WASHINGTON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a leading environmental attorney before he began focusing on public health issues. He has advanced false conspiracy theories about the safety of COVID-19 shots and other vaccines, views that have alarmed many health experts. Less controversial are some of his views on food safety.
Last week, President-elect Donald Trump nominated him to be his secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services, overseeing agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Wisconsin’s Republican Senator, Ron Johnson, applauded the pick.
“I think Bobby Kennedy will be kind of like the person [who] will be responsible for a healthy America,” Sen. Ron Johnson said in an interview on Newsmax.
Though Trump is demanding the Senate move quickly to confirm his choices next year, Johnson’s Democratic counterpart, Tammy Baldwin, has some reservations about Kennedy.
“I’m going to vet him very, very closely, and we’ll ask the sort of questions that I think need to be asked given his nomination,” Baldwin told Spectrum News.
Baldwin sits on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which will scrutinize Kennedy’s background before the full chamber decides whether or not to confirm him.
“I’ve certainly been concerned by some of the things that he has posited that seem to be conspiratorial,” Baldwin said. “The agency that he will head has many divisions that are extremely critical to fighting disease, curing disease, including the National Institute for Health. The department has agencies that are charged with disease prevention, and so it’s hugely important.”
Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said he figured Kennedy would be nominated because of how visible he was during the campaign. Kennedy began running for president last year as a Democrat, switched his registration to independent, and then ended his campaign and endorsed Trump.
“Controversial, I guess, in some of the things that he said in the past,” Fitzgerald. “But you know, it sounds like the Senate has their process and they’re going to go through that, so we’ll see what happens.”
Confirmation hearings will begin after the new Congress is sworn in in early January. That’s when we’ll see if Kennedy makes it through.