance packages together with SNAP, the Supplemental Diet Help Program. Earlier than being nominated for HHS, RFK Jr. even posted an Instagram video filmed outdoors the Division of Agriculture, promising within the caption to enact the MAHA agenda “when @realDonaldTrump will get me contained in the USDA.”
At HHS, he’ll nonetheless have some affect over his favourite food-related points, equivalent to banning sure meals components. He’ll even have direct affect on the following spherical of federal dietary pointers, that are attributable to be launched in 2025. However HHS’s powers to alter People’ meals consumption are both oblique or gradual.
To take away a meals ingredient as well being secretary, as an illustration, Kennedy must stress the FDA to challenge ingredient bans. As a result of Kennedy would oversee the company, Marty Makary, Trump’s decide for FDA commissioner, must no less than entertain that request, besides, the company would probably want years to tug any ingredient off cabinets. Banning an ingredient requires important science and authorized justification. Earlier this 12 months it banned brominated vegetable oil, a chemical added to sure sodas that has been banned in Europe and the UK for years. Proper now, the company depends on only a few folks to do this sort of work. (The workers reviewing the security of meals components is sufficiently small that the pinnacle of the FDA’s meals middle lately boasted that he was ready so as to add 5 full-time staffers.) Dashing up the workplace’s work—which incorporates policing new components that meals firms are recurrently launching—would require extra funding and reduce in opposition to Trump’s pledge to restrict authorities spending.
However the adverse impact of the meals components that Kennedy appears most nervous about is felt by solely a small subset of eaters. He has spoken, as an illustration, a few yellow dye referred to as tartrazine. He has claimed that the dye is tied to bronchial asthma, however a 2001 meta-analysis discovered that avoiding tartrazine “might not profit most sufferers, besides these only a few people with confirmed sensitivity.” (Lots of Kennedy’s different claims concerning the dye’s harms are extremely debated amongst toxicology specialists.) Against this, a program to limit soda in SNAP, as Kennedy has proposed, would possibly require its personal bureaucratic finagling at USDA, however may have an effect on a good portion of the 42 million individuals who use this system. Modifications to high school lunch, equally, would have an effect on some 28 million younger folks.
Placing RFK Jr. at HHS additionally doesn’t completely make sense as a political determination. Affirmation fights are much less contentious when the nominee has bipartisan bona fides; few Democrats help most of Kennedy’s health-care views, and his traditionally liberal views on abortion may price him some Republican votes. However loads of liberals like his tackle meals and agriculture. As HHS secretary, RFK Jr. can be more likely to be dragged into the politics of Trump’s mass-deportation plan, a difficulty he’s largely steered away from, as a result of Well being and Human Providers is accountable for caring for unaccompanied youngsters who’re apprehended for being in the US illegally. Trump’s final HHS secretary, Alex Azar, shortly grew to become what Politico referred to as the “public explainer and punching bag for the migrant disaster.” Whereas Azar was getting tongue-lashed by Congress in 2018, RFK Jr. was tweeting that the coverage amounted to immigration officers “forcing beleaguered dad and mom to make Sophie’s Alternative at America’s borders.” Trump’s USDA secretary should navigate calls from the farm trade to spare agricultural laborers from the administration’s mass-deportation plan, however as well being secretary, Kennedy will probably should be the face of any coverage detaining migrant youngsters, or overtly criticize his boss.
The individual Trump did decide to steer the Division of Agriculture—America First Coverage Institute CEO Brooke Rollins—has a lot much less apparent curiosity in its purview than Kennedy does. Past an undergraduate diploma in agricultural growth, she doesn’t have any direct agricultural expertise that prepares her for the job, and her present group’s associated coverage work appears targeted on concern over U.S. agricultural land being bought by China.
Trump’s option to nominate RFK Jr. for HHS appeared like a last-minute determination. In spite of everything, in late October, a co-chair of the Trump transition workforce promised that Kennedy would not be picked to steer the division, just for Trump to call him to that place two weeks later. Perhaps it simply resonated as a sound-bite to have the pinnacle of the “Make America wholesome once more” motion lead the well being division. Perhaps Trump needed to stash RFK Jr. at an company the place he can’t truly do a lot hurt to the massive meals firms which have traditionally allied with the Republican Social gathering. Both approach, the result’s that RFK Jr.’s needs to enhance our meals provide—the elements of his agenda which have essentially the most bipartisan attraction—shall be stymied at HHS. Trump put Kennedy within the place the place he’ll each face essentially the most political friction and be least efficient. RFK Jr. would possibly attempt to nudge or affect Rollins to his approach of seeing issues, however the well being secretary demanding that the agriculture secretary change farm and meals coverage is the equal of the governor of California urging the governor of Texas to alter that state’s immigration coverage. It simply received’t occur.
