The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

The Department of Health and Human Services, led by self-described peptide superfan Robert F. Kennedy Jr, has discovered an exciting new model of public health: if drugs can’t pass FDA safety and effectiveness standards, just order the FDA to stop enforcing its own rules. The new HHS policy tells the FDA to look the other way while specialty pharmacies sell a slate of unapproved injectable peptides like BPC-157 and TB-500 — substances the FDA’s own scientists warned can cause allergic reactions, kidney damage, and maybe even help your tumors live their best life.

FDA staff, whose job is theoretically to keep experimental snake oil out of people’s veins, were largely sidelined while HHS drafted the plan, then brought in at the end to sprinkle on some “guardrails” like sourcing ingredients from FDA-registered factories and collecting side-effect data after people start injecting this stuff. Decisions over drug compounding have traditionally belonged to the FDA, but HHS dug up an old legal technicality to muscle in and hand the booming compounding industry a regulatory hall pass, all while pretending this is about stopping gray-market Chinese imports rather than juicing a domestic gray market with a nicer logo.

Just to underline the farce: in 2023 the FDA formally told compounders not to play with these same peptides because of serious safety concerns. In 2026, HHS responded by telling the FDA to stop enforcing that. This is what happens when you put a wellness-industry fanboy in charge of national health policy — you don’t get science-based regulation, you get vibes-based deregulation and a federal government that treats a deadly 2012 meningitis outbreak from contaminated compounded drugs as more of a fun prequel than a lesson.

The Trump administration’s favorite anti-vax hobbyist, HHS secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, has figured out a clever new way to kneecap public health: don’t outlaw vaccines, just quietly blow up the system that makes them usable. He gutted the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, stacked it with his own scientifically challenged fan club, got smacked down by a judge for doing it improperly, and then simply… never bothered to fix it. Result: no functioning committee, no new recommendations, and shiny new vaccines like Moderna’s mRNA flu shot stuck in bureaucratic purgatory until at least 2029.

On the ground, that means people like 63‑year‑old asthma patient Ron Kroening are hunting for the one pharmacy in town that even has the new flu shot, then getting hit with a $40 co-pay because insurers aren’t required to cover a vaccine that ACIP hasn’t officially recommended. States that rely on ACIP guidance to let pharmacists vaccinate people are stuck, Medicare coverage is delayed or confused, and even previous ACIP decisions—like new RSV shots and the universal birth dose of hepatitis B—are being undermined or used as ammo for state-level anti-vax bills. It’s a perfect demonstration of how you can sabotage a national immunization program without ever passing a law: just take the expert committee hostage and let entropy do the rest.

Legal experts note there is absolutely nothing stopping Kennedy from lawfully appointing new ACIP members; he simply isn’t doing it. Vaccine law scholar Dorit Reiss points out that he’s already “aggressively undermined” trust in the committee’s independence and now benefits from the vacuum, which could let him issue his own pet recommendations while vaccines languish in coverage limbo. Even industry groups are scrambling to reassure people that they’ll voluntarily keep covering shots that were recommended before Kennedy’s wrecking ball hit in September 2025, because the federal government has abdicated the basic job of coordinating vaccine policy. Public health, of course, remains the one thing this administration refuses to make contagious.

Roughly half of rural voters say they support Trump’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda, and about 8 in 10 also say it has either hurt them or done absolutely nothing for their communities. So the good news for Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is that the brand is strong; the bad news is that the part where people live longer and don’t get sick is going about as well as you’d expect from an administration that treats vaccines like witchcraft and red meat like penicillin.

Under MAHA, the federal government has ditched long-standing vaccine policies, chased vibes-based theories about ultraprocessed foods, picked loud fights with Big Ag while not exactly fixing anything, and pushed a climate-torching, red-meat-heavy diet as if cardiologists were a Deep State psyop. The AP/KFF poll of 2,241 rural voters finds that even among self-identified MAHA superfans, 68 percent admit the grand health revolution is not making them healthier. It’s the perfect Trump-era policy achievement: maximum culture war, minimum actual benefit, and millions of people stuck in the middle wondering why their loyalty didn’t come with functioning healthcare.

The Senate HELP Committee shoved Nicole Saphier’s nomination for surgeon general out of committee on a party-line vote, because nothing says “serious public health” like promoting a former Fox News medical contributor whose brand is dunking on the COVID response and writing a book called “Make America Healthy Again.” Trump, naturally, announced she’s a “STAR physician” and an “INCREDIBLE COMMUNICATOR,” which in this administration is less a medical credential and more a promise she can hit her talking points between commercial breaks.

This all follows Trump yanking his previous pick, Casey Means, an RFK Jr. ally whose nomination died of complications from basic Senate arithmetic. Trump blamed GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy as a “very disloyal person” for not fast-tracking the anti-vax-adjacent dream team, then had to pivot to someone who, awkwardly, acknowledges basic vaccine science. Under oath, Saphier said the MMR vaccine is not lethal (a fun thing the surgeon general-designate now has to clarify because the president suggested otherwise) and that childhood vaccines don’t cause autism. Cassidy, visibly relieved to hear something from this administration that wasn’t ripped from a Facebook meme, promptly declared she’d earned his vote for the radical act of telling the truth about vaccines on camera.

So the bar for surgeon general in Trump’s America is now: former cable-news doctor, ideologically safe enough for Trump, scientifically coherent enough for one semi-sane Republican senator, and willing to publicly contradict the president on whether vaccines kill children while still accepting his nomination. Public health leadership, 2026 edition: a constant tightrope walk between epidemiology and keeping Trump’s Truth Social posts from turning into official medical guidance.