In the list of things to watch in the coming weeks, this is added to Project 2025, which is the game plan written last year by an influential conservative group, for the benefit of a possible Trump presidency: the authors of this report, who are in the majority people who were involved in the first Trump administration or are part of his current entouragerecommend among other things to eliminate or silence the scientific agency that studies the oceans and the atmosphere (NOAA), as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and even the National Weather Service. Explanation in two parts.
1) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Minister of Health?
On the airwaves of CNN, This is in response to a question from the host who asked him if it was true that RFK was destined to play an important role in a possible Trump administration, that Trump transition team co-director Howard Lutnick had touted RFK’s intelligence and claimed that both subscribed to the idea that measles vaccines caused the increase in autism cases.
Subscribe to our newsletter!
So you don’t miss any scientific news and know everything about our efforts to fight against fake news and disinformation!
Let us recall that the increase in cases has long been attributable to the fact that very definition of autism has been considerably refined since the 1990s. Furthermore, all attempts to try to find a statistical correlation between vaccination and autism have failed over the decades.
Last week, in a video message to his supporters, RFK actually claimed that Donald Trump had “promised” him to give him “control of public health agencies”. The term “public health agencies” is vague, but could refer to the Ministry of Health (Department of Health and Human Services), which oversees the Center for Disease Control (CDC)—responsible for tracking the evolution of health problems—the FDA—responsible for approving drugs—the NIH—the main funding agency for health research— and a few others. RFK also mentioned the Department of Agriculture, “because we need to get rid of vegetable oils and we need to get rid of pesticides.”
It is true that in the countryside, Trump a promis that he would let Kennedy do as he pleases in health (go wild on health). The latter, who had presented himself as an independent candidate for the presidency, withdrew from the race in August by giving his support to the former president. Kennedy had long become known as a lawyer involved in environmental causes, but he was best known for 20 years for one loads of bizarre theoriesfrom the assertion that Ashkenazi Jews (those from central and eastern Europe) are immune to COVID, to the idea that mass killings are caused by Prozac prescriptionsby the way by chemtrails and by this association between vaccines and autism. His name appeared in 2021 in the report you Center for Countering Digital Hateas one of the 12 “super-spreaders” of false information about COVID on social networks.
Enough to worry doctors who have observed in recent years, almost everywhere in the world, resurgences of measles cases each time the vaccination rate decreases. Even the one who held, under the first Trump presidency, the position of public health administrator (in English, Surgeon General) qualified on October 28 of concern about the “influence” that RFK could have on a future administration: “it would further erode people’s willingness to stay up to date with their vaccination recommendations, and I worry about the impact it would have on the health of our nation, our economy and our security.”
2) War on environmental facts?
The 2025 Projecta roughly 900-page document released in 2023, presents itself as a guide to what the first year of a Trump administration would be like. It also targets the CDC, the NIH and the FDA, with the stated aim of limiting their power to make recommendations to elected officials.
But it is also in the environmental sector that this intention to minimize the government’s capacity to see crises coming would be felt. The report therefore recommends:
- the dismantling of NOAA, a scientific agency that studies both the state of fisheries and the progression of hurricanes; we would put an end to most of its climate research;
- the partial dismantling of the National Weather Service, which depends on NOAA, to “commercialize” part of its services;
- the partial dismantling of the Environmental Protection Agency —established in 1970 by a Republican president, Richard Nixon;
- the elimination of most current environmental policies (such as anti-pollution measures for automobiles and drilling) and policies overseeing the transition to green energy. Last summer, a report published by a green energy promotion group assessed that these actions would add 2.7 billion CO2 by 2030compared to the Biden government’s targets.
But it’s not just a desire to eliminate regulations which motivates these authors: it is sometimes a desire to muzzle those who are able to present facts. Thus, in one of the training videos for future civil servants of a Trump administration, videos obtained last summer by investigative journalistsone of the speakers from Project 2025 explained that a Trump administration should “eradicate, absolutely everywhere, references to climate change”.
It should be noted that a central element of Project 2025 is the layoff of thousands of career civil servants to replace them with civil servants appointed according to their loyalty to the new president, and not according to their expertise (the document cites also the Department of Justice and the FBI). It is in this context that its authors assess that it would therefore be easier to dismantle these agencies.
Among environmentalists, those who denounced Project 2025 said they feared that its application would harm international efforts to fight climate change. But the impacts on the American population could be even more direct: in the United States, the number of deaths caused by extreme heat is already increasing from year to year (according to a compilation of the Ministry of Health) and the economic costs of damage caused by weather events also increase from year to year (according to a compilation from NOAA).
Project 2025 is led by the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank that has been close to every Republican administration of the past four decades. The Foundation established itself during the years of President Ronald Reagan (1980-1988) as an important “influencer” for the writing of conservative, even libertarian, policies – that is to say a maximum reduction of the powers of the State for the benefit of the market. She also promoted the invasion of Kuwait in 1991 and that of Iraq in 2002. The Democratic Party denounced the 2025 Project for almost a year, and the Republican Party has tried to distance itself from it.
