Now Kennedy is truly Health Czar!

Last Thursday (February 13), President Donald J. Trump signed yet another executive order, that the online world unaccountably ignored. Perhaps they did so because Vice-President J. D. Vance made a much bigger splash next day. Or perhaps everyone missed this executive order because Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. won confirmation as Secretary of Health and Human Services on the same day. But it could be one of the most important executive orders Trump will sign, for it addresses human health. In fact it cements the partnership Trump formed with Secretary Kennedy during the campaign. Trump promised Kennedy the chairmanship of a special panel to address the “epidemic” of chronic disease in children. His executive order on health, establishes that panel – which will likely be permanent.

What drives Kennedy, and what Trump promised him

The executive order “Establishing the President’s Make America Health Again Commission” is available here. How Trump and Kennedy got to that pass, is instructive to review.

Shortly after the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pa., Trump and Kennedy started meeting. They talked about the issues that truly drive Kennedy, including first and foremost:

1. The assassinations of his father, his Uncle Jack, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and
2. The sorry spectacle of children’s health and especially the frightening incidence and prevalence of chronic disease in children.

Donald Trump delivered on the first issue with his January 23 Executive Order declassifying the “Assassination Files” and ordering immediate planning for the release of those records – complete and unredacted. His action on the second issue concerns us today.

On August 23, 2024, Kennedy suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump’s candidacy. Trump won his election, of course – and within ten days, nominated Kennedy for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Big Pharma stocks plummeted, Democrats were aghast, and in the end every Senate Democrat voted against Kennedy, along with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Kennedy won anyway, and now the Trump-Kennedy partnership is set in concrete.

Throughout these events, Trump had promised a key role for his newfound friend – as a sort of Health Czar, or head of a special panel on human health and especially child health. With Trump’s new executive order, the new Secretary of HHS gets his wish. And none will be able to gainsay it.

The President’s Health Commission

The President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission – or the Health Commission – has fifteen permanent members ex officio – those who have membership by virtue of the offices they hold. As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy will serve as its Chairman – making him truly Health Czar. The Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy will have the collateral duty of Executive Director.

Thirteen other members ex officio shall exist:

• Secretaries of Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, Education, and Veterans’ Affairs,
• Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),
• Directors of Office of Management and Budget, National Economic Council, Office of Science and Technology Policy, CDC, and NIH,
• Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy,
• Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and
• Commissioner of Food and Drugs.

Mr. Kennedy and his Executive Director may in addition co-opt other administration officials, as they see fit.

The mission of the Health Commission will be to see to the health of Americans. Two sections of the executive order spell out an immediate mission to address the “childhood chronic disease crisis.” Beyond the usual boilerplate, this paragraph serves as the best equivalent of a mission statement:

[T]he Commission shall… study the scope of the childhood chronic disease crisis and any potential contributing causes, including the American diet, absorption of toxic material, medical treatments, lifestyle, environmental factors, Government policies, food production techniques, electromagnetic radiation, and corporate influence or cronyism.

Thus far, Dr. Joseph R. Mercola has said nothing about the EO or about Kennedy’s confirmation. But CNAV expects him to say plenty. His Substack (requires a private-membership subscription) has a wealth of material directly pertinent to all the issues the EO mentions.

Reforms already announced – by Kennedy and others

On the night after his confirmation and the EO, Kennedy granted an interview with Laura Ingraham on The Ingraham Angle.

Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit provided a partial transcript. Kennedy reiterated his statements to the Senate Finance and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committees, that he would “not take away anyone’s vaccines.” But he did say:

The vaccines are the one medical product that is exempt from pre-licensing safety studies. I sued HHS a few years ago in 2018, and I said, Show us one study, one pre-licensing study of any of the vaccines that are now, the 72 vaccines that are now mandated for children on the childhood schedule. After a year of sandbagging, HHS came to the courthouse and handed us a letter and saying, Yeah, there are no studies. The only vaccine that is on the childhood schedule that had a placebo-controlled, double-blind trial was the COVID vaccine. None of the other ones have. That doesn’t mean you have to do that trial now, but you need to know what the risk profile is for these products.

