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The RFK Jr. Effect

The Atlantic

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This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

Among Donald Trump’s recent Cabinet nominations is a pick that has alarmed the scientific community: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services. With this choice, Trump has further elevated a conspiracy-minded vaccine skeptic with no medical background, whose views are often not rooted in science. I spoke with my colleague Yasmin Tayag, who covers health, about the damage RFK Jr.’s proposals could do to Americans’ trust in public health—whether he is confirmed or not.

The Elevation of Fringe Beliefs

Lora Kelley: As you’ve written, some of Robert F. Kennedy’s concerns—such as taking on ultra-processed foods and removing toxins from the environment—seem appealing to Americans across the political spectrum, yet his proposed solutions for these problems could pose a danger to Americans. Could you help me understand the gap between some of his seemingly commonsense proposals and the fringe ideologies behind them?

Yasmin Tayag: A lot of Kennedy’s health proposals actually make sense to me: investing in regenerative agriculture, and increasing access to preventive health care, and even removing toxins from the environment are things that sound good to pretty much anyone, regardless of their political party. Kennedy, of course, was until recently a Democrat, and a lot of his environmental and health concerns do reflect the things that the left has historically worried about.

The problem is that when you start looking at how he’s going to execute on these goals, you realize that his track record of proposing solutions is not based in science. We can all agree that it’s a good idea to take toxins out of the environment, but we might not all agree that fluoride is a toxin, as Kennedy seems to suggest. And so you have to ask: How is Kennedy going to make these decisions?

He’s a science skeptic, even though he claims to be a champion of science that lets people make their own decisions about their health. His view is that science as an institution has been so corrupted by corporate influence—he’s always railing against Big Pharma—that anything that comes out of the science institution that we’ve long relied on is bad.

Lora: Even if he doesn’t get confirmed, could Kennedy’s nomination still have an impact on Americans’ trust in public health?

Yasmin: Kennedy being so publicly considered for such a prominent health role has already given legitimacy to the fringe ideas that he’s entertained over the years. He’s said in the past that he believes 5G cellular technology controls our behavior, and he has implied that antidepressants are linked to mass shootings.

For a lot of the public, this might be their first time really having to think about health topics such as fluoridation. If this is not something you think about normally, and all of a sudden, here’s this guy all over the news, talking about his doubts about things that have long been accepted as scientific fact, I think it’s reasonable that people would also start feeling confused. The fact that he is in the public eye and getting a lot of airtime to discuss his skepticism is, at the very least, putting a spotlight on these fringe beliefs and, at worst, making them seem more legitimate than they are.

Lora: Given that bird flu may be a growing threat, how do you anticipate Kennedy might respond to a pandemic as the head of HHS?

Yasmin: It’s unlikely that we would see anything close to a streamlined public-health response, in part because Kennedy is so skeptical of vaccines. That could mean a hesitation to invest in the production of vaccines, or a lack of encouragement for Americans to use them. But I think the broader impact might be if he continues to legitimize the view that vaccines are something to be afraid of. People may refuse to take them.

During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, we had people who believed in science leading HHS, and the response was pretty mediocre: inconsistent communication, inadequate testing, little coordination between state and federal agencies. But at least the interventions made sense from a scientific perspective. With someone who does not believe in basic health principles, we may see an unpredictable response—or even no response.

Lora: What kind of power does this role actually come with?

Yasmin: If Kennedy becomes secretary of HHS, he’s going to have an enormous influence on American public health—he would oversee the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, Medicare and Medicaid, and the Administration for Children and Families, among others. And on top of overseeing all of those departments, he would also be the primary adviser to the president on health. So he would be the one telling Donald Trump what health priorities should be. That’s a really scary prospect, because a lot of Kennedy’s perspective on the world doesn’t seem to be rooted in any kind of scientific reality, at least not a mainstream one. He wouldn’t always be able to implement his ideas directly—removing fluoride from water, for example, can happen only at the state and local level—but his endorsement alone could go a long way.

His appointment, though he still needs to be confirmed, seems plausible to me. Kennedy’s audience is a big one—MAGA meets woo-woo, as our colleague Elaine Godfrey has called it—that could further expand support for Trump. But there are still a number of Republican senators he’ll have to win over. Some might take issue with his views on health. Others may feel threatened by his plans to remove corporate influence from the government—Big Pharma, for example, has long provided campaign money to both parties. Kennedy’s plans to overhaul food and pharmaceuticals would also require a ton of regulation, which is exactly what Republicans don’t want. The biggest pitfall for Kennedy would be if his goals run up against Trump’s economic priorities. He was an environmental lawyer, so he’s very anti-oil, whereas Trump is deeply pro-oil. In his past speeches, Trump has said that Kennedy can do whatever he wants, as long as he doesn’t “touch the oil.” I could see Trump or others in the party pushing back on him for that reason.

