The Atlantic Magazine Jan 2026 Issue

The Atlantic’s January Cover: Michael Scherer Profiles Robert F. Kennedy Jr., ‘The Most Powerful Man in Science’

For The Atlantic’s January cover story, “The Most Powerful Man in Science,” staff writer Michael Scherer profiles Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, as he crusades against what he perceives as the corruption of the scientific establishment. Scherer asks what it means when the country can’t agree on common facts—even those once considered validated by the scientific method––and examines why RFK Jr. is so convinced that he’s right in his beliefs. “The whole medical establishment has huge stakes and equities that I’m now threatening,” Kennedy told The Atlantic. “And I’m shocked President Trump lets me do it.”

Scherer had extensive access to Kennedy and his top deputies at HHS for the profile, including Jay Bhattacharya, Marty Makary, and Mehmet Oz––all of whom were bonded by the experience of COVID “in a fellowship of the ostracized.” Since Trump put him in charge of HHS, Kennedy has, in conjunction with the White House, pushed out about one in four HHS employees, including much of the senior career staff and thousands of workers at the CDC, which Kennedy described to Scherer as a “snake pit.” (Kennedy compares his relationship with Trump to “when you’re dating somebody that you keep liking more and more.”) And though Kennedy has slashed the budget of his own department, he now tells Scherer that he plans to spend billions of dollars investigating vaccines’ potential ties to chronic diseases. Discussing COVID-vaccine boosters, Kennedy tells Scherer: “You never do an intervention—particularly with a healthy human being—unless you know that it’s safe and effective. And we don’t know if it’s safe and effective.”

Throughout their interviews, Scherer writes, he often found himself jousting with Kennedy about the details of one scientific debate or another. Scherer writes that Kennedy says he’s open to listening to other viewpoints, but, “when presented with data that contradict his arguments, Kennedy regularly claims bad faith on the part of his adversaries—­that they’re motivated by profit or professional advancement. His experience as a litigator may have made this reflexive. As John Morgan, his litigation partner, told me, it’s hard to sue polluters and cigarette companies and not come away convinced that the defendants are ‘in the business of premeditated murder.’ Kennedy has applied the same lens to the medical establishment, casting it as powered by the big pharmaceutical companies and their government protectors—despite the fact that most pediatricians and virologists and epidemiologists have devoted their lives to helping children and reducing suffering.”