Daily Caller
Trump, RFK Jr’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ Pledge Signals Major Shift In GOP Priorities

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Adam Pack
Former President Donald Trump and former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent vow to tackle public health issues together could signal a major shift in Republican priorities if the Trump campaign prevails on Election Day.
Trump has called for the creation of an independent commission with Kennedy’s input and pledged to address various Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) issues the former independent candidate has brought to the forefront, including improving the public’s intake of nutritious foods and addressing the rising trend of obesity in adults. These concerns, in addition to other MAHA priorities that have not historically found much support in the GOP such as calling for more stringent environmental regulations, indicate that a potential Trump administration may take a different approach on health, agricultural and environmental issues than during his first term in office.
Campaign officials, GOP lawmakers and health experts previewed a diverse set of MAHA priorities in interviews with the Daily Caller News Foundation. Tackling the rising chronic disease rate that impacts roughly 60% of American adults is a shared point of concern.
“It’s finally turning the page and saying, ‘We want a health system, not a disease system,’” Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told the DCNF. “For 50 years we built a disease system.”
“When we send President Trump back to the White House, he will work alongside passionate voices like RFK Jr. to Make America Healthy Again by providing families with safe food and ending the chronic disease epidemic plaguing our children,” Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, told the DCNF. “President Trump will also establish a special Presidential Commission of independent minds who are not bought and paid for by Big Pharma and will charge them with investigating what is causing the decades-long increase in chronic illnesses.”
Republicans and former Trump health officials are enthusiastic that marshaling the federal government in response to the country’s myriad health crises could turn the corner on an era where Americans are facing poorer health outcomes and declining life expectancy.
Redfield endorsed the idea of an independent chronic disease commission and told the DCNF that the federal government “must get more serious in preventing chronic disease” to turn the corner on an era where Americans are facing poorer health outcomes and declining life expectancy.
“It’s much more important to get real time, continuous, day-to-day monitoring of your chronic illness, not just the way the system works now where you check in every six months and someone tells you how you’re doing,” Redfield added. “No, you’ve got to check in every day.”
According to Redfield, a second Trump administration could cut the more than $4 trillion Americans spend on healthcare every year by half if federal agencies take an “all-of-government” approach to targeting substance use disorder, obesity and ultra-processed foods in addition to improving mental health services.
“These are, in my view, low-hanging fruit,” Redfield told the DCNF. “That alone would improve the American health system substantially.”
Texas Agriculture commissioner Sid Miller, who is helping vet candidates to serve in a second Trump administration, recounted running into a swarm of British schoolchildren while on a recent trade mission to the United Kingdom as providing further confirmation that a second Trump term must take action on obesity and processed foods, in an interview with the DCNF.
“90s kids and there wasn’t one fat kid in the bunch,” Miller, who has also called for bringing back the presidential fitness test program retired by the Obama administration in 2012, told the DCNF. “That kind of inspired me and made me think we’re not doing something right.”
To improve health outcomes for the more than 40% of Americans that are obese, Miller told the DCNF that a second Trump administration should consider ending Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for processed foods.
“Why are we paying for soda drinks and cookies and junk food with SNAP benefits?” Miller told the DCNF. “That needs to stop.”
Miller also pointed to his Texas Fresh Farm program that provides fresh and local products to more than 5 million Texas school members as a program that should be implemented nationwide to improve a portion of the public’s intake of nutritious foods.
Republican lawmakers have also been supportive of a second Trump administration prioritizing nutrition as part of the MAHA agenda.
“As a physician, I can absolutely say that good nutrition leads to better patient outcomes 100 percent of the time. Healthy food is medicine and is the cure for many chronic diseases and curbing health care spending in the United States,” Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas told the DCNF in a statement. “American farmers set the gold standard for nutritious food, and the MAHA agenda will work with farmers and ranchers to continue producing the safest and most wholesome food at affordable prices for our country and the world.”
Implementing MAHA priorities will likely require the empowerment of federal government agencies whose budgets and enforcement powers Republican lawmakers could be inclined to shrink. Taking action on chronic disease and obesity will also necessitate buy-in from members of the public and lawmakers that have lost trust in institutions’ abilities to tell the truth and manage crises without infringing on a person’s individual autonomy.
