The Independent By Eric Garcia
The Senate has voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the conspiracy-promoting environmental lawyer-turned-anti-vaccine activist, to run the nation’s largest public health agency.
In a 52-48 vote, Kennedy was approved as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, with only Sen. Mitch McConnell breaking from his Republican colleagues to reject the confirmation. McConnell, a polio survivor, has stressed the importance for 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.
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.
In 2023, he staged a long-shot campaign to challenge then-president Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination for president before running as an independent and ultimately endorsing Trump. In response, during the campaign, Trump said he would let Kennedy “go wild on health.”
The Department of Health and Human Services is a large and sprawling bureaucracy, with about $130.7 billion in discretionary funding and $1.7 trillion in mandatory spending. It includes the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health…
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… (independent.co.uk)
Home | Caravan to Midnight (zutalk.com)
Be First to Comment