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robert f. kennedy jr
Trump Has Dismantled Anti-Human Trafficking Programs and 'Repeatedly Sided With Sex Offenders'
"The Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to our capacity to hold sex offenders to account and undermined support and services for crime victims," said Rep. Jamie Raskin.
Sep 17, 2025
Congressional Democrats and victim advocates took aim Tuesday at President Donald Trump's gutting of federal programs combatcing human trafficking, belying campaign promises to aggressively target perpetrators of such crimes.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, on Tuesday released an 18-page memo "detailing how the Trump administration has repeatedly sided with sex offenders and human traffickers over their victims—often rewarding sexual predators and elevating them to positions of power within the US government while crippling key offices, programs, and grants that combat sex crimes and support survivors."
This seemingly flies in the face of Trump's "Agenda 47" campaign platform, which vowed to aggressively crack down on human traffickers, and the groundswell of Trump supporters' unheeded calls for action and accountability in the Jeffrey Epstein case. Fighting child sex trafficking—both real and imagined—has long been an issue of passionate importance for the MAGA movement.
"Trump began his second term promising to 'make America safe again.' But safe for whom? Law-abiding citizens or dangerous criminals?"
Noting that "Trump and his supporters have gone from demanding the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files to doing everything in their power to prevent their release, openly tampering with potential witness Ghislaine Maxwell and calling the matter a 'Democrat hoax,'" the memo—titled Epstein Is the Tip of the Iceberg—begins by asking: "Trump began his second term promising to 'make America safe again.' But safe for whom? Law-abiding citizens or dangerous criminals?"
The memo notes that in the past seven months, Trump has:
- Gutted federal offices designed to combat human trafficking, domestic violence, and sexual violence against women and children.
- Terminated the programs and grants designed to support the victims and survivors of human trafficking networks and crimes of sexual violence.
- Made it systematically harder for law enforcement to prosecute sex offenders and dismantle sex trafficking networks.
- Repeatedly used the powers of his office to pardon individual sexual predators and give official protection, aid, and comfort to accused rapists and child pornographers.
- Rewarded numerous individuals who have a personal history of sexual predation and domestic violence by appointing them to his administration and elevating them to senior positions within the government.
Senior administration officials including Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, and former de facto Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief Elon Musk have been accused of either committing or enabling sexual crimes or misconduct.
Trump has also been found civilly liable for sexual abuse and has been accused of rape, sexual assault, or harassment by more than two dozen women.
"President Trump in office has repeatedly taken the side of criminal sex predators and violent abusers against their victims, and this pattern goes well beyond his strenuous efforts to bury the Epstein Files," Raskin said Tuesday in a statement. "Trump is systematically dismantling the offices and programs we rely on to combat human trafficking and prosecute sex crimes."k
"Our memo shows how the Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to our capacity to hold sex offenders to account and undermined support and services for crime victims," the congressman added. "Far from aiding victims and survivors, President Trump consistently sides with their abusers. His all-of-government policy to aid traffickers and sex criminals and abandon survivors has made American women dramatically less safe."
Following whistleblower claims "that the Trump administration concealed information about the safety of unaccompanied Guatemalan children they tried to deport in the dead of night," Sens. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Tuesday called for an oversight hearing to examine the US Office of Refugee Resettlement's "mass child deportation efforts and apparent lies under oath."
"The urgent call for a hearing comes after the disclosure alleged that at least 30 of 327 unaccompanied Guatemalan children the administration attempted to deport without due process 'have indicators of being a victim of child abuse, including death threats, gang violence, human trafficking, and/or have expressed fear of return to Guatemala,'" Padilla's office said in a statement Wednesday.
An investigation published Wednesday by The Guardian also detailed how the Trump administration "has aggressively rolled back efforts across the federal government to combat human trafficking."
Jean Bruggeman, executive director of the advocacy group Freedom Network USA, told The Guardian that “it’s been a widespread and multipronged attack on survivors that leaves all of us less safe and leaves survivors with few options."
Numerous critics have warned of the dangers of Trump's diversion of federal resources and personnel dedicated to combating human trafficking to enforcing mass deportations.
As Raskin told Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel during a charged Wednesday hearing, "When Trump decided that rounding up immigrants with no criminal records was more important that preventing crimes like human trafficking of women and girls, drug dealing, terrorism, and fraud, you ordered FBI’s 25 largest field offices to divert thousands of agents away from chasing down violent criminals, sex traffickers, fraudsters, and scammers to help carry out Trump’s extreme immigration crackdown."
"You ordered hundreds of FBI agents to pore over all the Epstein files," Raskin said, "but not to look for more clues about the money network or the network of human traffickers, pulled these agents from their regular counterterrorism, counterintelligence, or anti-drug trafficking duties to work around the clock, some of them sleeping on their office desks, to conduct a frantic search to make sure Donald Trump’s name and image were flagged and redacted wherever they appeared."
"Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are," Raskin added.
