Trump has now announced all the key people that he plans to place in his cabinet (department heads) or other key positions of authority when his regime takes power on January 20.

A lot can be said about this repugnant assembly of white supremacists, Christian fascists, male supremacists, warmongers and xenophobes (people who hate “foreigners”). But the essential thing to grasp is that Trump is pulling together a crew of loyal lieutenants to implement his nightmarish fascist program in the U.S., and to reassert even more violently the U.S.’s dominant position in the world as a whole.

This is the second in an ongoing series of articles focusing on different components of this program. Part 1 focused on Trump’s plans for major attacks on millions of immigrants. In this article, we get into the anti-science lunatics that are being put in charge of shredding the scientific foundations of public health.

Public Health Depends on Science; But Fascism Depends on Ignorance and Blind Faith

Caring for public health—preventing and combating the spread of disease, treating people who are ill, finding cures when possible—is a necessary part of the functioning of any society. There is enormous complexity to this—the human body, the ways (healthy and unhealthy) that people relate to and treat each other and themselves, and the organisms and processes that make people ill are all incredibly complicated. 

Because of this, it is essential that public health be approached on the basis of science. Not on prayers, not on what is most “comforting,” not on “something I saw on YouTube.” 

In “Conspiracy Theories, ‘Certitude,’ Liberal Paralysis, Or A Scientific Approach to Changing the World” (short version), Bob Avakian quotes Ardea Skybreak (a professionally trained scientist and advocate of the new communism) on the meaning and importance of science:

Science is very different than religion or mysticism, or things like that, which try to explain reality by invoking imaginary forces and which provide no actual evidence for any of their analyses. By contrast, science requires proof. It requires evidence.

and

Without science you are at the mercy of being manipulated, of having your thinking manipulated and not being able to tell what’s right from what’s wrong, what’s true from what’s false.

This goes a long way to explaining why fascists like Trump oppose science, and in fact deny the existence of “objective truth” altogether. Their project depends on manipulating the grievances, feeding the prejudices and stoking the anger of their supporters, in order to weld and wield them as supporters or shock troops of open violent dictatorship. And it depends on intimidating, paralyzing and rolling over their opponents. 

This comes together with Christian fascism and extreme individualism. The Christian fascist worldview that health comes from a connection to god and prayer along with the brutal patriarchy of literalist Christianity (anti-abortion, anti-trans, etc.). And the extreme individualism that what you want to do is more important than what is required for the public and social health.

This lunatic irrational opposition to science is fully revealed in the kinds of people Trump has slated to fill crucial positions in the federal public health system.

Trump’s Public Health Team—Conspiracy Theorists, Grifters and Faith Healers

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK)—Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) 

HHS oversees 13 health-related agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes for Health (NIH), and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. In other words, most of the federal public health infrastructure is to be under RFK’s leadership.

And Kennedy is infamous for anti-science views that can appear comical but are actually quite disturbing. Here are two important examples:

• RFK opposes vaccination. Period. Although he now claims that he “won’t take anyone’s vaccines away from them,” in July 2023 (according to the Associated Press) “he said … that ‘There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective’” and told FOX News that he still believes in a notion that has been disproven by scientific studies that “vaccines can cause autism.” 

  He added that “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, better not get them vaccinated.”

  Think about this! Until the early 1950s parents lived in terror of their kids contracting polio, which killed 3,000 children and paralyzed far more just in 1952. Until the mid-60s, about 48,000 people a year were hospitalized with measles. Other deadly diseases like smallpox that once killed millions are now all but wiped out. How did this happen? VACCINES! 

  RFK may “sincerely believe” vaccines are “dangerous,” but that just shows how dangerous he is as head of HHS.¹

• RFK believes that concern about global warming is a distraction from the “real” health dangers. He actually said that: “The Democrats obsess about counting CO2 [which is the main driver of global warming], while neglecting urgent issues such as the chemicals in our food, soil, and water.” 

  Now, there are problems with weak regulation of chemicals in food, soil and water. This is a capitalist country, and so there are enormous pressures on legislatures and regulators to allow “questionable” use of toxic chemicals, and to take all kinds of other risks with the health and lives of the people, in the interests of maximizing profit, and this very likely does impact people’s health negatively, to some degree.

  But first of all, Trump has been leading the charge on even further loosening these regulations. In Trump’s first term, actions by the FDA to enforce legally required limits on chemicals and additives plummeted. And since then, Trump has repeatedly pledged to slash the “regulatory state” in his second term—i.e., the very agencies (like FDA) that are in charge of enforcing the safety of food, medicines and water. According to a recent article in Mother Jones, RFK has even said he wants current FDA employees “investigated and possibly jailed,” [emphasis added] supposedly because they are part of the “corrupt” web of food and pharmaceutical corporations.