“Our failed response to the pandemic opened the eyes of millions to the capture and corruption of federal agencies by the corporate interests who are supposed to be regulated by them,” Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told the DCNF. “As a result, the public’s interest is not being well-served or properly protected.”
“Getting public health officials in the next administration that really spend a lot of energy on trying to reestablish public trust is going to be fundamental to the success of the efforts of Making America Healthy Again,” Redfield told the DCNF. “The vaccine mandates were a big mistake. Closing down our economy—a big mistake. Shutting down our schools—a big mistake. So, there was a huge loss of credibility and trust that has to be rebuilt.”
Redfield is still a strong believer in vaccines, dubbing them as “the most important gift to modern medicine,” but said that vaccine mandates are a self-defeating approach and that debate about a vaccine’s safety and efficacy should be encouraged not denounced.
“I’ve always said that Bobby Kennedy is not anti-vax. Bobby Kennedy just wanted honest transparency and debate about vaccines,” Redfield told the DCNF. “We should foster discussion and debate, and if someone has a question about looking at data to determine a vaccine’s safety that shouldn’t be listed as anti-vax. That should be listed as wanting an honest, open discussion about what is the data?”
“As we secure our borders and rebuild our economy, we are also going to Make America Healthy Again,” Trump said at a campaign event with Kennedy in Duluth, Georgia, on Wednesday. “We have more chronic health problems than any nation, more childhood diseases than we did just a generation ago. Millions of Americans are realizing that something is wrong. By getting this fixed not only will we have healthier families, we will save trillions and trillions of dollars and bring down the cost of healthcare.”
“We have a thousand chemicals in our food that are illegal in Europe, but the problem is not from those chemicals. The big problem is corruption in our federal agencies. These agencies are now owned by big Pharma by ‘Big Food’ and Big Agriculture,” Kennedy told the crowd at the same event. “Don’t you want a president that’s going to get the chemicals out of our food? And don’t you want a president that’s going to get the corruption out of Washington, D.C.? And don’t we deserve a president of the United States that’s going to Make America Healthy Again?”
Redfield also told the DCNF that he’s willing to serve in a second Trump administration.
“I’m in the final turn,” Redfield told the DCNF. “I’d obviously work in any way I can to help the President and Bobby Kennedy and our nation move toward health.”
Kennedy did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
Business
Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan Ramp Up Pressure On Google Parent Company To Deal With ‘Censorship’

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Andi Shae Napier
Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan are turning their attention to Google over concerns that the tech giant is censoring users and infringing on Americans’ free speech rights.
Google’s parent company Alphabet, which also owns YouTube, appears to be the GOP’s next Big Tech target. Lawmakers seem to be turning their attention to Alphabet after Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta ended its controversial fact-checking program in favor of a Community Notes system similar to the one used by Elon Musk’s X.
Cruz recently informed reporters of his and fellow senators’ plans to protect free speech.
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“Stopping online censorship is a major priority for the Commerce Committee,” Cruz said, as reported by Politico. “And we are going to utilize every point of leverage we have to protect free speech online.”
Following his meeting with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai last month, Cruz told the outlet, “Big Tech censorship was the single most important topic.”
Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent subpoenas to Alphabet and other tech giants such as Rumble, TikTok and Apple in February regarding “compliance with foreign censorship laws, regulations, judicial orders, or other government-initiated efforts” with the intent to discover how foreign governments, or the Biden administration, have limited Americans’ access to free speech.
“Throughout the previous Congress, the Committee expressed concern over YouTube’s censorship of conservatives and political speech,” Jordan wrote in a letter to Pichai in March. “To develop effective legislation, such as the possible enactment of new statutory limits on the executive branch’s ability to work with Big Tech to restrict the circulation of content and deplatform users, the Committee must first understand how and to what extent the executive branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech.”
Jordan subpoenaed tech CEOs in 2023 as well, including Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Tim Cook of Apple and Pichai, among others.