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RFK Jr.'s Vaccine Panel May Restrict Covid-19 Shots for Those Under 75, Citing Unverified Death Reports
"They are leveraging this platform to share untruths about vaccines to scare people," said one doctor Kennedy fired from the panel.
Sep 13, 2025
Health officials working under Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may seek to restrict access to the Covid-19 vaccine for people under 75 years old.
The Washington Post reported Friday that the officials plan to justify the move by citing reports from an unverified database to make the claim that the shots caused the deaths of 25 children.
The reports come from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a federal database that allows the public to submit reports of negative reactions to vaccines. As the Post explains, VAERS "contains unverified reports of side effects or bad experiences with vaccines submitted by anyone, including patients, doctors, pharmacists, or even someone who sees a report on social media."
As one publicly maintained database of "Batshit Crazy VAERS Adverse Events" found, users have reported deaths and injuries resulting from gunshot wounds, malaria, drug overdoses, and countless other unrelated causes as possible cases of vaccine injury.
As Beth Mole wrote for ARS Technica, "The reports are completely unverified upon submission, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff follow up on serious reports to try to substantiate claims and assess if they were actually caused by a vaccine. They rarely are."
Nevertheless, HHS officials plan to use these VAERS reports on pediatric deaths in a presentation to the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) next week as the panel considers revising federal vaccine guidelines.
One person familiar with the matter told the Post that HHS officials attempted to interview some of the families who claimed their child died from the vaccine, but it is unclear how many were consulted and what other information was used to verify their claims.
In June, Kennedy purged that panel of many top vaccine experts, replacing them with prominent anti-vaccine activists, after previously promising during his confirmation hearing to keep the panel intact.
The Food and Drug Administration under Kennedy has already limited access to the Covid-19 vaccine. Last month, it authorized the vaccines only for those 65 and over who are known to be at risk of serious illness from Covid-19 infections.
While the vaccine is technically available to others, the updated guidance has created significant barriers, such as the potential requirement of a doctor's prescription and out-of-pocket payment, making it much harder for many to receive the shot.
The Post reports that ACIP is considering restricting access to the vaccination further, by recommending it only for those older than 75. It is weighing multiple options for those 74 and younger—potentially requiring them to consult with their doctor first, or not recommending it at all unless they have a preexisting condition.
Prior to the wide availability of Covid-19 vaccinations beginning in 2021, the illness killed over 350,000 people in the US. And while the danger of death from Covid-19 does increase with age, CDC data shows that from 2020 to 2023, nearly 47% of the over 1.1 million deaths from the illness occurred in people under 75.
According to the World Health Organization, the US reported 822 deaths from Covid over a 28-day period in July and August this year, vastly more deaths than anywhere else in the world. CDC data reported to ACIP in June shows that Covid deaths were lower among all age groups—including children—who received the mRNA vaccine.
Nicole Brewer, one of the vaccine advisers eliminated by Kennedy, lamented that Kennedy and his new appointees are ignoring the dangers of Covid-19 while amplifying the comparatively much lower risk posed by vaccines.
"They are leveraging this platform to share untruths about vaccines to scare people," she told the Post. “The U.S. government is now in the business of vaccine misinformation.”
ACIP is also reportedly mulling the rollback of guidelines for other childhood vaccines for deadly diseases like measles, Hepatitis B, and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV).
While ACIP's guidelines are not legally binding, the Post writes that its meeting next week "is critical because the recommendations determine whether insurers must pay for the immunizations, pharmacies can administer them, and doctors are willing to offer them."
"If you haven't gotten your updated Covid vaccine by now, book an appointment fast before next week's ACIP meeting," warned Dr. David Gorski, the editor of the blog Science-Based Medicine. "After that, you might not be able to get one."
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Trump's MAHA Report Reads Like a Big Ag Wish List
Making Americans healthy will require confronting the very corporate polluters who got us in this mess—not capitulating to more of their demands.
Sep 13, 2025
US President Donald Trump’s “Make America Healthy Again” ploy is more sinister than we have been led to believe. More than disingenuous lip service to a legitimately concerned—and powerful—voting bloc, Trump’s MAHA is a dangerous smokescreen designed to consolidate power with the corporations responsible for harming us all. The release of the White House MAHA Commission strategy report this week put this on full display.
The report, written by a commission chaired by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is designed to convey the Trump administration’s priorities on food and childhood chronic disease. In truth, its deregulatory proposals read like an agriculture industry wish list—Big Ag corporations and trade groups were among the few voices of support.
Making Americans healthy will require confronting the very corporate polluters who got us in this mess—not capitulating to more of their demands. Trump is doing just the opposite, letting some of the nation’s biggest corporations off the hook: pesticide manufacturers, livestock producers, and big chemical companies.
The MAHA Commission report is most notable for what it lacks, including any recommendations to regulate toxic pesticides. An abundance of research links these ubiquitous agricultural chemicals to everything from cancers and Parkinson’s disease, to birth defects and developmental disorders.
