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Days before the November election, Donald Trump said he would let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “go wild for a little while” on public health, “then I’m going to have to maybe rein him back.”
Kennedy is going wild. And there appear to be no reins, either.
The Health and Human Services secretary is getting wide latitude from the president, more than some other top administration officials, as he dismantles and reshapes the US health care bureaucracy. Trump fully trusts Kennedy, according to people who know both men, to make sweeping changes to vaccines, the US food supply, pandemic readiness, and more.
That bond is helping Kennedy and his allies avoid taking hits from MAGA players like Laura Loomer, whose attempted ouster of a top HHS official got reversed. Even speculation that Kennedy might be preparing a 2028 campaign hasn’t imperiled his relationship with Trump, which one person familiar with it called “stronger than ever;” Kennedy has dismissed the 2028 talk, and multiple people close to the situation told Semafor that he won’t be running.
It’s not clear that Republicans in Congress can diminish Kennedy’s influence within the administration, as frustrated as some are by his recent ouster of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez and his installation of vaccine skeptics on a critical advisory panel. He’ll face lots of questions about that during an appearance Thursday before the Senate’s Finance Committee.
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., of no relation to the secretary, told Semafor he’d advised Kennedy earlier this year that the new HHS chief’s job “is to restore confidence in the institution of public health” after COVID undermined it.
“So far, all I see over there is chaos. I mean, it’s a goat rodeo,” the senator said of HHS. “How’s the average American, who is trying to make a decision, supposed to make a decision based on what’s going on now? … We’ve already had this kind of chaos during the pandemic.”
The president’s growing bond with Kennedy comes as he litigates one of his signature first-term accomplishments: Operation Warp Speed, which led to the quick creation and distribution of COVID vaccines. As huge portions of Trump’s base question the vaccine’s effectiveness and recommendations for its use, he is also pressing for more answers.
One person close to Trump told Semafor that the president “believes he was lied to throughout COVID” by public health officials, even as he remains proud of the work he did to get vaccines quickly developed: “I think what they’re looking for here is lessons learned so the next time we do Operation Warp Speed, we don’t get lied to.”
Kennedy will face “hard questions” from the Senate Finance Committee about his recent moves, said Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.
Those questions, Republican senators said, will focus on whether politics is driving the CDC’s vaccine decisions and why Monarez was fired so quickly after being confirmed.
As Thune put it: “Because [whether] somebody’s supportive of or in favor of vaccines is not disqualifying for that job. So I assume he’ll have some questions to answer.”
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Over the weekend, the president called on drug companies to release more data about the COVID vaccines, admitting the issue has “ripped apart” the CDC. Yet Trump appeared to simultaneously back his development of Operation Warp Speed while also siding with Kennedy on questions over the vaccines’ effectiveness.
And Kennedy doesn’t seem to be pushing for the president to completely disavow the work his administration did in 2020. Cassidy even said he should get the Nobel Prize.
“Trump should be proud of Operation Warp Speed,” said the person familiar with the Trump-Kennedy dynamic. “It was absolutely the right decision to do all hands on deck to figure out a solution to COVID.”
Yet there is a clear Republican divide over whether Kennedy’s changes at the CDC should be celebrated or considered a grave error that endangers Americans’ health.
Kennedy has his own base of conservative support on the Hill, despite his status as a former Democrat. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said that he supported Kennedy’s moves and said the department has been forthright with his probes into the COVID vaccine.
On the other side are GOP lawmakers cringing at the departure of so many CDC officials. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., said that ensuring medical professionals make public health decisions “should be a bright line for all of us.”
“It looks like they’re getting rolled for [Kennedy’s] philosophies,” said one Republican senator. “The CDC is really in turmoil right now.”
Caught in the middle is the Senate health committee’s chair, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a longtime practicing doctor. He told Semafor that “we need radical transparency” about how Kennedy is making decisions about vaccines — and seemed confident he’ll get it.
“Who’s making the decision at the CDC on all these policy issues? If the scientists are gone, is it the political people? If it’s the political people, then where are they getting the information?” Cassidy said.
White House officials are confident Kennedy can take the heat, in part because he’s a true believer.
“Sometimes the hiring just doesn’t work out,” one White House official said regarding likely questions about Monarez’s firing. “The people who can’t handle themselves are the people who don’t believe in what they say, and he [Kennedy] believes in it.”
And Kennedy’s power stems from Trump’s support. After Monarez pushed back on the notion she’d been officially fired, the White House said in a statement that she was “not aligned with the president’s agenda of Making America Health Again” and that they’d “terminated” her.
Room for Disagreement
The Republican Party is aligned around some of the CDC drama. Take the case of Demetre Daskalakis, one of four top officials who resigned after Monarez was ousted.
Republicans have propped up Daskalakis, who used the term “pregnant people” in his resignation letter, as a prime example of a person whose political biases should have disqualified him from the CDC to begin with.
“Would you trust this guy to make important policy decisions and medical decisions for your family?” asked Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. “It suggests that at least some appointments and promotions there were based on factors other than medical experience and judgment.”
Shelby and Burgess’ View
Kennedy was narrowly confirmed, and his hearing on Thursday will probably generate wall-to-wall coverage as Washington tries to divine just how mad Senate Republicans are at the secretary.
But in Trump’s second term, skepticism from congressional Republicans doesn’t usually amount to much.
“At this point, the president is closer to Kennedy than some of those senators,” as the person close to Trump put it. “People don’t understand that.”
So Kennedy’s job looks as safe as it can be. It might take an all-consuming public health event to change that.
Notable
- Florida is ending all vaccine mandates in schools, the Washington Post reports, as northeastern states pursue their own potential public health alliance, per the Boston Globe.
- The FDA is questioning whether the flu and Covid vaccines should be taken together, the Washington Post reports.
Eleanor Mueller contributed to this report.