Remember living through a worldwide pandemic? It seems ridiculous to ask: only a toddler or someone on Tokelau, which didn’t record COVID-19 cases until December 2022, could have missed the “fun.” You likely remember the witch hunt against Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease researcher on Trump’s White House Coronavirus Task Force. He helped guide the country through a pandemic that killed more than 1.2 million Americans, about three times the 405,399 Americans who died in World War II.

The campaign against Fauci succeeded: he received death threats that required a security detail and a preemptive pardon as Biden left office. Today, a lawyer without medical training leads HHS, and his department’s conservative playbook is available in a PDF.

“Trust the plan” was QAnon’s catchphrase, and its playbook relies on blind trust. I verify what I can read myself: the plan is the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, known as Project 2025.

Its case against the CDC is four pages, readable in twenty minutes. I’ve read them: the plan prioritizes loyalty over public health expertise. Check your registration at vote.gov, read them before Tuesday, November 3, and vote like your family’s health depends on it.

The Doctor

Here’s what Fauci brought to the job:

  1. Medical training: Earned his M.D. from Cornell University.
  2. Research leadership: Directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022, 38 years overseeing research on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, Ebola, Zika, and COVID-19.
  3. Global health: Played a significant role in creating PEPFAR, the U.S. global HIV/AIDS relief program.
  4. Recognition: Received the National Medal of Science in 2005 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008.

He wasn’t perfect. Pandemic guidance, including mask advice, shifted, as the plan’s authors note on page 452. Guidance should evolve with evidence, and officials should explain changes. Though Fauci advised a White House-led task force, critics (including the authors) cast him as the face of the administration’s failures.

The Lawyer

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. brought a different résumé to the same department:

  1. Education: A law degree from the University of Virginia and a master of laws from Pace University.
  2. Environmental law: Worked as an attorney for Riverkeeper, pursuing pollution cases.
  3. Vaccine activism: Founded and chaired Children’s Health Defense, and has a long record of spreading false and misleading information about vaccines.
  4. Confirmation: Confirmed as HHS secretary in February 2025 by a 52 to 48 party-line vote. The lone Republican no was Mitch McConnell, who had polio as a child.

He spent decades suing polluters and is mostly right that Americans spend far more on health care than people in peer nations, who are also healthier. But a law degree isn’t a medical qualification, and his vaccine record is worse than having no credentials. In his first interview as secretary, he said:

“Vaccines are the one medical product that is exempt from prelicensing safety studies.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to Laura Ingraham on Fox News, February 14, 2025

FactCheck.org’s review of that interview states: “All vaccines are tested for safety before being approved.” It also documents false or unsupported claims about prescription drugs, seed oils, and an abortion drug, and debunked the same vaccine claim in 2023. He repeats the claim despite public debunking; repeating a claim after correction is a lie. He’s a liar, as I’ve written about in discussing what assertive liars do to public trust.

Fauci adjusted his guidance as evidence changed; Kennedy’s claims fail scrutiny.

The Plan

Kennedy now leads the department this plan aims to remake. The 920-page Mandate’s foreword centers on four promises: restore the family, dismantle the administrative state, defend national sovereignty and borders, and secure “God-given individual rights.” Chapter 14, by Roger Severino, covers Health and Human Services; its CDC section opens with this verdict:

“COVID-19 exposed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as perhaps the most incompetent and arrogant agency in the federal government.”

Mandate for Leadership, Chapter 14, page 452

The plan targets “Unaccountable bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci who should never again have such broad, unchecked power to issue health ‘guidelines’ that will certainly be the basis for federal and state mandates.” It recommends splitting the CDC into two agencies, barring officials from saying schoolchildren “should be” masked or vaccinated “(through a schedule or otherwise),” and moving CDC vaccine safety monitoring programs to the FDA.

A wish list matters only if implemented. Trump repeatedly said during the 2024 campaign, “I know nothing about Project 2025.” On his first day back, he signed Executive Order 14171, reviving Schedule F, which makes career policy employees easier to fire.

The plan explicitly calls for it: its personnel chapter says Trump’s Schedule F order “should be reinstated” (page 81), while the USAID chapter proposes to “pilot-test a reinstated Executive Order 13957” (page 271). Russ Vought, author of the Executive Office of the President chapter, became director of the Office of Management and Budget on February 7, 2025, placing a plan author at the helm of the office that prepares the president’s budget.

