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In February 2025, Robert F Kennedy Jr began his tenure arsenic caput of nan Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) pinch an different connection for nan national section responsible for protecting nationalist health.
America’s top challenge, he said, was not conscionable chronic illness but a “spiritual malaise”, a benignant of soul-sickness derived from America’s civilized decline.
“Spiritual and beingness maladies thrive connected 1 another,” Kennedy told HHS labor successful his first address. The solution, he said, “must statesman pinch a belief question”, of individual work and inward vigilance against nan acheronian forces that would support Americans “sedated” and “compliant”.
Weeks later, nan White House moved to trim 20,500 jobs crossed nan very agency tasked pinch protecting nationalist health.
This March, arsenic nan US faced its worst bales resurgence successful 34 years – 1 he has mostly ignored – Kennedy again warned nan federation of nan aforesaid nebulous threat.
This time, he took a much militant tone. “Malevolent forces”, he told an assemblage of doctors-in-training, must beryllium met pinch “spiritual warfare”, waged done nan “sacred ritual” of eating meal together arsenic a family.
Now complete a twelvemonth into his tenure, Kennedy champions individual subject while casting organization subject arsenic a acheronian unit successful a cosmic struggle against nan light. He has promoted pseudoscientific aliases unproven remedies, including vitamin A for measles, peptides for longevity and nan nutritional benefits powerfulness of earthy milk, while sowing uncertainty astir nan safety and efficacy of vaccines.
Because of his granola aura arsenic a erstwhile biology advocate, Kennedy’s invocation of nan “spiritual” tin initially sound benign – much hippy than doctrinaire.
Yet his repeated references to belief forces are much than run-of-the-mill wellness vernacular. They are a awesome that nan Christian nationalist activity that helped propel Trump into agency is now reshaping nan nationalist wellness agency from nan inside.
The effect is corrosive, eroding nan nation’s shared epistemological reality – for illustration a worm moving its measurement done encephalon tissue.
A warfare from within
“The ‘warfare’ point is simply a canine whistle to stoke Christian nationalist ideology,” says Savannah Tate, nan girl of megachurch pastor Benny Tate.
Tate grew up immersed successful nan movement, caught betwixt patriarchal forces and biblical literalism. She near nan religion successful her early 20s. Now 32 pinch a doctorate successful psychology, she speaks astir her acquisition publicly.
Christian nationalists – a sprawling religious-political ecosystem of factions and networks – reason that American rule should bespeak a singular Christian imagination of nan country. That task would elevate biblical law, erode nan separation of religion and state, and hollow retired pluralism and democracy.
Some successful nan Trump authorities openly claim nan label, specified arsenic Russell Vought, Trump’s head of nan agency of operations and fund and a cardinal writer of nan ultra-conservative Christian thinktank Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which has travel to usability arsenic a Christian nationalist blueprint for governance.
Terms specified arsenic “spiritual warfare” and “spiritual attack”, Tate says, are cardinal to nan movement’s vocabulary – portion of a binary, warcentric and mysterious rhetoric leveraging fearfulness and disinformation to support group connected their toes against enemies some tangible and spiritual. Maga Christian nationalism is dominionist, meaning it seeks to spot its militant type of Christian authority complete institutions, civilization and government.
Kennedy’s speech, taken together pinch nan rhetoric of different Maga leaders, reflects a broader shape of strident belief connection moving into nan highest levels of government.
Trump himself described his 2nd word arsenic “a warfare from within” against “anti-Christian bias.” JD Vance has courted Turning Point followers by calling Christianity “America’s creed”, advancing nan myth that America was founded arsenic a Christian nation, alternatively than a populist grounded successful equality.
Secretary of defense Pete Hegseth, who belongs to a Christian nationalist religion and has a tattoo of a Christian nationalist symbol, considers America a “Christian federation successful our DNA”. And House speaker Mike Johnson has agelong backed Christian nationalist intends that would rotation backmost civilian authorities for women and LGBTQ+ people, aliases condemnation doctors who execute abortions to “hard labor”.
Not each would picture themselves arsenic Christian nationalists. But nan explanation matters little than nan legislation. Regardless of what they telephone themselves, nan cumulative effect of their connection and argumentation is simply a coordinated, full-throated onslaught connected secular antiauthoritarian institutions that protect everyone equally.
“I do deliberation nan word ‘Christofascist’ is due theologically arsenic good arsenic politically,” says nan Rev Dr Gary Gunderson, a Baptist curate and professor of nationalist wellness subject astatine Wake Forest University School of Medicine, referring to Trump’s regime.
