Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump's pick to be Health and Human Services secretary, leaves a meeting Jan. 8 with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont). (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Bipartisan critics of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are sharpening their arguments that he is unfit to serve as the nation’s top health official, embracing the extra time they have been given while Kennedy waits for his confirmation hearings to be scheduled.
The Office of Government Ethics as of Friday was still evaluating Kennedy’s financial disclosures, which are required for potential Cabinet officials, delaying his anticipated hearings in front of the Senate’s finance and health committees. The prominent anti-vaccine activist and former presidential candidate recently amended some of his prior disclosures, and ethics officials are looking for potential conflicts of interest, congressional aides have said.
Senators traditionally wait to schedule confirmation hearings until that process is completed.
A spokesperson for Kennedy did not respond to a question about his financial disclosures and potential hearing dates.
The delay has meant that Kennedy will not face the Senate until late January at the earliest. The holdup — and the prospect that Kennedy will be the lone high-profile Trump pick facing the Senate on a given day, rather than jockeying with multiple other nominees for attention — could amplify the spotlight on his record, scrutiny that has increased in recent weeks.
Kennedy’s disparate critics — ranging from liberals to conservatives, and encompassing leaders in the prior administration — illustrate his slender path to confirmation as secretary of health and human services. The nearly $2 trillion agency oversees Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act; approves drugs, medical equipment and vaccines; funds billions of dollars in scientific research; and steers the response to virus outbreaks, such as covid.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) previewed Thursday how Democrats are likely to examine Kennedy in upcoming hearings, laying out numerous concerns in a letter sent to Kennedy and shared with The Washington Post. The liberal senator, who sits on the Finance Committee, pressed Kennedy on his role founding an anti-vaccine organization, his recent pledge to restrict abortion access and his vows to fire federal employees, among other topics.
Many of Warren’s questions — roughly 175 in all — directly quote Kennedy’s past statements, such as his suggestion that the coronavirus may have been “ethnically targeted” to spare some Jews and Chinese.
“I ask that you review these questions and arrive prepared to answer them,” Warren wrote.
Meanwhile, former vice president Mike Pence and his conservative allies this week urged GOP senators to ask whether Kennedy — a longtime liberal and a scion of perhaps the most famous family in Democratic politics — is truly committed to restricting access to abortion medication and pursuing other goals long held by the antiabortion movement.
“We are deeply concerned,” Tim Chapman and Marc Short, who lead Advancing American Freedom, a Pence-backed group, wrote Wednesday to senators. “RFK Jr., as well as any other nominated HHS Secretary, must be able to provide satisfactory answers to the list of important pro-life questions attached to this letter.”
Public health leaders and Democratic activists have continued their own campaigns to scuttle Kennedy’s appointment, with several efforts coordinated by Protect Our Care, a Democrat-aligned advocacy group running a “Stop RFK” war room. Advocates have continued to highlight Kennedy’s record and remarks, such as his visit to meet anti-vaccine activists in Samoa before a measles outbreak rocked the island nation, and have encouraged medical experts to sign online petitions opposing him.
Several former Trump health officials have reiterated their concerns about Kennedy’s potential confirmation. Scott Gottlieb, who led the Food and Drug Administration under Trump, said at the J.P. Morgan health-care conference this week that he stands by comments made last year that Kennedy could undermine Americans’ vaccine confidence and help foster a resurgence in vaccine-preventable disease.
Other former Trump officials and GOP senators have said they stand by Kennedy’s record and are confident he will be confirmed, arguing that he will bring new scrutiny to the health-care industry and the factors behind Americans’ relatively poor health.
“We need transparency. We need to restore integrity to science,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), a staunch Kennedy supporter, said in a brief interview last month. Johnson invoked Kennedy’s criticism of the nation’s coronavirus response and his pledges to combat chronic disease, saying he had tapped into a “popular cause.”
Kennedy’s allies also see some of the Biden administration’s recent decisions as early victories, such as the FDA’s announcement Wednesday that it would ban a controversial red food dye linked to cancer in animals. Kennedy has been a vocal critic of food dyes and promised to prioritize removing them from the nation’s food supply if confirmed.
Trump and Kennedy “are getting results before even taking office,” Calley Means, a Kennedy adviser, posted on social media this week.
The public is divided on Kennedy’s candidacy. An AP-NORC poll released Wednesday found that 30 percent of Americans favor Kennedy’s selection as America’s top health official, 42 percent oppose it, and the remainder are undecided or don’t have an opinion. There are key partisan splits; 59 percent of Republicans support Kennedy for the role, compared with 10 percent of Democrats.
According to a Washington Post analysis, 20 senators have said they favor Kennedy’s candidacy as HHS secretary, 19 signaled they oppose it, and the positions of the remaining 61 are unclear. Many Democrats have said they will approach Kennedy’s confirmation with an open mind and are refusing to rule out voting for him, though they have cited deep concerns about his views on vaccines.
If Kennedy does not win support from any Democrats, he can afford to lose only three Republican votes in the closely divided Senate, where he needs 50 votes to be confirmed. He has spent the past month meeting with dozens of senators, seeking to sway them.
Kennedy has repudiated his past support for abortion, insisted he has broken with the Democratic Party and maintained he is not anti-vaccine. He vows to prioritize his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, which calls for focusing on the root causes of chronic illness.
Kennedy’s new allies have sought to shore up potential vulnerabilities. The Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative advocacy organization, released an advertisement Monday touting Kennedy as a reformer who will fight special interests and improve Americans’ health care.
Roger Severino, Heritage’s vice president of domestic policy, also defended Kennedy’s shift on abortion.
“He acknowledges that abortion is a tragedy and is surrounding himself with proven conservatives who will roll back Biden’s radical and unpopular abortion policies with alacrity,” said Severino, a senior health official in the first Trump administration who focused on conservative priorities, such as efforts to protect health-care providers who had conscience objections to performing abortions and other procedures.
Severino has been privately speaking with GOP senators to reassure them Kennedy will follow through on Trump’s antiabortion goals, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Severino declined to comment on his conversations with senators.
The fight over Kennedy’s nomination has gotten personal. Katie Miller, who was Pence’s spokeswoman in the White House and is serving as Kennedy’s spokeswoman, sharply rebuked the former vice president in a post on social media.
“Mike Pence doesn’t practice what he preaches when it comes to family values, he only does it when it’s politically expedient,” Miller wrote Wednesday. She suggested that Pence had fired her shortly after Miller gave birth in 2021 because of deep animus between Pence and Trump, who employs Miller’s husband, Stephen.
In a statement to The Washington Post, Miller defended Kennedy and said she was confident in his candidacy.
“Robert F Kennedy Jr will be confirmed and will be the best Secretary of Health and Human Services,” Miller wrote. “At President Trump’s direction, Mr. Kennedy will end the chronic disease epidemic and make America healthy again.”
Chapman, who is president of the Pence-backed Advancing American Freedom, declined to comment on Miller’s remarks or relationship with Pence. In an interview, he said his group was trying to provide political cover for conservatives to raise questions about one of Trump’s most controversial nominees.
“We had a responsibility to plant the flag, and that’s what we’re doing,” Chapman said.
Senate Democrats are also reiterating their opposition to Kennedy, recognizing that a handful of votes might be enough to stop his candidacy.
“It takes no imagination to see how dangerous it would be to confirm RFK Jr. as Health Secretary, and it takes mountains of willful ignorance to ignore it,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington) said in a statement Wednesday, after leaving her meeting with Kennedy.
