2 weeks Ago By Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vocal vaccine skeptic and activist lawyer, appeared on track to become the nation’s health secretary after winning the crucial support of Republican Sen.
Bill Cassidy, a doctor who says Kennedy has assured him he would not topple the nation’s childhood vaccination program. In a starkly partisan vote, the Republican-controlled Senate Finance Committee advanced Kennedy’s nomination 14-13, sending his bid to oversee the $1.7 trillion U.
S. Health and Human Services agency for a full vote on the Senate floor. All Democrats on the committee opposed Kennedy, whose family name had been synonymous with their party for generations before he aligned with President Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign.
They sounded an alarm on Kennedy’s work to sow doubt around vaccine safety and his potential to profit off lawsuits over drugmakers. A full Senate vote has not yet been scheduled, but with Cassidy’s vote no longer in doubt Kennedy’s nomination is likely to succeed absent any last-minute vote switches. Kennedy has been among the more contentious of Trump’s Cabinet choices, and Republicans coalescing around him showed another powerful measure of near lockstep allegiance to the president.
Cassidy had publicly detailed his personal struggle, as a doctor who has seen the lifesaving ability of vaccines, with Kennedy’s confirmation. “Your past, undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments, concerns me,” Cassidy told Kennedy last week. Yet when it came to his vote Tuesday, he advanced Kennedy with a simple “aye.
” Cassidy, who is up for reelection next year and could face a primary challenge, later described “intense conversations” with Kennedy and Vice President JD Vance that started over the weekend and continued into Tuesday morning, just before the vote. Those conversations yielded “serious commitments” from the administration, Cassidy said. His reelection campaign had “absolutely zero to do with the decision,” he told reporters.
Cassidy said in a speech later on the Senate floor that, in exchange for his support, Kennedy has promised not to make changes to existing vaccine recommendations that have been made by a federal advisory committee and has agreed not to scrub the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of statements that clarify vaccines do not cause autism. In addition, Cassidy said Kennedy will consult with him on new hires for the agency and appear if asked quarterly before the Senate’s health committee, which Cassidy chairs. A 30-day notice will be sent to the committee if Kennedy seeks to make changes federal vaccine safety monitoring programs.
“He will be the secretary,” Cassidy said. “But I believe he will also be a partner in working for this end.” Republican Sen.
Thom Tillis of North Carolina, another vulnerable vote that Kennedy worked to win over, said he was reassured last week by the health secretary nominee’s promise to let scientists at the public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes for Health, work “independently.” “The only way that Bobby Kennedy will get crosswise is if he does take a position against the safety of proven vaccines,” Tillis said. “That will be a problem to me.
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