The order repeatedly underscores the declining health and fitness of America’s children as its number one priority, noting that ‘the health of Americans is on an alarming trajectory that requires immediate action’ and that this ‘applies urgently to America’s children.’
Shortly after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), President Trump signed an executive order titled Establishing The President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission (MAHA EO) to investigate and address the root causes of America’s escalating health crisis, with a focus on childhood chronic disease.
Chaired by Kennedy, the commission has four main policy directives to reverse chronic disease: Empower Americans through transparency and open-source data and avoid conflicts of interest in all federally funded health research; Prioritize gold-standard research on why Americans are getting sick in all health-related research funded by the federal government; Work with farmers to ensure that U.S. food is the healthy, abundant, and affordable; and ensure expanded treatment options and health coverage flexibility for beneficial lifestyle changes and disease prevention.
“To fully address the growing health crisis in America, we must redirect our national focus, in the public and private sectors, toward understanding and drastically lowering chronic disease rates and ending childhood chronic disease,” declares the order. “This includes fresh thinking on nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety.”
“We must restore the integrity of the scientific process by protecting expert recommendations from inappropriate influence and increasing transparency regarding existing data,” it continues. “We must ensure our healthcare system promotes health rather than just managing disease.”
The MAHA EO comes at a time when many Americans have lost trust in the nation’s healthcare system and are increasingly skeptical as to whether they are receiving honest answers about the causes of the country’s health crisis and how to improve it.
The order repeatedly underscores the declining health and fitness of America’s children as its number one priority, noting that “the health of Americans is on an alarming trajectory that requires immediate action,” and that “This concern applies urgently to America’s children.”
Immediate assessment and strategy to make children healthy again
At the outset, the commission will “advise and assist the President on how best to exercise his authority to address the childhood chronic disease crisis” and within 100 days, will submit to the president its “Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment.”
Within 180 days, the commission will present a “Make our Children Healthy Again Strategy,” “restructuring the Federal Government’s response to the childhood chronic disease crisis, including by ending Federal practices that exacerbate the health crisis or unsuccessfully attempt to address it, and by adding powerful new solutions that will end childhood chronic disease.”
The order notes that:
In 2022, an estimated 30 million children (40.7 percent) had at least one health condition, such as allergies, asthma, or an autoimmune disease. Autism spectrum disorder now affects 1 in 36 children in the United States — a staggering increase from rates of 1 to 4 out of 10,000 children identified with the condition during the 1980s. Eighteen percent of late adolescents and young adults have fatty liver disease, close to 30 percent of adolescents are prediabetic, and more than 40 percent of adolescents are overweight or obese.
To fully address the growing health crisis in America, we must redirect our national focus, in the public and private sectors, toward understanding and drastically lowering chronic disease rates and ending childhood chronic disease. This includes fresh thinking on nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety. We must restore the integrity of the scientific process by protecting expert recommendations from inappropriate influence and increasing transparency regarding existing data. We must ensure our healthcare system promotes health rather than just managing disease.
“Thank you, President Trump, for your leadership, your confidence in me, and your deep concern for the health of the American people,” said Kennedy. “You have truly heard the calls of the millions of mothers who simply want the tools – and the truth – so they can make informed decisions for their children.”
“I have prayed each morning for the past two decades for God to put me in a position to solve the childhood chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy continued, “and now, thanks to you Mr. President, we will make this promise a reality.”
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The changes are expected to reduce the agency’s headcount from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a significant restructuring of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday in a move to streamline the huge federal agency and cut costs.
Kennedy plans to trim about 10,000 employees from the agency’s workforce in addition to employees who left as part of a Deferred Resignation Program, similar to a buy out, earlier this year. The move is expected to save about $1.8 billion.
Kennedy said the restructuring won’t affect the agency’s critical services. When combined with HHS’ other efforts, including early retirement, the changes are expected to reduce the agency’s headcount from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees. The restructuring will also align the department with Kennedy’s goals for a healthier U.S. population.
“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said. “This Department will do more – a lot more – at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”
Kennedy also said the restructuring of the department’s 28 divisions will get rid of redundant units, consolidating them into “15 new divisions, including a new Administration for a Healthy America, or AHA, and will centralize core functions such as Human Resources, Information Technology, Procurement, External Affairs, and Policy.” Regional offices will be reduced from 10 to 5.
The overhaul will implement the new “HHS priority of ending America’s epidemic of chronic illness by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water, and the elimination of environmental toxins. These priorities will be reflected in the reorganization of HHS.”
Kennedy also said the restructuring would improve taxpayers’ experience with HHS by making the agency more responsive and efficient. He also said the changes would ensure that Medicare, Medicaid, and other essential health services remain intact.
The Administration for a Healthy America will combine multiple agencies – the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, Health Resources and Services Administration, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health — into a single, unified entity, Kennedy said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will get the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, which is responsible for national disaster and public health emergency response.
“Over time, bureaucracies like HHS become wasteful and inefficient even when most of their staff are dedicated and competent civil servants,” Kennedy said. “This overhaul will be a win-win for taxpayers and for those that HHS serves.”
Among the cuts: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will shed about 3,500 full-time employees. Officials said the reduction won’t affect drug, medical device, or food reviewers, nor will it impact inspectors. The CDC will drop about 2,400 employees. The National Institutes of Health will cut about 1,200 employees. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will cut about 300 employees. The reorganization won’t affect Medicare and Medicaid services, officials said.
Now seated at the helm of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is poised to reshape not only the agency’s research priorities but the very culture that pushed him to the fringe.
