The Wall Street Journal reports this week that President Trump is pressing Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to accelerate efforts to limit federal immunization recommendations.
Neither man has training in epidemiology, immunology, or public health. Kennedy has spent years campaigning against established vaccine policy, but advocacy is not expertise. In matters of science, the republic is safest when it relies on those who have devoted their careers to understanding the evidence. That alone should give Americans pause.
The problem extends well beyond public health. Across multiple areas of government, expertise has increasingly been treated as optional rather than essential.
Meanwhile, we find ourselves in a stalemate in Iran. A “successful” outcome at this point would merely return us to the position we occupied before the war began: the Strait of Hormuz open and a promise—however fragile—that Iran will not acquire a nuclear weapon. Lives have been lost, enormous sums spent, and yet the best imaginable result is a restoration of the status quo ante. It is a sobering reminder of how quickly foreign policy can drift from strategy into improvisation.
Traditionally, Americans defer to the commander in chief on matters of war and diplomacy. We support our troops, respect our institutions, and recognize that elections confer democratic legitimacy. But legitimacy does not guarantee wisdom. On trade, immigration, public health, and foreign policy, this administration has repeatedly treated expertise as an obstacle rather than an asset.
We often hear that elections have consequences. They do.
Expertise has consequences as well.
Ignoring it carries a price that elections alone cannot erase.
When the conversation turns to vaccines, we should remember who actually possesses the relevant knowledge and what is at stake. Public-health recommendations are not matters of instinct, ideology, or political branding. They are judgments built on evidence, tested by research, and refined through professional scrutiny.
Democracy does not require blind deference to elected officials. It requires citizens willing to ask for evidence, to challenge unsound policies in Congress and the courts, and, when necessary, to oppose them peacefully.
Our Constitution gives presidents enormous authority, but it was never designed to make expertise optional.
In a healthy republic, elections choose our leaders.
They should not determine the laws of biology.