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Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly urged the House Ethics Committee to not publicly release its probe into former Representative Matt Gaetz’s alleged sexual misconduct and illicit drug use. Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had a call about the future of the Ukraine war. It was their first conversation since late 2022. Trump selected North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum to be the Interior Department secretary last night; if confirmed by the Senate, Burgum would oversee the country’s public lands.

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Evening Read

Illustration by Diego Mallo. Source: Mark Peterson / Redux.

The Man Who Will Do Anything for Trump

By Elaina Plott Calabro

Kash Patel was dangerous. On this both Trump appointees and career officials could agree.

A 40-year-old lawyer with little government experience, he joined the administration in 2019 and rose rapidly. Each new title set off new alarms.

When Patel was installed as chief of staff to the acting secretary of defense just after the 2020 election, Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, advised him not to break the law in order to keep President Donald Trump in power. “Life looks really shitty from behind bars,” Milley reportedly told Patel. (Patel denies this.)

Read the full article.

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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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Pardon Trump’s Critics Now

The Atlantic

www.theatlantic.com › ideas › archive › 2024 › 11 › presidential-pardon-trump-critics › 680627

Over the past several years, courageous Americans have risked their careers and perhaps even their liberty in an effort to stop Donald Trump’s return to power. Our collective failure to avoid that result now gives Trump an opportunity to exact revenge on them. President Joe Biden, in the remaining two months of his term in office, can and must prevent this by using one of the most powerful tools available to the president: the pardon power.

The risk of retribution is very real. One hallmark of Trump’s recently completed campaign was his regular calls for vengeance against his enemies. Over the past few months, he has said, for example, that Liz Cheney was a traitor. He’s also said that she is a “war hawk.” “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her,” he said. Likewise, Trump has floated the idea of executing General Mark Milley, calling him treasonous. Meanwhile, Trump has identified his political opponents and the press as “enemies of the people” and has threatened his perceived enemies with prosecution or punishment more than 100 times. There can be little doubt that Trump has an enemies list, and the people on it are in danger—most likely legal, though I shudder to think of other possibilities.

Biden has the unfettered power to issue pardons, and he should use it liberally. He should offer pardons, in addition to Cheney and Milley, to all of Trump’s most prominent opponents: Republican critics, such as Adam Kinzinger, who put country before party to tell the truth about January 6; their Democratic colleagues from the House special committee; military leaders such as Jim Mattis, H. R. McMaster, and William McRaven; witnesses to Trump’s conduct who worked for him and have since condemned him, including Miles Taylor, Olivia Troye, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Cassidy Hutchinson, and Sarah Matthews; political opponents such as Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff; and others who have been vocal in their negative views, such as George Conway and Bill Kristol.  

[Mark Leibovich: In praise of clarity]

The power to pardon is grounded in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, which gives a nearly unlimited power to the president. It says the president “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” That’s it. A president’s authority to pardon is pretty much without limitation as to reason, subject, scope, or timing.  

Historically, for example, Gerald Ford gave Richard Nixon a “full, free, and absolute pardon” for any offense that he “has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.” If Biden were willing, he could issue a set of pardons similar in scope and form to Trump’s critics, and they would be enforced by the courts as a protection against retaliation.

There are, naturally, reasons to be skeptical of this approach. First, one might argue that pardons are unnecessary. After all, the argument would go, none of the people whom Trump might target have actually done anything wrong. They are innocent of anything except opposing Trump, and the judicial system will protect them.

This argument is almost certainly correct; the likelihood of a jury convicting Liz Cheney of a criminal offense is laughably close to zero. But a verdict of innocence does not negate the harm that can be done. In a narrow, personal sense, Cheney would be exonerated. But along the way she would no doubt suffer—the reputational harm of indictment, the financial harm of having to defend herself, and the psychic harm of having to bear the pressure of an investigation and charges.

In the criminal-justice system, prosecutors and investigators have a cynical but accurate way of describing this: “You can beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride.” By this they mean that even the costs of ultimate victory tend to be very high. Biden owes it to Trump’s most prominent critics to save them from that burden.

More abstractly, the inevitable societal impact of politicized prosecutions will be to deter criticism. Not everyone has the strength of will to forge ahead in the face of potential criminal charges, and Trump’s threats have the implicit purpose of silencing his opposition. Preventing these prosecutions would blunt those threats. The benefit is real, but limited—a retrospective pardon cannot, after all, protect future dissent, but as a symbol it may still have significant value.

A second reason for skepticism involves whether a federal pardon is enough protection. Even a pardon cannot prevent state-based investigations. Nothing is going to stop Trump from pressuring his state-level supporters, such as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, to use their offices for his revenge. And they, quite surely, will be accommodating.

