Here's how RFK Jr. can Dunkin' into the Oval Office - The Boston Globe

Welcome to Trendlines. The secret password is “melt.”

*Today, I have a modest proposal for RFK Jr. Plus: Concord’s scant cell phone coverage. *

🎧 Podcast Plug

Want to go deeper on the Iran conflict, the Supreme Court’s tariffs ruling, and the next chair of the Federal Reserve? Check out the latest episode of EconoFact Chats, featuring me, Binyamin Appelbaum of The New York Times, Scott Horsley of NPR, and Claire Jones of the Financial Times. The podcast is hosted by Michael Klein, a Tufts University economist and founder of EconoFact.org. Listen here.

➡️ The Latest

• President Trump s ignaled the US war on Iran could be ending soon, sending oil prices lower after they topped $100 a barrel. - Massachusetts drivers are paying sharply higher gas pricesas the Iran war sends oil surging. - The Justice Department settled its antitrust lawsuitagainst Ticketmaster and Live Nation, though some states said they won’t go along with the deal.

🥤 Food fight

TO: The Honorable Robert F. Kennedy Jr., US Secretary of Health and Human Services

SUBJECT: Don’t stop at Dunkin’

Mr. Secretary — do you mind if I call you Bobby?

FEATURED VIDEO

Let me get right to it. President Trump has lost his mojo.

He’s a big, fat lame duck — more focused on extorting money from billionaires and cosplaying as Darth Sidious — than making America great again. Nick Fuentes and his Groypers smell blood. JD Vance is laying low, hoping to avoid collateral damage from his boss’s foreign misadventures.

But MAHA? It has a healthy future! Play it right and you and Cheryl could be hosting huge parties like Jack and Jackie in the new ballroom come 2029.

The light dawned over Marblehead when I read your comments about Dunkin’, a friend of Matt Damon’s and Ben Affleck’s but a true enemy of the people. America doesn’t run on burnt Dunkin’ coffee and its greasy fried egg sandwiches. It runs, like you say, on red meat and raw milk (well, whole milk these days).

Advertisement

At a recent rally in Texas, you created a media stir when you hinted at the coming crackdown on the scourge of Canton: “Show us the safety data that show that it’s OK for a teenage girl to drink an iced coffee with 115 grams of sugar in it.”

The Globe story sparked a fair amount of criticism (“Do we want our food regulated by a guy who brags that he used to sniff coke off a toilet seat?”). But this is enemy territory, the land of Massholes who think you betrayed the legacy of your father and uncles. Ignore them.

Bobby, I was no fan of your run for president. Same goes for your sucking up to Trump, your COVID conspiracy theories, and your hyping of dubious scientific claims. (But propping up that dead bear cub on a bike in Central Park? Dude, that was hilarious!)

To be honest, I thought you were a brainworm-addled bozo who was exploiting the Kennedy name to spout nonsense that left the rest of the family ashamed. But I was wrong. So wrong.

Trump’s obsessions — tariffs, undocumented “murderers and rapists,” rigged elections — were effective in 2024. But what about the midterms? And 2028? People are tired of the same old song.

You’ve tapped into the future. You understand what Americans are most scared of: sugar in their coffee, fries made with vegetable oil, nonfat milk (can they even call it milk with no fat?), whole grains, and that freakin’ rainbow coalition of food dyes. Junk science isn’t the ticket to the White House. Junk food is.

Advertisement

Bobby, instead of spending $6 billion a day bombing Iran, Trump should be using that money on your war to make America healthy again.

But as you know, the president doesn’t do anything small. And Dunkies is barely on his radar (though I’d bet he’s snarfed down a few Munchkins over the years).

You have to go big, Bobby, and I’ve got the perfect way to grab the people’s — and POTUS’s — attention.

Forget about your upside-down food pyramid. Booooring!

It’s time for “America’s Most Wanted Food.”

Posters all over the country — restaurants, supermarkets, billboards — and a splashy social media campaign that will put Kristi Noem to shame. You can stage nighttime rallies across the land with giant bonfires and young, fit American kids (boys in jeans, no shirts; girls in floral dresses) tossing all that garbage food into the flames.

