A new edition of my book Wealth versus Health – Trump’s Global war on Health and Science, now available as paperback and ebook, has given me much more than an opportunity to update the list of the Trump regime’s reactionary policies. It is a chance to balance the depressing list of attacks by also taking stock of where Trump has proved unable to impose the policies he wants – as a result of resistance that is continuing to grow.
There has been resistance – from fired employees, from concerned academics, from angry members of the public (often responding to what they see correctly as brutal violence or injustice to others). This has in many cases also led to court challenges, in which even the right-wing dominated Supreme Court has ruled more than once against the administration.
The scale of public concern, combined with fear of the political consequences of some of the more outrageous Trump policies have also helped drive a limited and belated degree of political resistance in Congress, most notably in the bipartisan vote back in February to drastically alter Trump’s 2026 budget.
Even where Trump’s policies have been imposed, the fight has often continued. Campaigners and pressure groups have emerged to expose the consequences, press for change, and protect data and information that Trump has been seeking to suppress.
Notable examples include
- Climate.us, (now established as “the nonprofit successor to Climate.gov,” “At a moment when critical climate information was being deleted or distorted, we stepped up to rescue key climate resources”)
- 27UNIHTED (“off-duty and former staff from all 27 institutes and centers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)”),
- Stand Up for Science (“Science activists and allies mobilizing to save science, health and democracy itself from the Trump administration’s dismantlement and privatization”), and
- Fired But Fighting (“a network of current and former HHS professionals, including scientists, communicators, policy analysts, and public health experts, who are standing together to demand public health as a vital government service,” now an initiative of the National Public Health Coalition).
In the US itself the control of the main news media by a handful of right wing billionaires has meant relatively few Americans are aware of the scale of the resistance, or its level of success in keeping issues alive.
But the scale of the opposition to Trump and his policies has been boosted by his arbitrary decision to start a hugely unpopular war with Iran, which has further increased the cost of living and could well run unresolved – and enormously expensive – to the next elections in 2028.
Other contentious issues have included the building of huge, polluting, energy-guzzling, water-hungry AI data centres, and the blatant gerrymandering of electoral districts in GOP-dominated states.
Opinion polls are now beginning to reveal the extent to which Trump’s failure to deliver on his promises of improving living standards (and his corruption and ‘forever’ war) are translating into a slump in support, especially in the battleground states he won in 2024.
Sales of red MAGA hats and regalia have plummeted even in the reddest states, and areas that once boasted their support have ceased to do so.
Trump’s speech to the opening rally of the Republican Convention in Dallas was marked by large numbers of empty seats, despite frantic efforts to fill them. Candidates facing tight contests in the mid-terms are reportedly urging the President to stay away from their states.
Trump himself has resorted to promising $5,000 cheques for every adult US citizen (an unprecedented $1 trillion-plus bribe, with no clear source of the funds to cover it) – if the Republicans keep their majorities in the House and the Senate.
But working people stand to lose much more than $5,000 if the regime gets another two years. House Speaker Mike Johnson has stated openly that if they win in November, Republicans will “continue to do what they’ve been doing.”
That means more soaring costs, more tax handouts for the ultra-rich while everyone else pays more tax, more of Trump’s illegal tariffs and more months of his unpopular war in Iran, more ICE raids on innocent citizens and migrants, and more shootings and illegal detentions by masked ICE thugs. As MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell sums up, if the GOP wins the midterms, “They’ll do ‘exactly’ what voters don’t want.”
This includes the imposition from January of a whole series of policies from last summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill which Trump and his cronies know will be hugely unpopular and disruptive.
For example about 20 million of America’s poorest adults will face new Medicaid work rules: they will need to prove every month that they’re either working, volunteering or going to school for at least 80 hours a month in order to keep their health coverage. The complex system is designed to ensure many cannot complete the necessary forms – and threatens to exclude people too sick to work.
This is among the changes designed to cut roughly $1 trillion from health spending: it runs alongside withdrawal of tax credits that have helped subsidise individual and family health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.
And the cuts in Medicaid spending are driving a massive new round of rural hospital closures: the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform (CHQPR) estimates 700 rural hospitals – one-third of all rural hospitals in the country – are at risk of closing because of serious financial problems and almost a third (260) of these rural hospitals are “at immediate risk of closing because of the severity of their financial problems.” 76 hospitals could close in Texas alone, with 12 at immediate risk: already some rural Texas hospitals only deliver babies on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
With attacks on Medicaid and a massive hike in health insurance premiums, at least 17 million more people are expected to be uninsured by 2034.
