MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. — Jerome Adams has always viewed himself as a medical doctor and, essentially, apolitical. After serving as Indiana health commissioner and President Donald J. Trump’s first-term surgeon general, Adams begged off when I asked him if he supported a second term.

“I believe health care and public health should be nonpartisan, and as such I don’t endorse candidates or reveal who I’m voting for,” Adams told me in March 2024. “However, I stand ready to help whoever is president address America’s poor health and inequitable health care system.”

This month, after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. canceled $500 million in mRNA research contracts, Adams could stay silent no longer.

“[I]n his second term, Trump’s tolerance for his own appointees undermin

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