Rfk Jr. Is Ready To Make His Case To Senators

The scene Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is set to face in the Senate Wednesday not long ago would have seemed like something out of a bizarro world.

Before President Donald Trump named the scion of Democratic royalty and progressive activist to lead the government’s health agencies, Republicans would have seen Kennedy’s views on vaccines, abortion, environmental regulation and food production as disqualifying. Not anymore. On Wednesday, look for many GOP senators on the Finance Committee to lob softballs Kennedy’s way. On the other side of the dais, Democrats who once craved Kennedy’s endorsement during their campaigns are expected to rebuke him.

Whether Kennedy will win the Finance panel’s approval and advance to a floor vote remains an open question. Any one Republican could complicate his confirmation hopes if Democrats are united in opposition.

But Kennedy’s nomination and the welcome reception from most Republicans nonetheless puts in stark contrast the conservative Republican Party that existed before Trump and the populist juggernaut Trump has made. The hearing will also show that the Kennedy name no longer demands Democratic deference, and that Kennedy himself is no longer the progressive environmentalist Democrats on the panel knew.

“There are so many things about RFK Jr. that would seem to make him a Democratic appointee instead of a Republican one — but so much of that is overshadowed by his anti-vaccine views, which resonate with Republicans after the Covid experience,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president at the health policy think tank KFF.

If Kennedy advances to a floor vote, it’ll set off alarm bells among public health advocates about Republicans’ health agenda. Trump promised in the waning days of his campaign to let Kennedy, who has spent recent years maligning the public health establishment and discouraging Americans from getting vaccinated, to “go wild on health.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics is sending senators stories of the life-saving effects of vaccination, and it and the American Public Health Association, which represents public health workers, are planning a press conference to follow the Finance Committee’s hearing.

To this point, no Republican senator has publicly opposed Kennedy’s nomination as secretary of Health and Human Services.

Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy, who has a seat on Finance and will chair another hearing with Kennedy on Thursday of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, issued a tepid response after meeting with him earlier this month. A gastroenterologist before entering politics, Cassidy said they had had a “frank” conversation and that the two spoke “at length” about vaccines.

He’s since remained mum about how he’ll vote. “Don’t ask me about RFK — I’m not answering,” Cassidy said earlier this month.

Kennedy’s cousin and former President John F. Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy, released a letter to senators on Tuesday decrying Kennedy’s “crusade against vaccination.”

But Kennedy’s history as an anti-vaccine activist doesn’t seem to bother Finance member Roger Marshall, who is an OB-GYN and goes by “doc.” He told POLITICO he strongly supports Kennedy. He’s so enthused with Kennedy’s focus on the root causes of disease that he co-founded a caucus to help the nominee pursue his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.

But there’s more at stake than Kennedy’s views on vaccines, Levitt said.

“He would be heading up an agency that oversees the health coverage for half the nation,” he said, referring to the Medicare and Medicaid programs. “That’s been overshadowed by his views on vaccines and many other views that are counter to scientific consensus.”

If Kennedy were to pursue even a fraction of the policy agenda he espoused as an activist, it would upend HHS and the public health system. Yet his history of demanding major changes to the food system hasn’t scared off farmland senators in the GOP. Nor has his past support for abortion rights deterred the chamber’s anti-abortion advocates, despite a push by a group run by former Vice President Mike Pence to convince anti-abortion senators to vote no.

Industries that, historically, have cheered the deregulatory Cabinet nominees of Republican presidents are fretting about Kennedy — though doing so quietly.

On the Democratic side, look for some of the most critical questions to come from the progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, the state that lifted the Kennedy family to prominence.

Though Kennedy’s past support for government regulation to protect the environment and promote healthy food was progressive, progressives have mostly derided his candidacy to lead HHS.

That’s a function both of his efforts to sow doubts about vaccines — he’s said the measles vaccine causes autism, the polio vaccine might have “killed many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did,” and the Covid shot was “the deadliest vaccine ever made” — and his decisions first to run for president against then-President Joe Biden and later to drop out and endorse Trump.

The endorsement prompted five of Kennedy’s eight living siblings to denounce him, as did other extended family members.

Republican staffers, granted anonymity to frankly discuss the dynamics, say this week’s confirmation hearings have the potential to make an uncomfortable vote downright difficult — and test Trump’s power over the Senate.

But the disruption that Kennedy brings to the health policy conversation could be useful to move beyond gridlock, some experts believe.

“It is a breath of fresh air to hear chronic diseases and prevention be talked about on the national stage as the most important health care policy topic,” Dr. Anand Parekh, who served as a career executive at HHS and is now chief medical adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank, said. “The question is, even though the diagnosis is right, is the prescription right?”

Besides Kennedy’s views, the nominee’s personal behavior could be a subject of questioning. Eliza Cooney told Vanity Fair last summer that Kennedy forcibly groped her in the late 1990s. Kennedy, who said the Vanity Fair report was “a lot of garbage,” later apologized to Cooney but said he had no memory of the events. Even so, when asked about the incident, he admitted: “I’m not a church boy.”

Then there’s Kennedy’s campaign season admissions that he dumped a dead bear in Central Park and that the National Marine Fisheries Service was investigating him for cutting off a whale’s head and driving it home three decades ago.

Pence’s group has raised other concerns: Kennedy’s theory that wireless technology causes toxins to enter the brain and his past heroin addiction.

The Washington Post on Tuesday published a letter from Kennedy’s cousin Patrick, who has struggled with addiction and is the son of former Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), defending Kennedy’s ideas about treating substance use disorder.

Kennedy has sought to assure GOP senators he is more concerned about Trump’s vision for the country than his own — and that he’s changed his mind about many of his past views.

Kennedy has told them he’s now “all for" the polio shot, for example, and Trump has said his pick is ready to work with the pharmaceutical industry he’s long demonized.

Kennedy allies are trying to woo not only Republicans but also Democrats they think could back him, like Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, who has a seat on Finance. In the run-up to his hearing, Kennedy made his case to others on the panel, including Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), in private meetings.

But senators have also weathered more than $1 million in ads opposing Kennedy's run by health groups aligned with the Democratic Party.

They’ll have to decide where they stand after hearing from Kennedy.