Trump’s Health Secretary Pick Is Crowd-Sourcing Health Treatments

The nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services is open-sourcing cures from anyone with a song.

The FAQ for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” website features a relatively banal assortment of questions, from how to troubleshoot merchandising orders to how to stop recurring donations to RFK Jr.’s defunct presidential campaign. But among the bullet points hides a strange prompt that one wouldn’t expect from a man on the cusp of overseeing the nation’s health policies: an invitation to email him whatever medical therapies you’ve got lying around.

If you “have a cure for something,” the website reads, “please send an email to info@teamkennedy.com.”

The request plays into Kennedy’s larger conspiratorial ideas on modern medicine, effectively equating old wives’ tales and snake oil elixirs with thoroughly researched and studied science-backed treatments.

Kennedy—a virulent vaccine conspiracy theorist who doesn’t believe that AIDS is caused by HIV, insists that WiFi causes cancer, and has shared he has brain-eating worms in his head—has promised to completely reshape America’s approach to public health.

Under Trump’s helm, Kennedy has sworn to remove fluoride from all public water systems—reversing a 1945 public health decision that has reduced cavities and tooth decay in adults and children by as much as 25 percent, according to the American Dental Association.

During the “plandemic,” Kennedy likened 2020 vaccination efforts to the Nazi testing on “Gypsies and Jews,” referring to the jab as “a pharmaceutical-driven, biosecurity agenda that will enslave the entire human race and plunge us into a dystopian nightmare.” As part of Trump’s Cabinet, Kennedy reportedly has plans to strip not just the Covid vaccine but older, irrefutably effective vaccines from the market, as well.

But Kennedy’s vaccine conspiracies aren’t just easily refutable hogwash—they’ve caused legitimate, real-world harm. Prior to a deadly measles outbreak on the Pacific islands of Samoa in 2019, Kennedy’s anti-vax nonprofit Children’s Health Defense spread rampant misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines, sending the nation’s vaccination rate plummeting from the 60–70 percent range to just 31 percent, according to Mother Jones. That year, the country reported 5,707 cases of measles—an illness that was declared eliminated by the United States in 2000 thanks to advancements in modern medicine (read: vaccines)—as well as 83 measles-related deaths, the majority of which were children under the age of 5.

Since their invention, vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The shots are so effective at preventing illness that they have practically eradicated some of the worst diseases, from rabies to polio and smallpox, from our collective culture—a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene experienced a reality check outside the Supreme Court Wednesday morning.

Greene was speaking in front of the building that houses the high court as the justices heard oral arguments in U.S. v. Skrmetti, which concerns a legal challenge to Tennessee’s ban against gender-affirming care for transgender minors.

As the right-wing Georgia congresswoman went on a rant, complaining about minors taking puberty blockers “before they’re old enough to join the military, before they’re ever old enough to … be an adult,” she was taken aback by a wave of boos from protesters there for the “Freedom to Be Ourselves” rally in support of trans rights.

According to independent journalist and former New Republic reporter Talia Jane, the crowd was “roughly 4:1 pro-trans rights vs anti” and growing, making Greene and her fellow anti-trans activists a rapidly shrinking minority. In the House of Representatives, however, Greene is now part of a razor-thin Republican majority that will almost certainly attempt to restrict trans rights during Donald Trump’s second term.

Already, Greene and her colleague attention-seeking Representative Nancy Mace are targeting the first transgender person to be elected to Congress, Representative-elect Sarah McBride, ludicrously claiming her use of Capitol restrooms would be tantamount to assault. Inside the Supreme Court on Wednesday, conservative justices holding similar views indicated they would likely uphold the Tennessee law and further restrict rights for transgender people.

Outside of the court, though, Greene and right-wing activists came face-to-face with actual public opinions on trans rights, which include more support for the community than conservatives may realize. It’s a preview of the next four years, with Republicans set to take legal aim at the LGBTQ community in the face of public opposition.

Ex–Fox News star Pete Hegseth won’t let go of his nomination to be Donald Trump’s next defense secretary.

In a post on Wednesday, the accused rapist claimed that he would continue his ascent to the president-elect’s Cabinet despite his dwindling odds at passing a Senate confirmation hearing, branding himself as a “disruptor.”

“I’m doing this for the warfighters, not the warmongers,” Hegseth wrote alongside a photo of himself in combat gear. “The Left is afraid of disrupters and change agents. They are afraid of @realDonaldTrump—and me. So they smear w/ fake, anonymous sources & BS stories. They don’t want truth.

