Republicans have a long and despicable history of scapegoating one group after another: Blacks, liberals, Hispanics, gays, Asians, women, Muslims, environmentalists, lesbians.  

And now they have added scientists generally and doctors in particular to their list of hated targets.

Since taking office on January 20, Donald Trump has virtually declared war on the American medical establishment.  

Summarizing Trump’s first 100 days in office, Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, warned: 

• “Trump’s health administrators fired or forced resignations of senior staff, including the top vaccine regulator at the FDA, directors of many NIH institutes, and senior FDA staff involved in the regulation of food, tobacco and new drugs.”
• “The administration has also proposed consolidation of many HHS agencies with near elimination of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).”
• “The Trump Administration stripped vital public health information from HHS, CDC and FDA websites and abandoned all diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.”
• “Trump issued an executive order announcing his intent to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO), suspending funding and other support and recalling U.S. government personnel assigned to work with WHO—to the detriment of several global health programs and emergency response efforts.”

• “Trump’s  allies in Congress are seeking to cut Medicare and Medicaid, with dangerous implications for access to health care, particularly for seniors and people with disabilities.”
• “The Trump Administration is threatening to further privatize Medicare, threatening to hinder access to care and put the long term health of the program in jeopardy.”
• “Trump and his allies in Congress want to give Big Pharma its top demand to undermine the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program—blocking seniors’ and people with disabilities’ access to Medicare-negotiated prices until 13 years after a drug is approved.”

On September 4, for the first time since he took office as Secretary of Health and Human Services on February 13, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. faced his critics at the Senate Finance Committee.

Defending the wholesale firings at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), he said: “The people at the CDC who oversaw that process—who put masks on our children, who closed our schools—are the people who will be leaving. ”

He called the United States the “sickest country in the world” due to the prevalence of chronic diseases:

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Kennedy attacked the integrity of Susan Monarez, whom he fired as CDC director after less than a month on the job. She had been nominated by Trump, endorsed by Kennedy and confirmed by a Senate vote in July.

Kennedy claimed: “I asked her: ‘Are you a trustworthy person?’ and she said ‘No.’ If you had an employee who told you they weren’t trustworthy, would you ask them to resign?” 

In testifying before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions  on September 17, Monarez offered a different explanation for her firing: She refused to cede to Kennedy’s demands to pre-approve vaccine recommendations for the public and he wanted her to fire career scientists.

“He just wanted blanket approval. Even under pressure, I could not replace evidence with ideology.

“He called CDC the most corrupt federal agency in the world, emphasized that CDC employees were horrible people. He said that CDC employees were killing children and they don’t care.”

Susan Monarez

In late August, Kennedy told her he had “already spoken with the White House several times about having” her removed, she said.

Kennedy used much of his testimony to lie or lob insults, rather than refute his critics with facts.

On August 9, a 30-year-old Georgia man, Patrick Joseph White, using an automatic rifle, had fired over 180 rounds on the CCD headquarters in Atlanta, breaking about 150 windows.

Influenced by anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, he believed the COVID-19 vaccine had made him depressed and suicidal.

When Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock asked Kennedy if his disparaging remarks about CDC employees could have instigated the shooting, Kennedy retorted: “Are you complicit in the assassination attempts on President Trump?”

“Why have you acted behind closed doors to overrule scientists and limit the freedom of parents to choose the COVID vaccine for their children?” asked Democratic New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan.

Kennedy: “This is crazy talk.”

It wasn’t. In many states, pharmacists cannot legally administer vaccines unless they are endorsed by the CDC’s advisory panel.

During 2020—Donald Trump’s final year of his first term as President—COVID-19 emerged as the greatest threat to worldwide health since the 1919 Spanish influenza.

Coronavirus

To this crisis, Trump responded with:

• Lies about its dangers
• Attacks on medical authorities who urged masking and social distancing
• Inciting his followers to ignore governors’ “lockdown” orders to stop the spread
• Thefts of medical supplies from Blue states
• Quack cures (bleach, UV light)
• Demands to “Re-open the country!” and
• “Learn to live with it.”

At least 400,000 Americans died as a result. 

Through his wholesale gutting of America’s healthcare system—once considered the best in the world—Trump and his anti-science accomplices are setting the United States on a collision course with the next deadly epidemic.

