Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arrives on Capitol Hill on Monday to kickstart a number of days of personal conferences with greater than two dozen senators and their employees in a bid to grow to be the nation’s subsequent well being secretary.
Among the many senators on Kennedy’s record is Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the GOP’s decide to grow to be the subsequent Senate majority chief, and incoming Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, a physician.
Kennedy’s possibilities of getting confirmed by the Senate aren’t clear. His previous feedback questioning vaccine science and the meals business might lose — and achieve — votes on both aspect of the aisle relying on how he talks about his plans for the incoming administration.
Listed here are three questions surrounding his nomination:
Would he attempt to restrict entry to sure vaccines just like the polio shot or encourage faculties to drop vaccine mandates?
Kennedy has mentioned he isn’t against all vaccines. He says he absolutely vaccinated, except for the COVID-19 shot, and that he has vaccinated his kids.
Kennedy additionally has falsely claimed that childhood vaccines trigger autism, despite the fact that the research claiming that hyperlink has been retracted and quite a few different high-quality research have discovered no proof that vaccines are tied to autism.
As well as, Kennedy has questioned the security of the polio vaccine and enlisted the assistance of a longtime adviser and anti-vaccine advocate, Aaron Siri, to vet potential job candidates for the incoming administration.
Siri petitioned the Meals and Drug Administration in 2022 to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine on behalf of an anti-vaccination advocacy group.
Katie Miller, a transition spokesperson, mentioned Kennedy and Siri have by no means spoken about Siri’s petitions.
“Mr. Kennedy believes the polio vaccine needs to be accessible to the general public and totally and correctly studied,” she mentioned.
Secretary of Well being and Human Providers nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. departs the New York Inventory Trade (NYSE) on Dec. 12, 2024, in New York.
David Dee Delgado/AFP through Getty Photos
Dr. Richard Besser, a former head of the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention and an ABC Information contributor, mentioned senators ought to ask Kennedy if he would think about using his new put up to discourage native faculty districts from requiring vaccinations.
Whereas state — not federal — legal guidelines set up vaccination necessities for native faculties, they rely closely on the suggestions by the CDC and FDA, which Kennedy would oversee as well being secretary, if confirmed. At the moment, all 50 states and Washington, D.C., have legal guidelines requiring vaccines to attend faculties, though many supply exemptions.
“What’s going to you do to be sure that dad and mom can really feel snug sending their kids to high school shielded from measles, whooping cough and different vaccine-preventable ailments if vaccines are now not required?” Besser mentioned senators needs to be asking Kennedy.
On questioning the polio vaccine, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving Senate chief in historical past and a polio survivor, mentioned final week that anybody searching for Senate affirmation would “do effectively to avoid even the looks of affiliation with such efforts.”
Will Kennedy use ‘affirmation bias’ to overview authorities knowledge?
Affirmation bias is the concept that folks usually hunt down data that helps their very own deeply held beliefs, quite than be open to accepting new data that may problem their concepts.
In relation to the polio vaccination, Kennedy has mentioned he is prepared to say that he is improper however that he has but to see data that will persuade him.
“If you happen to present me a scientific research that reveals that I am improper … I will put that on my Twitter and I will say I used to be improper,” he mentioned in a podcast final 12 months with Lex Fridman.
It is probably a number of senators will ask Kennedy whether or not he’d be prepared to alter his thoughts on vaccines based mostly on knowledge, or if he is already satisfied that the information is improper or manipulated.
Critics say Kennedy is willfully ignoring the knowledge that is on the market already. In a letter obtained by The New York Instances, greater than 75 Nobel Prize winners urged senators to dam his nomination, citing his “lack of credentials or relative expertise” in issues of medication, science and public well being.
“In view of his document, inserting Mr. Kennedy accountable for [the Department of Health and Human Services] would put the general public’s well being in jeopardy and undermine America’s international management within the well being sciences, in each the general public and industrial sectors,” the laureates wrote.
How would he attempt to change what Individuals eat?
Kennedy finds probably the most political consensus when he talks about America’s weight problems disaster and blames the excessive ranges of sugar, sodium and fats in ultra-processed meals. A longtime environmental advocate, he is additionally taken intention at using components pushed by meals corporations — incomes him kudos from some Democrats.
“We’re prioritizing companies feeding us unhealthy merchandise as a substitute of household farmers rising contemporary, wholesome meals – and we let too many harmful chemical compounds flood our meals system,” mentioned Sen. Cory Booker final month after Kennedy’s nomination was introduced.
“All of us should come collectively to construct a system that works for all,” he added.
However one huge query many senators will probably ask is how Kennedy plans to show round America’s consuming habits in a manner that does not harm U.S. farmers or closely regulate agricultural companies which are key political supporters of President-elect Donald Trump. Throughout Trump’s first administration, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue rolled again Obama-era guidelines that sought to restrict sodium and sugar in kids’s faculty lunches that settle for federal subsidies.
FDA Administrator Robert Califf, who will step down when Trump takes workplace in January, testified lately earlier than a Senate committee that there is a lot we nonetheless do not find out about meals science and security. When the FDA does transfer forward with regulation, he mentioned the rule is commonly challenged in courtroom.
“What sounds easy, given the present state of judicial affairs, First Modification rights, [is] the truth that companies have the identical rights as people — each little factor we do, except particularly intimately instructed by Congress — it isn’t simply that we lose in courtroom, however we lose years,” he mentioned.
ABC’s Olivia Rubin contributed to this report.
