Public health experts are discussing the fallout from the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services. And they’re looking ahead to upcoming hearings on other HHS nominations, including Dr. Mehmet Oz for Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and biotech investor Jim O’Neill for HHS Deputy Secretary. On February 20, 75 organizations called on senators to reject Oz’s nomination.

“Month after month, J Street news releases echoed pronouncements coming from the White House and State Department, becoming grim parodies of wishful thinking and empty warnings. The headlines of J Street releases were largely contoured around hollow claims from the Biden administration that it was diligently striving to end the death and agony in Gaza.”

“Not only did Biden, Blinken and Secretary Austin ignore and justify the overwhelming evidence of Israel’s grotesque and deliberate crimes, overruling their own staff recommendations to halt weapons transfers to Israel, they doubled down by providing Israel with unconditional military and political support to ensure it could carry out its atrocities,”

Erin Reed, a journalist reporting on LGBTQ+ legislation and news, talks to the Institute for Public Accuracy about the fight for transgender rights across the U.S.

Both are part of the International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine, which recently stated: “Strong winter winds and heavy rains, particularly in Northern Gaza, are contributing to the suffering and death of Palestinians as their tents and makeshift living structures break down, blow away or are inundated with mud and floodwaters.

The size of the federal government workforce has dropped three percentage points since the year of Donald Trump’s birth. The problem with the federal government, some analysts say, is that it is too small, not too big. They contend that when the federal government is understaffed, the public is underserved and badly served.

Public health experts are stunned but unsurprised by the Senate confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary. Kennedy, they contend, oversimplifies and distorts complex public health subjects including chronic disease and vaccine safety. His stance on vaccines in particular threatens to cause a major infectious disease conflagration, such as the measles outbreak currently occurring in Texas. 

Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.

Last month, President Trump signed an executive order promising “immediate action”––including canceling student visas and deporting students––against noncitizen college students who participate in pro-Palestine protests. 

Sources report that Elon Musk and his “Department of Government Efficiency” will make their first visit to the Department of Labor on Wednesday, Feb. 5. Labor reporter Kim Kelly writes that “DOL workers have been ordered to give DOGE access to whatever they ask for—or risk termination.” Meanwhile, Congressman Andy Biggs (R-AZ) has introduced legislation to repeal the Occupational Safety and Health Act and “abolish” the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). This is the third time Biggs has introduced such legislation.