Zinger Key Points
- Senators are likely to question Kennedy’s views on vaccines, abortion and his “Make America Healthy Again" agenda.
- Kennedy is set to appear before the Senate Committee on Finance and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will begin Senate confirmation hearings on Wednesday as President Donald Trump's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
What To Know: If confirmed by the Senate, Kennedy would oversee the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Medicare and Medicaid as the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy is set to appear before the Senate Committee on Finance on Wednesday where he is expected to face questions regarding his unorthodox views on vaccines, abortion and "Make America Healthy Again” agenda. He will stand before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Thursday, where he’s likely to face similar questions.
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Senators are likely to question Kennedy's views on vaccine research as the nominee has supported debunked theories that certain routine childhood vaccines cause autism. He was also an outspoken critic of COVID-19 vaccines produced by Pfizer, Inc. PFE and Moderna, Inc. MRNA.
Questions on Kennedy's skepticism of vaccines is timely as bird flu is spreading through wild birds and poultry farms in the U.S.. A new strain of bird flu was identified at a duck farm in California and is raising concerns that the virus is mutating in a way that could create a wider outbreak in humans, according to a report from the Washington Post.
While campaigning for president in 2024, Kennedy wrote a post on social media doubting the safety and efficacy of bird flu vaccines in particular.
"There is no evidence these vaccines will work, and they appear to be dangerous," Kennedy wrote.
He also attempted to push a conspiracy theory where deadly bird flu strains were being engineered in government labs in order to create a market for pharmaceutical companies to profit from vaccines.
"We already know our public health agencies are out of control. We have to stop the runaway gain-of-function experiments and the highly lucrative pandemic vaccine experiments right now," he wrote.
What Else: A member of the Kennedy family, Caroline Kennedy, released a letter on Tuesday urging members of the Senate to reject the nomination of her cousin as secretary of health.
In the letter, Caroline Kennedy described Robert Kennedy as a drug addict and a charismatic predator. She alleged he "enjoyed" placing baby chicks and mice in a blender to feed to his birds in a "perverse scene of despair and violence."
Caroline is the former U.S. ambassador to Australia and Japan and the daughter of former President John F. Kennedy. Her cousin Robert is the son of Robert F. Kennedy, the former presidential candidate, attorney general and senator. Both men were assassinated in the 1960s.
She praised the American health care system as the best in the world in her statement and said the American people deserve a better leader for the country’s critical health systems.
"They deserve a Secretary committed to advancing cutting-edge medicine to save lives, not rejecting the advances we have already made. They deserve a stable, moral, and ethical person at the helm of this crucial agency. They deserve better than Bobby Kennedy- and so do the rest of us," Kennedy wrote.
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