Four months into his job, Kennedy targeted vaccine advisers. In June 2025, he removed all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replaced them with his picks. Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy voted to confirm Kennedy after he promised no changes to the committee. As ABC’s report on the firings recounts, Cassidy told the Senate Kennedy would “maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes.”

Two weeks before the firings, Kennedy announced that the COVID-19 vaccine would leave the CDC’s immunization schedule for “healthy children and pregnant women,” as the same ABC report notes. Page 454 calls for dropping the recommendation for children, saying CDC officials should never again say schoolchildren “should be” vaccinated. Richard Besser, a former acting CDC director, said the firings “should erase any remaining doubt that he intends to impose his personal anti-vaccine agenda on the American people.” Though the plan did not call for that specific firing, it laid the groundwork by portraying CDC experts as the problem.

The chain links the plan’s argument to your pharmacy counter, with Schedule F showing its implementation. Solid arrows mark what the plan requested or directly entails; dotted arrows mark independent administrative actions.

graph TB accTitle: How Project 2025's CDC argument reaches your vaccines accDescr: The plan calls the CDC incompetent and asks for Schedule F, which the administration revived. The same administration put a vaccine skeptic in charge of HHS, who dropped the COVID shot for healthy children and removed all 17 vaccine advisers. Both changes reach the vaccines your doctor recommends and your insurance covers. A[The plan: the CDC is incompetent and Fauci had too much power] -->|asked for by name, page 81| B[Personnel: Schedule F revived as the plan asked] A -.->|same administration, not named in the plan| C[Leadership: a vaccine skeptic runs HHS] C --> F[May 2025: COVID shot dropped for healthy children, as page 454 urges] C -.->|not in the plan, built on its argument| D[Advisers: all 17 vaccine experts removed in June 2025] F --> E[You: the vaccines your doctor recommends and your insurance covers] D --> E style A fill:#e1f5fe style B fill:#f3e5f5 style C fill:#fff3e0 style F fill:#fff3e0 style D fill:#ffebee style E fill:#e8f5e9

That final box affects your kitchen table: under the Affordable Care Act, most private health plans must cover recommended vaccines without cost sharing. Committee members help determine what your pediatrician recommends and what insurance covers for free.

As someone who lost an uncle to COVID, I don’t want a plan that prioritizes loyalty over expertise. I want officials who tell the truth about evidence, even when it’s inconvenient. The plan’s argument against the CDC is four pages long; read it yourself and decide whether you trust it more than the evidence.

I’m not a Democrat or a Republican, and I’d say the same if the other party wrote this playbook. Voter accountability requires officials to tell the truth about evidence. The plan shrinks government in some areas but wields it more forcefully in others. In public health, where mistakes cost lives, I won’t trade expertise for loyal subjects carrying out orders.

Read It Yourself

You don’t need to read 920 pages. Here’s the twenty-minute version:

  1. Open the source: Download the full Mandate for Leadership PDF from the Heritage Foundation’s own site.
  2. Jump to the CDC section: Go to printed page 452, which is page 484 in most PDF viewers, and read until the FDA section starts on page 456.
  3. Compare it with your memory: Ask whether it describes the pandemic you lived through, and who you’d want answering the phone at the CDC in the next one.
  4. Ask your candidates: Email or call your House candidates (and Senate candidates, if your state has a race this year) and ask: “Project 2025 says CDC officials should never again be allowed to say that school children should be vaccinated. Do you agree?” Senators confirm the health secretary, and Congress funds the CDC, so this is part of the job. Vote411, the League of Women Voters’ nonpartisan guide, lists your candidates. Their answers, or their silence, tell you what you need to know.

For why I trust evidence over slogans, see why I love science and my 2021 piece on COVID vaccination and personal responsibility.

November 3

The midterm election is Tuesday, November 3, 2026, 16 days from now. Your vote determines whether the next health secretary faces tough questions or a rubber stamp. If you do one thing, vote. If you do three, do these:

  1. Check your registration at vote.gov for state deadlines and early voting options. If the deadline passed, see whether your state allows same-day registration.
  2. Vote based on the answer. A candidate who won’t state their position has told you something; one who supports it has told you more, whatever their party.
  3. Bring one person with you, and hand them page 452.

The plan asks for trust; Fauci’s career asked you to trust verifiable evidence. You have the PDF, page number, and ballot. Read four pages, decide for yourself, and help save the republic while we can still fix this.