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From ‘brilliant’ to ‘aghast’: Reactions to RFK Jr.’s nomination for HHS secretary run the gamut

Published

12 months ago

12 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Dr. Brenda Baletti, The Defender

From “brilliant” to “aghast” – President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nomination on Thursday of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., founder of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), to run the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) triggered a range of reactions among media outlets, public health officials, and Kennedy’s long-time supporters and detractors.

In a statement posted on Truth Social and X, Trump said Kennedy would restore the public health agencies “to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!”

Kennedy, who promised to fight corruption and end the revolving door between industry and government, thanked Trump for the nomination on social media. He said he would “free the agencies from the smothering cloud of corporate capture so they can pursue their mission to make Americans once again the healthiest people on Earth.”

 

Kennedy is a longtime critic of how corporate interests have captured the public health agencies meant to regulate them, and of the outsized and corrupt role that Big Pharma plays in American life.

If confirmed, Kennedy would hold the most powerful governmental position in public health, overseeing 80,000 employees across a department that houses 13 agencies and more than 100 programs. Those agencies include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health and the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services.

CHD CEO Mary Holland told The Defender the organization “could not be more pleased” with the nomination, adding:

Kennedy has been devoted to ending the childhood chronic health epidemic for almost 20 years. He has been effective in communicating the failures of our existing public health establishment.

Based on his extensive litigation history, he is uniquely prepared to reform the regulatory institutions, the research institutions, and public education on health. I look forward to seeing dramatic, measurable improvements in Americans’ health during the Trump administration.

Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said on X that he was “excited by the news,” particularly about Kennedy’s commitment to fighting chemicals in foods, the power of Big Pharma, and to other health priorities.

“I hope he leans into personal choice on vaccines rather than bans (which I think are terrible, just like mandates) but what I’m most optimistic about is taking on big pharma and the corporate ag oligopoly to improve our health,” he added.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) told Fox News, “I think Robert is another disruptor. We need a disruptor. I will be glad and I’m looking forward to working with him,” Politico reported.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) called Kennedy a “brilliant, courageous truth-teller” and said he could make the “most significant impact on health.”

Vaccine stocks take a dive on news of announcement

On the flip side, some lawmakers and public health leaders expressed alarm, decrying the nomination.

U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) called the choice “f— insane” on X, Fox News reported. “He’s a vaccine denier and a tin foil hat conspiracy theorist. He will destroy our public health infrastructure and our vaccine distribution systems. This is going to cost lives.”

Dr. Richard E. Besser, CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a former acting director of the CDC, said that having Kennedy head up HHS “would pose incredible risks to the health of the nation,” because Kennedy’s critique of the public health agencies was worsening the mistrust lingering after the coronavirus pandemic, The New York Times reported.

Besser told CNN that some of Kennedy’s ideas about chronic health issues regarding children were good ideas, but other ideas were deeply concerning – particularly Kennedy’s proposal that individuals should decide for themselves whether to take a vaccine.

“The idea that receiving childhood vaccines would be a parental choice scares me,” he said.

READ: Canada’s public health agency still working to adopt WHO pandemic treaty: report

Current CDC Director Mandy Cohen raised concerns that Kennedy would use the position to spread misinformation and foster distrust in public health institutions, particularly with respect to vaccines.

Kennedy has called for an end to immunity for vaccine manufacturers for the injuries caused by their products. He points out that no vaccine on the childhood immunization schedule has undergone proper safety and efficacy testing.

He has been a long-term advocate for the tens of thousands of families seeking compensation for their children’s vaccine-induced autism.

Kennedy also promised that, if confirmed, he would make the V-safe vaccine injury data collected but not made public by the CDC transparent, so scientists have access to the data necessary to analyze vaccine safety

Vaccine and Pharma stocks fell sharply this morning, following yesterday’s announcement about Kennedy, Reuters reported.

 

Bavarian Nordic, which makes the mpox vaccine, was down 16 percent. Its CEO told Reuters he was concerned that Kennedy could fuel vaccine skepticism.

However, he also said that the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic under Trump’s first term made him confident that the incoming administration would continue to fund biodefense.

The Trump administration launched and oversaw Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership to rapidly develop a COVID-19 vaccine that gave vaccine makers hundreds of billions in profits along with total immunity for any harms caused by those investigational vaccines under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act.

Kennedy will be ‘single greatest threat to profits in America’

Republican advisers have cautioned that Kennedy could face a difficult path to confirmation, The Washington Post reported, citing his “past statements on drugs and vaccines, and his many personal entanglements.” FiercePharma said his confirmation process is likely “to be contentious.”

Physician, professor and Substacker Dr. Vinay Prasad wrote that Trump could use a recess appointment to secure Kennedy’s position, but that he will likely need to be confirmed by the Senate where “He has a several hundred billion dollar industry that will do everything possible to stop him.”

“Many of these companies have lobbied throughout Congress,” Prasad added. “They will use those connections. Unlike other controversial appointees, RFK Jr. will be the single greatest threat to profits in America.”