Christian nationalism is not a “normal faith”, he says. Believers are acold little concerned astir Jesus’s teachings than exercising powerfulness from nan highest levels of authorities each nan measurement down to section counties, he adds. It has a much fierce governmental imagination than accepted streams of Catholic aliases mainline Protestant faith.
“What we’re seeing successful nan US coming is nan effort to usage belief and Christian nationalism to erode a scientifically based societal statement of spot betwixt authorities and nan people, and switch it pinch a much authoritarian relationship,” adds Gunderson.
The sociologists Joseph Baker, Stephen Perry and Andrew Whitehead, who person studied nan movement, write that because subject provides an “alternative root of civilized authority beyond divine revelation”, Christian nationalists comprehend organization subject “as a threat to nan supremacy of Christianity”. Public health’s usage of subject successful nan corporate liking of each races, faiths and genders clashes pinch their hierarchical civilized order, successful which Christians are seen arsenic much virtuous and divinely protected than others.
Tate observes an constituent of religious-patriarchical insecurity astatine play. “It’s a batch astir fearfulness of losing powerfulness overall,” she says. “Fear that nan much medicine we fig retired and nan much we’re capable to thief group from getting sick, nan little that group will dangle connected God.”
‘We want nan bureaucrats to beryllium traumatically affected’
Inside nan HHS, officials are not conscionable talking astir war, they’re waging it against technological statement and individual experts.
Calley Means, who engineered nan Kennedy-Trump confederation and now serves arsenic Kennedy’s elder adviser, took to X to write that Trump and RFK were “quite litterally [sic] fighting demonic forces to return nan CDC to existent science”.
He was referring to Demetre Daskalakis – past head of nan National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and a gay, Harvard-educated epidemiologist. Means called him a “proud satanist” because his Instagram posts uncover he has a pentagram tattoo (a reference, he says, to overcoming puerility bullying) and has worn a leather harness pinch a akin design.
Means, who has working ties with nan Heritage Foundation, knew precisely what he was doing by attacking him. “We want nan bureaucrats to beryllium traumatically affected,” arsenic Vought put it successful a private 2023 speech. “When they aftermath up successful nan morning, we want them to not want to spell to work, because they are progressively viewed arsenic nan villains.”
Daskalakis, who resigned successful protestation past summertime aft Kennedy unilaterally fired each 17 members of nan Advisory Committee connected Immunization Practices, is not a satanist, according to Poynter Institute factcheckers – and himself.
In fact, he was raised Greek Orthodox, and has a overmuch bigger tattoo of Jesus.
“One of nan things that nan caput of wellness says often is that trusting experts is simply a characteristic of religion, not a characteristic of democracy,” Daskalakis says. “In truth I deliberation what we’re seeing is simply a cultish religiosity,” mired successful fundamentalism, spreading passim nan HHS.
Kennedy has agelong been nan pied piper of nan crunchy-to-fascism pipeline, wherever wellness civilization emulsifies into much blimpish Christian views. This April, Trump rescinded Casey Means’s surgeon wide information (officially complete her vaccine stance, though immoderate of her critics were discomfited by her pagan-adjacent views). She was replaced by Dr Nicole Saphier, a radiologist and Fox News commentator who is much mainstream successful her belief beliefs, and erstwhile told an interviewer she “clung” to her religion done a teenage pregnancy.
Kennedy’s reside is uniquely useful to nan management successful that it cultivates nan cognition that skepticism toward aesculapian experts and systems equates to belief freedom. Fatima-Zahra Aklalouch, a linguistics interrogator astatine Université Paris Cité who has studied Kennedy’s rhetorical strategies, says he starts pinch a “basic civilized intuition that naturalness is bully and unnaturalness leads to evil”, a framing that casts institutions and nan group who activity successful them arsenic corrupt. By implying institutions and their representatives are morally compromised, this framing “meshes very easily” pinch Christian nationalist goals, she says.
While Kennedy and Means, successful different words, premier nan nationalist pinch belief rationale for dismantling nationalist health, Vought – nicknamed “the Reaper” – controls funding, and does nan demolition, determining which programs are amputated aliases near to die.
Vought seems to detest nationalist health. He was primitively hoping to fold nan HHS into a caller entity he planned to telephone “the Department of Health and Public Welfare” – a sanction chosen, a erstwhile authorities expert told nan New Yorker, precisely because “it sounds bad”.
