If the reception Robert F. Kennedy Jr. received from Democratic senators last week is any indication of how they’ll vote on his confirmation to serve as President Donald Trump’s health secretary, Kennedy’s going to need 50 Republicans to back him.
The Senate Finance Committee will vote Tuesday on the recommendation of Kennedy’s confirmation to lead federal health agencies, the committee announced Sunday.
From the opening statement of Senate Finance ranking member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to the most junior Democrats on the Senate’s health panel, Kennedy took a beating from the left side of the dais, mainly for his views about vaccines, during two days of confirmation hearings.
“I will be voting against your nomination because your views are dangerous to our state and to our country,” said Maryland Democrat Angela Alsobrooks after Kennedy defended his view that Black people should be on a different vaccine schedule than white people.
Kennedy could still win a surprise vote from the Democratic caucus. But the likeliest possibilities — senators like Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, or New Jersey’s Cory Booker, who share Kennedy’s desire to regulate pollution and food additives — have given every indication they’ll be nos.
After the health committee hearing, Booker shared a video on X of an emotional Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) in which she spoke of her son’s cerebral palsy and the torment she felt as a mother that something she did could have caused it. “The problem with this witness’ response on the autism cause and relationship to vaccines is because he is relitigating and churning settled science so we can’t go forward,” she said.
“So moved by my colleague,” Booker wrote.
Though Kennedy’s the scion of a storied Democratic family and Democrats once craved his endorsement in their campaigns, they now cannot abide his skepticism of vaccines or his willingness to ally with Trump.
Kennedy dropped his own presidential bid in August to endorse Trump.
Even Kennedy’s law school roommate and former hunting buddy, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), lectured him during the Finance hearing on Kennedy’s years of casting doubt on the safety of widely accepted shots. “You frighten people,” Whitehouse said.
It’s not that Senate Democrats have forgotten that Kennedy’s father, Robert, was a senator, one uncle, John, a president, and the other, Edward, the Senate’s “liberal lion” during more than 46 years in the chamber.
Sanders referenced all three in addressing Kennedy at the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on Thursday before unleashing a barrage of hostile questions about Kennedy’s views about vaccines and drug prices. It got so heated that another senator, Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), interrupted to accuse Sanders of “battering the witness.”
Democrats’ assault went beyond Kennedy’s views on vaccines.
They called out his past support for abortion rights, accusing him of flip-flopping to appease Trump, who appointed three of the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.
They criticized him for his shaky responses to basic Medicare and Medicaid questions, and they drew attention to past Kennedy claims that AIDS is a different disease in Africa and Wi-Fi causes cancer.
Kennedy was nonplussed, citing a large turnout of devotees of his “Make America Healthy Again” movement, who filled the hearing rooms.
He chalked up Democrats’ criticism to his alliance with Trump.
“All these Democrats are opposed to me for partisan issues,” he said. “They used to be my friends, agreed with me on all the environmental issues that I’ve been working on for my whole career. Now they’re against me because anything that President Trump does, any decision he makes, has to be lampooned, derided, discredited, marginalized, vilified.”
