Main the Division of Well being and Human Providers appears, at first look, like a dream job for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., fairly probably America’s most notorious anti-vaxxer. If confirmed, Kennedy will oversee the businesses that play a central function in researching, reviewing, and recommending vaccines. However selling his personal vaccination views will possible be an extended push for refined adjustments—rulings that People could get vaccinated, somewhat than ought to—and he’s stated, not less than, that he’s not aiming to “take away anyone’s vaccines.” Based mostly on his latest public statements, he seems rather more occupied with reducing down on America’s consumption of seed oils, and frozen school-lunch pizza. In nominating Kennedy to guide the well being division, Trump is kneecapping one of many few bipartisan points he campaigned on this election: enhancing the weight-reduction plan, and total well being, of People. If Trump really wished RFK Jr. to satisfy these components of their pledge to “Make America wholesome once more,” he ought to have picked a distinct 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 college lunch instantly,” argued that the federal government should cease subsidizing the crops that make seed oils, and urged Trump to cease permitting individuals 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 gained’t be capable of do any of this as the top of the federal well being division.
Trump has already signaled that the EPA, which has the ability to crack down on pesticides, is off-limits, as a result of RJK Jr. “does not like oil.” However Kennedy might have been an era-defining chief of the USDA, which regulates college lunches, doles out subsidies for oilseed crops, and units guidelines for public-assistance applications 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, akin to banning sure meals components. He’ll even have direct influence on the subsequent spherical of federal dietary tips, that are resulting from 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, for example, Kennedy must stress the FDA to challenge ingredient bans. As a result of Kennedy would oversee the company, Marty Makary, Trump’s choose for FDA commissioner, must not less than entertain that request, besides, the company would possible want years to drag any ingredient off cabinets. Banning an ingredient requires vital science and authorized justification. Earlier this yr 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 individuals to do this type of work. (The employees reviewing the protection of meals components is sufficiently small that the top of the FDA’s meals heart just 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 usually launching—would require extra funding and minimize towards Trump’s pledge to restrict authorities spending.
However the detrimental impact of the meals components that Kennedy appears most anxious about is felt by solely a small subset of eaters. He has spoken, for example, a few yellow dye often called tartrazine. He has claimed that the dye is tied to bronchial asthma, however a 2001 meta-analysis discovered that avoiding tartrazine “could not profit most sufferers, besides these only a few people with confirmed sensitivity.” (A lot 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, may require its personal bureaucratic finagling at USDA, however might 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 individuals.
Placing RFK Jr. at HHS additionally doesn’t completely make sense as a political choice. Affirmation fights are much less contentious when the nominee has bipartisan bona fides; few Democrats assist most of Kennedy’s health-care views, and his traditionally liberal views on abortion might value him some Republican votes. However loads of liberals like his tackle meals and agriculture. As HHS secretary, RFK Jr. can also be more likely to be dragged into the politics of Trump’s mass-deportation plan, a problem he’s largely steered away from, as a result of Well being and Human Providers is in control of caring for unaccompanied youngsters who’re apprehended for being in the USA illegally. Trump’s final HHS secretary, Alex Azar, rapidly turned 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 Selection at America’s borders.” Trump’s USDA secretary must navigate calls from the farm trade to spare agricultural laborers from the administration’s mass-deportation plan, however as well being secretary, Kennedy will possible need to be the face of any coverage detaining migrant youngsters, or overtly criticize his boss.
The individual Trump did choose to guide 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 choice. In spite of everything, in late October, a co-chair of the Trump transition workforce promised that Kennedy would not be picked to guide 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 top of the “Make America wholesome once more” motion lead the well being division. Perhaps Trump wished 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 means, the result’s that RFK Jr.’s needs to enhance our meals provide—the components of his agenda which have essentially the most bipartisan attraction—will probably 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. may attempt to nudge or affect Rollins to his means 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 gained’t occur.