US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is at war with the nation’s public health establishment. He’s overseen mass layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; canceled $500 million in federal funding for mRNA vaccine development; and promised to end the bias against “alternative medicine.”

The country’s leading scientists and physicians have started pushing back against the Trump administration’s agenda, with some physician groups releasing their own Covid vaccine recommendations after Kennedy unilaterally changed the federal guidance this summer. Doctors say they’re looking to protect the most vulnerable as the government turns against the long-standing public health consensus.

“I think we all actually have a duty to try to improve the country no matter who’s in power,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist and a medical ethicist who works at the University of Pennsylvania.

Emanuel was a senior health care adviser in the Obama administration and informally counseled President Donald Trump’s first administration on prescription drug prices and the early Covid-19 response. He said public health does need to be bipartisan — but Kennedy’s agenda risks further dividing Americans. The health crises facing Americans are real, and we need real solutions — but Kennedy is not proposing them.

Below is an excerpt of Emanuel’s conversation with Today, Explained host Sean Rameswaram, edited for length and clarity. Listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including

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