WINNING FRIENDS AND INFLUENCING PEOPLE — When he was first tapped by Donald Trump to become secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination was greeted with shock and revulsion by Democrats and public health officials who blanched at his unorthodox views, vaccine skepticism, and habit of trafficking in conspiracy theories. Less than a month later, however, some of Kennedy’s other views — especially on food — are surprisingly taking root on Capitol Hill. There’s still considerable resistance to Kennedy — and no certainty that he gets confirmed by the Senate. But his attacks on Big Ag and Big Pharma are resonating and RFK is finding allies among some populists who share the goal of taking on big corporate interests. On the campaign trail and as part of his Make America Healthy Again movement, Kennedy spoke passionately about how large-scale, industrial agriculture operations and major multinational pharmaceutical companies are making Americans sicker and poorer. He railed against big corporations repeatedly, which resonated with a public reckoning with a byzantine healthcare system, strangled access to healthy food and a sense of powerlessness to do anything about it. The next Trump administration’s embrace of Kennedy signals a broad recognition of how well Kennedy’s message worked. If confirmed as secretary of HHS, which oversees the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, his supporters will expect him to be a counterweight to powerful food and beverage industry interests working overtime to block new policies on issues like ultraprocessed foods and toxic food additives that have bipartisan support. Kennedy’s rapid ascension “reflects the failure of recent Democratic administrations to really fix broken food markets both at USDA and FDA where you seeded the ground for an extremist like him to flourish,” explained Austin Frerick, author of ‘Barons,’ a book about how monopolies reshaped food systems. It’s the same reasoning that propelled a blustery Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to spar with FDA officials in a hearing today. “Even now, when you’re getting out of office, are you prepared to tell us that this committee, this Congress, needs to take on the food and beverage industry whose greed is destroying the health of millions of people?” Sanders asked. “I’m not going to castigate the people in the food and beverage industry,” said FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf. “Why not? That is your job!” Sanders responded. If Kennedy is really allowed to pursue the path suggested by Sanders on food and healthy policy, he will face the well-resourced lobbyists from some of the biggest companies in the world, many of whom are already preparing to parry his opening volleys. Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University and a vocal critic of the food system, rejects Kennedy’s positions on raw milk and vaccines, yet she has expressed astonishment at how he has elevated issues she’s pushed for decades. “Here is the president-elect of the United States talking about the industrial food complex,” said Nestle recently, referencing Trump’s announcement of Kennedy’s nomination. “The mind boggles. You can’t make this stuff up.” During his campaign, Kennedy visited dozens of farmers all over the country, building rapport with a constituency that views large seed, pesticide and fertilizer companies as rapacious. “He built a lot of trust by getting out there, listening and incorporating what he heard into this policy provision,” said Angela Huffman, president of Farm Action, a group that supported President Biden’s hawkish anti-monopoly policies. “I think people are just ready.” But Huffman is also among many farmers who feel fed up with empty rhetoric, pointing to two Democratic administrations — Obama and Biden — where the White House made big promises about going after agricultural titans, only to come up short of serious transformation. In addition to scrambling traditional ideological dividing lines between right and left, Kennedy appears to be bolstering the GOP’s growing populist orientation — his stances on food and health policy are a rejection of big corporate influence over federal policy. To win back rural voters and run up their numbers, Democrats must abandon the corporate donor class and embrace a style that hews closer to Kennedy’s messaging, write Bryce Oates and Jake Davis in a recent newsletter on rural issues. “It would require hearing about how the meatpackers JBS and Smithfield are polluting our water. Or how Big Agriculture is colluding in a sham government-funded carbon pipeline scheme through the Midwest. Or how big pharma created an opioid crisis that still plagues many small towns,” they write. At the moment, Democrats and public health advocates are treading lightly with Kennedy’s rhetoric, fearful that too close a relationship could threaten vital public health advances, like policy discouraging raw milk consumption and trust in vaccinations. If Kennedy is the standard-bearer, some who agree with him on individual issues fear that he could undermine the serious, long-term efforts to build lasting reform in food and drug regulatory systems, rendering an already-wary public even more cynical. Lawmakers on the right and left still resist Kennedy’s anti-vax views, his fringe theories and doubt his commitment to driving through real change in the food and drug industries — which will require technocratic, unglamorous work. It doesn’t help that his wife, Cheryl Hines, recently hawked products from her wellness company while he showered naked behind her in a social media post. Or when he advertised Black Friday sales of Santa, “MA HA HA” mugs, referencing the logo of his movement, Make America Healthy Again on his Instagram story. Even so, it’s hard to miss Kennedy’s recent traction in the policy arena. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), a longtime advocate for healthy food and a pointed critic of ultra processed foods, recently name-checked several policies that Kennedy has also embraced in a speech to public health experts. And Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who figures to be a key confirmation vote, also noted some common ground. “When it comes to food itself and good, healthy food, he is raising an issue that has needed to be raised for a long, long, long time.” said Murkowski, who hasn’t yet met with Kennedy and said she disagrees with him on vaccines “very very strongly.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at marciabrown@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @Marcia_Brown9.
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment