When we think about health and wellness, we don’t tend to think of threats to our national security, but here’s one: A stunning 77% of American young people aren’t even qualified for military service due to obesity, drug use, or mental or physical health problems.

That was just one data point of the crisis facing Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was confirmed Thursday as Donald Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services secretary by a 52-48 vote, with the Trump-deranged and increasingly infirm Mitch McConnell once again joining sides with the Democrats.

It’s clear, though, that RFK Jr. is unconcerned about McConnell or the partisan warfare that kept even a single one of his former Democrat colleagues from supporting him. Indeed, partisanship now seems so trivial to him.

“For 20 years,” he said from the Oval Office at his swearing-in, “I got down every morning on my knees and prayed that God would put me in a position where I can end childhood chronic disease epidemic in this country. On August 23 of last year, God sent me President Trump.”

Whether the end of his primary challenge to Joe Biden and his subsequent endorsement of Trump on that day were divinely inspired is for another column, but it’s hard to imagine a more viscerally committed HHS secretary than this black sheep scion of the Democrats’ first family. Kennedy is yet another of Trump’s disruptors, and his appointment will likely have huge consequences for the health and well-being of the American people. Accordingly, Trump immediately announced the formation of the Make America Healthy Again Commission, which Kennedy will chair and which will investigate and address “the root causes of America’s escalating health crisis, with an initial focus on childhood chronic diseases.”

Among the deliverables for the MAHA Commission will be a summary, with international comparisons, of “what is known and what questions remain regarding the childhood chronic disease crisis,” due within 100 days, and a strategy for fixing the health of America’s children, due at 180 days.

In tackling our chronic disease epidemic, the commission will be driven by four main directives: transparency and open-source data that avoids hidden conflicts of interest; “gold-standard research” on why we’re getting sick; engagement with farmers to ensure that our food supply is “healthy, abundant, and affordable”; and improved treatment options and health coverage to facilitate lifestyle changes and prevent disease rather than merely reacting to it.

“Ending the corruption,” Kennedy said, “ending the corporate capture of those agencies, getting rid of the people on those panels that have conflicts of interest — we can do unadorned and unimpeded science rather than the kind of product that is coming out of those agencies.”

Kennedy’s appointment has made for some strange bedfellows, primarily due to his pro-abortion history and his hostility toward vaccines. As our Nate Jackson noted back in November, Kennedy once said there is “no vaccine that is safe and effective” because they’ve caused an “autism epidemic.” Since then, Kennedy has moderated his position on vaccines and says he’s only interested in getting to the truth. As Kennedy said during his second Senate hearing: “News reports and many in the hearing yesterday have claimed that I’m anti-vaccine and anti-industry. Well, I’m neither. I’m pro-safety. I’m pro-good science.”

If RFK Jr. ventures out of his lane, we expect President Trump will gently remind him about it.

In any case, Kennedy isn’t the only one to raise very real concerns about the COVID mRNA vaccines that were forced onto us by Joe Biden’s federal mandates but that are radically different than traditional vaccines. Otherwise, Kennedy’s past pronouncements on vaccines will soon butt up against the MAHA Commission’s commitment to “gold-standard research,” and that’ll be that.

Of course, the vaccine debate is a distraction from the glaring health crisis that stares us in the face, thanks in no small part to the government agencies that seem to have gotten things so totally wrong over the years — including that idiotic lobbyist-driven Food Pyramid we’d been force-fed for decades. As our Emmy Griffin wrote in 2023, we are what we eat. And what we eat is — let’s face it — crap.

Whether it’s a contaminated food supply, an array of environmental factors, or both, we should pause to reflect on, for example, how the humble peanut has been practically driven from our lives due to allergies that we never saw when we were growing up. Or how so many children today seem to be way overweight, when most of what we saw as kids was termed “baby fat.”

More concretely, from the MAHA Commission paper:

Prior to COVID, American life expectancy averaged 78.8 years, while comparable countries averaged 82.6 years, creating a gap that equates to 1.25 billion fewer life years for Americans.

The United States has the highest age-standardized cancer incidence rate across 204 countries, nearly double the next-highest rate.

Something has gone horribly wrong with our food supply and with our health and wellness, and perhaps RFK Jr. is the guy to get to the bottom of it. He’s certainly been thinking long and hard about these issues.

“Whether you’re in a blue state or red state,” he promised, “I’m going to do everything I can to work with you, whether you are a Democrat or Republican, to restore child health in this country.”