A Senate subcommittee decided Tuesday to send Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to the entire chamber for consideration as secretary of health and human services, clearing a significant obstacle.
Kennedy was able to calm Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La,’s worries, and the Senate Finance Committee pushed through his nomination in a party-line vote of 14–13.
The panel’s lone swing vote was Cassidy, a physician. After interrogating Kennedy at two confirmation hearings, he indicated last week that he had major doubts about his suitability to head the enormous agency and that he was having difficulty making up his mind. Cassidy chairs the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in addition to the Finance Committee.
Cassidy said he had very serious talks with Kennedy and the White House over the weekend, and he thanked Vice President JD Vance for his candid advice in a statement put on X shortly before Tuesday’s vote.
After the vote, Cassidy told the entire Senate that Kennedy, a longtime opponent of vaccines, had made a number of promises to him, including that he would keep the Centers for Disease Control’s advisory committee on immunization practices in place and would not take down the CDC’s website’s claims that vaccines do not cause autism.
“Mr. Kennedy and the administration committed that he and I would have an unprecedentedly close collaborative working relationship if he is confirmed,” Cassidy stated. “We’ll talk or meet several times a month. We will be able to collaborate effectively and be more productive as a result.
Additionally, Cassidy pledged to use his role on the HHS oversight panel “to rebuff any attempt to remove the public’s access to life-saving vaccines without ironclad causational scientific evidence that can be accepted and defended before the mainstream scientific community and before Congress.”
Cassidy had stated last week that he would listen to known science on the subject and that he needed to hear Kennedy make a clear and unambiguous statement that vaccines do not cause autism. On Tuesday, it remained unclear if Kennedy had actually said it.
Despite Cassidy’s claims that Kennedy gave him numerous assurances regarding his support for vaccine efficacy, the nominee’s strong ties to the anti-vaccine movement were evident: Del Bigtree, a well-known anti-vaccine campaigner and Kennedy buddy, was inside the committee room when Cassidy voted yes earlier in the day.
Kennedy, a descendant of the legendary Democratic dynasty, entered the 2024 presidential election as an independent and later as a Democrat before withdrawing to support Trump. Kennedy launched a “Make America Healthy Again” campaign while campaigning for Trump, denouncing food producers and the use of unhealthy additives in the country’s diet.
Despite the fact that numerous senators from both parties said they were in favor of making food products safer, Kennedy faced other serious issues during two days of questioning last week.
Kennedy stumbled when responding to simple inquiries regarding Medicaid, a topic that makes up a significant portion of the health secretary’s duties. Democratic senators raised concerns about what they described as serious conflicts of interest if he were approved, including the possibility that he might profit indirectly from ongoing legal action against a vaccine manufacturer he would oversee in his capacity as HHS secretary.
Kennedy’s repeated rejections of the effectiveness of vaccines, however, have been the subject of some of the most vocal criticisms. Kennedy was repeatedly criticized by Cassidy during a committee hearing last week for his refusal to accept the evidence that vaccines do not cause autism.
“You’ve approached it using selected evidence to cast doubt, and I’ve approached it using the preponderance of evidence to reassure,” Cassidy stated last week.
In 2026, Cassidy will run for reelection. Because of his vote to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial, he has already attracted a GOP primary opponent.
Trump tried to give Kennedy a boost on Truth Social just minutes before the committee’s vote.
“Twenty years ago, one in 10,000 children had autism. Currently, it’s 1 in 34. Whoa! There’s a serious problem. BOBBY is what we need! Many thanks! DJT.
Diagnoses of autism have climbed from around 1 in 150 children in 2000 to 1 in 36 now, while researchers have attributed at least some of this increase to expanded screening and evolving criteria of the disorder. More investigation into whether other factors have contributed to the spike has been demanded by advocates.
Scientists have disproved the mythical connection between vaccines and autism in hundreds of research conducted over decades and worldwide.Kennedy’s confirmation alarmed proponents of autism, who feared that decades of advancement would be undone by his bogus claims linking the complex neurological and developmental disorder to vaccines. They claim that the constant focus on erroneous ideas has taken valuable research resources away from elaborating on actual causality.
Cassidy had some concerns about Kennedy’s confirmation, at least in part because of the link between autism and vaccines.
Supporters of Kennedy, particularly the anti-vaccine movement he spearheads, have been putting pressure on Cassidy for weeks. However, a person familiar with the campaign said that a parallel pressure effort urging Cassidy to vote against Kennedy also grew stronger over the weekend. This includes calls to Cassidy’s office and internet advertisements from Protect Our Care, an organization working to block Kennedy’s appointment. Calls from other organizations and physicians were also included.
In the past, organizations such as the National Vaccine Information Center, Children’s Health Defense, and the anti-vaccine foundation Kennedy established had coordinated supporters to bombard Cassidy’s office with emails and calls pleading with him to support the nomination.
Kennedy’s enormous fan base, many of whom the senator stated trust you more than they trust their own doctor, was blowing up Cassidy’s phone during one of his confirmation hearings last week.
What are you going to do with that trust? That is the question I need answered. “Said Cassidy.”
Through newsletters, social media, and online programs, the same anti-vaccine organizations informed their supporters following the hearing that Cassidy was the most likely obstacle to Kennedy’s nomination. Del Bigtree, the founder of the anti-vaccine organization Informed Consent Action Network, spoke candidly about Cassidy for 25 minutes on Thursday’s broadcast of their online program, asking him to vote in favor of the bill.