Nicholas Florko

Washington, D.C., United States

Staff writer at The Atlantic reporting on why Americans are so unhealthy, and what's being done about it. Lover of public records and @terrorhardcore.

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Articles

Republicans Are Right About Soda

1 week ago | theatlantic.com | Nicholas Florko

Sarah Palin knew her audience. In 2013, during a speech at CPAC, the annual Republican confab, the former Alaska governor reached down into her lectern and pulled out a cup of soda the size of her head. She took a long swig, and then another, as the audience broke into raucous applause. Palin put the drink down and delivered the punch line: “Our Big Gulp's safe,” she said.
RFK Jr.’s End Game

3 weeks ago | theatlantic.com | Nicholas Florko

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is finally getting his wish of sucker punching the federal health agencies. This week, Kennedy began the process of firing some 10,000 employees working under the Health and Human Services umbrella. Even before he took office, Kennedy warned health officials that they should pack their bags, and on Tuesday, he defended the cuts: “What we’ve been doing isn’t working,” Kennedy posted on X.
Texas Never Wanted RFK Jr.’s Vitamin A Shipment for Measles

3 weeks ago | theatlantic.com | Nicholas Florko

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., staring down his first major health crisis as the head of Health and Human Services, had a plan.
department-of-food-rfk-jr - The Atlantic

4 weeks ago | theatlantic.com | Nicholas Florko

If there was a mascot to represent everything that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sees wrong with food, it would be Big Daddy’s Primo Pizza. A staple of school cafeterias, Big Daddy’s pizza bills itself as an “over-the-top exceptional slice to entice students” that’s made with whole-wheat flour. It’s mass-produced in a factory with industrial additives so that it just needs to be reheated right before serving. That makes the pizza an ultra-processed food, which Kennedy is set on removing from school lunches.
The Quiet Assault on Vaccines

1 month ago | theatlantic.com | Nicholas Florko

There seems to be a limit to how anti-vax is too anti-vax in the Trump administration. Yesterday, hours before Dave Weldon was slated to begin his Senate confirmation hearing for CDC director, the White House pulled his nomination. Weldon, a physician and former Republican congressman, has long questioned the safety of vaccines. In a meeting last month, he reportedly told one senator that routine childhood vaccines were exposing kids to dangerous levels of mercury and may cause autism.
The Pro-Vaccine Surgeon Who Will Soon Report to RFK Jr.

1 month ago | theatlantic.com | Nicholas Florko

Leading the FDA has long been one of the greatest professional achievements in American health. At the start of every administration, doctors jockey for the role, hoping to steer an agency that regulates 20 cents of every dollar spent in the United States. To be the FDA commissioner who presides over the approval of a cure for a previously intractable disease, or who launches an investigation into a product that is sickening Americans, is to etch your name into the annals of modern medicine.
The Public-Health Brain Drain Is Here

1 month ago | theatlantic.com | Nicholas Florko

In a little over a month, the Trump administration has started to hollow out America’s federal health agencies. Roughly 2,000 probationary workers have been fired en masse, by virtue of the fact that they were relatively new to their jobs. But the long-term impact of those terminations could pale in comparison to a lesser-noticed spate of departures that have recently roiled the health agencies. In the past two months, the FDA, CDC, and NIH second in commands have all resigned or retired.
The Senate Confirmed RFK Jr. as Health Secretary. Now What?

2 months ago | theatlantic.com | Nicholas Florko

America’s health secretaries, almost as a rule, have résumés manicured to a point of frictionlessness. Once in a while one will attract scandal in their tenure; see Tom Price’s reported fondness for chartered jets. But anyone who has garnered enough cachet to be nominated to head the Department of Health and Human Services tends to arrive in front of the Senate with such impeccable credentials that finding anything that might disqualify them from the position is difficult.
The Doctor Who Let RFK Jr. Through

2 months ago | theatlantic.com | Nicholas Florko

Ron Johnson may be the most anti-vaccine lawmaker in Congress; he’s the kind of guy who says he’s “sticking up for people who choose not to get vaccinated” while claiming without valid evidence that thousands have died from COVID shots. This morning, at the Capitol, Johnson walked over to his Senate Finance Committee colleague Bill Cassidy, a doctor and a passionate advocate for vaccination, and gave him an affectionate pat on the shoulder. The two of them had just advanced Robert F.
How MAHA Wins

2 months ago | theatlantic.com | Nicholas Florko

From inside the room, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearings felt at times more like an awards show than a job interview. While the health-secretary nominee testified, his fans in the audience hooted and hollered in support.