During the Biden years, the vanguard leftism known as “wokeness” became suffocatingly omnipresent — not just in politics but in places and institutions not previously political. Including the doctor’s office. In 2023, I documented for National Review how virtually all facets of the medical field had been infected by left-wing ideology. The omnipresence of wokeness played a large role in Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory; voters valued his potential to push back against it all.

Since becoming president, Trump has delivered on much of this potential, and the tide of wokeness has receded from many places, not infrequently thanks to Trump-driven drainage. But we should not be complacent. The medical field, in particular, deserves continued scrutiny. The pro-meritocracy medical advocacy group Do No Harm recently uncovered that the National Cancer Institute has dispersed $218 million in grants for “underrepresented groups,” $10.5 million of which remains currently active. And in City Journal, Manhattan Institute fellow Leor Sapir details how the New England Journal of Medicine, a prestigious medical publication, has consistently “abandoned even the pretense of objectivity, declining to hold researchers to scientific standards or air alternative views that would advance scientific knowledge,” especially when it comes to medicalized gender transition.

The foothold of wokeness in the medical field lingers. There are steps to take to counter it, however. The Trump administration can continue its welcome effort to rid the government of this kind of thinking, which has knock-on effects given the extent of reliance on federal funding and guidance by regulation. It’s harder to tackle the problems with the New England Journal of Medicine. But pointing out its declining credibility, as Sapir has done, is necessary. Even now, we must remain vigilant about the infection by left-wing politics of nonpolitical spaces.