The Senate has voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the conspiracy-promoting environmental lawyer-turned-anti-vaccine activist, to run the nation’s largest public health agency.
In a 52-48 vote, Kennedy was approved as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, with only Sen. Mitch McConnell breaking from his Republican colleagues to reject the confirmation. McConnell, a polio survivor, has stressed the importance for vaccinations.
Senate Democrats took to the Senate floor in the hours ahead of Kennedy’s confirmation to air their concerns about Kennedy, a known vaccine skeptic who’s boosted baseless conspiracy theories about Covid, HIV, and antidepressants.
A longtime environmental lawyer, Kennedy, the son of the late Democratic senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of John F. Kennedy, grew in prominence for his promotion of the debunked idea that vaccines cause autism.
In 2023, he staged a long-shot campaign to challenge then-president Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination for president before running as an independent and ultimately endorsing Trump. In response, during the campaign, Trump said he would let Kennedy “go wild on health.”
The Department of Health and Human Services is a large and sprawling bureaucracy, with about $130.7 billion in discretionary funding and $1.7 trillion in mandatory spending. It includes the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.
Along with his comments about vaccines and autism, Kennedy has made other inflammatory remarks, including suggesting that Anne Frank was in a better situation when she hid from Nazis than Americans were under Covid-19 mandates and claiming Covid-19 was a “bioweapon” that targets “Caucasians and Black people” while sparing Ashkenazi Jewish and Chinese people.
The Kennedy nomination caused heartburn for Republicans as they grappled with his anti-vaccine views.
During his confirmation hearings before the Senate Finance Committee and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, he attempted to clean up his previous remarks and insisted he is not anti-vaccine, but “pro-safety.”
But Democrats grilled him with reams of documents about his past stance on vaccines.
“I think that this is a sad day in the history of the United States Senate,” Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia who grilled Kennedy about his remarks, told The Independent. our people send us here with the hope that we will send to their families, their health, their well being and And what we are witnessing in this point is a shame.”
During one hearing, Sen. Bernie Sanders made headlines for displaying onesies from the Children’s Health Defense, which RFK led, that bragged about babies not being vaccinated.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican physician from Louisiana, showed skepticism over the appointment and confronted Kennedy on his views about vaccines and autism.
But the lawmaker, who faces re-election next year, ultimately announced he would vote to confirm Kennedy. Shortly thereafer, the Republican conference’s other two moderates—Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—said they would support his nomination.
Cassidy later told The Independent that he still disagreed with Kennedy on vaccines and said he would continue to work with families of autistic children.
“I obviously disagree with in fact, know, the medical research shows that vaccines do not cause autism,” he said after the vote. “That's settled science.”
Murkowski for her part voted to confirm him, but said she continued to have reservations and wanted to see measures to hold him accountable.
“And so what we need to do as members of Congress who have received those commitments, we need to make sure that they are adhered to,” she told The Independent. “It's going to require close communication with the secretary in his role.”
By contrast, McConnell, the former Republican majority, cited his experience with polio as a reason for his decision to oppose Kennedy.
“In my lifetime, I've watched vaccines save millions of lives from devastating diseases across America and around the world,” he said. “I will not condone the re-litigation of proven cures, and neither will millions of Americans who credit their survival and quality of life to scientific miracles.”
McConnell also cited how the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed led to the development of a Covid-19 vaccine.
“Mr. Kennedy failed to prove he is the best possible person to lead America’s largest health agency,” McConnell said in a statement. “As he takes office, I sincerely hope Mr. Kennedy will choose not to sow further doubt and division but to restore trust in our public health institutions.”
Trump has also speculated about the debunked link between vaccines and autism, saying in one of his early presidential debates that autism has become “an epidemic.”
In December, Trump said there’s “something wrong” with the increase in autism rates. Shortly before Kennedy’s confirmation vote in the Senate Finance Committee, Trump posted on Truth Social: “20 years ago, Autism in children was 1 in 10,000” before saying “We need BOBBY!!!”
Kennedy’s nomination comes the day after the Senate voted along similar lines to confirm Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee to become director of National Intelligence.
Kennedy will not be the last nominee with views about health care that contradict the scientific consensus. Trump nominated Dave Weldon, a former Florida congressman who also repeated the idea that vaccines are linked to autism, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In addition, Trump nominated Mehmet Oz, the former television host who ran a failed campaign for Senate in Pennsylvania, to lead the organization that manages Medicare and Medicaid.