  So don’t expect the already shaky regulatory system to get stronger under RFK/Trump. 

  Second, global warming is objectively a vastly more serious problem confronting people in the U.S. and all over the world. Climate change is already killing tens of thousands through extreme weather events, and turning millions into refugees as droughts, excessive rain and other climate-fueled problems ruin farmers in many parts of the world. And it does pose the very real danger of making life on the planet as a whole unlivable.

  Yet the Trump administration is filled with “climate change deniers,” as well as people who consider it a “distraction” from really “important” things, like pumping more oil or—as with RFK—eliminating vaccinations, promoting raw (un-pasteurized) milk, which can spread bacteria, and other dangerously unscientific ideas. More fascist lunacy! 

The Rest of the Crew

Dr. Mehmet Oz—Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS)

CMS oversees medical insurance for 150 million elderly, disabled, and/or impoverished people. This is a crucial, big-budget, and highly complicated administrative task. Oz’s main experience seems to be as an opportunistic TV personality and grifter. 

Like Trump, Oz promoted hydroxychloroquine as a treatment at the height of the COVID pandemic, even though it was proven to be useless and possibly dangerous. And that wasn’t just a one-off. A study of the “treatments” that Oz recommended on his TV show (like green coffee extract for obesity, nutritional supplements for cancer, and so on) showed that 39 percent of Oz’s recommendations were not supported by any studies, and another 15 percent were outright contradicted by the existing evidence.

Oz’s defense of this is revealing: “I actually do personally believe in the items that I talk about on the show; I passionately study them. I recognize that oftentimes they don’t have the scientific muster to present as fact.” [Emphasis added.] In other words, he makes life-and-death treatment recommendations to millions of viewers, not based on actual science built on actual facts, but rather on “belief.” 

Dr. Marty Makary—Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

The FDA is the division of HHS that is directly responsible for regulating prescription drugs as well as food additives. During the COVID epidemic, Makary advocated “natural immunity”—everyone should get the disease, and then when (and IF) they recovered they would have stronger immunity than is provided by vaccines. This amounts to recommending that millions of people play Russian Roulette with a deadly disease. And, it turned out not to be true—“natural immunity” has not proven to be any stronger than vaccine immunity. Likewise, Makary claimed that the COVID vaccine caused a rare heart condition… wrong again! Yet he still had the audacity to claim that the government—meaning the scientists who were trying to combat the epidemic—was the “greatest perpetrator” of misinformation.

Dr. David Weldon—Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

CDC is the agency most responsible for preventing or defeating epidemics of contagious diseases. Yet another opponent of vaccines, who for many years claimed that they caused autism. Weldon was also president of “a trade group for Christian organizations that offered an alternative to traditional health insurance,” and he was a leading proponent of a bill to compel HHS to accept insurance companies that denied coverage for abortions. 

Dr. Janette Nesheiwat—Surgeon General

The role and task of the Surgeon General is mainly to influence and educate the public on medical questions. We can get some sense of what kind of “influence” Nesheiwat will have from the web-page for her book Beyond the Stethoscope: Miracles in Medicine. It describes the book as “a Christian memoir” illuminating “the transformative power of prayer.” We are told that Nesheiwat is “guided by Christian wisdom” and “her greatest lifeline is… the power of God’s love.” The book’s promotional blurbs describe her as “an angel on Earth,” who is “serving others in the name of Jesus Christ,” and “a reminder of the blessings that unfold when we trust God’s love.”

The word “science” does not appear on the page.

Again, this brings us back to the need for science, and the recognition that these problems of caring for public health are complicated. People who are oppressed, people who are suffering, and people who have been denied any training in a scientific approach to the world may understandably seek quick and simple answers. But people who are in a position to know better, but instead feed them these “simple answers,” are actually undercutting their health and their ability to take better care of themselves. Moreover, the undercutting of a scientific approach to the world makes people vulnerable to being manipulated in every arena—and in particular, it sets people up for being used by fascist leaders who like Trump claim “Only I can fix it!”

What Is Needed NOW!

No one should go along with, and every decent person should oppose, the takeover of essential public health services by conspiracy theorists, grifters, and people who think “prayer” is an essential medical practice. And all under the baton of a hard-core fascist president who is depending on ignorance and uncritical thinking to keep his flock in line.

Join with the revcoms (revolutionary communists) in taking up the revolutionary struggle to defeat this fascist regime as part of fighting for a real revolution and a whole new and better world.

In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America.

A Better World IS Possible.

The Existing Capitalist-Imperialist System And Institutions Of Government In This Country Must Be Abolished And Dismantled—And Replaced By A New, Socialist System Based On The CONSTITUTION FOR THE NEW SOCIALIST REPUBLIC IN NORTH AMERICA.