Good politicians are rarely modest. The job requires an uncanny ability to sell each bit of incremental progress as a success in and of itself. That’s especially true for someone…

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. For nearly a decade, the immunologist and biochemist William Parker has tried, with…

Two and a half years ago, Ashish Jha was the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, a job that meant getting as much of the country as possible on board with…

Some Republican senators, it seems, have begun to fret that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was not being entirely honest when he sought their votes to confirm him as secretary of…

This spring, months before the recent dramatic departures from the CDC, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. battled with the agency’s scientists during the very first public-health crisis of his tenure as…

Derrick Hiebert had planned to stick it out at FEMA. He was an assistant administrator working on hazard mitigation—he specialized in getting communities prepared for disasters—and like many emergency-management experts…

In February 2010, Michelle Obama launched “Let’s Move!” with a wide-ranging plan to curb childhood obesity. The campaign took aim at processed foods, flagged concerns about sugary drinks, and called…

The White House’s AI Action Plan, released in July, mentions “health care” only three times. But it is one of the most consequential health policies of the second Trump administration.…

Every year, there is a single day when summer turns to fall. In 2025, on the Gregorian calendar, this day is September 22. On the pumpkin-spice calendar, it was Tuesday,…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is coming undone. The White House announced last night that it had ousted the agency’s newly sworn-in director, Susan Monarez, whose lawyers insist…