Robert F. Kennedy Jr. moved one step closer Tuesday to being confirmed as the country’s top health official as the Senate Finance Committee voted 14-13 along party lines to advance his nomination.
Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a doctor who also heads the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, joined his fellow Republicans in supporting Kennedy. Cassidy had said last week that he was “struggling” with the decision and expressed concern about Kennedy’s long history of anti-vaccine activism. In a statement posted on X Tuesday, the senator said he held “very intense” talks with Kennedy and the White House leading up to the vote and thanked Vice President JD Vance for the “honest counsel” he had provided. “With the serious commitments I’ve received from the administration and the opportunity to make progress on the issues we agree on like healthy foods and a pro-American agenda, I will vote yes,” Cassidy wrote.
In a speech on the Senate floor, Cassidy said he had been inundated with messages both for and against Kennedy. He said he had decided to support Kennedy’s nomination after receiving various promises and assurances, including a commitment to protect “the public health benefit” of vaccines. “Vaccines save lives,” Cassidy said. “They are safe. They do not cause autism. There are multiple studies that show this. They are a crucial part of our nation’s public health response.”
Cassidy said that Kennedy and the Trump administration had agreed to work closely with him and keep current vaccine approval and safety monitoring systems. Cassidy said he had also been promised that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advisory committee on immunization practices would stay in place and the CDC would not remove statements from its website saying that vaccines do not cause autism.
Cassidy also promised that, as chairman of the Senate’s health panel, he would watch for any effort to instill public fear of vaccines and would use his oversight authority “to rebuff any attempt to remove the public’s access to life saving vaccines without ironclad causational scientific evidence that can be accepted and defended before the mainstream scientific community and before Congress.”
Democrats remain steadfastly opposed: Democrats said that Kennedy represents a threat to American health and well-being as well as the future of science in the country. They noted that he was given ample opportunity to recant anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and state publicly that the science around routine vaccinations was settled, but he had repeatedly refused to do so. “Peddling these conspiracy theories as the nation’s chief health care officer will be deadly for kids across the country,” Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, said.
Democrats also warned about Kennedy’s potential financial conflicts of interest and the risk that he might allow the Trump administration to restrict access to abortion or the abortion pill mifepristone. And they pointed out that, during his confirmation hearings, Kennedy displayed a troubling lack of knowledge about the Medicare and Medicaid programs he’d be overseeing. “That alone should be disqualifying,” Wyden said.
The bottom line: A vote by the full Senate has yet to be scheduled, and Wyden told reporters he thought more no votes could emerge when the nomination is brought to the Senate floor. As of now, though, it appears that Kennedy is well on his way to a somewhat surprising confirmation. That would be another win for President Donald Trump and another display of the sway he still holds over congressional Republicans.