Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s nominee to steer the sprawling federal forms liable for the healthcare of hundreds of thousands of Individuals, acquired the backing of a key Senate committee on Tuesday regardless of his historical past of denying the science supporting vaccinations and assist of disproved medical conspiracy theories.
GOP Sen. Invoice Cassidy, a Louisiana doctor who has vocally struggled with whether or not to assist Kennedy, in the end voted according to his occasion within the face of fierce stress from fellow Republicans to assist the nominee, together with threats of a major problem in 2026.
Kennedy’s nomination moved ahead on a party-line vote of 14 to 13 within the Senate Finance Committee.
All eyes have been on Cassidy, a member of the committee who additionally chairs one other Senate committee wherein he instructed Kennedy on Thursday that he had “been struggling along with your nomination” due to Kennedy’s previous feedback questioning the protection of vaccines and refusal to just accept science that exhibits that childhood immunizations don’t trigger autism.
Trump raised the problem of autism shortly earlier than the listening to started.
“20 years in the past, Autism in kids was 1 in 10,000. NOW IT’S 1 in 34. WOW! One thing’s actually mistaken. We’d like BOBBY!!! Thank You! DJT,” he wrote on his social media platform.
Cassidy introduced his intention to assist Kennedy’s nomination on social media simply earlier than the committee voted.
“I’ve had very intense conversations with Bobby and the White Home over the weekend and even this morning,” Cassidy wrote on X. “With the intense commitments I’ve acquired from the administration and the chance to make progress on the problems we agree on like wholesome meals and a pro-American agenda, I’ll vote sure.”
Cassidy didn’t converse in the course of the listening to, however one other Republican, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, stated he regarded ahead to seeing Kennedy tackle populist points, corresponding to reining in rising drug costs and selling meals security. However Tillis warned that he can be maintaining a tally of Kennedy’s dealing with of vaccines.
“The one means that Bobby Kennedy and I’ll get crosswise is that if he does truly take a place in opposition to the protection of confirmed vaccines,” Tillis stated. “That may be an issue for me.”
Kennedy didn’t attend Tuesday’s listening to. A date for the Senate to vote on his nomination has not been set, nevertheless it may happen subsequent week.
Kennedy, 71, is the son of former U.S. Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy and a nephew of former President Kennedy. The Brentwood resident, who’s married to actor Cheryl Hines, was a Democrat for many years earlier than he unsuccessfully ran for president as an unbiased in 2024. After he dropped out of the race in August, Kennedy endorsed Trump, a person he had beforehand labeled a possible “sociopath.”
After profitable the November election, Trump nominated Kennedy to be his secretary of Well being and Human Providers, main a division with a $1.8-billion funds and 90,000 workers. Among the many businesses and applications that fall underneath the division’s purview are the Meals and Drug Administration, the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention and the Nationwide Institutes of Well being in addition to Medicaid and Medicare.
Public well being teams and medical officers have assailed the prospect of placing a self-described “poster little one for the anti-vax motion” in control of the nation’s premier well being and medical analysis businesses.
His candidacy and his nomination additionally confronted notable opposition from a number of of his kinfolk, most just lately his cousin Caroline Kennedy, who despatched senators a scathing letter on the eve of his first nomination listening to final week — the primary time she had spoken out so publicly about his politics.
The only real surviving little one of President Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy served as an envoy in two Democratic administrations. Within the letter, first reported by the Washington Publish, she warned that her cousin was a “predator” whose views on vaccinations have been disqualifying, and that he would proceed to revenue from a lawsuit in opposition to the pharmaceutical firm Merck a few vaccine that forestalls cervical most cancers.
“He’s prepared to counterpoint himself by denying entry to a vaccine that may stop virtually all types of cervical most cancers and which has been safely administered to hundreds of thousands of girls and boys,” Caroline Kennedy wrote.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) alluded to these lawsuits Tuesday when she reiterated her issues about Kennedy’s attainable monetary conflicts of curiosity. She stated concessions he made to deal with such issues — corresponding to agreeing at hand off his monetary curiosity in sure lawsuits in opposition to vaccine makers to his son — didn’t go far sufficient.
“He has found out tips on how to become profitable off his anti-vax positions,” Warren stated. “He’s ready the place he can have an effect on the outcomes by issues he does as secretary of HHS, and but he refuses to say that he’ll delay by even a day taking over anti-vax lawsuits the minute he leaves.”
Sen. Raphael Warnock, a fellow Democrat from Georgia, expressed specific concern for the destiny of the Atlanta-based Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention.
“I merely don’t belief him to supervise the CDC,” Warnock stated. “He’s unqualified, and I dare say everyone right here is aware of it.”
In two days of Senate hearings final week, Kennedy, who pledged to “make America wholesome once more,” confronted aggressive questions on his previous vocal skepticism of vaccines, embrace of debunked medical claims, monetary conflicts of curiosity and political pirouetting on points corresponding to abortion rights.
Kennedy, a once-lauded environmental lawyer, framed the assaults in opposition to him as the results of his willingness to ask arduous questions of entrenched, highly effective pursuits corresponding to pharmaceutical corporations.
He stated he sought to focus on healthcare points the place there may be broad bipartisan settlement, corresponding to diet and substance abuse.
However Kennedy ceaselessly contradicted his previous positions, saying he was pro-vaccine regardless of a well-documented historical past of questioning their security, together with serving for a number of years because the chair of Youngsters’s Well being Protection, a nonprofit that falsely claims childhood vaccines trigger autism. He additionally stumbled whereas answering questions concerning the well being applications he would lead if he’s confirmed.
Dr. Joseph Varon, president of the Unbiased Medical Alliance, hailed the committee’s assist for Kennedy and stated he was wanting ahead to the complete Senate’s vote subsequent week.
“Individuals demand a frank dialog concerning the state of our authorities healthcare businesses,” stated Varon, a Kennedy ally and COVID-19 vaccine critic, in a press release.
The group stated its advocacy arm, IMA Motion, reached out to greater than 100,000 Kennedy supporters in Louisiana over the weekend and helped them make their views identified to Cassidy.