Robert F Kennedy Jr.

Announced as Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services

Trump announced Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as his pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy is known for spreading conspiracy theories, especially regarding vaccines, and has vilified public health agencies.

Kennedy entered the 2024 Democratic presidential primary in April 2023. In October 2023, he dropped out of the Democratic primary and announced a run as an independent. Billionaire Timothy Mellon, a major Trump donor, gave $25 million to a Super PAC supporting Kennedy, who some considered a potential spoiler for Democrats. After pulling out of the race in August 2024 and endorsing Trump, Kennedy vowed to remove his name from 10 states where he could be a “spoiler” to the Trump campaign. Kennedy transformed his campaign into the so-called “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement and pushed his supporters to Trump. In a video posted to X, RFK Jr. urged his supporters: “No matter what state you live in, you should be voting for Donald Trump. And let me tell you why. That’s the only way that we can get me and everything I stand for into Washington, DC, and fulfill the mission that motivated my campaign.”

The Atlantic has described the alliance between Trump and Kennedy as “the natural culmination of a broader trend in American politics that has seen the Trumpian right meld with the vax-skeptical, anti-establishment left.” Before the election, Kennedy told his supporters that Trump “promised” him control of public health agencies, though the Trump transition team co-chair said to CNN in response that “[h]e’s not getting a job for HHS.” If confirmed, Kennedy will be “responsible for the huge Medicare and Medicaid health coverage programs, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

Kennedy, who has repeatedly suggested that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, seeks to restructure federal health agencies via mass layoffs and staff replacement. He has pledged to redirect NIH research. Per the Atlantic, RFK Jr. has said that “Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci are ‘members of a ‘vaccine cartel’ trying to kill patients by denying them hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin,” arguing “that this cartel secretly funded doctors to produce fraudulent studies showing that the drugs were ineffective against COVID—and that it did so in order to orchestrate global lockdowns and accelerate the construction of 5G cellular networks.” He also suggested that COVID was a bioweapon targeted to attack “certain races disproportionately.” Kennedy recently warned of “an organized, systematic, devious, nefarious project by elites … elites to turn the world into a technocracy[…] trusting the experts is not a feature of democracy, it is not a feature of science […] it’s a feature of totalitarianism.” In response to his planned nomination, more than 75 Nobel Laureates warned in a letter to the Senate that Kennedy’s confirmation would “put the public’s health in jeopardy and undermine America’s global leadership in the health sciences.”

As head of HHS, Kennedy could hold the authority to appoint and dismiss members of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, which is tasked with making evidence-based recommendations on vaccine safety and effectiveness to the FDA, and Kennedy could instruct the CDC to take actions reducing vaccine access.

Kennedy has been one of the most prominent voices in the anti-vaccine movement, leading the Children’s Health Defense which, per the NYT, was a “a symbol of the vaccine resistance movement” an part of the “Disinformation Dozen, which refers to the top 12 superspreaders of misinformation about Covid-19 on the internet.” anti-vaccine nonprofit which spreads medical misinformation. Kennedy has spread the debunked theory associating vaccines with autism, which Trump suggested the HHS will investigate under Kennedy. Kennedy also suggested that the polio vaccine caused a wave of cancers that “killed many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did.” Per the NYT, RFK Jr.’s lawyer, Aaron Siri, has “asked the F.D.A. to revoke approval of the Polio vaccine […] Siri, who specializes in vaccine lawsuits, has been at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s side reviewing candidates for top jobs at the Department of Health and Human Services.”

Kennedy has also tied school shootings to antidepressants, chemicals in water to transgender youth, and WiFi radiation to cancer. He has also cast doubt on the details of the September 11th attacks and the assassinations of his uncle, the President John F. Kennedy, and his father, Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Other members of the Kennedy family have publicly distanced themselves from his views, emphasizing that they do not share his stance on vaccines, his endorsement of conspiracy theories, or his endorsement of Trump.

Kennedy has a history of allegedly transporting dead animal carcases. In an interview with Kick Kennedy, (RFK Jr. ’s daughter), Town and Country Magazine reported “When she was six, word got out that a dead whale had washed up on Squaw Island in Hyannis Port. Bobby — who likes to study animal skulls and skeletons — ran down to the beach with a chainsaw, cut off the whale’s head, and then bungee-corded it to the roof of the family minivan for the five-hour haul back to Mount Kisco, New York. ‘Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet,’ Kick recalls. ‘We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us.’ AP reported federal law enforcement had opened an investigation into Kennedy’s alleged conduct. Kennedy also admitted to dumping a dead bear in Central Park, recounting the incident as reported by NPR: “Kennedy, an animal lover and former environmental lawyer, says he was driving upstate early one morning to take a group of people falconing in the Hudson Valley when a driver in front of him fatally hit a bear cub. ‘So I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van, because I was gonna skin the bear,’ he explains matter-of-factly. ‘It was in very good condition and I was gonna put the meat in my refrigerator.’” Kennedy goes on to explain that he rushed from falconry to dinner in NYC and later decided to dump the bear in Central Park. He never returned to Central Park to recover the bear body.

In July 2024, after a woman named Eliza Cooney alleged Kennedy sexually assaulted her while she was working for him in her early twenties as a weekend babysitter and assistant to his environmental law clinic, Kennedy said that he is not a “church boy” and “[has] so many skeletons in [his] closet.” When asked whether other women might come forward with additional sexual assault allegations, Kennedy replied, “I don’t know. We’ll see what happens.”

WHAT PROJECT 2025 SAYS ABOUT HEALTHCARE

THE POLICIES

– Repeal, with the help of Congress, the provision in the Inflation Reduction Act (​​IRA) that allows Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices.

– Separate the subsidized Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchange market from the non-subsidized insurance market to give the “non-subsidized market regulatory relief from the costly ACA regulatory mandates.”

– Eliminate the ability of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to take a “prescriptive character,” such as stating “school children must be vaccinated or masked.”

– Decommission the CDC Foundation (which supports the CDC) and National Institutes of Health Foundation (which supports the NIH).

– End research using “embryonic stem cells,” which Project 2025 describes as involving “the destruction of human life,” and restore authority for “religious accommodation of those who cannot take or administer vaccines, including those made or tested with aborted fetal cell lines.”

PRECEDING CONTEXT FOR PROJECT 2025

– Republicans have attempted to repeal the ACA nearly 70 times, with a “skinny” repeal amendment failing 49 to 51, with 49 Republicans voting “yes” and only Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and John McCain voting “no.”

– When COVID-19 Medicaid protections ended, officials in Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, New Hampshire, and South Dakota quickly removed many people from Medicaid.

– The 5th Circuit blocked the COVID-19 vaccine requirement for U.S. government workers.

– In 2023, Mississippi’s Attorney General declined to defend Mississippi’s long-standing vaccination requirements against lawsuits by anti-vaccine groups. Before this move, Mississippi’s vaccine requirements had resulted in one of the highest vaccination rates in the United States, with 99% of kindergarteners being immunized.

HOW ARE PROJECT 2025’S POLICIES POSSIBLE?

– Repealing the IRA would require congressional legislation.

– CDC has the authority to operationalize many of Project 2025’s CDC policy proposals, including those that specify not enforcing regulations, ending grant-making, and eliminating certain data collection functions.