In May, Kennedy’s team identified concerns about children’s exposure to pesticides. The backlash from food and farm industry groups was swift. The administration consequently hosted a parade of industry groups including CropLife America, Walmart, and Coca-Cola. In fact, Kennedy testified in a recent Senate hearing that he had entertained 140 farm interest groups since May.
In keeping with White House promises to industry lobbyists, the MAHA strategy report lacks any mention of concern for pesticide exposure, parrots pesticide industry talking points, and pulls punches on pesticide regulation. It even promotes the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) pesticide review process as robust and sufficient, which couldn’t be further from the truth. This review process has routinely been proven vulnerable to corporate influence.
This report is yet another step in Trump’s dangerous deregulatory agenda that will make America very, very sick.
This unwillingness to tackle toxic pesticides goes directly against the demands of voters and Kennedy’s own promises: Fully 71% of Democrats and 66% of Republicans support increasing restrictions on the use of pesticides in agriculture.
Meanwhile, Trump’s congressional allies are plotting with pesticide corporations to hamper EPA's ability to better regulate these toxic chemicals and shield pesticide manufacturers from health related lawsuits.
Food & Water Watch research catalogues the multimillion dollar push to pass Cancer Gag Acts in statehouses and Congress. Bayer has spent over $11 billion settling more than 100,000 cancer lawsuits related to its Roundup pesticide, whose key ingredient glyphosate the World Health Organization defines as a probable carcinogen. The federal Cancer Gag Act, expected to be reintroduced this fall as the “Agricultural Labeling Uniformity Act,” is reportedly a House Farm Bill priority; House Republicans included related language in a July appropriations vote to prevent EPA from improving pesticide warning labels.
In another capitulation to industry, the MAHA strategy report also fails to address factory farms’ public health impacts. America has become a factory farming nation, with these industrial animal warehouses pockmarking rural communities from coast to coast. These facilities are often sited right next to homes and schools, releasing a cocktail of dangerous air pollution, including particulate matter, ammonia, and hydrogen sulfide. These pollutants are linked to asthma and respiratory disease that gravely impact children’s health.
HHS agencies like the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) have the authority to study this pollution and recommend enforceable exposure limits for hazardous air emissions. This would help force factory farms to clean up their act and protect communities from dangerous health impacts. Any report serious about improving children's health must embrace these reforms.
Factory farms are also known drinking water polluters. Food & Water Watch analysis finds that factory farms produce a whopping 941 billion pounds of untreated waste annually. Much of it finds its way into the water we drink, carrying pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, E. coli bacteria, nitrates, and more into drinking water. These pollutants are linked to everything from cancers to antibiotic resistance. Faced with industry pressure, the MAHA report recommends weakening EPA’s already lax regulation of factory farm waste. Congressional Republicans have also introduced dangerous legislation to further deregulate the sector.
In yet another giveaway, the MAHA strategy report fails to adequately address the crisis that Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) contamination is wreaking on our health. These lab-made “forever chemicals,” found in drinking water nationwide, are linked to a large range of health problems including various cancers, altered hormone levels, decreased birth weights, digestive inflammation, and reduced vaccine response.
A full 97% of US residents have PFAS in their blood. Even still, the report makes only a passing mention of this rampant health concern, while simultaneously disregarding the Trump administration’s plan to gut recently-established common-sense PFAS drinking water safety rules. Food & Water Watch research tracks the tens of millions of dollars chemical corporations have spent on a campaign to conceal the health concerns of these forever chemicals—a concealment in which it appears the MAHA Commission is complicit.
The MAHA strategy report is, at best, a reckless industry giveaway. But a close reading belies the truth: This report is yet another step in Trump’s dangerous deregulatory agenda that will make America very, very sick. Trump’s budget cuts, which have gutted food safety oversight and closed food safety labs, stand in stark contrast to the few report takeaways where we agree. Take food chemicals and ultra processed foods for example.
Food & Water Watch has repeatedly called for overhaul of the federal Generally Recognized as Safe Loophole (GRAS) loophole—this report is right to endorse that reform. For years, food companies have self policed which chemicals make it into the food we eat, through this Food and Drug Administration (FDA) loophole. Today, hundreds if not thousands of chemicals are in our food because of this lack of oversight.
Food chemicals like titanium dioxide, potassium bromate, certain food dyes, and meat curing agents are part of a long list of chemicals that advocacy groups have been watching for years enter our food system. Critically, many of these chemicals are banned in other countries, yet still exist today on America’s grocery shelves.
It’s hard to believe Trump is serious about GRAS reform, when he’s busy gutting the very agency that would carry it out. His elimination of 3,500 FDA staff will leave the agency hamstrung, unable to implement even the few positive aspects of the MAHA strategy report.
Ultimately, the White House’s MAHA strategy will only deepen America’s industrial agriculture-driven health crisis. Any administration serious about public health must strictly regulate the corporations putting our food and water supplies at risk. Instead, Trump appears poised to do the very opposite.
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