Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cleared a key obstacle on Tuesday after a Senate panel voted to advance in his nomination to the Secretary of Health and Human Services of the Complete Chamber.
In a 14-13 Vote along the lines of the party, the Senate’s finance committee exceeded Kennedy’s nomination after he managed to calm the concerns raised by Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of the.
Cassidy, a doctor, was the only swing vote on the panel. Last week, he said he had serious reservations about whether Kennedy was qualified to lead the vast agency, saying he was “fighting” with his decision after questioning him in two confirmation hearings. In addition to the Finance Committee, Cassidy serves as president of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
In a statement published in X just before Tuesday’s vote, Cassidy said he had “very intense conversations” with Kennedy and the White House during the weekend, specifically thanking Vice President JD Vance “for his honest advice.”
Cassidy went to the entire Senate after the vote, saying that he received a series of Kennedy promises, an anti -vaccine activist for a long time, including that he would maintain the advisory committee for the control of disease control over immunization practices, and would not eliminate Declarations about CDC’s the website indicates that vaccines do not cause autism.
“Mr. Kennedy and the Administration committed that he and I would have an unprecedented collaborative working relationship if confirmed,” said Cassidy. “We will meet or talk several times a month. This collaboration will allow us to work well together and, therefore, be more effective.”
Cassidy also promised that he would use his position in the panel that supervises the HHS, “to reject any attempt to eliminate public access to vaccines that save lives without causational scientific evidence of iron that can be accepted and defended before the conventional and conventional scientific community Before Congress “
Last week, Cassidy had said that he needed to hear an unequivocal statement from Kennedy that vaccines do not cause autism and indicate that he would listen to science well established on the matter. It wasn’t clear yet on Tuesday if Kennedy had made that statement.
Even when Cassidy said he received several Kennedy guarantees about supporting vaccines, the firm links of the nominee with the anti -vacuna community were unmistakable: Kennedy’s ally and the prominent anti -cacamic activist of the Bigman were present within the room of the Cassidy Voting Voting Voting Voting Voting Voting Committee Voting Voting yes, earlier in the day.
A stem from the historic democratic family, Kennedy was running for president in 2024, first as a Democrat and then as independent, before abandoning to support Trump. While he achieved the way for Trump, Kennedy described a “Make America Healy Again” campaign, in which he criticized food manufacturers and unhealthy ingredients in the nation’s diet.
While some senators in both parties expressed their support to make food products safer, two days of interrogation last week revealed other significant objections to Kennedy.
Kennedy shot to answer basic questions about Medicaid, an area that constitutes an important part of the work of Secretary of Health. The Democratic senators opposed what they called significant conflicts of interests in case it was confirmed, including that it could benefit indirectly financially from pending litigation against a vaccine manufacturer that would regulate as secretary of the HHS.
But among Kennedy’s most vociferous objections are related to their repeated denials of vaccine efficiency. At a committee hearing last week, Cassidy repeatedly led Kennedy to the task of her refusal to embrace science that shows that vaccines do not cause autism.
“I can say that I have approached it using the preponderance of the evidence to reassure and has approached when using selected evidence to question,” Cassidy said last week.
Cassidy is ready for re -election in 2026. He has already drawn a main challenger of the Republican party for his vote to condemn Trump in his judgment of political trial of 2021.
Minutes before the vote of the committee, Trump tried to provide a boost to Kennedy in Truth Social.
“20 years ago, autism in children was 1 in 10,000. Now it is 1 in 34. Wow! Something is really bad. We need bobby! Thank you! Djt.”
Autism diagnoses have increased from approximately 1 in 150 children in 2000 to 1 in 36, although researchers have indicated an increase in detection and changing definitions of the condition as at least some of the bases for that increase. Defenders have asked for more research on whether other factors have contributed to the increase.
In hundreds of studies for decades and worldwide, scientists have discredited the false link between vaccines and autism. Autism defenders expressed concern about Kennedy’s confirmation, fearing that their false statements that link the complex neurological and development condition to vaccines would delay decades of progress. They say that repeated emphasis on false theories has diverted the precious research necessary to expand true causality.
That autism at Vaccine Link had been at least part of the reserves that Cassidy had about Kennedy’s confirmation.
For weeks, Cassidy has been the focus of a pressure campaign of Kennedy supporters, specifically of the anti -acuna movement he leads. But a secondary pressure campaign that asks Cassidy to vote against Kennedy also intensified during the weekend, according to a source with knowledge of the campaign. That included Protect Our Care, a group that tries to stop the Kennedy appointment, which organized calls to the Cassidy office and executing digital ads. It also included calls from doctors and external groups.
Previously, groups, including the children’s health defense, the non -profit organization Anti -Vacuna, Kennedy, founded and the National Vaccine Information Center had organized supporters to flood Cassidy’s office with calls and emails that They urged their support for the nomination.
In one of Kennedy’s confirmation hearings last week, Cassidy acknowledged that his phone was being “fly” by the “tremendous followers” of Kennedy, many of whom the senator said “trust you more than what they trust in their own doctor “.
“The question I should have answered is what will you do with that confidence?” Cassidy said.
After the audience, the same antivacamic groups declared their followers through newsletters, social networks and online programs, that Cassidy was the most likely impediment to Kennedy’s nomination. In the episode of Thursday of the online show of the Action of Action of Anti -Vacinum Action Action, Bigree talked directly about Cassidy for twenty -five minutes, urging him to vote yes.