If his appointment goes through, Prasad said Kennedy will face a difficult road in getting his proposed policies enacted, given the entrenched power of Pharma and the power of the media that opposes him.

Law professor Wendy Parmet, director of Northeastern University’s Center for Health Policy and Law, pointed to the potential clash between Kennedy’s anti-industry position and the big-business leanings of the Republican Party.

“We have an administration that promises to deregulate, to be business-friendly, and then we have RFK Jr., who promises to go after fast food,” Parmet told The Washington Post.

READ: Idaho health district votes to stop offering COVID vaccines at its medical centers

Health and health freedom advocates optimistic Kennedy will bring change

Despite the challenges ahead, health advocates are optimistic that changes they have been seeking for decades will come to pass.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, critics of pandemic policies were condemned and marginalized. Kennedy was censored by the Biden administration and social media companies as part of the so-called “Disinformation Dozen” for airing many of those critiques.

Over the course of the election Kennedy – who ran for president as a Democrat, then announced he was running as an independent before suspending his campaign and endorsing Trump – has repeatedly been called a “conspiracy theorist.” Both Kennedy and CHD are routinely dismissed as “anti-vax” for openly discussing the scientific evidence on the link between vaccines and chronic diseases including autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or ADHD and other neuropsychiatric and autoimmune disorders, in some children.

Rather than investigating the science, mainstream media mostly insists these links have been “debunked,” without providing any evidence for their claim.

Kennedy has also called for the removal of fluoride from public drinking water, citing recent studies and a landmark federal court decision that show it interferes with children’s brain development – a concern that has even been flagged by some mainstream public health commentators.

His supporters hope these issues will now receive serious public attention that will lead to policy change.

Holland said on X that Kennedy’s nomination came 38 years to the day after the Vaccine Injury Act that gave vaccine manufacturers immunity from liability was signed into law.

“Let’s rewrite this one,” she said.

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Nearly One-Quarter of Consumer-Goods Firms Preparing to Exit Canada, Industry CEO Warns Parliament

Published on November 18, 2025

By

The Opposition with Dan Knight

Dan Knight's avatar Dan Knight

Standing Committee on Industry and Technology hears stark testimony that rising costs and stalled investment are pushing companies out of the Canadian market.

There’s a number that should stop this country cold: twenty-three percent. That is the share of companies in one of Canada’s essential manufacturing and consumer-goods sectors now preparing to withdraw products from the Canadian market or exit entirely within the next two years. And this wasn’t whispered at a business luncheon or buried in a consultancy memo. It was delivered straight to Parliament, at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, during its study on Canada’s underlying productivity gaps and capital outflow.

Michael Graydon, the CEO of Food, Health & Consumer Products of Canada, didn’t hedge or soften the message. He told MPs, “23% of our members expect to exit products from the Canadian marketplace within the next two years, because the cost of doing business here has just become unsustainable.”

Unsustainable. That’s the word he used. And when the people who actually make things in this country start using that word, you should pay attention. These aren’t fringe players or hypothetical startups. These are firms that supply the goods Canadians buy every single day, and they’re looking at their balance sheets, their regulatory burdens, the delays in getting anything approved or built, and concluding that Canada simply doesn’t work for them anymore.

What makes this more troubling is the timing. Canada’s investment levels have been falling for years, even as the United States and other competitors race ahead. Businesses aren’t reinvesting in machinery or technology at the rate they once did. They’re not modernizing their operations here. They’re putting expansion plans on hold or shifting them to jurisdictions that move faster, cost less and offer clearer rules. That’s not ideology; it’s arithmetic. If it costs more to operate here, if it takes longer to get a permit, and if supply chains back up because ports and rail lines are jammed, investors will choose the place that doesn’t make growth a bureaucratic mountain climb.

Graydon raised another point that ought to concern anyone who cares about domestic production. Canada’s agrifood sector recorded a sixty-billion-dollar trade surplus last year, one of the brightest spots in the national economy, but according to him that potential is being “diluted by fragmented interprovincial trade and logistics bottlenecks.” The ports, the rail corridors, the entire transport network—choke points everywhere. And you can’t build a productive economy on choke points. Companies can’t scale, can’t guarantee delivery, can’t justify the costs. So they leave.

This twenty-three percent figure is the clearest evidence yet that the problem isn’t theoretical. It’s not something for think-tank panels or academic papers. It is happening at the level that matters most: the decision whether to continue doing business in Canada or move operations somewhere more predictable. And once those decisions are made, they’re very hard to reverse. Capital doesn’t boomerang back out of patriotism. It goes where it can earn a return.

For years, Canadian policymakers have talked about productivity as if it were a moral failing of workers or a mystical national characteristic. It’s neither. Productivity comes from investment—real money poured into equipment, technology, training and expansion. When investment stalls, productivity collapses. And when a quarter of firms in a major sector are already planning their exit, you are not looking at a temporary dip. You are looking at a structural rejection of the business environment itself.

The fact that executives are now openly warning Parliament that they cannot afford to stay is a moment of clarity. It is also a test. Either this country becomes a place where people can build things again—quickly, affordably, competitively—or it continues down the path that leads to empty factories, hollowed-out supply chains and consumers who wonder why the shelves look thinner every year.

