Tatiana Schlossberg condemned her cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his vaccine skepticism while announcing her terminal cancer diagnosis.
The environmental reporter, 35, shared the heartbreaking news in a New Yorker essay on Saturday, November 22, that she’d been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and had been given one year to live by her doctors.
Schlossberg was initially diagnosed after giving birth to her daughter — whose name she has kept private — in May 2024. (Schlossberg and her husband, George Moran, also share a son, Edwin, 3.) She spent several weeks in New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital to undergo a bone marrow transplant and later received at-home chemotherapy treatments.
Schlossberg explained in her essay that her diagnosis coincided with her cousin RFK Jr., 71, suspending his independent presidential bid and endorsing Donald Trump in 2024. The vaccine skeptic eventually accepted a position in the Trump administration as the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
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“In August, 2024, he suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump, who said that he was going to ‘let Bobby go wild’ on health,” Schlossberg wrote in the New Yorker. “My mother wrote a letter to the Senate, to try and stop his confirmation; my brother had been speaking out against his lies for months. I watched from my hospital bed as Bobby, in the face of logic and common sense, was confirmed for the position, despite never having worked in medicine, public health, or the government.”
The journalist recalled feeling like the entire health scare system was “strained [and] shaky” at the exact moment she was reliant on round-the-clock care.
Schlossberg reflected on the additional stress of her husband, George, working as a doctor at Columbia University. (The Trump administration withdrew $400 million in grants to Columbia University in March 2025 over complaints about its response to pro-Palestinian protests on campus. A deal was later reached to restore some of the funding.)
“Columbia was one of the Trump Administration’s first targets in its crusade against alleged antisemitism on campuses; in May, the university laid off a hundred and eighty researchers after federal-funding cuts,” she wrote. “If George changed jobs, we didn’t know if we’d be able to get insurance, now that I had a preëxisting condition. Bobby is a known skeptic of vaccines, and I was especially concerned that I wouldn’t be able to get mine again, leaving me to spend the rest of my life immunocompromised, along with millions of cancer survivors, small children, and the elderly.”
Schlossberg also called out her relative for his controversial remarks on the “Lex Fridman Podcast” in 2023 that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.” (Kennedy later downplayed those comments by insisting he’s “pro safety” rather than “anti-vaccine.”)
“Bobby probably doesn’t remember the millions of people who were paralyzed or killed by polio before the vaccine was available,” she added. “My dad, who grew up in New York City in the 1940s and ‘50s, does remember. Recently, I asked him what it was like when he got the vaccine. He said that it felt like freedom.”
Elsewhere in her poignant New Yorker essay, Schlossberg acknowledged her utter shock at being diagnosed with cancer at nine months pregnant.
“I did not — could not — believe that they were talking about me. I had swum a mile in the pool the day before, nine months pregnant. I wasn’t sick. I didn’t feel sick. I was actually one of the healthiest people I knew,” Tatiana wrote in The New Yorker. “I had a son whom I loved more than anything and a newborn I needed to take care of.”
Schlossberg is far from the first member of the Kennedy family to come out against RFK Jr. Five Kennedy family members— Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Courtney Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Chris Kennedy and Rory Kennedy — released a joint statement denouncing their brother when he endorsed Trump in August 2024.
“We want an America filled with hope and bound together by a shared vision of a brighter future, a future defined by individual freedom, economic promise and national pride,” they said.
Their letter continued “Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story.”
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During an interview on CNN, Robert argued that political differences within his family were no different to those faced by millions of Americans.
“I have a big family,” he said. “I don’t know anyone in America who’s got a family who agrees with them on everything.”
Following Robert’s nomination to the HHS department in early 2025, Tatiana’s mother Caroline Kennedy criticized the nomination because her cousin lacked “any relevant, government, financial, management or medical experience.”
“His views on vaccines are dangerous and wilfully misinformed,” Caroline added.
Tatiana’s younger brother, Jack Schlossberg, even trolled Robert’s wife, Cheryl Hines, in July 2025.
“I have never met Cheryl Hines, but if I did, I’d tell her she looks super dehydrated,” Schlossberg, 32, quipped via X on July 23.
Earlier this month, Jack announced plans to run for Congress in New York’s 12th congressional district in the 2026 midterm elections.
“I’m not running because I have all the answers to our problems. I’m running because the people of New York 12 do. I want to listen to your struggles, hear your stories, amplify your voice, go to Washington and execute on your behalf,” he wrote via Instagram.
Jack continued, “There is nowhere I’d rather be than in the arena fighting for my hometown. Over the next eight months, during the course of this campaign, I hope to meet as many of you as I can. If you see me on the street, please say hello. If I knock on your door, I hope we can have a conversation. Because politics should be personal.”
