​The Host

Mary Agnes Carey
KFF Health News

@maryagnescarey

Mary Agnes Carey is managing editor of KFF Health News. She previously served as the director of news partnerships, overseeing placement of KFF Health News content in publications nationwide. As a senior correspondent, Mary Agnes covered health reform and federal health policy.

President Donald Trump this week nominated a former deputy surgeon general who has expressed support for vaccines to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Considered a more traditional fit for the job, Erica Schwartz would be the agency’s fourth leader in roughly a year, should she be confirmed by the Senate. 

And Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on Capitol Hill this week in the first of several hearings discussing Trump’s budget request for the department. But the topics up for discussion deviated quite a bit from the subject of federal funding, with lawmakers raising issues of Medicaid fraud, measles outbreaks, the hepatitis B vaccine, peptides, unaccompanied minors, and much, much more. 

This week’s panelists are Mary Agnes Carey of KFF Health News, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, Emmarie Huetteman of KFF Health News, and Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico Magazine.

Panelists

Anna Edney
Bloomberg News

@annaedney

@annaedney.bsky.social

Read Anna’s stories.

Emmarie Huetteman
KFF Health News

Joanne Kenen
Johns Hopkins University and Politico

@JoanneKenen

@joannekenen.bsky.social

Read Joanne’s bio.

Among the takeaways from this week’s episode:

Trump on Thursday named four officials to the CDC’s leadership team. Schwartz, whom he picked as director, is a physician and Navy officer who served as a deputy surgeon general during Trump’s first term. She has voiced support for vaccines and played a key role in the covid-19 pandemic response.

RFK Jr. testified before three committees of the House of Representatives this week on the president’s budget request for HHS. While the hearings touched on a wide variety of topics, notable moments included a slight softening of Kennedy’s stance on the measles vaccine, including the acknowledgment that being immunized is safer than having measles — although he also stood by the decision to remove the recommendation for the newborn dose of the hepatitis B vaccine.

New studies on the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy and the effects of water fluoridation on cognitive function refute Trump administration claims. And a White House meeting that brought together Trump, Kennedy, and other leaders of the Make America Healthy Again movement aimed to so  

​North America’s largest coke plant hugs the west bank of Pennsylvania’s Monongahela River, belching out emissions from turning superheated coal into a carbon-rich fuel.

Researchers say the children at Clairton Elementary School about a mile away pay the price. They discovered the students there and at other elementary schools near major pollution sites in Pennsylvania had higher asthma rates than other children in the state.

Residents and environmental advocates saw reason for hope and relief in the form of a Biden administration rule designed to tamp down on coke oven plant pollution. But even before it took effect, President Donald Trump granted all 11 coke plants in the U.S. — including the one in Clairton — a two-year exemption from the standards.

Trump and Republicans have sought to align themselves with the Make America Healthy Again movement’s populist ideals, such as improving Americans’ food choices and reducing corporate harm to the environment. But the administration is ratcheting up its attacks on the very environmental protections that MAHA followers hold dear.

Taken together, these anti-environmental initiatives will lead to more pollution-related illnesses and higher health care spending, health researchers say. They could also have political ramifications, eroding MAHA’s support for GOP candidates in the November midterm elections if followers believe the party is more beholden to industry than to the movement’s agenda.

Only 1 in 5 American adults, including about a quarter of Republicans, support rolling back environmental regulations, according to a poll by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Some MAHA supporters believe voters will support Republicans because the Trump administration is delivering on other goals important to the movement.

“MAHA has a pretty diverse set of policy goals, ranging from medical freedom to food and the environment,” said David Mansdoerfer, who served in Health and Human Services leadership during Trump’s first term. “In totality, the Trump administration has strongly delivered on much of the MAHA agenda.”

While MAHA voters have been upset at some of the administration’s actions that promote industry, it’s hard to know how that may play out in the midterms, said Christopher Bosso, a professor of public policy and politics at Northeastern University. Many were disillusioned by a Trump executive order they viewed as promoting glyphosate, which HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called poison.

“The glyphosate thing really ticks off a lot of them; they’re really upset,” Bosso said. “Kennedy said it was poison. If it is a poison, why aren’t we regulating it? That’s where the tension plays out.”

The situation with the Clairton coke plant and the others granted exemptions from regulations underscores the potential public health ri