Original URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/us/rfk-jr-hhs-senate-confirmation.html
Title: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Faces Backlash on Vaccine Ties; Senators Say He Lacks Credibility for a Leadership Role at Health Agency.
Plain Text: As public health officials expressed their fear that his stance on inoculations might complicate vaccine distribution, senators signaled that they do not anticipate Mr. Kennedy to be confirmed.
WASHINGTON — A son of Robert F. Kennedy is poised to face resistance from both parties in the Senate over his nomination to a top public health post in the Trump administration.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer and vaccine skeptic, is Mr. Trump’s nominee to be the acting assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Some members of Congress have already expressed fear that Mr. Kennedy’s past views on vaccines — including a suggestion that mercury, a common ingredient, causes autism and later claims that thimerosal, a preservative, should be eliminated — might complicate the job of aggressively deploying vaccines against the coronavirus, which he would oversee.
Mr. Kennedy’s nomination was promptly met with criticism from most of the public health community, which is overwhelmingly made up of vaccination proponents. Some members from both parties told The New York Times they do not anticipate he would be confirmed.
A committee hearing on his nomination is planned for March, such as it is. With the traditional White House support for nominees all but absent, it will be handled virtually, according to an aide to Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee and the chairman of the committee overseeing the nomination.
The senator’s office provided no additional information besides the date.
A Senate Democratic aide said the hearing would be an opportunity to explore the nominee’s “significant conflicts” and challenge “known misinformation.”
In addition to raising fears that he might undermine vaccine distribution during a pandemic, Mr. Kennedy’s ties to the Russian government have provoked concern. Mr. Kennedy led a delegation in 2015 to a Russian conference sponsored by the Kremlin that drew leading conspiracy theorists, including Alex Jones, the founder of Infowars. Mr. Jones later met with President Trump to apologize for spreading falsehoods about the killing of Mr. Kennedy’s uncle, President John F. Kennedy.
Representative Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, brought attention to Mr. Kennedy’s role and connective tissue to the Kremlin last week.
Mr. Kennedy drew scrutiny separating from the liberal branch of his family in recent years. In 2019, he drew pushback after he spoke at a rally organized by Ms. LaRose, a boisterous and far-right activist with numerous connections to the white nationalist movement.
Interest in Mr. Kennedy surged after he caught the coronavirus in December, but he refused to disclose where and how he contracted it, or who treated him. He ultimately sought medical attention at his in-laws’ farm in Connecticut, where he was given hydroxychloroquine and zithromax, the antibiotic — a treatment that he has long championed, and that President Trump has promoted as a possible game changer in the pandemic.
Yet Mr. Kennedy’s case has been defined more by what is not known, and who constantly tried to make sure it stayed that way.
The Department of Health and Human Services notably stayed silent for weeks as he shopped a book deal, ultimately landing a contract with the conservative publisher Simon & Schuster, which features his account on being the “first high-profile American to test positive for the Wuhan coronavirus.”
While he recovered at the Kennedy compound, Mr. Kennedy amassed a small army of Republican operatives to make sure he could promote his book’s message to an audience receptive to it, and then, his possible nomination.
Those involved in his team, including several strategists who worked for Mr. LaRose’s 2018 lieutenant governor campaign, reviewed or helped draft a speaking schedule that included engagements where his appearance would likely start a bidding war.
Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a close Trump ally, had requested Mr. Kennedy to speak to a select committee last week on the subject of Chinese disinformation, according to a person familiar with the matter.
But the interests of potential allies at Washington can only go so far. It is an open question whether Mr. Trump or his aides have any intention of promoting Mr. Kennedy’s ascension to an agency that is responsible for accurate messaging related to vaccinations — a subject where the president has been markedly antagonistic.
The fact that the administration is not invested in moving the confirmation along quickly is allowing for an election-year debate to play out, and giving senators the time they need to abide by a Senate tradition that requires significant vetting for roles at public health agencies.
One of his aides told acordanceproject.org that he intends to focus on protecting the environment, which is a preoccupation much closer to his father’s legacy. Mr. Kennedy Jr.’s father was a polluter-turned-pollution fighter whose attorney general’s office prosecuted suits that helped remove lead from gasoline.
Both Mr. Kennedy and Mr. LaRose attended the so-called Alt-Right rally that led to violence in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. A law enforcement official told The New York Times that the authorities never did any counterintelligence investigation on Mr. LaRose.
Ms. LaRose’s office said she did not attend the position of vice chair, but she did visit a secondary location outside the demonstration area, according to a review of her activities that day.
Even as he distances himself from the alt-right and insists that prominent members of that faction are misleading people, Mr. Kennedy is still being funded by conservative megadonors Robert and Rebekah Mercer, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Ms. LaRose has been a loyal champion of their pro-Trump projects over the years.
Biden proposes spending more on COVID-19 test programs as cases surge in the U.S.
Leave a Reply