That provoked an immediate question about the coronavirus vaccines:

Q: Do you think the COVID vaccine was safe and the boosters were safe? A lot of people talk about adverse effects.

A: We don’t have good data on it, and that is a crime. The fact that we don’t have a surveillance system that actually works. In 2010, CDC has a surveillance system called the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, and it’s supposed to pick up injuries. But, the CDC did a study of that system in 2010, and that study said, and there is a published study by CDC, that it captures less than 1% of the vaccine injuries. That’s inexcusable.

Congress has repeatedly, and the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, have repeatedly ordered CDC to put together a better vaccine. Will you require it? And we will do that right away.

Ingraham asked him to address rumors that he would fire half the personnel in his department. Kennedy seriously doubted that he would fire half the department’s 90,000-member workforce. But he did remind Ingraham of a history of scientific corruption that goes back many decades.

What I’m interested in are moving away the people who have made really bad decisions, for example, on the nutrition guidelines. There’s people at NIH that were involved in the amyloid plaque scandals that derailed Alzheimer’s treatment for 20 years. It’s all corruption. Those people need to be moved.

Then he said this:

I have a list in my head. We have a generic list of the people that if you’ve been involved in good science, you got nothing to worry about. If you care about public health, you got nothing to worry about. If you’re in there working for the pharmaceutical industry, then I’d say you should move out and work for the pharmaceutical industry.

Zounds! Shades of The Mikado!

As someday it will happen, an accounting must be found,

I’ve got a little list, I’ve got a little list

Of scientific fudgers who might well be underground.

They never will be missed, they never will be missed!

All joking aside, only yesterday Paul Thacker shared a segment from Ingraham’s interview. In it, Kennedy announced that he would task the CDC with creating “a new vaccine safety system.”

HHS Secretary Kennedy will require CDC to put together a new vaccine safety system.

#scicomm writers deceived the public and and wrote “vaccines are safe!” fairytales. They lied.

A new study will be published soon showing Adverse Events from the COVID vaccine and court documents show that Merck[, Sharpe and Dohme] lied about the safety of Gardasil.

HHS Secretary Kennedy will require CDC to put together a new vaccine safety system.#scicomm writers deceived the public and and wrote "vaccines are safe!" fairytales. They lied.

A new study will be published soon showing Adverse Events from the COVID vaccine and court… pic.twitter.com/w4PxO0ExoG— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) February 15, 2025

Separately, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said she looked forward to working with Kennedy to reform the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (“Food Stamps”). Among other reforms she apparently would seek: banning the use of Food Stamps to buy “junk” food.

When a taxpayer is putting money into SNAP, are they okay with us using their tax dollars to feed really bad food and sugary drinks to children who need something more nutritious?

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins welcomes RFK Jr.’s help reforming SNAP to cut “bad food and sugary drinks”

“When a taxpayer is putting money into SNAP, are they okay with us using their tax dollars to feed really bad food and sugary drinks to children who need something more… pic.twitter.com/nFeooY3fkM— American Values (@AVPac_US) February 15, 2025

Remember: the SecAg will sit on the Health Commission.

Suggestions for “Health Czar” Kennedy

This new Health Commission could be better only by creating it permanently, by an Act of Congress. Then again, Congress never created the Cabinet, either – but every member of it is a Senate-confirmed Civil Officer. In fact this Commission has an interesting precedent: Dwight D. Eisenhower’s President Council on Youth Fitness. (John F. Kennedy changed its name to President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. In 2010, Barack Obama changed it to President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition.)

But that Council does little more than run athletic competitions. The Health Commission has a far more comprehensive mission. Considering the “study” the EO orders, only a Commission with the specific membership the order describes, could carry it out. (And set policy in response to it.) Examining some items in the “study” mandate is especially instructive:

The American diet

George Malkmus, founder and CEO of Hallelujah Acres, adds the word Standard to that phrase: Standard American Diet – or SAD! And small wonder! “To go on a diet,” for sixty years, has meant “to eat fewer or smaller meals to lose weight.” That alone reveals that Americans eat foods – many of them addictive – that promote weight gain – and also, cancer. Vice-President J. D. Vance has spoken often of losing considerable weight – by adopting his wife’s Indian, mostly plant-based (“vegetarian”) diet.

