Brad Reed
January 24, 2025
RAW STORY
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has written a characteristically blunt analysis of the Trump administration's public health policies, which he has described as "Donald Trump wants you to die."
Writing on his Substack page, Krugman argued that the Trump administration appears to be waging a broad war against the civil service, with a specific focus on those working in public health agencies.
"Federal health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes for Health, have been ordered to pause all external communications, including health advisories and scientific reports," Krugman writes. "NIH, in particular, appears to have been effectively put in lockdown, with even routine meetings canceled and employees forbidden to travel."
Krugman went on to note that it's unlikely that these agencies will restart as normal in the near future either, especially since Trump is determined to appoint anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Health and Human Services Department.
All of this, Krugman explained, ties into the American conservative movement's long-standing hostility toward science.
"So my prediction — which I hope proves false — is that when NIH and other health agencies emerge from the current freeze they will have been emasculated and politicized, prohibited from releasing information and research whose implications the Trump administration doesn’t like, banned from making policy recommendations that are inconvenient for Trump or at odds with the prejudices of the MAGA base," he warned. "And many Americans will die as a result."
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has written a characteristically blunt analysis of the Trump administration's public health policies, which he has described as "Donald Trump wants you to die."
Writing on his Substack page, Krugman argued that the Trump administration appears to be waging a broad war against the civil service, with a specific focus on those working in public health agencies.
"Federal health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes for Health, have been ordered to pause all external communications, including health advisories and scientific reports," Krugman writes. "NIH, in particular, appears to have been effectively put in lockdown, with even routine meetings canceled and employees forbidden to travel."
Krugman went on to note that it's unlikely that these agencies will restart as normal in the near future either, especially since Trump is determined to appoint anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Health and Human Services Department.
All of this, Krugman explained, ties into the American conservative movement's long-standing hostility toward science.
"So my prediction — which I hope proves false — is that when NIH and other health agencies emerge from the current freeze they will have been emasculated and politicized, prohibited from releasing information and research whose implications the Trump administration doesn’t like, banned from making policy recommendations that are inconvenient for Trump or at odds with the prejudices of the MAGA base," he warned. "And many Americans will die as a result."
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