In his State of the Union address, President Trump avoided health topics that he spoke of last year, including abortion and cancer. He also didn’t mention his health secretary RFK Jr.’s priorities.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
President Trump has said he wants to make health care into a Republican issue. But in last night’s State of the Union, he skipped many of the health-related topics that he used to talk about a lot. NPR’s Selena Simmons-Duffin watched the speech. She has this report on what was left out.
SELENA SIMMONS-DUFFIN, BYLINE: There was actually a person conspicuously absent from President Trump’s remarks last night, although he was in the room, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Last year, Trump spoke about Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again effort at length and his focus on the causes of autism. Here Trump is during his 2025 joint address to Congress.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And there’s nobody better than Bobby and all of the people that are working with you. You have the best to figure out what is going on. OK, Bobby? Good luck. It’s a very important job. Thank you.
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SIMMONS-DUFFIN: This year, there was no mention of Kennedy, MAHA, autism or vaccines.
JONATHAN OBERLANDER: I think that it may signal a pivot away from the high-profile anti-vaccine activism of RFK.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: That’s political scientist Jonathan Oberlander of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Kennedy has moved aggressively in the past year to upend federal vaccine policy.
OBERLANDER: Their actions are not terribly popular with the American public about vaccination. And I think it’s a liability going into the 2026 midterms.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Trump didn’t even mention Kennedy’s efforts that are less politically fraught, including going after food dyes and changing the food pyramid. There was a brief section on health policy in the speech. Trump mentioned efforts on drug prices and insurance policies he’d like to see Congress pick up. But he was silent on some enormous changes actually unfolding in health policy, with barely any mention of Medicare or Medicaid and no mention of the Obamacare enhanced subsidy fight that caused the government shutdown in October. Here’s Dr. Georges Benjamin, CEO of the American Public Health Association.
GEORGES BENJAMIN: He didn’t talk about the fact that they cut, you know, almost a trillion dollars out of the Medicaid program. He didn’t talk anything about what they’re going to do about all the people that are going to lose coverage over the next year or two.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Then there’s abortion. Katie Keith, director of the Center for Health Law and Policy at Georgetown Law, notes that Trump used to talk about abortion restrictions regularly. Last night…
KATIE KEITH: It did strike me as notable that he didn’t mention it at all.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Something else that wasn’t mentioned was scientific research, breakthroughs, cures, world-leading science. Again, here’s Oberlander.
OBERLANDER: That’s sort of State of the Union bread and butter. Every president can say something, that they’re committed to science.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: He used to talk about scientific research. He brought cancer patients as guests for past addresses to Congress. He even announced an ambitious effort to end the HIV epidemic in one speech. This past year, his administration has slashed the federal health workforce and cut billions of dollars in scientific grants.
OBERLANDER: So I think that silence probably speaks volumes on that as well.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: There were other health topics conspicuously absent. Rural health was not mentioned, even though the administration is sending billions to states for rural health to help offset Medicaid cuts. Measles was not mentioned, even though there are concerning outbreaks all over the country, especially in South Carolina. So despite Trump’s goal of making health care a Republican issue for the midterms, Keith of Georgetown says…
KEITH: It just was not a health care speech by any stretch of the imagination.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: In response to NPR’s request for comment on the decision to leave these topics out of the speech, White House spokesman Kush Desai wrote in a statement, quote, “delivering on health care affordability and the broader MAHA agenda were and remain top priorities for the entire administration,” unquote. Selena Simmons-Duffin, NPR News, Washington.
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