The update is also a way of reminding people of the many ways Trump and Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Junior, have literally put the lives and health of millions of Americans at risk. Kennedy has reduced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to a mere “skeleton of the powerhouse it was,” according to a recent New York Times assessment. It states:
“New personnel data, compiled by a group of former federal scientists and reported here for the first time, indicate that … as of May 2026, the C.D.C. had 30 percent fewer employees than it did before the layoffs…. […]
“The changes have hindered the C.D.C.’s ability to respond to outbreaks as measles spreads at home and Ebola abroad, and to issue timely guidance on vaccinations as cooling temperatures kick off the respiratory season, according to current and former employees. […]
The budget for the CDC branch that tackles Ebola and other deadly diseases has been slashed by 36 percent, and only 100 or so CDC staff members have been deployed to Congo to help with the current outbreak, compared with about 2,000 sent to West African countries during the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
Elsewhere in the CDC “Entire divisions have been shuttered, including teams that worked on smoking, sexual violence, child abuse and falls among older adults.”
The Division of Population Health has lost 88 percent of its staff. Established senior CDC leaders have been almost completely purged under RFK Jr: only one of the 11 CDC centre directors from March 2025 remains at the agency.
The remaining staff are being driven by 22 high-level political appointees to divert resources into crackpot theories fostered by RFK Jr and his co-thinkers.
- $362,000 was taken from a program that provides free vaccines to about half of American children to finance an investigation into the debunked theory that immunising pregnant women would lead to autism in their children;
- one RFK appointee has demanded agency employees ignore their brief to promote human health, and work on screwworm, a disease that mostly affects cattle;
- and another Kennedy acolyte, who treated children while he was infected with measles has asked senior CDC officials to look into cod liver oil as a treatment for measles.
RFK is in many ways the most dangerous of the Trump team, because he retains a significant following: according to YouGov, He is the 3rd most popular Republican (behind Arnold Schwarzenegger and George Bush) and the most popular current cabinet member – with a 36% approval rating.
However since taking office, and devoting the bulk of his energy into gagging scientists and opponents of vaccine scepticism and installing compromised, obedient and inadequate stooges in their place RFK has created the conditions for the biggest and most deadly US outbreak of Measles in 35 years, with over 700 cases in Pennsylvania so far, and now warnings it is spreading through public transport and large-scale events.
Medical research has also been under ideological attack from the Trump regime. Democrat Senator Tammy Baldwin has spoken out against White House plans to double down on its efforts to take control of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant-making process and further politicize the agency, warning:
“Instead of investing taxpayer funds based on the science and what experts think is the best bet for the next medical breakthrough, President Trump wants to pick and choose research projects based on his own political agenda. […]”
“This is more of the same from President Trump, who has spent his second term taking away services and hope from families, just to seek revenge and free up money for his war overseas, tax breaks for billionaires, and vanity projects.”
Recent reports that the Trump administration was drafting an executive order that would have allowed it to block National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants that did not conform to a certain political agenda have been met with stiff opposition from scientists and apparently from some lawmakers: there are suggestions that the White House may be backing away from those plans after members of Congress objected to the idea.
However the New York Times last month noted the scale of Trump cutbacks on cancer research that effectively “end the war on cancer” – the administration has “cancelled hundreds of millions of dollars in cancer-related research grants and contracts, arguing that they were part of politically driven D.E.I. initiatives, and suspended or delayed payments for hundreds of millions more.” Trump’s proposed 2027 budget would also cut over 37% of the National Cancer Institute budget reducing it to $4.5bn from $7.2bn.
White House hard liners have drawn up a list of 235 keywords that help them identify projects or perspectives the administration does not like. The forbidden terms include “equity,” “advancing diversity,” “racist,” “gender,” “climate change,” “Marginalized”/”Underrepresented,” “Black”/“Hispanic communities,” “Indigenous community,” “Elderly,” “Vulnerable” and many more.
Meanwhile the need to focus on precisely some of these concerns is illustrated the appallingly high levels of maternal mortality in the US: even the American average for white women in 2024 (14.2 per 100,000 live births) is almost three times higher than the European Union average (5). For Asian Americans the average is higher still (18.1) – and for Black Americans it is a shocking NINE times higher (44.8 per 100,000 live births). As Dr Jess Steier shows:
“Black women in the US are more than THREE TIMES as likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth than white women. This disparity isn’t fully explained by income, education, access to care, or pre-existing health conditions.”
Grayce Zelphin, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California told the Center for Science in the Public Interest
“The Trump administration is unlawfully penalizing scientists because their research does not support the government’s preferred viewpoint on issues such as race and gender.”
My updated book is also a tribute to all the brave Americans who are still fighting back, challenging politicians, organising open letters and campaigns, and also taking concrete action to protect and prevent the destruction of data by an administration that has set its face against medical and climate science.
