Opinion

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We’re not even a month into Donald Trump’s new term and already, a cadre of Republican activists appears poised to fritter away his popularity and derail his administration’s agenda with a maximalist demand for a budget-busting tax cut.  

The U.S. Constitution established three branches of government, designed to balance power — and serve as checks on one another. That constitutional order suddenly appears more vulnerable than it has in generations. President Trump is trying to expand his authority beyond the bounds of the law while reducing the ability of the other branches to check his excesses. 

The Senate has just confirmed as health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, a science denialist who once said there is no vaccine that is safe and effective, who has suggested that Covid might have been genetically engineered to spare Jewish and Chinese people and who spent more than 100 pages in his recent book breathing new life into the idea that H.I.V. does not cause AIDS.

In the lead-up to Valentine’s Day, people across the world rush to buy diamond engagement rings. By now most will know that in the past, many diamonds were mined in African war zones where rebel groups used the proceeds to fund their violent insurgencies.

As former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention public health professionals, we are alarmed by the Trump administration’s recent actions, which severely restrict the agency’s communications and have compromised its ability to protect the health of the American people.

I wonder what, in the end, persuaded Senator Susan Collins that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had the right stuff to be the official steward of Americans’ health.