The Democratic governors of California and Illinois have already at least attempted to curtail the overconsumption of sugary drinks and similarly addictive foods. Now the new Health Commission can establish a national standard.

Absorption of toxic material

Our society has toxins all around us, even in our food. Shortly before the Inauguration, the FDA banned erythrosine (FD&C Red Dye No. 3) from food and drugs taken by mouth. Years ago a study implicated erythrosine as an inducer of cancer in rats. But many other petrochemical dyes remain in use – in America, not necessarily in Europe. Only today, Station WBTS-TV (Channel 10, NBC-TV, Boston, Mass.) ran an Associated Press article about erythrosine and nine other synthetic food dyes allowed in American foods and per orem drugs.

Beyond that, industrialization always risks increasing the total toxin load on the human body. That’s why the Health Commission includes the EPA Administrator. But perhaps the Administrator of the FAA and the Secretary of the Air Force will need to testify – to address the persistent allegation of “chemtrails” – the discharge of noxious chemicals from military airlift or even commercial airline flights. That should be an interesting set of hearings.

Medical treatments

Any medical treatment has side effects. Some patients take so many drugs that their doctors find themselves overwhelmed trying to keep those side effects straight.

Aside from that, Joseph R. Mercola (see above) has long alleged that rheumatology – the treatment of esoteric diseases involving arthritis and other signs – consists mainly of treatments that do not address the underlying cause, and might in fact make the patient’s condition worse. YouTube ignominiously removed his famous video, The Town of Allopath. But the original author/playwright (Mike Adams, “The Health Ranger”) still publishes his original narration script. (CNAV has also made sure to share it to The Wayback Machine.) His moral: “Prevention is the answer, not the treatment of symptoms.”

Lifestyle and environmental factors

The plethora of radio and especially television and “streaming” entertainment has promoted a sedentary (“sitting around”) lifestyle. That, plus the excess of processed (and dyed) foods, is responsible for most of the obesity we see today. All obesity is at least a little morbid, because the extra weight strains the heart and lungs.

In addition, the Health Commission should study risks to children in households where the adults abuse alcohol, tobacco – and marijuana. Apart from the “bad moral example,” marijuana might do its own type of chronic injury to heart, lungs and brain.

Government policies

The obvious government policies (apart from the “chemtrails” allegation) include willingness to subsidize “junk foods.” Fortunately, Agriculture Secretary Rollins has already hinted at addressing this. But the forbidding of the sale of raw milk is another policy in drastic need of abandonment.

Food production techniques

This could cover everything from food processing that emphasizes shelf life over nutritional value, to the use (and abuse!) of chemical fertilizers, plus pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and every other kind of -cide. The simple reform of traditional farming – including crop rotation so that soil depletion and infestation would not be problematic – could save billions in farming costs and make all foods safer.

Electromagnetic radiation

This means more than exposure to diagnostic X rays, or the overuse of high-energy X ray and gamma rays. It covers allegations of excessive radiation dosage from cellular radio – both the “smart phones” and the towers that serve them. Extremely low-frequency radiation from high-tension wires could also cause problems for people living beneath the wires. The first microwave ovens were not recommended by reason of the radiation dosage they put out. Are modern microwave ovens that much safer? Maybe the Health Commission can find out.

Corporate influence or cronyism

That covers the “Regulatory Revolving Door,” in which regulators go to work in the industry they used to regulate. Direct bribery almost never occurs – few companies would be so brazen. Or wouldn’t they? Kennedy in fact suspects that very thing.

Kennedy has his work cut out for him

Obviously Secretary Kennedy faces quite a challenge. That’s one reason Trump wrote his EO – to back him up. Trump has another reason – to give Robert Kennedy the tools and the assistance he will need to make his vision of a healthier America real.