The backlash against Trump that has begun (and is further fuelled by every incidence of the graft that has made him far and away America’s most corrupt and self-serving President) may not completely defeat him in the mid-terms: but the progressive movement has begun, and it is not likely to stop.
Dear Reader,
If you like our content please support our campaigning journalism to protect health care for all.
Our goal is to inform people, hold our politicians to account and help to build change through evidence based ideas.
Everyone should have access to comprehensive healthcare, but our NHS needs support. You can help us to continue to counter bad policy, battle neglect of the NHS and correct dangerous mis-infomation.
Supporters of the NHS are crucial in sustaining our health service and with your help we will be able to engage more people in securing its future.
Please donate to help support our campaigning NHS research and journalism.
A new edition of my book Wealth versus Health – Trump’s Global war on Health and Science, now available as paperback and ebook, has given me much more than an opportunity to update the list of the Trump regime’s reactionary policies. It is a chance to balance the depressing list of attacks by also taking stock of where Trump has proved unable to impose the policies he wants – as a result of resistance that is continuing to grow.
There has been resistance – from fired employees, from concerned academics, from angry members of the public (often responding to what they see correctly as brutal violence or injustice to others). This has in many cases also led to court challenges, in which even the right-wing dominated Supreme Court has ruled more than once against the administration.
The scale of public concern, combined with fear of the political consequences of some of the more outrageous Trump policies have also helped drive a limited and belated degree of political resistance in Congress, most notably in the bipartisan vote back in February to drastically alter Trump’s 2026 budget.
Even where Trump’s policies have been imposed, the fight has often continued. Campaigners and pressure groups have emerged to expose the consequences, press for change, and protect data and information that Trump has been seeking to suppress.
Notable examples include
In the US itself the control of the main news media by a handful of right wing billionaires has meant relatively few Americans are aware of the scale of the resistance, or its level of success in keeping issues alive.
But the scale of the opposition to Trump and his policies has been boosted by his arbitrary decision to start a hugely unpopular war with Iran, which has further increased the cost of living and could well run unresolved – and enormously expensive – to the next elections in 2028.
Other contentious issues have included the building of huge, polluting, energy-guzzling, water-hungry AI data centres, and the blatant gerrymandering of electoral districts in GOP-dominated states.
Opinion polls are now beginning to reveal the extent to which Trump’s failure to deliver on his promises of improving living standards (and his corruption and ‘forever’ war) are translating into a slump in support, especially in the battleground states he won in 2024.
Sales of red MAGA hats and regalia have plummeted even in the reddest states, and areas that once boasted their support have ceased to do so.
Trump’s speech to the opening rally of the Republican Convention in Dallas was marked by large numbers of empty seats, despite frantic efforts to fill them. Candidates facing tight contests in the mid-terms are reportedly urging the President to stay away from their states.
Trump himself has resorted to promising $5,000 cheques for every adult US citizen (an unprecedented $1 trillion-plus bribe, with no clear source of the funds to cover it) – if the Republicans keep their majorities in the House and the Senate.
But working people stand to lose much more than $5,000 if the regime gets another two years. House Speaker Mike Johnson has stated openly that if they win in November, Republicans will “continue to do what they’ve been doing.”
That means more soaring costs, more tax handouts for the ultra-rich while everyone else pays more tax, more of Trump’s illegal tariffs and more months of his unpopular war in Iran, more ICE raids on innocent citizens and migrants, and more shootings and illegal detentions by masked ICE thugs. As MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell sums up, if the GOP wins the midterms, “They’ll do ‘exactly’ what voters don’t want.”
This includes the imposition from January of a whole series of policies from last summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill which Trump and his cronies know will be hugely unpopular and disruptive.
For example about 20 million of America’s poorest adults will face new Medicaid work rules: they will need to prove every month that they’re either working, volunteering or going to school for at least 80 hours a month in order to keep their health coverage. The complex system is designed to ensure many cannot complete the necessary forms – and threatens to exclude people too sick to work.
This is among the changes designed to cut roughly $1 trillion from health spending: it runs alongside withdrawal of tax credits that have helped subsidise individual and family health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.
And the cuts in Medicaid spending are driving a massive new round of rural hospital closures: the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform (CHQPR) estimates 700 rural hospitals – one-third of all rural hospitals in the country – are at risk of closing because of serious financial problems and almost a third (260) of these rural hospitals are “at immediate risk of closing because of the severity of their financial problems.” 76 hospitals could close in Texas alone, with 12 at immediate risk: already some rural Texas hospitals only deliver babies on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
With attacks on Medicaid and a massive hike in health insurance premiums, at least 17 million more people are expected to be uninsured by 2034.