As a Presidential candidate in 2024, Donald Trump warned Americans that he planned to decimate their healthcare system: His Secretary of Health and Human Services would be Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.    

On October 27, speaking at a rally in Madison Square Garden, Trump said: “I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines.

“The only thing I don’t think I’m going to let him even get near is the liquid gold that we have under our feet,” he added, referring to oil.

Kennedy, the son of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, is a self-admitted former 14-year heroin addict, which he has said began at age 15.

On September 16, 1983, he was charged with heroin possession in Rapid City, South Dakota. In February 1984, he pleaded guilty to a single felony charge of possession of heroin, and was sentenced to two years’ probation and community service. After his arrest, he entered a drug treatment center. 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Since 2005, Kennedy has peddled vaccine misinformation and public health conspiracy theories. Among these: HIV/AIDS denialism (that the human immune deficiency virus—HIV—does not cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).

His vaccine misinformation has included:

• Vaccines cause autism;
• The COVID-19 vaccine—which has saved countless lives—is “the deadliest vaccine ever made.” 
• There is no comprehensive system for monitoring vaccine safety.

So how did such a man become the final arbiter of the American healthcare system?  During 2024, he ran an independent Presidential campaign before dropping out in August and endorsing Trump.

Predictively, since taking office on February 13, Kennedy has proven a disaster for the scientific approach to medicine. 

On February 14, around 1,300 employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were laid off by the administration, which included all first-year officers of the Epidemic Intelligence Service.

In August, over 600 CDC employees were laid off and a number of programs completely dismantled, including maternal and child health services, oral health programs, and the CDC’s long-running Violence Against Children and Youth Surveys.

At the May 6 meeting of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, Rep. Kim Schrier, M.D. (D-Washington) decried the Trump administration for attacking American healthcare.

The first pediatrician elected to the House, Schrier warned: “We’ve got to recognize that our nation’s health care system is under attack right now.

Kim Schrier

“What we’re seeing now from the current administration has been infuriating and reckless, and this includes slashing medical research and essential staff and funding from agencies like the CDC, the NIH and the FDA, and this kneecaps U.S. research and innovation, and it jeopardizes public health.

“It also cedes the ground for U.S. leadership in the world, and basically hands that leadership to China. That’s plain wrong, and I feel like it just undermines U.S. leadership in the world.”

Referring to the $1 trillion in Medicaid funding cuts mandated in Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” then certain to be passed by the Republican-controlled Congress, Schrier noted: 

“These cuts would be disastrous and detrimental for the most vulnerable members of our communities, many of whom are at higher risk for cancer, for deaths from cancer, for late detection of cancer, and I want you to know that I’m doing everything in my power to call out the destruction these cuts would cause, to restore funding for medical research, especially cancer research, and to stand up for patients.” 

Trump signed the “Big Beautiful Bill” into law on July 4.

On June 9, 92 National Institute of Health researchers, program directors, branch chiefs and scientific review officers signed their names in a protest letter to Jay Bhattacharya, their Trump-appointed director. Another 250 of their colleagues across the agency endorsed the declaration without using their names.

Accusing the Trump administration of spreading “a culture of fear and suppression,” the declaration said: “We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources.”

Its accusations included:

• NIH’s terminating 2,100 research grants valued at more than $12 billion;
• The resulting human costs—such as cutting off medication regimens to participants in clinical trials or leaving them with unmonitored device implants;
• NIH’s ending a $5 million research study when it was 80% complete.

On August 9, a 30-year-old Georgia man, Patrick Joseph White, fired over 180 rounds on the CCD headquarters in Atlanta, breaking about 150 windows and piercing some of the blast-resistant windows.

Influenced by anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, he believed the COVID-19 vaccine had made him depressed and suicidal.

White died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Fired But Fighting, a group of laid-off CDC employees, blamed the attack on the anti-vaccine rhetoric on the Trump administration. Kennedy, they charged, “is directly responsible for the villainization of CDC’s workforce through his continuous lies about science and vaccine safety.” 

Under Kennedy, CDC has laid off nearly 2,000 employees. And Trump proposes cutting the agency’s budget in half in 2026. 

Fired But Fighting also demanded the resignation of Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget. In a a video he had said:

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”