Kennedy's fringe, discredited ideas are about to get a government-sponsored megaphone
It’s not just the 13 health agencies under Kennedy that could become rife with conspiracy theories and disinformation. We should expect the very same thing to happen at every other government agency.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, my husband tested positive for COVID-19. It’s been almost a year since COVID hit our household, so we all needed a refresher on the symptoms, treatment and most important, recommendations on how to keep everyone else in the house from getting sick.
The journalist in me has a deep appreciation for reliable sources, so I went straight to the CDC for information. Everything you need to know is right there on a free, public website. I know the CDC’s reputation suffered during the pandemic, but it remains the gold standard for a wide variety of public health information.
For now.
I fully expect this credible health information to vanish when Donald Trump’s nominee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and his band of anti-science, do-your-own-research, conspiracy-theory driven COVID deniers get control of the country’s health agencies.
If confirmed, Kennedy would run the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), a sprawling agency with over 85,000 employees and a mission to promote health, wellness and disease prevention in the U.S. and around the world. We should get ready for him to replace rigorously researched scientific information with discredited and false pseudo-science that could actually kill people instead of keeping them safe. RFK Jr’s anti-vaccine advocacy has already killed people in Samoa. Now imagine how much more damage he will do leading (aka corrupting) the institutions that protect us here in America.
Photo credit: AP /Matt Rourke
Not only will Kennedy turn government health agencies into megaphones for his discredited and dangerous medical theories, but he’s also threatened to fire many of the scientists, researchers and doctors who work there for among other things what he says is the “aggressive suppression” of some of his favorite fringe products like raw milk and the discredited COVID-19 treatments ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
If Trump gets his way, Kennedy will have a willing partner Dr. David Weldon, the former member of Congress who Trump picked to head the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Weldon has a long record of promoting vaccines conspiracy theories and, like Kennedy, he has long campaigned against the agency Trump wants him to lead. Not only could Weldon alter or even eliminate public facing vaccine information and recommendations, but he could also even refuse vaccine policy recommendations from the CDC’s independent vaccine advisory committee and set the nation’s vaccine policy himself.
We are just weeks away from a guy featured in multiple anti-vax propaganda films having that kind of power. We may very soon see a Kennedy/Weldon effort to force the CDC to promote propaganda linking vaccines to autism. Recall, Trump’s first term included efforts to hide information about the COVID-19 pandemic from the country while promoting government propaganda efforts like the 1776 Project. I don’t think Americans voted for that.
And it gets worse. Imagine the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an organization that the entire world counts on for health science and information, turned into a fountain of disinformation. Actually, you don’t have to imagine: Kennedy has already threatened to fire hundreds of the researchers at NIH. And Trump wants Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who infamously said the COVID-19 virus should be left to run wild, infecting everyone, to lead the agency. I wonder how long until the quack bros delete the NIH website section on the health impacts of climate change.
It’s not just the 13 agencies under Kennedy at HHS that could become rife with conspiracy theories and disinformation. I think we should expect the very same thing to happen at every other government agency under Trump 2.0. For example:
Monthly jobs numbers or the consumer price index from the Bureau of Labor Statistics could be fudged to make Trump look good. Or… it could be leaked to friendly investors before publication.
Instead of food safety alerts from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a multistate salmonella outbreak might be ignored if a Republican donor owns the food company in question.
Some airline CEOs are pushing Trump to dump the Biden-era consumer protections like refunds for canceled flights. We could also see pressure to eliminate the FAA’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics reports on airline on-time and cancellation rates as well as consumer complaints.
New car shoppers could be fed doctored information from a MAGA-run Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the best and worst gas guzzlers and forget about looking for credible information on electric vehicles.
USA.gov has a variety of information that could be manipulated or deleted to suit the whims of Team Trump, including where to find your polling place for the 2026 midterm elections.
Trump’s Project 2025 has already promised to dismantle the country’s leading weather agency — NOAA and with it, downgrade or even sell off the National Weather Service. Like me, you would probably really miss free, reliable weather information.
The anti-government, alternative facts, conspiracy theory crowd won the 2024 election and will soon be controlling every aspect of our federal government. Trump isn’t hiring competent, qualified people to do work to make people’s lives better. He’s gathered a team of propaganda ministers who will use right-wing media to spread lies, doctor data and maybe to use what should be real and trustworthy public information for his own private benefit. It’ll be up to the rest of us to hold fast to a belief that the government can do good things, that facts matter and that government information needs to be high-quality and public.
Meanwhile, back at my house this week, my husband recovered from COVID, and no one else in our household became ill. I’m not sure America will fare as well in the coming years.
Jennifer Schulze is a Chicago journalist talking about journalism. You can read her columns at Heartland Signal and It’s the Democracy, Stupid. Follow Jennifer on Bluesky @newsjennifer.bsky.social or Threads @newsjennifer_schulze.