If there’s a theme among President-elect Donald Trump’s health Cabinet picks, it’s this: The vast majority were critics of how the Biden administration handled COVID-19.
The pandemic upended Americans’ perspective on public health and health care delivery, both throughout the United States and among Republican lawmakers. Policy experts say that change is evident in Trump’s selections to lead major U.S. health agencies.
That change is particularly notable in Trump’s pick for secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who has been critical of the federal government’s pandemic response. Trump and Republicans have praised Kennedy for bucking conventional thinking when it comes to public health, even though many of Kennedy’s theories and proposals are not backed by science.
