Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as Health Secretary by the Senate in a 52-48 vote on Thursday. Every Republican voted in his favor except for former party leader Senator Mitch McConnell (Ky.). Democrats unanimously opposed Kennedy’s confirmation.
President Donald Trump picked Kennedy to run his administration’s Health and Human Services as the leader of the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ (MAHA) movement. Kennedy’s platform has sounded the alarm about the rise of chronic disease in America and the poor nutritional options preferred by American consumers. Additionally, MAHA is skeptical of the fast food industry and harshly critical of the close relationship between pharmaceutical corporations and the public health bureaucracy.
RFK Jr was initially a Democratic and then independent presidential candidate, who ended his own campaign last summer before throwing his full weighted support to Trump. Voting battles followed as some states refused to remove Kennedy as a candidate from their ballots, arguably in the hopes that Trump would not receive votes of Kennedy supporters.
National Review reports on how Republicans advanced Kennedy’s nomination through the Senate Finance Committee earlier this month along partisan lines thanks to a crucial moment when he secured the support of Senator Bill Cassidy (R., La.) a medical doctor who was concerned about Kennedy’s skepticism of vaccines and history of falsely linking vaccines to autism.
“Cassidy, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said in a statement that he decided to back Kennedy after receiving assurances from Vice President JD Vance. Not long after, Cassidy delivered a speech on the Senate floor where he listed all of the concessions he received from Kennedy on vaccine promotion and congressional access” writes National Review.
Kennedy will now be tasked with handling the more than $1.5 trillion HHS budget, giving him control over a large umbrella of public health and safety, as well as Medicare and Medicaid.