But finding state charges will be much more difficult, if only because most of the putative defendants may never have visited a particular state. More important, even if there is some doubt about the efficaciousness of federal pardons, that is no reason to eschew the step. Make Trump’s abuse of power more difficult in every way you can.

The third and final objection is, to my mind at least, the most substantial and meritorious—that a president pardoning his political allies is illegitimate and a transgression of American political norms.   

Although that is, formally, an accurate description of what Biden would be doing, to me any potential Biden pardons are distinct from what has come before. When Trump pardoned his own political allies, such as Steve Bannon, the move was widely (and rightly) regarded as a significant divergence from the rule of law, because it protected them from criminal prosecutions that involved genuine underlying criminality. By contrast, a Biden pardon would short-circuit bad-faith efforts by Trump to punish his opponents with frivolous claims of wrongdoing.

[Daniel Block: The Democrats’ Senate nightmare is only beginning]

Still, pardons from Biden would be another step down the unfortunate road of politicizing the rule of law. It is reasonable to argue that Democrats should forgo that step, that one cannot defend norms of behavior by breaking norms of behavior.

Perhaps that once was true, but no longer. For the past eight years, while Democrats have held their fire and acted responsibly, Trump has destroyed almost every vestige of behavioral limits on his exercises of power. It has become painfully self-evident that Democratic self-restraint is a form of unilateral disarmament that neither persuades Trump to refrain from bad behavior nor wins points among the undecided. It is time—well past time—for responsible Democrats to use every tool in their tool kit.

What cannot be debated is that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris owe a debt not just of gratitude but of loyalty to those who are now in Trump’s investigative sights. They have a moral and ethical obligation to do what they can to protect those who have taken a great risk trying to stop Trump. If that means a further diminution of legal norms, that is unfortunate, but it is not Biden’s fault; the cause is Trump’s odious plans and those who support them.

The Loyalists Are Collecting Their Rewards in Trump’s Cabinet

The Atlantic

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This story seems to be about:

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

A note from Tom:

As we were about to publish this newsletter, Donald Trump announced that he has asked the Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, a military veteran who has no experience in leading large organizations and no serious background as a senior leader in national-security affairs, to be his secretary of defense. This is exactly the kind of unqualified nomination that I was warning could be looming after this first group of nominees were announced—and it explains why Trump is determined to bypass the U.S. Senate to get some of his nominees confirmed. I will have more to say about Hegseth soon.

So far, the new Trump administration has a chief of staff, a “border czar,” and a national security adviser; all three are White House positions controlled by the president. Donald Trump has also reportedly named six people to senior positions that require Senate confirmation: secretary of state, United Nations ambassador, secretary of homeland security, secretary of defense, CIA director, and administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. (He has also chosen an ambassador to Israel.) His first picks are neither very surprising nor very impressive, but this is only the beginning.

His co–campaign manager Susie Wiles will make White House history by becoming the first female chief of staff. People around Trump seem relieved at this appointment, but she’ll likely be saddled with Stephen Miller as a deputy, which could get interesting because Miller apparently has a tendency to get out of his lane. (According to a book by the New York Times reporter Michael Bender, Miller attended a tense meeting that included Trump, Attorney General Bill Barr, and General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. As the nation’s leaders debated what to do, Miller interjected and said that America’s major cities had been turned into war zones. General Milley, Bender writes, turned to Miller, pointed at him, and said: “Shut the fuck up, Stephen.”)

The rest of the appointments are unsurprising, given the limited pool of Republicans willing to serve in another Trump administration. (Some Trump loyalists such as Senator Tom Cotton have reportedly declined a role in the administration, likely protecting their future for the 2028 GOP race to succeed Trump.) Marco Rubio, who sits on the Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees in the Senate, was a reasonable choice among the Trump coterie to become America’s top diplomat as secretary of state.

Likewise, Representative Mike Waltz of Florida is a reasonable choice for national security adviser—but again, that’s in the context of the now-smaller universe of national-security conservatives in politics or academia willing to work for Trump at this point. He is a veteran, and like Rubio, he has served on relevant committees in Congress, including Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Waltz may be a credible voice on national security, but he was also a 2020 election denier. He pledged to oppose certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 win and signed on to an amicus brief supporting a Texas lawsuit to overturn the election. He changed his mind—but only after the events of January 6.

Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, meanwhile, was bound to be rewarded for her loyalty. Although Vice President–elect J. D. Vance took the gold in the race to replace the disowned Mike Pence, Stefanik was a comer even by the standards of the sycophantic circle around Trump, and so she’ll head to the United Nations, a low-priority post for Trump and a GOP that has little use for the institution. A former member of Congress from New York, Lee Zeldin (who was defeated in the 2022 New York governor’s race) will head up the EPA, another institution hated by MAGA Republicans, thus making Zeldin’s weak—or strong, depending on your view—legislative record on environmental issues a good fit for this administration.

