Two years and a few weeks ago, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke at an anti-vaccine mandate rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. On Wednesday, the Senate voted to advance Kennedy’s nomination for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, putting him at the helm of public health infrastructure in the U.S.
Only a final Senate vote now stands between Kennedy and the most powerful health position in the country. That vote will likely take place later this month.
Senators voted on party lines, 53-47.
Since making a name for himself as a warrior for “health freedom,” Kennedy has publicly distanced himself from many of the conspiratorial claims he put forth about vaccines and other well-established public health interventions. If it was intended to make him more palatable for the medical professionals in the Senate like Sen. Bill Cassidy, it seems to have worked: Cassidy announced last week that he would support Kennedy’s nomination after having “very intense conversations” in which Kennedy personally assured him that he wouldn’t try to hinder vaccine access.
“We need a leader at HHS who will guide President Trump’s agenda to Make America Healthy Again,” Cassidy said in a floor speech after his announcement. “Based on Mr. Kennedy’s assurances on vaccines and his platform to positively influence Americans’ health, it is my consideration that he will get this done.”
Cassidy’s concerns focused on the powerful role Kennedy could play in directing vaccine development and access from his new seat atop HHS, which encompasses the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, among other subagencies.
Some Republican senators brushed off the need for Congress to have any additional supervision over Kennedy beyond the norm.
“If [Kennedy] wants to come and have a hearing for all of us, I’d be for that. But that wouldn’t be for him just communicating with Dr. Cassidy,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville said. “But [Cassidy] wants to ask to do that, he’s surely got the will to do it.”
Longtime Kennedy ally Sen. Rand Paul agreed.
“I don’t know what [Cassidy’s] stipulations were, but everybody has their own sort of coming around to how they support a candidate,” Paul said.
But others agreed that Kennedy was a special case.
“I put a lot of stock in Cassidy’s research,” Sen. Thom Tillis said. “I think he’s right to do that. I made it clear, this is a first-of-its-kind nominee for HHS, and I’m willing to give it a chance, but I’ll be watching it very closely, particularly on vaccine efficacy and safety issues. Let the scientists do it.”
The Trump administration has already taken steps to remake the bureaucracy of the health agencies, including by shutting down some communications with outside parties and changing how the NIH funds research grants. Nearly all of the proposed changes have come up against intense scrutiny and legal challenges from the scientific community.
After a prolific career as an environmental lawyer, Kennedy spent 20 years campaigning against vaccines, which he said cause autism and other health issues.
Since announcing his run for the presidency in early 2024, though, Kennedy had sought to sterilize his image. Instead of focusing on the so-called dangers of vaccines, he instead pointed to the quality of the U.S. food supply as the source of Americans’ health woes.
But even that platform proved malleable once Kennedy gave up his own bid for the White House and joined Trump’s campaign in August 2024. Even as Trump declared that he was going to let Kennedy go “wild” on health, many of Kennedy’s policy proposals ran counter to Trump’s — and the Republican Party’s — own agenda.
Once Kennedy was nominated by Trump as the HHS secretary, whenever he needed to pivot, he pivoted. Whether it was by reneging his former support for abortion access to appease conservatives like Sen. James Lankford or backing off his anti-big agriculture agenda after senators from farming states took issue with it, he positioned himself as a born-again Trump disciple.
Of course, many of Kennedy’s followers — some of whom may be vying for positions in the new HHS administration — haven’t let go of the anti-vaccine theories and policy proposals. In perhaps a nod to this, and to the other policy views Kennedy still holds that differ from Trump’s, the Trump administration has added some of his own loyalists to Kennedy’s transition team and potential HHS office. These include Katie Miller, DOGE member and wife of Trump’s immigration policy architect Stephen Miller, and Heather Flick, who served in the HHS during Trump’s first term.
No Democrats voted for Kennedy. Sen. John Fetterman, who at one point seemed like a potential Kennedy supporter, said that he ultimately chose to vote no because of the “totality” of Kennedy’s nomination.
But he said he was supportive of the candidate regardless. Not that he feels that Democrats have much of a choice at this point: “My vote doesn’t matter,” he said. “Any Democrat’s vote don’t matter on these things.”
“The dude has the job, so it’s all virtue signaling and making a statement,” he continued. “We will not like some of these things, but that honestly reminds you that we still have a democracy. The Constitution hasn’t just been shred. Everybody can just realize that’s how D.C. works. Sometimes, one cycle, we’re the baby. Next cycle, we’re the diaper.”
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Margaret Manto is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.