The update is also a way of reminding people of the many ways Trump and Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Junior, have literally put the lives and health of millions of Americans at risk. Kennedy has reduced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to a mere “skeleton of the powerhouse it was,” according to a recent New York Times assessment. It states:
“New personnel data, compiled by a group of former federal scientists and reported here for the first time, indicate that … as of May 2026, the C.D.C. had 30 percent fewer employees than it did before the layoffs…. […]
“The changes have hindered the C.D.C.’s ability to respond to outbreaks as measles spreads at home and Ebola abroad, and to issue timely guidance on vaccinations as cooling temperatures kick off the respiratory season, according to current and former employees. […]
The budget for the CDC branch that tackles Ebola and other deadly diseases has been slashed by 36 percent, and only 100 or so CDC staff members have been deployed to Congo to help with the current outbreak, compared with about 2,000 sent to West African countries during the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
Elsewhere in the CDC “Entire divisions have been shuttered, including teams that worked on smoking, sexual violence, child abuse and falls among older adults.”
The Division of Population Health has lost 88 percent of its staff. Established senior CDC leaders have been almost completely purged under RFK Jr: only one of the 11 CDC centre directors from March 2025 remains at the agency.
The remaining staff are being driven by 22 high-level political appointees to divert resources into crackpot theories fostered by RFK Jr and his co-thinkers.
RFK is in many ways the most dangerous of the Trump team, because he retains a significant following: according to YouGov, He is the 3rd most popular Republican (behind Arnold Schwarzenegger and George Bush) and the most popular current cabinet member – with a 36% approval rating.
However since taking office, and devoting the bulk of his energy into gagging scientists and opponents of vaccine scepticism and installing compromised, obedient and inadequate stooges in their place RFK has created the conditions for the biggest and most deadly US outbreak of Measles in 35 years, with over 700 cases in Pennsylvania so far, and now warnings it is spreading through public transport and large-scale events.
Medical research has also been under ideological attack from the Trump regime. Democrat Senator Tammy Baldwin has spoken out against White House plans to double down on its efforts to take control of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant-making process and further politicize the agency, warning:
“Instead of investing taxpayer funds based on the science and what experts think is the best bet for the next medical breakthrough, President Trump wants to pick and choose research projects based on his own political agenda. […]”
“This is more of the same from President Trump, who has spent his second term taking away services and hope from families, just to seek revenge and free up money for his war overseas, tax breaks for billionaires, and vanity projects.”
Recent reports that the Trump administration was drafting an executive order that would have allowed it to block National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants that did not conform to a certain political agenda have been met with stiff opposition from scientists and apparently from some lawmakers: there are suggestions that the White House may be backing away from those plans after members of Congress objected to the idea.
However the New York Times last month noted the scale of Trump cutbacks on cancer research that effectively “end the war on cancer” – the administration has “cancelled hundreds of millions of dollars in cancer-related research grants and contracts, arguing that they were part of politically driven D.E.I. initiatives, and suspended or delayed payments for hundreds of millions more.” Trump’s proposed 2027 budget would also cut over 37% of the National Cancer Institute budget reducing it to $4.5bn from $7.2bn.
White House hard liners have drawn up a list of 235 keywords that help them identify projects or perspectives the administration does not like. The forbidden terms include “equity,” “advancing diversity,” “racist,” “gender,” “climate change,” “Marginalized”/”Underrepresented,” “Black”/“Hispanic communities,” “Indigenous community,” “Elderly,” “Vulnerable” and many more.
“Black women in the US are more than THREE TIMES as likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth than white women. This disparity isn’t fully explained by income, education, access to care, or pre-existing health conditions.”
Grayce Zelphin, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California told the Center for Science in the Public Interest
“The Trump administration is unlawfully penalizing scientists because their research does not support the government’s preferred viewpoint on issues such as race and gender.”
My updated book is also a tribute to all the brave Americans who are still fighting back, challenging politicians, organising open letters and campaigns, and also taking concrete action to protect and prevent the destruction of data by an administration that has set its face against medical and climate science.
The backlash against Trump that has begun (and is further fuelled by every incidence of the graft that has made him far and away America’s most corrupt and self-serving President) may not completely defeat him in the mid-terms: but the progressive movement has begun, and it is not likely to stop.
Dear Reader,
If you like our content please support our campaigning journalism to protect health care for all.
Our goal is to inform people, hold our politicians to account and help to build change through evidence based ideas.
Everyone should have access to comprehensive healthcare, but our NHS needs support. You can help us to continue to counter bad policy, battle neglect of the NHS and correct dangerous mis-infomation.
Supporters of the NHS are crucial in sustaining our health service and with your help we will be able to engage more people in securing its future.
Please donate to help support our campaigning NHS research and journalism.
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