This afternoon, Trump announced that John Ratcliffe will serve as CIA director. Ratcliffe previously served as director of national intelligence and will now be in a post that is functionally subordinate to his old job. Ratcliffe is a reliable partisan but an unreliable intelligence chief. The most baffling move Trump has made so far is the appointment of South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to lead the Department of Homeland Security. Noem served four terms in Congress and is in her second as governor. She has very little relevant experience, especially as a government executive. (South Dakota might be a big place, but it’s a small state; DHS has more than 260,000 employees, making it a bit more than a quarter the size of the entire population of Noem’s home state.) DHS is a giant glob of a department—one I have long argued should never have existed in the first place and should be abolished—that has seeped across the jurisdictional lines of multiple institutions and, unlike some other Cabinet posts, requires someone with serious leadership chops.

DHS will also be central to some of Trump’s most abominable plans regarding undocumented immigrants—and, potentially, against others the president-elect views as “enemies from within.” (The “border czar” Trump has named, Tom Homan, once falsely implied that some California wildfires were worsened by an undocumented immigrant.) In that light, Noem is perfect: She is inexperienced but loyal, a political lightweight with no independent base of support or particularly long experience in Washington, and she can be counted on to do what she’s told. She will be no John Kelly or Kirstjen Nielsen, her confirmed predecessors at DHS, both of whom were on occasion willing to speak up, even if ineffectively.

This first passel of nominees should gain Senate confirmation easily, especially Rubio. (Sitting members of the chamber usually have an easier time, as do people who have close associations with the Senate.) And given Trump’s history and proclivity for mercurial and humiliating firings, few of them are likely to be very long in their post, and are probably better than the people who will later replace them.

But that in itself raises a troubling question. If Trump intends to nominate these kinds of fellow Republicans, why is he insistent that the new Senate allow him to make recess appointments?

For those of you who do not follow the arcana of American government, Article II of the Constitution includes a provision by which the president can make appointments on his own if the Senate is in recess and therefore unable to meet. The Founders didn’t think this was a controversial provision; sometimes, presidents need to keep the government running (by choosing, say, an ambassador) even when the Senate might not be around—a real problem in the days when convening the Senate could take weeks of travel. Such appointments last until the end of the next legislative session.

For obvious reasons, the Senate itself was never a big fan of a device—one that presidents routinely used—that circumvents constitutional authority to confirm executive appointments, especially once the practice got out of hand. (Bill Clinton made 139 recess appointments, George W. Bush made 171, and Barack Obama made 32.) The Senate’s response was basically to be wilier about not declaring itself in recess even when there’s no one around, and when President Obama tried to push through some of these appointments in 2012, the Supreme Court sided with the Senate.

Now Trump wants to bring back the practice. The obvious inference to draw here is that after some fairly uncontroversial nominations, he intends to nominate people who couldn’t be confirmed even in a supine and obedient Republican Senate. Perhaps this is too clever, but I am concerned that this first pass is a head fake, in which Trump nominates people he knows are controversial (such as Zeldin) but who are still confirmable, and then sends far worse candidates forward for even more important posts. Kash Patel—a man who is dangerous precisely because his only interest is serving Trump, as my colleague Elaina Plott Calabro has reported—keeps bubbling up for various intelligence posts.

“Ambassador Elise Stefanik” and “EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin” might not be great ideas, but they are not immediate threats to U.S. national security or American democracy. “CIA Director John Ratcliffe,” by contrast, is cause for serious concern. If Trump is serious about his authoritarian plans—the ones he announced at every campaign stop—then he’ll need the rest of the intelligence community, the Justice Department, and the Defense Department all under firm control.

Those are the next nominations to watch.

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The judge in Trump’s hush-money criminal case delayed his decision on whether Trump’s conviction on 34 felonies should be overturned after his reelection. A federal judge temporarily blocked a new Louisiana law that would have required the display of the Ten Commandments in all public classrooms, calling the legislation “unconstitutional on its face.” Louisiana’s attorney general said that she will appeal the ruling. The Archbishop of Canterbury announced his resignation. An independent review found that he failed to sufficiently report the late barrister John Smyth, who ran Christian summer camps and abused more than 100 boys and young men, according to the review.

Evening Read

Illustration by Mark Pernice

AI Can Save Humanity—Or End It

By Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Craig Mundie

The world’s strongest nation might no longer be the one with the most Albert Einsteins and J. Robert Oppenheimers. Instead, the world’s strongest nations will be those that can bring AI to its fullest potential.

But with that potential comes tremendous danger. No existing innovation can come close to what AI might soon achieve: intelligence that is greater than that of any human on the planet. Might the last polymathic invention—namely computing, which amplified the power of the human mind in a way fundamentally different from any previous machine—be remembered for replacing its own inventors?

Read the full article.

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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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