Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. President Trump’s nominee to be secretary of Health and Human Services, testifies before a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., January 30, 2025.
Nathan Howard | Reuters
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cleared a key hurdle Tuesday after a Senate panel voted to advance his nomination to be health and human services secretary to the complete chamber.
In a vote along party lines, the Senate Finance Committee pushed through Kennedy’s nomination after he managed to allay concerns raised by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., over his past anti-vaccine stances.
Cassidy, a health care provider, signaled he held serious reservations over whether Kennedy was qualified to steer the vast agency, saying he was “struggling” together with his decision after questioning him at two confirmation hearings last week. Along with the Finance Committee, Cassidy serves as chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
In a press release posted to X before Tuesday’s vote, Cassidy said he had “very intense conversations” with Kennedy and the White House over the weekend, specifically thanking Vice President JD Vance “for his honest counsel.”
“With the intense commitments I’ve received from the administration and the chance to make progress on the problems we agree on like healthy foods and a pro-American agenda, I’ll vote yes,” Cassidy said.
A scion of the storied Democratic family, Kennedy ran for president 2024, first as a Democrat after which as an independent, before dropping out to endorse Trump. While hitting the trail for Trump, Kennedy branded a “Make America Healthy Again” campaign, where he railed against food manufacturers and unhealthy ingredients within the nation’s food plan.
While some senators in each parties expressed support for making food products safer, two days of questioning last week revealed other significant objections to Kennedy.
Kennedy tripped up in answering basic questions on Medicaid, an area that constitutes a serious a part of the job of health secretary. Democratic senators objected to what they called significant conflicts of interest should he be confirmed, including that he could not directly financially profit from pending litigation against a vaccine maker that he would regulate as HHS secretary.
But amongst essentially the most vociferous objections to Kennedy got here around his repeated denials of the efficacy of vaccines. In a single committee hearing last week, Cassidy repeatedly took Kennedy to task for his refusal to embrace science showing vaccines don’t cause autism.
“I can say that I’ve approached it using the preponderance of evidence to reassure and you’ve got approached using chosen evidence to solid doubt,” Cassidy said last week.
Cassidy is up for reelection in 2026. He has already drawn a GOP primary challenger over his vote to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial.