According to watchdog Grant Witness, Vought has slashed $518m from NIH investigation grants, $698m from nan National Science Foundation, $6.9bn from CDC nationalist wellness programs and $28bn from nan Environmental Protection Agency. This April, nan management abruptly fired nan full committee of nan National Science Foundation, a awesome funder of technological investigation astatine US universities. In a projected fund for 2027, Vought seeks to trim nan HHS fund by $16bn from 2026.
HHS has trim $389m from nan Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, though a fraction of those costs person been bookmarked for faith-based addiction programs to reside what Kennedy calls “spiritual malaise” underpinning addiction.
The consequences are already visible. The management has allowed states to increase entree to belief vaccine exemptions. Measles, erstwhile eradicated, infected much than 2,000 Americans successful 2025 and much than 1,700 truthful acold successful 2026. Last August, nan costs needed for nan Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to stem a bales outbreak successful Texas weren’t disposable until aft 2 children died.
(While RFK rejects nan “anti-vax” label, alternatively identifying arsenic “pro-safety”, critics and now courts reason his questioning of vaccines is costing children their health. Under Senate questioning this April, Kennedy allowed that vaccination mightiness person saved those 2 Texas children’s lives.)
Driving these cuts is simply a neoliberal-theological fusion: nan belief that dismantling nationalist institutions is not conscionable fiscally sound but morally ordained to combat demonic evils nan likes of which, to astir non-Pentecostal ears, sound a batch much exotic than a leather-wearing nationalist wellness official.
The Center for Renewing America, an ultraconservative thinktank founded by Vought, puts that fusion successful writing. In a healthcare blueprint published earlier this year, it described nan Affordable Care Act, which extended sum to tens of millions of Americans, arsenic “cancerous”, and Medicaid, associated pinch little all-cause mortality and entree to care, arsenic a “weaponized monstrosity destroying nan lives of children”.
Meanwhile, investigation backing to support caller ideas for curing Alzheimer’s and intelligence wellness disorders person been cut successful half, glucosuria by almost 40% and crab by almost a quarter. Reproductive healthcare is being dismantled, LGBTQ+ group are being erased from national policy, and nan EPA’s authority to protect Americans from biology wellness hazards specified arsenic lead and Pfas is being stripped away.
These are not absurd losses. Cutting investigation into nan diseases that disproportionately termination nan mediocre while simultaneously dismantling protective sum compounds existing disadvantage. Health inequities person a greater power connected Americans’ wellbeing than moreover genetics, driven by deficiency of education, poverty, biology pollution, structural racism and deficiency of nutrient entree – each of which Kennedy’s HHS is making worse.
The occupation of nationalist wellness is “about creating wellness equity”, says Daskalakis. “If equity is thing that they don’t work together with,” he says, “it astir apt intends that they either don’t understand nan value of that work, aliases it is someway contrary to their mission.”
In speech for nan infrastructure of nan communal good, nan management is utilizing taxation incentives to beforehand inadequate substitutes for security that prevention them money.
For instance, Republicans and manufacture lobbyists are advancing high-deductible wellness savings accounts (HSAs), which use wealthier group but tin mean ruinous upfront aesculapian costs to everyone else.
Lobby groups are besides pushing for subsidies to support much health-sharing ministries – Christian alternatives to wellness security wherever churches usability arsenic their ain micro-insurers, pinch members pooling money to screen each another’s aesculapian expenses – truthful agelong arsenic those expenses don’t see abortion aliases LGBTQ+ care.
Under this caller regime, healthcare isn’t a shared, nationalist responsibility, it’s an individual purity test: tin you work? Can you spend backstage coverage? Do you beryllium to a church? Do you navigator meal astatine home? Can you springiness commencement connected their terms?
Fail these tests, and you’re shamed and blamed by nan righteously smug: isn’t it your ain bad choices, your diet, your intersexual orientation, your deficiency of due religion that put you successful this predicament?
Prophets and profiteers
When wellness fails, and nary thief is available, it’s tempting to move to God, supplements aliases both.
Where Means and Kennedy find their astir profitable communal crushed pinch nan Christian nationalist worldview whitethorn not beryllium its fire-and-brimstone zealotry truthful overmuch arsenic its prosperity gospel tenet: that accumulating wealthiness and powerfulness is divine. The sicker and much hopeless Americans become, and nan weaker nan nationalist wellness strategy that mightiness support them, nan much lucrative nan replacement wellness abstraction grows.
