The Senate on Thursday voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the 26th secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), taking over the role from the Biden administration’s Xavier Becerra. Senators voted mostly along party lines, with 52 Republicans voting in favor and 45 Democrats voting against Kennedy, along with two Independents. (Senator Mitch McConnell was the sole Republican to vote no.)
Kennedy is the 15th Trump nominee to be confirmed by the Senate, following Wednesday’s confirmation of Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence. As HHS secretary, Kennedy will oversee tens of thousands of clinicians and scientists across 13 agencies, including the CDC, FDA, NIH, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
Kennedy’s likelihood of confirmation was initially uncertain, with multiple Republican lawmakers expressing skepticism over his history of anti-vaccine rhetoric. A Republican group led by former Vice President Mike Pence targeted him in a six-figure ad campaign, citing his past support for abortion rights. And the Committee to Protect Healthcare, a coalition of more than 20,000 physicians and advocates who say they “hold anti-healthcare politicians accountable,” urged the Senate to reject Kennedy in a letter.
During two Senate hearings, RFK Jr. was repeatedly pressed about his views on vaccines and whether he would restrict access to them as secretary—a position he previously denied. He claimed during the hearings that he is not anti-vaccine but rather “pro-safety.”
He also backtracked on his past support for abortion rights, saying he believes that every abortion is a “tragedy,” that each state should be able to regulate abortion rights, and that he’ll implement whatever policies President Trump asks him to.
Kennedy was also tested on his knowledge of Medicare and Medicaid during the hearings, and seemed to answer questions on the programs incorrectly. For example, he said Medicaid is fully funded by the government, though it is financed by both state and federal dollars (the next day he claimed he had misspoken on the matter), and struggled to explain what Medicare Parts A, B, and C cover, CNBC reported.
His confirmation comes as public trust in HHS and other federal health agencies is slipping. In the past 18 months, the share of people in the US who say they trust the CDC fell from 66% to 61%, according to a poll from health policy research firm KFF. And the number of people who say they trust the FDA fell from 65% to 53% over the same time period, the poll found.
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RFK Jr.’s platform. Since he was announced as the president’s nominee in November, Kennedy has vowed to “Make America Healthy Again.” Many of his proposed policies center on nutrition, with Kennedy making promises like banning ultraprocessed foods from school lunches, increasing access to raw milk, and eliminating fluoride from water systems.
Other initiatives he’s floated include reassessing vaccine safety standards, cutting or redirecting NIH funding, and changing how Medicare pays physicians.
Conflicts of interest. In financial disclosures released prior to his confirmation process, Kennedy said he had resigned from his position at Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine nonprofit, and would divest his stakes in various healthcare companies, including Massachusetts biotech company Dragonfly Therapeutics and Swiss gene editing company CRISPR Therapeutics.
The disclosures also revealed that Kennedy has made more than $850,000 from law firm Wisner Baum, which he’s been working with since 2018 on a lawsuit claiming pharmaceutical company Merck’s HPV vaccine Gardasil causes dangerous side effects, Reuters reported. The disclosures stated Kennedy would still collect fees for the litigation as HHS secretary, though he seemed to suggest on Jan. 30 he would not take the money, the New York Times reported.
The ramifications. Lawrence Gostin, faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, told Healthcare Brew the implications of Kennedy’s confirmation could be “enormous.”
Kennedy is “unqualified” to be HHS secretary because “the basic core requirement is fidelity to science and a willingness to shape health policy based on evidence,” Gostin said. The newly minted secretary has failed to live up to that standard throughout his career, according to Gostin, who cited examples of previous claims Kennedy has made including that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism and that the Covid-19 virus targeted people based on their ethnicity.
“He could do enormous damage to the health and safety of the US population,” Gostin said.