Trump chooses anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary
NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, putting a man whose views public health officials have decried as dangerous in charge of a massive agency that oversees drug, vaccine and food safety, medical research and the social safety net programs Medicare and Medicaid.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump said in a post on his social media site announcing the appointment. Kennedy, he said, would “Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
Kennedy is one of the most prominent anti-vaccine activists in the world and has long advanced the debunked idea that vaccines cause autism and other health issues.
Trump also announced Thursday that he has chosen Doug Collins, a former congressman from Georgia, to run the Department of Veterans Affairs. Collins is a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force Reserve Command. The Republican served in Congress from 2013 to 2021, and he helped defend Trump during his first impeachment process.
Hailing from one of the nation’s most storied political families, Kennedy is the son of Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of President Kennedy.
He first challenged President Biden for the Democratic nomination last year, then ran as an independent but abandoned his bid after striking a deal to give Trump his endorsement in exchange for a promise to have a role in health policy in Trump’s administration.
He and Trump say they have since become good friends, with Kennedy frequently receiving loud applause at Trump’s rallies. “I’m going to let him go wild on health,” Trump said at a rally last month.
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During his victory speech in Florida last week, Trump exclaimed, “Go have a good time, Bobby!”
Still, it had been unclear what job he would be offered. In an October interview on CNN, Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick said there was no way Kennedy would receive the job he eventually got.
The appointment drew alarms from public health experts.
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is not remotely qualified for the role and should be nowhere near the science-based agencies that safeguard our nutrition, food safety and health,” said Dr. Peter Lurie, president of the public health watchdog group Center for Science in the Public Interest.
Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, told the Associated Press, “I don’t want to go backwards and see children or adults suffer or lose their lives to remind us that vaccines work, and so I am concerned.”
“Any misinformation coming from places of influence, of power, are concerning,” she said.
During the campaign, Kennedy told NewsNation that Trump had asked him to “reorganize” agencies including the CDC, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.
Kennedy has pushed against processed foods and the use of herbicides such as Roundup weed killer. He has long criticized the large commercial farms and animal feeding operations that dominate the industry.
But he is perhaps best known for his criticism of childhood vaccines.
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Again and again, Kennedy has made his opposition to vaccines clear. In July, he said in a podcast interview that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” and told Fox News that he still believes in the long-ago debunked idea that vaccines can cause autism.
In a 2021 podcast, he urged people to resist CDC guidelines that advise when kids should receive routine vaccinations.
“I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, ‘Better not get them vaccinated,’ ” Kennedy said.
Repeated scientific studies in the U.S. and abroad have found no link between vaccines and autism. Vaccines have been proved safe and effective in laboratory testing and in real-world use in hundreds of millions of people over decades. The World Health Organization credits childhood vaccines with preventing as many as 5 million deaths a year.
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Trump during his first term launched Operation Warp Speed, an effort to speed the production and distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine in the early months of the pandemic. The resulting vaccines were widely credited, including by Trump, with saving many lives.
Trump, in his announcement, said that under Kennedy the Department of Health and Human Services would “play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming Health Crisis in this Country.” But Health and Human Services does not have jurisdiction over many of those issues, which fall under the purview of the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Agriculture.
Kennedy is an attorney who has built a loyal following over several decades of people who admire his lawsuits against major pesticide and pharmaceutical companies. He has pushed for tighter regulations on the ingredients in foods.
With the Trump campaign, he worked to shore up support among young mothers in particular, with his message of making food more healthful in the U.S., promising to model regulations imposed in Europe. He named the effort “Make America Healthy Again.”
It remains unclear how that will square with Trump’s history of deregulation of big industries, including food. Trump pushed for fewer inspections of the meat industry, for example.
Kennedy also has said he would recommend removing fluoride from drinking water, although fluoride levels are mandated by state and local governments. The addition of the material has been cited as leading to improved dental health and is considered safe at low levels.
Kennedy has said he would seek to ban certain food additives, cracking down on substances such as food dyes and preservatives, which are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. He has also targeted pesticides, which are jointly regulated by the EPA and the FDA.
Kennedy has also drawn headlines for his history with wild animals. He admitted to dumping a dead bear in New York’s Central Park — placing it as though it had been hit by a bike — and found himself the subject of a federal probe after his daughter revealed that he had cut off a beached whale’s head and strapped it to the roof of his car to take home.
The National Marine Fisheries Service is investigating claim that RFK Jr. cut off the head of a dead whale and took it home two decades ago.
The Department of Health and Human Services has more than 80,000 employees across the country. Kennedy has promised to take a serious look at those who work for the department and its agencies, including the FDA, the National Institutes of Health and the CDC.
Kennedy’s stance on vaccines raises questions about his ability to get confirmed, even in a Republican-controlled Senate.
Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) would not comment on Trump’s pick of Kennedy or any other potential nominee. “I’m not going to make any judgments about any of these folks at this point,” he said.
But Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) posted on X: “Bad day for Big Pharma! @RobertKennedyJr.”
Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the No. 3 Democrat, said Kennedy’s confirmation would be “nothing short of a disaster for the health of millions of families.”
But not every Democrat recoiled from the news. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said he hopes Kennedy will “lean into personal choice” on vaccines.
That idea is concerning to former New York Public Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan, who said that if people opt against vaccines, deadly viruses could run wild. He points to an increase in measles outbreaks — 16 so far this year, compared with four last year. “That’s going to continue if we have someone at the top of our health system that is saying, ‘I’m not so sure about the science here,’” Vasan said.
FDA could have one of the biggest shakeups, with Kennedy’s promises of more regulations — action that would buck the moves that previous Republican administrations have made. He has promised a crackdown on food dyes and preservatives. And with pharmaceutical companies, he’s suggested that drugmakers be barred from advertising on TV, a multibillion-dollar enterprise that accounts for most of the industry’s marketing dollars. He also proposed eliminating fees that drugmakers pay the FDA to review their products.
He wants to weaken FDA regulations around a host of unsubstantiated therapies, including psychedelics and stem cells as well as discredited COVID-era drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
Kennedy will also focus on ending the “revolving door” of employees who have previous history working for pharmaceutical companies or leave government service to work for that industry, his former campaign communications manager, Del Bigtree, said last month. Bigtree is also an anti-vaccine organizer.
Kennedy recently said he wanted to fire and replace 600 employees at the National Institutes of Health, which oversees vaccine research. In separate comments, he has said that in his first week he would order a pause in drug development and infectious disease research, shifting the focus to chronic diseases.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them the Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
Trump on Thursday also nominated North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, his former rival in the Republican presidential primary, to lead the Department of the Interior; and Jay Clayton, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term, to serve as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Colvin and Seitz write for the Associated Press and reported from New York and Washington, respectively. AP writer Zeke Miller in Washington and JoNel Aleccia in Temecula, Calif., contributed to this report.
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