Rolling Stone has the most accurate headline describing the news: Republicans Confirm Anti-Vax Conspiracy Theorist To Run Nation’s Health Systems.
The Senate confirmed Kennedy in a 52-48 vote, with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) joining every Democrat in opposing the nomination. McConnell was also the only Republican to vote against confirming Tulsi Gabbard as director of National Intelligence on Wednesday.
I continue to find McConnell’s minuscule protests galling.
Regardless, Kennedy’s confirmation is just another example of the power of partisanship. We are seeing Republican Senators (including a medical doctor who knows better) vote the party line because it is their team. Yes, I do think that there is fear about primary and other attacks, but this is mostly just plain tribal.
Less than a year ago, most of these Senators would have gladly said that Kennedy was a kook. But now he is fit to run HHS as far as they are concerned. It is nakedly partisan.
Trump’s cabinet is quite the assortment of inexperienced hacks. Sort of the anti-Avengers of governance.
So far the only one who couldn’t make the cut was credibly accused of sex with minors and illegal drug use.
Quite the low bar.
The man is a conspiracy theorist who does not believe in the efficacy of vaccines and, indeed, will help spread doubt about them to the public. He has no experience running a large organization and now he oversees, among other things, the CDC, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Heckuva job, GOP.
Kennedy’s nomination was opposed by Democrats in Congress, 75 Nobel Prize winners, and thousands of doctors, as well as his cousin, former U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, who wrote in a letter to senators that he is a “predator” who is “addicted to attention and power.” Various Kennedy relatives had urged RFK Jr. to drop his 2024 presidential bid at the time and denounced him when he backed Trump.
[…]
When questioned during his Senate confirmation hearing, Kennedy did not entirely disavow some of his bizarre and unfounded medical conspiracy theories. He agreed, for example, that he had “probably said” at one point that Lyme disease is likely a militarily engineered bioweapon. However, he lied about past statements, including suggesting that pesticides cause children to become transgender, and insisted he played no role in a deadly outbreak of measles in Samoa in 2019 after Children’s Health Defense allegedly promoted anti-vaccine sentiment in the island nation. (A total of 83 people died of the preventable disease, most of them young children.)
Among the other unscientific notions spread by RFK Jr. are that prescription antidepressants may cause school shootings, that Americans are being “poisoned” by seed oils, that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are effective treatments for Covid-19, that HIV might not cause AIDS, that Wi-Fi exposure leads to brain cancer, and that fluoridated drinking water is harmful. Kennedy himself has experienced some unusual medical issues, from mercury poisoning attributed to a fish-heavy diet to the discovery of a dead parasitic worm lodged in his brain, most likely a pork tapeworm. Accounts of his strange behavior — like the time he removed a dead bear cub from a road to butcher for meat but later dumped it in Central Park — have raised doubts as to his suitability for government (to say nothing of his alleged inappropriate relationship with a journalist who profiled him during his campaign).
A recovering heroin addict, Kennedy wants to battle addiction in the U.S. with “healing farms,” though drug policy experts say this is a risky planfocused on moral redemption rather than clinical health care. He has suggested pausing all infection disease research in the country — a proposal that could be effectively enacted by DOGE-imposed cuts at the NIH, where Kennedy has said he would fire hundreds of employees. Another potential item on his agenda is the prosecution of leading medical journals if they don’t start publishing what he calls “real science,” which presumably encompasses the many debunked conspiracy theories he repeats. He has been especially critical of the FDA, accusing the agency of waging a “war on public health” and vowing to eliminate entire departments of the agency.
But, you know, the best person for the job.
What could possibly go wrong?
It is one thing to have a government formed with differing policy preferences and priorities. It is yet another for it to be stocked with inexperienced cranks and charlatans.
