Pressure is mounting on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as critics squeeze senators from both sides of the aisle to oppose President Trump’s pick to be the nation’s top health official.
Kennedy’s bipartisan opponents, including liberal advocates and an organization founded by former Vice President Pence, argue the nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services secretary isn’t fit to serve.
Liberals point to Kennedy’s longtime advocacy against vaccines and his role as the founder of the prominent anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense.
Democratic-aligned group Protect Our Care is spending roughly $1 million on a campaign to highlight how Kennedy could endanger the nation’s health system, running television and digital ads about his record, releasing reports using Kennedy’s own words, and holding events in the districts of key lawmakers.
In a likely preview of what Kennedy will face from Democrats in the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) last week pressed him in a letter to answer 175 questions on a range of topics including vaccines, his shifting positions on reproductive rights, his pledge to gut the National Institutes of Health, drug pricing and the Affordable Care Act, among many others.
“Given your dangerous views on vaccine safety and public health, including your baseless opposition to vaccines, and your inconsistent statements in important policy areas like reproductive rights access, I have serious concerns regarding your ability to oversee the Department,” Warren wrote.
In many cases, Warren quoted Kennedy directly and asked him to explain his comments, such as when he wrote in his 2023 book about vaccines that “[t]here is virtually no science assessing the overall health effects of the vaccination schedule or its component vaccines.”
On the Senate floor Wednesday, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said Democrats may be sympathetic to Kennedy’s arguments about healthy eating and reforming the food system, but his past advocacy against vaccines is disqualifying and puts lives at risk.
“We don’t have to bring measles and mumps back in order to fix our food system. We don’t have to bring back the horrors of polio in the name of cleansing our diet,” Schatz said.
On the conservative side, the Pence-launched group Advancing American Freedom on Wednesday launched a six-figure ad campaign opposing Kennedy’s nomination.
While the ads highlight controversial comments made by Kennedy across a variety of issues, AAF has been highlighting the former Democratic presidential candidate’s past support for abortion.
“It is not a no-brainer for a pro-life senator to just sign up on this. I think it really requires some real due diligence, and I just don’t think that’s been done yet,” Advancing American Freedom president Tim Chapman said.
Chapman said his organization wants conservative senators to know they’re not alone in questioning Kennedy’s commitment to the anti-abortion cause. Their opposition will be a test of whether traditional conservative arguments still matter to a Republican Party that has been remade under Trump.
“It is odd to me that there are not more conservatives out there who are raising the issue,” Chapman said, adding that he has heard from lawmakers who privately express their concerns but are afraid to say so publicly out of fear of backlash from the administration and its allies.
He wants to give them political cover.
“It is a very difficult environment right now for those people to go on the record and say that. So, you know, for us, we feel like it’s an obligation on our part to raise a flag, to draw attention to it, and then let the chips fall where they may,” Chapman said.
The bipartisan critiques show just how narrow Kennedy’s path to confirmation is. He can only lose three Republican votes if every Democrat votes against him.
Senate Finance Committee chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) announced Wednesday that Kennedy’s confirmation hearing will be Jan. 29.
The hearing had been held up due to delays in Kennedy’s financial disclosure and ethics reports, but once they were posted online, the hearing was quickly scheduled.
GOP senators who have met with Kennedy so far have also largely dismissed any concerns about abortion.
Kennedy has tried to reassure Republicans by saying his personal views don’t matter, and that he will implement all of the anti-abortion policies from the first Trump administration.
Kennedy “recognizes that abortion is a tragedy and is surrounding himself with proven conservatives who will quickly reverse Biden’s radical and unpopular abortion policies,” Roger Severino, a longtime anti-abortion stalwart and director of HHS’ Office for Civil Rights during the first Trump administration, said in an email.