Let me pitch some candidates for the most-wanted list. Yes, I know these are among the country’s most popular foods. But they are a danger to the American way of life. People will learn: being a MAHA warrior entails sacrifice.

• Pop-Tarts
• Oreos
• KFC Famous Bowl
• Froot Loops
• Outback Bloomin’ Onion
• Mrs. Fields Cookie Sandwich
• Flamin’ Hot Cheetos
• Taco Bell Chicken Bacon Ranch Street Chalupas
• Twinkies
• Cinnabon Classic Roll

There are hundreds more where these came from. You’ll never run out junk food scapegoats.

Bobby, Mr. Secretary, the time to strike is now — while the steak-laden grill is hot. The people need to know that food is what you kill in the woods or run over on the highway.

The Democrats cheated you out of the nomination. Trump has checked out. It’s time for you to make America — and the Kennedy name — great again.

🎙️ On the Record

“I don’t know anybody who’s ever come into any of our stores and said, ‘Oh, my God, I thought we were going to the arena.’”

Advertisement

— Ivelise Rivera, founder of The Boston Garden Dispensary, a retail marijuana company with three stores. The company has been *sued by Delaware North*, owner of the TD Garden, which alleges trademark infringement and is demanding that Rivera stop using the Boston Garden name.

🩺 Health Care

More cuts: Point32Health, the parent of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Tufts Health Plan, said it axed 100 jobs, after laying off nearly 365 employees last year.

Bad look: Baystate Health’s CEO just wrote a book on how to fire people. It’s a topic he’s personally familiar with.

Peace of mind: Uber has rolled out its women-only option nationally after testing it in nearly 30 cities. The feature lets women riders and drivers match with each other.

👩🎓 Higher Education

Follow the money: Amid a sharp drop in international students, University of New Haven plans to open a campus in Saudi Arabia later this year.

💻 AI

Counterpunch: Anthropic sued the Trump administration to reverse the Pentagon’s decision designating the AI company a “supply chain risk” over its refusal to allow unrestricted military use of its technology.

Go fund me: Axiomatic AI, a Cambridge provider of verification for engineering-focused AI, raised $18 million in a seed funding round led by Engine Ventures.

✈️ Aerospace

Revving the engine: GE Aerospace plans to invest $1 billion into its US plants and create another 5,000 jobs.

🔢 By the Numbers

$46 million

— *US weekend box office sales** for “Hoppers,” the biggest opening for a Pixar original film in nearly a decade.*

Advertisement

*🚫 Help not wanted *

The job market is brutal right now.** **So I will be sitting down with my colleague Emily Schario, co-founder of The B-Side newsletter, to answer your questions about unemployment, job hunting, and navigating this mess.

🙋 What do you want to know? Drop your Qs here! Or follow the link to be notified when the content drops.

📱 The Closer

Concord is a wealthy town that has poor cell phone coverage. Really poor. That got the Globe’s Billy Baker thinking: What would onetime resident Henry David Thoreau — he of nearby Walden Pond fame — make of it. Billy writes:

As the town finally begins a deliberate effort to solve its notorious dead zones — which include Concord Center, the West Concord business district, and Concord-Carlisle High School and its athletic facilities — it’s not lost on people that there has been something very Concord, very Thoreau, about being untethered from the connected world.

“I think Thoreau would be thrilled that we’ve gone this long without reception,” said Bobbi Benson, who was working at Thoreauly Antiques on a recent day. “He’d be happy that we have to actually talk to each other and ask for directions.”

But in 2026, a mobile phone is essentially a necessity. And Megan Zammuto, the deputy town manager who is leading the effort to expand coverage, said it has become a serious issue that impacts public safety and local businesses, not to mention being an impediment to daily life.

“We get letters all the time, and the community is demanding improvement,” Zammuto said inside Town Hall in Concord Center, where coverage is so bad that many businesses have their own signal boosters.

Advertisement

You can connect with Billy’s story here.

📆 On this date in 1964, the US Supreme Court, in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, raised the standard for public officials to prove they’d been libeled in their official capacity by news organizations.

*👋 Thanks for reading. Trendlines will be back on Thursday. *

✍🏼 If someone sent you this newsletter, you can sign up for your own copy.

Larry Edelman can be reached at [email protected].