Enter nan “Seven Mountains Mandate”, nan Christian nationalist get-rich-and-powerful strategy. It outlines really believers scheme to inhabit apical roles crossed cardinal domains of nationalist life – including media, government, acquisition and nan family – asserting authority complete each facet of society.
Matthew Boedy, a professor and writer of The Seven Mountains Mandate: Exposing nan Dangerous Plan to Christianize America and Destroy Democracy, says we’re seeing its effects connected nationalist health, “which really has not had that onslaught connected it successful my life … It’s almost a deep-state wellness attack.”
The Seven Mountains Mandate recalls a 1990s business executive coaching plan: seizure “mountains” (key institutions and societal systems), portion them of collective, progressive and public-serving elements, and switch them pinch free-market, theologically aligned alternatives tally by allies.
Christian nationalists destruct a strategy to create a vacuum, Boedy explains. Then they say, “‘OK, well, our friends who are trading this merchandise tin move correct successful to capable that vacuum.’”
Health isn’t itself a mountain, but it winds done 3 others: family (restricting reproductive care, promoting accepted marriage), authorities (dismantling nationalist wellness infrastructure) and business, wherever nan $7tn world wellness manufacture represents tremendous profit.
Kennedy sits astatine nan halfway of a financial web. While positioning himself arsenic a vaccine-safety whistleblower, he has earned much than $2.4m successful referral fees from Wisner Baum, a rule patient litigating against pharmaceutical companies complete vaccine information claims.
At his Senate confirmation hearing, Kennedy refused to perpetrate to stopping these payments while overseeing nan agencies that modulate nan vaccines cardinal to those lawsuits. An first morals statement would person allowed him to proceed receiving proceeds; only aft nationalist scrutiny was it revised to way payments elsewhere, including to his son.
Kennedy besides registered “Make America Healthy Again” arsenic a trademark, reportedly earning astir $100,000 earlier transferring it to an LLC led by his state Del Bigtree. That Maha branding is now trading for a broader anti‑vaccine and wellness‑adjacent movement, drafting audiences, donations and merchandise income from nan ambiance of distrust successful wellness institutions Kennedy has helped cultivate.
Calley Means, meanwhile, co-founded Truemed, a level that helps group usage HSAs to acquisition unscientific wellness sundries sold by Truemed aliases its affiliates, specified arsenic cold plunge pools and beef hotdogs.
Means’s argumentation imagination maps consecutive connected to Truemed’s business model: trim national healthcare dollars from programs that assistance poorer Americans, specified arsenic Medicaid, and boost user markets catering to nan trendy wellness whims of nan precocious mediate class. Recently released financial records uncover Means held betwixt $25 and $50m successful Truemed banal while moving arsenic a typical authorities worker advising Kennedy. While he claims to person divested from nan institution upon becoming a full-time authorities employee, his engagement successful it has nevertheless contributed to an quality of divided loyalty betwixt his ain interests, and those of nan American people.
And nan much Kennedy and Means tin destabilize spot successful mainstream science, nan much immoderate of their friends and friends tin financially benefit.
Potential benefactors see Means’s and Kennedy’s business partner Dr Mark Hyman, who fabricated nan ridiculous idea that “11 cardinal group dice from nutrient each twelvemonth … for illustration a Holocaust,” and makes his money from trading detox cleanses, which do not work. According to a caller Public Citizen watchdog report, Hyman “oversees a wellness empire that stands to use importantly from HHS policies nether Kennedy”. They besides see Casey Means, Calley’s sister, a Truemed shareholder.
As nan management keeps widening nan Overton model connected beingness maladies being linked to belief causes, galore citizens will person their religion and fears exploited by nan politicians who were expected to thief them beryllium safe.
The group dragging America’s nationalist wellness strategy toward a caller acheronian property are not demonic. Rather, they are morally bankrupt and precocious connected nan proviso of theocratic self-righteousness, pinch nary respect to really their words and actions impact existent people’s wellbeing.
Christian nationalist connection gives calculated authorities neglect nan sheen of providence.
“God chose Ethan for a reason,” 1 South Carolina mother told nan Independent this February aft her boy was paralyzed by bales encephalitis.
“If I knew this could beryllium nan outcome, I still wouldn’t person fixed my boy nan vaccine,” she said, citing nan misleading scare statement publicly shared by Kennedy and Trump that children coming person excessively galore shots.
“There will beryllium a miracle,” she believes.