“Our warriors never back down, & neither will I,” he added.

Hegseth told reporters on Tuesday that he intended to meet with every senator, including those who were skeptical of his nomination.

“We’re going to meet with every senator that wants to meet with us, across the board,” Hegseth said on his second full day on Capitol Hill courting members of the upper chamber. “And we welcome their advice as we go through the advice and counsel process.”

That plan has already fallen apart, as The Washington Post’s Marianne Levine reported Wednesday that Hegseth had canceled an upcoming meeting with Senator Josh Hawley.

Conservatives have grown increasingly concerned about Hegseth’s ability to pass the Senate confirmation process in light of sexual assault allegations against the ex–Fox News host, including a detailed 2017 police report regarding Hegseth allegedly raping an attendee at a Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California.

Since those allegations surfaced, Hegseth has admitted to several other scandals, including five affairs that he had during his first marriage.

Even Hegseth’s own mother couldn’t defend the white nationalist–connected conservative, accusing her son in a scathing 2018 email following his separation from his second wife of “using women for his own power.”

“On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say … get some help and take an honest look at yourself,” Penelope Hegseth wrote in the email, obtained by The New York Times Friday.

“I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego,” she wrote. “You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”

Hegseth’s mother has since publicly changed her tune—on Wednesday morning, she appeared on Fox News to beg people to support her son for defense secretary.

But that’s not the only issue blocking Hegseth’s tenure at the top of the Pentagon: Reports of the Fox News anchor’s rampant drinking have prompted some GOP lawmakers to put their foot down on his nomination barring a promise of sobriety.

“One of the things I’d love to hear is that he’s committed to not drinking,” Republican Senator Kevin Cramer told CNN on Wednesday. “Being familiar with the problems of alcoholism and the dumb things we do when we drink too much, it’d be really nice if he could set that one aside for good, if not at least through his term as secretary.”

Democratic candidate Adam Gray defeated incumbent Republican Representative John Duarte in the final 2024 House race to be called. Gray’s victory, flipping California’s 13th congressional district, means the House Republican majority will be even more razor-thin than before.

With Gray’s win, called early Wednesday morning by the Associated Press, House Republicans will have just a 220–215 majority in the 119th Congress, as the Democrats have netted one more House seat. As CNN reporter Harry Enten noted last week while results were still pending, a party’s majority in the House has not been this slim since the Herbert Hoover administration, following elections for the 72nd Congress.

The House Republican majority is poised to be further deflated, temporarily, to 217–215 in early 2025 with the expected vacancies of three Republican seats.

Representative Matt Gaetz resigned from his seat last month, after he was tapped to be Trump’s attorney general but before he withdrew from consideration in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations. Two other Republican representatives, Elise Stefanik and Mike Waltz, are expected to resign to join the Trump administration. Until these three vacancies are filled, a single Republican defector in a party-line vote would dash a piece of legislation.

The scantiness of the House majority—on top of internal strife among Republican representatives—could significantly hamper the party’s ability to enact its legislative agenda early on in the coming Trump administration.

Kash Patel, Trump’s pick for FBI director, has a fake Covid-19 vaccine “detox” supplement side hustle.

According to a report from NBC News Wednesday, Patel has helped push “Warrior Essentials,” a right-wing faux “wellness” company that sells three different types of supplements claiming to “undo the damage from the spike protein” (essentially the Covid vaccine).

He first advertised them in February on his Truth Social, writing, “Spike the Vax, order this homerun kit to rid your body of the harms of the vax. Huge discount now by ordering via link below,” above an image that read, “If the Covid vaccines were actually ‘safe’ we wouldn’t be essential.”

He shouted Warrior Essentials out again in April, this time writing, “Mrna detox, reverse the vaxx n get healthy with @warrioressentials,” above an image stating, “You were immune to the propaganda, but are you immune to the shedders?”

“Since the mRNA covid vaccines were rolled out we’ve learned our DNA may have been infiltrated by the mRNA in the covid vaccines,” the Warrior Essentials website states. “Our DNA is already under stress from environmental pollutants and chemical additives in our foods. The spike could undermine it all. Not to worry. Warrior Essentials has your back with a support system to bring you back to peak health.”

Patel is a loyal MAGA disciple who wants to dismantle the very agency he is set to head. It only makes sense that he’s doing weird supplement grifting too—after all, he’s learned from one of the best.