Trump taps RFK Jr. as HHS secretary
Washington — President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday in a social media post that he’ll nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
“I am thrilled to announce Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as The United States Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS),” he said in a post on X. He said Americans have been “crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation” about public health, and Kennedy would “Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
Kennedy has a long record of criticizing vaccines, including spreading misleading claims about their safety.
He has vowed to combat an “epidemic” of chronic diseases and believes that large drug and food companies are to blame for a broad swath of ailments. Kennedy has claimed a number of health issues have worsened due to federal inaction, including autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, sleep disorders, infertility rates, diabetes and obesity. He has also urged removing fluoride from drinking water.
Kennedy would need to be confirmed by the Senate. His odds of clearing a Senate led by Democrats would have been low, given his long record of what the party called “anti-science, fringe public health stances,” but with Republicans in the majority come January, Trump’s nominees will have an easier path to confirmation.
Despite the expected opposition to Kennedy’s nomination — along with other controversial choices to lead national security agencies and former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz to lead the Justice Department — Trump has told associates in recent days he is standing by his pick for health chief.
“No one can talk him out of it,” one of the sources familiar with the pick said Thursday.
Trump promised during the campaign to let Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic and former environmental lawyer, “go wild” on issues relating to health, food and medicine.
“I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on medicines,” Trump said in the final days before the election. “The only thing I don’t think I’m going to let him even get near is the liquid gold that we have under our feet … sometimes referred to as oil and gas.”
The sprawling HHS Department encompasses a number of agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Food and Drug Administration. As HHS Secretary, Kennedy would also oversee the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is charged with caring for undocumented and unaccompanied children apprehended along the border.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a watchdog group that often clashes with the FDA and in some ways is closely aligned with Kennedy’s calls to get chemicals out of foods, put out a statement condemning his nomination.
“Nominating an anti-vaxxer like Kennedy to HHS is like putting a Flat Earther at the head of NASA,” the group’s president, Dr. Peter G. Lurie, said in a statement. “CSPI opposes this nomination and any other nominees who are a direct threat to science and evidence-based solutions.”
But one prominent Democrat, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, said in a social media post that he was “excited by the news” of Kennedy’s nomination. He praised Kennedy for helping to defeat vaccine mandates in Colorado in 2019 but said he hoped that Kennedy would embrace personal choice on vaccines, rather than banning them. He also said he was optimistic about Kennedy’s vow to take on big pharma and high drug costs for Americans. Polis also backed Kennedy’s criticism of “entire departments, like the nutrition department at the FDA” that “are not doing their job, they’re not protecting our kids,” in particular from pesticides used in agriculture.
Polis later clarified his praise, saying, “Science must remain THE cornerstone of our nation’s health policy and the science-backed decision to get vaccinated improves public health and safety.”
At the same time, Polis has also launched a policy entity with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker aimed at taking on other parts of the Trump agenda.
As a co-chair of Trump’s transition, Kennedy has been vetting a slate of staffers who could fill top positions throughout the Trump administration. He has said he hopes “to have every nutritional scientist” across the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture “fired on Day One.”
The FDA’s top vaccines official, Dr. Peter Marks, said he hoped to find common ground with Kennedy.
“What I would ask of him is that he keep an open mind. We’re happy to try to show as much of the data as we can. And I think the data are essentially overwhelming, in certain areas, but we’ll just have to engage in the dialogue,” Marks said this week an event hosted by the Milken Institute in Washington, D.C., ahead of Trump’s decision.
Kennedy, who faced a costly and time-consuming process to appear on general election ballots as an independent candidate, ended his longshot bid for the White House in August and endorsed Trump.
Kennedy said there were three issues that convinced him to endorse Trump: free speech, the war in Ukraine and what he called the “war on our children.” He said processed foods, chemicals and obesity were destroying the health of children in the U.S.
At an August rally with Kennedy, Trump vowed to establish a panel to investigate chronic health problems and childhood diseases, as well as establish an independent presidential commission on assassination attempts that would be tasked with releasing all of the remaining documents related to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Kennedy is the nephew of the late president and the son of the late senator, attorney general and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.
Caitlin Huey-Burns and Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report.