Imagine spending your career studying infectious diseases, only to find that the real virus spreading uncontrollably is censorship. That was the reality for Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford epidemiologist who committed the unpardonable sin of questioning the COVID-19 lockdown orthodoxy. His punishment? Digital exile, courtesy of Silicon Valley’s Ministry of Truth.
In December 2022, the Twitter Files exposed what many had long suspected: Twitter had quietly placed Bhattacharya’s account on a Trends Blacklist. This ensured that his posts, often critical of lockdowns and mask mandates, would never see the light of day on the platform’s trending topics. In other words, Twitter’s algorithm worked like a digital bouncer, making sure his dissenting opinions never made it past the velvet rope.
And Twitter wasn’t alone. Facebook, ever eager to please its government handlers, scrubbed the Great Barrington Declaration from its pages. That document, co-authored by Bhattacharya and other esteemed scientists, dared to suggest that maybe, just maybe, locking down entire populations wasn’t the best strategy. Instead, it proposed focused protection for the most vulnerable while allowing the rest of society to function. For this, it was sent to the digital equivalent of a gulag.
These experiences took center stage during Bhattacharya’s Senate confirmation hearing for the directorship of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Republican lawmakers, who suddenly found themselves cast as the last defenders of free speech in scientific discourse, saw his nomination as a win.
During his testimony, Bhattacharya didn’t mince words. He detailed how the Biden administration played an active role in orchestrating the suppression of alternative views. It wasn’t enough for officials to push their own pandemic policies — they needed to ensure that no one, regardless of expertise, could challenge them in the public square.
The Science™ vs. The Science
Bhattacharya’s testimony laid bare an uncomfortable truth: the pandemic was a crisis of speech. “The root problem was that people who had alternative ideas were suppressed,” he told Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.). “I personally was subject to censorship by the actions of the Biden administration during the pandemic.”
In a functioning society, that statement would spark bipartisan outrage. Instead, it barely registered. The people who spent years chanting “trust the science” were never interested in science at all.
Real science thrives on debate, skepticism, and the understanding that no single expert — no matter how credentialed—holds absolute truth. But during COVID, science became The Science™ — a government-approved doctrine enforced by Silicon Valley moderators and federal bureaucrats. Deviate from it, and you weren’t just wrong. You were dangerous.
A government-sanctioned muzzle
Bhattacharya wasn’t silenced in some haphazard, accidental way. The Biden administration actively leaned on social media companies to “moderate” voices like his. In practice, that meant tech executives — most of whom couldn’t tell a virus from a viral tweet — decided which epidemiologists the public was allowed to hear.
He responded with a lawsuit against the administration, accusing it of colluding with Big Tech to crush dissent. But in a ruling as predictable as it was revealing, the Supreme Court dismissed the case, arguing that Bhattacharya and his fellow plaintiffs lacked standing. Meaning: Yes, the government may have pressured private companies into silencing critics, but unless you can prove exactly how that harmed you, don’t expect the courts to care.
The real role of science
Despite everything, Bhattacharya didn’t argue for scientists to dictate policy. Unlike the public health bureaucrats who spent the pandemic issuing commandments from their Zoom thrones, he made it clear: “Science should be an engine for freedom,” he said. “Not something where it stands on top of society and says, ‘You must do this, this or this, or else.’”
That distinction matters. Science informs, but policy is about trade-offs. The problem wasn’t that officials got things wrong — it’s that they refused to admit the possibility. Instead of allowing open debate, they silenced critics. Instead of acknowledging uncertainty, they imposed rules with absolute certainty.
Bhattacharya wasn’t censored because he was wrong. He was censored because he questioned people who couldn’t afford to be.
His confirmation hearing made one thing clear: science wasn’t about data. It was about power. And in Washington, power doesn’t like to be questioned.
Science, money and power
At the heart of the hearing was a fundamental question: Who controls science that people are allowed to talk about? The NIH, with its $48 billion budget, is less a research institution and more a financial leviathan, shaping the direction of American science through the projects it funds (or doesn’t) fund.
Bhattacharya’s nomination comes at a moment when the battle lines around scientific freedom, government intervention, and public trust in research are more entrenched than ever. The pandemic shattered the illusion that science was above politics. Instead, it exposed just how much political and corporate interests shape what counts as “settled” science.
The irony is thick enough to cut with a knife. The man once branded too dangerous for social media, blacklisted for questioning lockdowns, and effectively erased from mainstream discourse is now being handed a key role in the very government that tried to silence him. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, once forced to the margins, is now at the center of power.
A new administration has decided that maybe — just maybe — silencing dissenting scientists wasn’t the best pandemic strategy. And in a twist no Hollywood scriptwriter would dare to pitch for being too on-the-nose, Bhattacharya wasn’t being welcomed back into the conversation — he’s being put in charge of it.
Bhattacharya was confirmed following a party-line vote Tuesday evening. The decision came after a similarly partisan endorsement from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), clearing the final hurdle for President Donald Trump’s nominee.
Equally central to his testimony was Bhattacharya’s call for a sweeping shift in NIH priorities. He proposed a decentralization of research funding, stressing the need for greater inclusion of dissenting voices in the scientific process, an apparent rebuke of the consensus-driven culture that dominated during the pandemic. He emphasized targeting resources toward projects with a clear and measurable impact on public health, dismissing other NIH initiatives as “frivolous.”
Now seated at the helm of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is poised to reshape not only the agency’s research priorities but the very culture that pushed him to the fringe. His confirmation, hard-won and unapologetically political, is already shaking the scaffolding of a scientific establishment that long equated conformity with consensus.
