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The Marin Town Where RFK Jr.’s Message Took Root
Every Wednesday, Fairfax’s farmers market unfolds beneath a canopy of redwoods in West Marin County. Kids run barefoot through the grass while parents line up for heirloom tomatoes and jars of honey. Local bands often strum bluegrass music near the picnic tables. But last year, the presidential election interrupted the bucolic rhythm.
Supporters of then-candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. set up shop at the entrance for months. They waved flags, gathered signatures and spread out rows of campaign merchandise — hats, shirts, flyers — stamped with Kennedy’s health reform slogan: “Make America Healthy Again.”
“It was all in this spirit of green libertarian politics,” said former Mayor Chance Cutrano, referring to the town’s mix of environmental values and anti-establishment sensibilities. “It’s not uncommon to see ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ stickers in town.” He and other local leaders once dismissed Kennedy’s followers as fringe — a cluster of anti-vaccine activists on the margins — but in recent years, those voices began dominating Town Council meetings.
“I did not realize the community’s degree of love and connection to RFK as this kind of cult figure,” he said. “There’s just an aggressive, adversarial, conspiratorial energy that has come, likely as an outcropping of the pandemic. It’s unrelenting.”
RFK Jr. May Bar Government Scientists From Publishing in Medical Journals
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he will ban government scientists from publishing in leading medical journals and proposed creating an “in-house” publication by the department.
“We are probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and those other journals because they are all corrupt,” Kennedy said during an episode of “The Ultimate Human” podcast. Kennedy said such publications are “vessels” for pharmaceutical companies.
The three publications Kennedy named have published original, peer-reviewed research since their respective foundings in the 1800s. They are all consistently ranked as the top medical journals in the world and are critical in sharing scientific information to millions of people across the globe. JAMA alone receives more than 30 million visits to its website a year.
RFK Jr.’s War on Pesticides Has Ohio Farmers Fuming — and Republicans Suspiciously Silent
A brewing controversy has Ohio’s farming community on edge as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s health leader, takes aim at agricultural chemicals that farmers consider essential to their livelihoods. The dispute highlights not just scientific disagreements but also raises questions about political consistency among Republican officials who once challenged similar federal actions.
On Today in Ohio, the daily news podcast from cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer, host Chris Quinn and reporter Lisa Garvin discussed the mounting tension between the Trump administration’s health initiatives and Ohio’s agricultural interests.
Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” report questions the safety of glyphosate — commercially known as Roundup — and other pesticides, citing research linking them to various health concerns including cancer and reproductive disorders. But as Garvin explained on the podcast, Ohio farmers believe these concerns are overblown and ignore decades of established science.
They’ve Tracked Americans’ Drug Use for Decades. Trump and RFK Jr. Fired Them
A federal study on mental health problems and substance use across the country that has been running for decades and is used by a wide range of researchers faces an uncertain future after President Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health is an annual survey of households conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, which is being dissolved in Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s overhaul of the nation’s health agencies.
“We survey about 70,000 people, 12 and older each year,” says Jennifer Hoenig, who used to lead the team of scientists in charge of the survey, which is the largest in the country. On April 1, Hoenig and her 16-person team of mostly statisticians lost their jobs to the layoffs orchestrated by Elon Musk’s DOGE effort to shrink the federal government. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) fired 10,000 staff, while another 10,000 employees took buyouts and early retirement offers.
In a statement to NPR, Emily Hilliard, press secretary at HHS, wrote that agency staff are working with a contractor to continue conducting the 2025 survey. And the 2024 annual report will be out later this summer. Since the firings, the agency has published two brief reports based on the 2023 survey — one on use of marijuana by people 12 years and older and one about the treatments received by adults with serious mental illness.
