Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s nominee to steer the sprawling federal forms liable for the healthcare of hundreds of thousands of Individuals, obtained 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 supporting Kennedy, finally 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 by which he informed Kennedy on Thursday that he had “been struggling together with your nomination” due to his previous feedback questioning the security of vaccines and refusal to simply accept science that exhibits that childhood immunizations don’t trigger autism.
Kennedy didn’t attend Tuesday’s listening to.
Kennedy, 71, is the son of former U.S. Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy and a nephew of former President John F. 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 impartial in 2024. After he dropped out of the race in August, Kennedy endorsed Trump, a person he had beforehand labeled a probable “sociopath.”
After successful 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 beneath 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.
His candidacy and his nomination confronted notable opposition from a number of of his family, 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 publicly about his politics.
The only real surviving little one of John F. Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy served as an envoy in two Democratic administrations. Within the letter, first reported by the Washington Submit, she warned that her cousin was a “predator” whose views on vaccinations have been disqualifying, and that he would proceed to revenue off a lawsuit towards the pharmaceutical firm Merck a couple of 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.
In two days of Senate hearings final week, Kennedy, who pledged to “make America wholesome once more,” confronted aggressive questions about his previous vocal skepticism of vaccines, embrace of debunked medical claims, monetary conflicts of curiosity and political pirouetting on points akin to abortion rights.
Kennedy, a as soon as lauded environmental lawyer, framed the assaults towards him as the results of his willingness to ask onerous questions of entrenched, highly effective pursuits akin to pharmaceutical corporations.
He sought to spotlight healthcare points the place there may be broad bipartisan settlement, akin to diet and substance abuse.
However Kennedy incessantly 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 Kids’s Well being Protection, a nonprofit that falsely claims childhood vaccines trigger autism. He additionally stumbled whereas answering questions in regards to the well being applications he would lead if he’s confirmed.
