A longtime environmental lawyer, Kennedy, the son of the late Democratic senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of John F. Kennedy, grew in prominence for his promotion of the debunked idea that vaccines cause autism.
“My responsibility is to learn — try and determine — if you can be trusted to support the best public health, a worthy movement called MAHA to improve the health of Americans, or to undermine it, always asking for more evidence and never accepting the evidence that is there,” Cassidy said at a hearing, referring to Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” slogan.
Kennedy — who’s repeatedly promoted conspiracies and the debunked link between vaccines and autism — will now lead a sprawling federal bureaucracy that manages public health, research, health guidance, and vaccinations.
Senate Democrats took to the Senate floor in the hours ahead of Kennedy’s confirmation to air their concerns about Kennedy, a known vaccine skeptic who’s boosted baseless conspiracy theories about Covid, HIV, and antidepressants.
Along with his comments about vaccines and autism, Kennedy has made other inflammatory remarks, including suggesting that Anne Frank was in a better situation when she hid from Nazis than Americans were under Covid-19 mandates and claiming Covid-19 was a “bioweapon” that targets “Caucasians and Black people” while sparing Ashkenazi Jewish and Chinese people.
