Carlos Osorio/AP Photo
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at a Trump campaign event, September 27, 2024, in Walker, Michigan.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s list of disqualifications for the role of secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is long and well documented. He is the founder of the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, vowed to remove fluoride from drinking water, and spewed race science, claiming that Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people are immune from COVID-19.
But despite all of the above, RFK Jr. seems to appeal to many not just on the political right, but also on the left. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat who has been firm in his post-election commitments to insulate Coloradans from the Trump administration, wrote on X on November 14: “I’m excited by the news that the President-Elect will appoint @RobertKennedyJr to @HHSGov. He helped us defeat vaccine mandates in Colorado in 2019 and will help make America healthy again by shaking up HHS and FDA.”
The backlash to Polis’s post was swift, and perhaps rightfully so. Many of Kennedy’s beliefs have caused demonstrable harm. One notable example is from Samoa, where Kennedy elevated anti-vaccine misinformation after a public-health scandal in which a medical error led to the death of two children. A measles outbreak began on the island in 2019, ultimately leading to the death of 83 people.
Translating those beliefs into nationwide health policy could be catastrophic. But dismissing Kennedy’s supporters without examining why that support exists fails to reckon with how Americans across the political spectrum think about health, the food they eat, and the corporations behind it all.
Many folks who have, like me, grown up in what some call “crunchy” regions of America, like the Bay Area or parts of Colorado, can recognize Kennedy’s appeal in the conversations and aesthetics we grew up in: organic-eating people who are skeptical of Big Ag and Big Pharma, who might reach for a supplement before a prescription.
On November 18, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) posted a video on X about the link between corporate agriculture and the lack of nutrition in the average American’s diet. Though Booker never mentioned Kennedy by name, RFK thanked Booker for his work on the issue, and reposted the video.
“This isn’t a partisan fight. It is literally a fight for our lives,” Booker said.
A majority of Kennedy’s beliefs—from the reasonable to the conspiratorial—are premised on a distrust of corporate power and its influence over government. That’s a message that Democrats and leftists are clearly animated by. Busting corporate agriculture monopolies has become a Democratic priority, especially in the economic populist wing of the party and among candidates from rural areas. Tim Walz elevated the issue during the 2024 presidential campaign, and Lina Khan’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has supported the USDA in its efforts to disempower big meat-processing corporations.
If confirmed, Kennedy will be serving in an unapologetically pro-corporate administration under a president who prides himself on running the government like a big business.
But due to powerful corporate lobbyists and money in Washington, as well as the orientation of the party he’ll now be working with, the likelihood that Kennedy would be able to make ground on any of his more reasonable positions, which could actually benefit the health of everyday Americans and reduce corporate power, is close to zero. If confirmed, Kennedy will be serving in an unapologetically pro-corporate administration under a president who prides himself on running the government like a big business.
Yes, Trump has claimed that he will “let [Kennedy] go wild on health” and “the food” and “the medicines,” but any meaningful change in those realms requires more than just the will of a single man. It requires a coordinated government effort and department leaders who aren’t afraid to take on corporate money. Does that sound like the Trump administration?
Successfully going after Big Ag, for example, requires a strong mobilization of the federal government, most specifically with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Trump hasn’t picked a secretary of agriculture yet, but in his first term, former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue stocked USDA with numerous agribusiness executives and lobbyists. He allowed line speeds to be increased in slaughterhouses, reduced safety inspections at meatpacking plants, and eliminated the agency that enforced the key protections for small farmers and ranchers. When asked in 2019 what the agency was doing to protect family farms amid rising suicide rates for dairy farmers in Wisconsin, Perdue said, “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out.”
KENNEDY HASN’T EXPRESSED A POSITION on Medicare drug price negotiations, an Inflation Reduction Act policy that Biden’s HHS used to successfully lower the prices of ten drugs for Medicare recipients. Those new prices are projected to save those enrolled in Medicare $1.5 billion in 2026, the first year they will come into effect. The drugs on the list are used to treat diabetes, kidney disease, heart failure, and other chronic conditions that Kennedy has said he wants to tackle. But more negotiations are slated to happen every year. If Kennedy chooses not to continue these negotiations, Americans who already live with these conditions could be left in the cold, forced to choose between paying for essential goods like groceries or for their medications.
The risks to Medicare and Medicaid were further punctuated on November 19, when Trump said that he would nominate television personality Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), a subgroup of HHS. CMS manages the insurance coverage of roughly half of Americans through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
In the statement announcing his intentions to nominate Oz, Trump claimed that Oz “will also cut waste and fraud within our Country’s most expensive Government Agency, which is a third of our Nation’s Healthcare spend, and a quarter of our entire National Budget.” Oz has a history of promoting Medicare Advantage, a privatization scheme that actually costs the government nearly $100 billion a year in overpayments, while being frequently cited for denying patient care.
Instead of using government power to regulate pharmaceutical and agricultural corporations, Kennedy could usher in an era of deregulation, particularly in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Shortly before Election Day, Kennedy claimed that the “FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” listing treatments and goods that he would presumably like to see deregulated. Notable on that list were psychedelics, raw milk, ivermectin, and hydroxychloroquine.
The FDA, housed under HHS, prohibited the interstate sale of raw milk in 1987 and has sent warning letters to raw milk farms and taken others to court to protect Americans from the potentially deadly consequences of unpasteurized dairy. Meanwhile, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are both drugs used during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, the FDA warned against the use of both drugs in the treatment of COVID-19 and, in the case of hydroxychloroquine, revoked an emergency use authorization allowing its use for patients.
The FDA doesn’t have a perfect track record and has been accused of slowing drug development. There are reforms available, like allowing drugs approved for use in Europe to be used in the United States under reciprocity agreements. But if Kennedy overcorrects by waving in drugs based on online misinformation that spreads interest in harmful therapies, regulations that protect Americans from dangerous foods and drugs could become less common or unenforced. And this deregulation within the FDA could contribute to public-health emergencies.
And the success of America’s vaccine regime, which has eradicated numerous deadly diseases and saved countless lives, is clearly at risk from RFK’s role in the government. While he has said that “I’m not going to take away anybody’s vaccines,” his pedestal at HHS could encourage parents to reject vaccines, reducing the “herd immunity” that keeps children safe. And Kennedy could add skeptics to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that sets guidelines for vaccines, or slow FDA approvals of vaccines.
Some Democrats, like Polis and Booker, are hopeful that Kennedy may actually advance shared goals: the shift of power away from corporations and toward consumers or small farmers, access to healthy foods and clean water, and the removal of corporate money from politics. But Democrats should be cautious. Enacting beneficial policies would take much more effort from the administration than just the will of Kennedy. But the harms he might cause? Without civil servants willing to stop him, those he can do all on his own.