Twenty-three percent is not just a statistic. It’s the sound of a warning bell ringing at full volume. The only question now is whether anyone in charge hears it.

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Climate Climbdown: Sacrificing the Canadian Economy for Net-Zero Goals Others Are Abandoning

Published on November 18, 2025

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By Gwyn Morgan

Canada has spent the past decade pursuing climate policies that promised environmental transformation but delivered economic decline. Ottawa’s fixation on net-zero targets – first under Justin Trudeau and now under Prime Minister Mark Carney – has meant staggering public expenditures, resource project cancellations and rising energy costs, all while failing to
reduce the country’s dependence on fossil fuels. Now, as key international actors reassess the net-zero doctrine, Canada stands increasingly alone in imposing heavy burdens for negligible gains.

The Trudeau government launched its agenda in 2015 by signing the Paris Climate Agreement aimed at limiting the forecast increase in global average temperature to 1.5°C by the end of the century. It followed the next year with the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change that imposed more than 50 measures on the economy, key among them a
carbon “pricing” regime – Liberal-speak for taxes on every Canadian citizen and industry. Then came the 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan, committing Canada to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, and to achieve net-zero by 2050. And then the “On-Farm Climate Action Fund,” the “Green and Inclusive Community Buildings Program” and the “Green Municipal Fund.”

It’s a staggering list of nation-impoverishing subsidies, taxes and restrictions, made worse by regulatory measures that hammered the energy industry. The Trudeau government cancelled the fully-permitted Northern Gateway pipeline, killing more than $1 billion in private investment and stranding hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of crude oil in the ground. The
Energy East project collapsed after Ottawa declined to challenge Quebec’s political obstruction, cutting off a route that could have supplied Atlantic refineries and European markets. Natural gas developers fared no better: 11 of 12 proposed liquefied natural gas export terminals were abandoned amid federal regulatory delays and policy uncertainty. Only a single LNG project in Kitimat, B.C., survived.

None of this has had the desired effect. Between Trudeau’s election in 2015 and 2023, fossil fuels’ share of Canada’s energy supply actually increased from 75 to 77 percent. As for saving the world, or even making some contribution towards doing so, Canada contributes just 1.5 percent of global GHG emissions. If our emissions went to zero tomorrow, the emissions
growth from China and India would make that up in just a few weeks.

And this green fixation has been massively expensive. Two newly released studies by the Fraser Institute found that Ottawa and the four biggest provinces have either spent or foregone a mind-numbing $158 billion to create just 68,000 “clean” jobs – an eye-watering cost of over $2.3 million per job “created”. At that, the green economy’s share of GDP crept up only 0.3
percentage points.

The rest of the world is waking up to this folly. A decade after the Paris Agreement, over 81 percent of the world’s energy still comes from fossil fuels. Environmental statistician and author Bjorn Lomborg points out that achieving global net-zero by 2050 would require removing the equivalent of the combined emissions of China and the United States in each of the next five
years. “This puts us in the realm of science fiction,” he wrote recently.

In July, the U.S. Department of Energy released a major assessment assembled by a team of highly credible climate scientists which asserted that “CO 2 -induced warming appears to be less damaging economically than commonly believed,” and that aggressive mitigation policies might be “more detrimental than beneficial.” The report found no evidence of rising frequency or severity of hurricanes, floods, droughts or tornadoes in U.S. historical data, while noting that U.S. emissions reductions would have “undetectably small impacts” on global temperatures in any case.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright welcomed the findings, noting that improving living standards depends on reliable, affordable energy. The same day, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed rescinding the 2009 “endangerment finding” that had designated CO₂ and other GHGs as “pollutants.” It had led to sweeping restrictions on oil and gas development and fuelled policies that the current administration estimates cost the U.S. economy at least US$1 trillion in lost growth.

Even long-time climate alarmists are backtracking. Ted Nordhaus, a prominent American critic, recently acknowledged that the dire global warming scenarios used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change rely on implausible combinations of rapid population growth, strong economic expansion and stagnant technology. Economic growth typically reduces population increases and accelerates technological improvement, he pointed out, meaning emissions trends will likely be lower than predicted. Even Bill Gates has tempered his outlook, writing that climate change will not be “cataclysmic,” and that although it will hurt the poor, “it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare.” Poverty and disease pose far greater threats and resources, he wrote, should be focused where they can do the most good now.

Yet Ottawa remains unmoved. Prime Minister Carney’s latest budget raises industrial carbon taxes to as much as $170 per tonne by 2030, increasing the competitive disadvantage of Canadian industries in a time of weak productivity and declining investment. These taxes will not measurably alter global emissions, but they will deepen Canada’s economic malaise and
push production – and emissions – toward jurisdictions with more lax standards. As others retreat from net-zero delusions, Canada moves further offside global energy policy trends – extending our country’s sad decline.

The original, full-length version of this article was recently published in C2C Journal.

Gwyn Morgan is a retired business leader who has been a director of five global corporations.

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