Donald Trump chooses anti-vaccine activist RFK Jr. as health secretary

NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday he will nominate anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, putting a man whose views public health officials have decried as dangerous in charge of a massive agency that oversees everything from drug, vaccine and food safety to medical research, Medicare and Medicaid.

“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump said Thursday in a post on his Truth Social site announcing the appointment. Kennedy, he said, would “end the Chronic Disease epidemic” and “Make America Great and Healthy Again!”

Trump said Kennedy would target drugs, food additives and chemicals.

As one of the most prominent anti-vaccine activists in the world, Kennedy’s nomination immediately alarmed some public health officials.

Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Associated Press, “I don’t want to go backwards and see children or adults suffer or lose their lives to remind us that vaccines work, and so I am concerned.”

Trump also announced Thursday that he has chosen Doug Collins, a former congressman from Georgia, to run the Department of Veterans Affairs. Collins is a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force Reserve Command. The Republican served in Congress from 2013 to 2021, and he helped defend Trump during his first impeachment process.

Later Thursday, Trump said he was nominating North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to lead the Department of the Interior. After ending his own presidential campaign in December 2023, Burgum endorsed Trump and became an outspoken supporter, appearing on TV news shows and at rallies and other events. He was on Trump’s short list of potential running mates.

Kennedy hails from one of the nation’s most storied political families and is the son of the late Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy. He first challenged President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination last year. He then ran as an independent but abandoned his bid this summer after striking a deal to endorse Trump in exchange for a promise to serve in a health policy role during a second Trump administration.

He and the president-elect have since become good friends. The two campaigned together extensively during the race’s final stretch, and Trump made clear he intended to give Kennedy a major public health role.

“I’m going to let him go wild on health,” Trump said at a rally last month.

During the campaign, Kennedy told NewsNation that Trump had asked him to “reorganize” agencies including the CDC, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration.

Kennedy has pushed against processed foods and the use of herbicides like Roundup weed killer. He has long criticized the large commercial farms and animal feeding operations that dominate the industry.

But he is perhaps best known for his criticism of childhood vaccines.

Again and again, Kennedy has made his opposition to vaccines clear. In July, he said in a podcast interview that “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” and told FOX News that he still believes in the long-ago debunked idea that vaccines can cause autism.

In a 2021 podcast he urged people to “resist” CDC guidelines that advise when kids should receive routine vaccinations.

“I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, ‘Better not get them vaccinated,’” Kennedy said.

Repeated scientific studies in the U.S. and abroad have found no link between vaccines and autism. Vaccines have been proven safe and effective in laboratory testing and in real world use in hundreds of millions of people over decades. The World Health Organization credits childhood vaccines with preventing as many as 5 million deaths a year.

Trump during his first term launched Operation Warp Speed, an effort to speed the production and distribution of a vaccine to combat COVID-19. The resulting vaccines were widely credited, including by Trump himself, with saving lives.

Kennedy has also worked to shore up support among young mothers in particular, on a message of ridding the U.S. of unhealthy ingredients in foods, promising to model regulations after those imposed in Europe. His claims that the U.S. obesity epidemic, as well as a rise in chronic diseases like diabetes, are the result of processed and unhealthy foods has resonated on social media among fitness gurus and mom influencers alike.

It remains unclear how that will square with Trump’s history of deregulation of big industries, including food. Trump has pushed for fewer inspections of the meat industry, for example.

Kennedy’s stance on vaccines raises question about his ability to get confirmed, even in a GOP-controlled Senate. He also has said he would make a controversial recommendation to remove fluoride from drinking water, although fluoride levels are mandated by state and local governments. The addition of the mineral has been cited as leading to improved dental health and is considered safe at low levels.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune would not comment on Trump’s pick of Kennedy or any other potential nominee. “I’m not going to make any judgments about any of these folks at this point,” he said.

But Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, R-MO, praised the HHS pick, posting on X: “Bad day for Big Pharma! @RobertKennedyJr.”

Several Democrats quickly condemned the selection.

Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the No. 3 Democrat, said that Kennedy’s confirmation would be “nothing short of a disaster for the health of millions of families.”

But not every Democrat recoiled from the news. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said he was “excited” for Kennedy to lead HHS. Polis said he wants to see Kennedy take on “big pharma” and hopes he will “lean into personal choice” on vaccines.

That idea is concerning to former New York Public Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan, who said that if people opt against vaccines, deadly viruses could run wild. He points to an uptick in measles outbreaks — 16 have occurred so far this year compared to four last year. “That’s going to continue if we have someone at the top of our health system that is saying, ‘I’m not so sure about the science here,’” Vasan said.

FDA could have one of the biggest shakeups, with Kennedy’s promises of more regulations — action that would buck the moves that previous Republican administrations have made. He has promised a crackdown on food dyes and preservatives. And with pharmaceutical companies, he’s suggested that drugmakers be barred from advertising on TV, a multibillion-dollar enterprise that accounts for most of the industry’s marketing dollars. He also proposed eliminating fees that drugmakers pay the FDA to review their products.

He wants to weaken FDA regulations around a host of unsubstantiated therapies, including psychedelics and stem cells as well as discredited COVID-era drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.

Kennedy also will focus on ending the “revolving door” of employees who have previously worked for pharmaceutical companies or leave government service to work for that industry, his former campaign communications manager, Del Bigtree, told the AP last month.

This past weekend, Kennedy said he wanted to fire 600 employees at NIH, which oversees vaccine research and replace them with 600 new people. In separate comments, he has said that in his first week he would order a pause in drug development and infectious disease research, shifting the focus to chronic diseases.

Kennedy’s anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.

Trump also announced Thursday that he will nominate Jay Clayton, who served as chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission during his first term, to serve as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

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