Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Thursday won Senate confirmation by a comfortable 52-48 vote to be President Trump’s secretary of health and human services, capping a remarkable rise from fringe environmental and anti-vaccine activist to the pinnacle of power.
The controversial anti-vaxxer swept to confirmation with the backing of all Republicans except Sen. Mitch McConnell, an ardent proponent of vaccines who survived childhood polio. All 47 Democrats opposed his bid.
RFK Jr., who mimicked Trump’s signature MAGA slogan by vowing to Make America Healthy Again, will oversee agencies that spend $1.7 trillion annually on vaccines, food safety and the Medicare and Medicaid health insurance programs that cover roughly half of all Americans.
Kennedy, 71, has spent his lifetime in the spotlight since his Democratic uncle and father were felled by assassins’ bullets in the 1960s but now is set to take on his biggest role yet.
The scion of Camelot has earned a formidable following with his populist views about how America regulates its food, medicines and vaccines, even as he has shown off a wacky side like when he used a road-kill bear carcass to stage a fake bicycle crash in Central Park.
The audience for his sometimes extreme views exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many Americans chafed at the government shutdown measures and vaccine mandates even though those measures prevented countless deaths.
Buoyed by the anti-vaxxer movement, Kennedy ran for president himself, first mounting a short-lived Democratic primary challenge to former President Biden, then launching an independent bid. He got on the ballot in several states and won strong support in some early polls.
In the summer, RFK ended his campaign and endorsed Trump, effectively rebranding his fight to win support for Trump among his independent-minded and younger base of support. His Democratic family unanimously recoiled in disgust, with sister Kerry Kennedy branding him an “outrage” and cousin Caroline Kennedy deriding him as a “predator.”
Trump in turn embraced RFK Jr., even though the president was once an enthusiastic backer of vaccines and took credit for paving the way to beat COVID with his Operation Warp Speed vaccine development program in his first term.
With Trump’s unquestioned backing, Kennedy says is “uniquely positioned” to revive trust in those public health agencies, which include the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes for Health.
The environmental lawyer endured a rocky two-day confirmation hearing at which even Republicans seemed shocked that he wouldn’t category deny a link between vaccines and autism, which has been categorically debunked by science.
He also displayed an unsteady knowledge of the health insurance programs he will oversee, at one point mixing up Medicare and Medicaid.
Kennedy steadfastly refused to back away from his explosive statements about vaccines, including his claim that “no vaccine is safe and effective.”
Kennedy has also been accused of ethics conflicts over his anti-vaccine activism, like the $850,000 windfall he made last year alone for referring clients to a law firm that has sued the makers of Gardasil, which protects against cervical cancer. He has refused to scrap the deal even though he’ll oversee regulating the vaccine in question, instead shunting the big bucks fees to his adult son.
He was expected to face opposition over his support for abortion rights, which would normally deter votes from conservatives, as well as his harsh criticism of food processing and Big Ag firms, both big Republican donors, especially to farm state lawmakers.
But among Republicans, the questions about RFK melted away in the face of an aggressive campaign by the White House, backed by the threat of attacks or even primaries if they did not fall in line.
It’s a playbook that’s gotten Trump most of the cabinet team he wants with a minimum of fuss.
Kash Patel, once known for spouting fringe conspiracy theories about Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, was approved by the Judiciary Committee Thursday to be director of the FBI. He is a heavy favorite to win final confirmation next week.
Kennedy is expected to take over the nation’s health agencies just as Trump and Elon Musk engineer a massive federal government shakeup that aims to cut billions of taxpayer dollars in public health funding, including spending for medical research into treatments for diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s.
Kennedy is likely to enthusiastically back the cuts. He has vowed to fire hundreds of employees at the NIH, the nation’s largest funder of biomedical research, saying he distrusts their pro-industry and Big Pharma bias.