Despite the recent action against the tech giant, the battle stretches back to President Donald Trump’s first administration. Cruz began his investigation of Google in 2019 when he questioned Karan Bhatia, the company’s Vice President for Government Affairs & Public Policy at the time, in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Cruz brought forth a presentation suggesting tech companies, including Google, were straying from free speech and leaning towards censorship.
Even during Congress’ recess, pressure on Google continues to mount as a federal court ruled Thursday that Google’s ad-tech unit violates U.S. antitrust laws and creates an illegal monopoly. This marks the second antitrust ruling against the tech giant as a different court ruled in 2024 that Google abused its dominance of the online search market.
Daily Caller
Daily Caller EXCLUSIVE: Trump’s Broad Ban On Risky Gain-Of-Function Research Nears Completion

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Emily Kopp
President Donald Trump could sign a sweeping executive order banning gain-of-function research — research that makes viruses more dangerous in the lab — as soon as May 6, according to a source who has worked with the National Security Council on the issue.
The executive order will take a broad strokes approach, banning research amplifying the infectivity or pathogenicity of any virulent and replicable pathogen, according to the source, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the anticipated executive action. But significant unresolved issues remain, according to the source, including whether violators will be subject to criminal penalties as bioweaponeers.
The executive order is being steered by Gerald Parker, head of the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, which has been incorporated into the NSC. Parker did not respond to requests for comment.
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In the process of drafting the executive order, Parker has frozen out the federal agencies that have for years championed gain-of-function research and staved off regulation — chiefly Anthony Fauci’s former institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.
The latest policy guidance on gain-of-function research, unveiled under the Biden administration in 2024, was previously expected to go into effect May 6. According to a March 25 letter cosigned by the American Society for Microbiology, the Association for Biosafety and Biosecurity International, and Council on Governmental Relations, organizations that conduct pathogen research have not received direction from the NIH on that guidance — suggesting the executive order would supersede the May 6 deadline.
The 2024 guidance altered the scope of experiments subject to more rigorous review, but charged researchers, universities and funding agencies like NIH with its implementation, which critics say disincentivizes reporting. Many scientists say that researchers and NIH should not be the primary entities conducting cost–benefit analyses of pandemic virus studies.
Parker previously served as the head of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), a group of outside experts that advises NIH on biosecurity matters, and in that role recommended that Congress stand up a new government agency to advise on gain-of-function research. Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield has also endorsed moving gain-of-function research decision making out of the NIH to an independent commission.
“Given the well documented lapses in the NIH review process, policymakers should … remove final approval of any gain-of function research grants from NIH,” Redfield said in a February op-ed.
It remains to be seen whether the executive order will articulate carveouts for gain-of-function research without risks of harm such as research on non-replicative pseudoviruses, which can be used to study viral evolution without generating pandemic viruses.
It also remains to be seen whether the executive order will define “gain-of-function research” tightly enough to stand up to legal scrutiny should a violator be charged with a crime.
Risky research on coronaviruses funded by the NIH at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through the U.S. nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance typifies the loopholes in NIH’s existing regulatory framework, some biosecurity experts say.
Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act in 2023 indicated that EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak submitted a proposal to the Pentagon in 2018 called “DEFUSE” describing gain-of-function experiments on viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 but downplayed to his intended funder the fact that many of the tests would occur in Wuhan, China.
Daszak and EcoHealth were both debarred from federal funding in January 2025 but have faced no criminal charges.
“I don’t know that criminal penalties are necessary. But we do need more sticks in biosafety as well as carrots,” said a biosecurity expert who requested anonymity to avoid retribution from his employer for weighing in on the expected policy. “For instance, biosafety should be a part of tenure review and whether you get funding for future work.”
Some experts say that it is likely that the COVID-19 crisis was a lab-generated pandemic, and that without major policy changes it might not be the last one.
“Gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens caused the COVID-19 pandemic, killing 20 million and costing $25 trillion,” said Richard Ebright, a Rutgers University microbiologist and longtime critic of high-risk virology, to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “If not stopped, gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens likely will cause future lab-generated pandemics.”
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