The velocity with which RFK Jr. continues to break the promises he made during his confirmation hearings is simply incredible. As we get further and further away from those hearings, which amazingly occurred only 21 months ago, we may lose sight of the assurances Kennedy gave directly to Congress about his plans if appointed to lead HHS. For the purposes of this post, here are two we’ll key in on.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) grilled Kennedy about the money he’s made in the private sector from lawsuits against vaccine makers and accused him of planning to profit from potential future policies making it easier to sue.
“Kennedy can kill off access to vaccines and make millions of dollars while he does it,” Warren said during the Senate Finance Committee hearing. “Kids might die, but Robert Kennedy can keep cashing in.”
Warren’s statement prompted an assurance by Kennedy.
“Senator, I support vaccines,” he said. “I support the childhood schedule. I will do that.”
Days later, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, declared Kennedy had pledged to maintain existing vaccine recommendations if confirmed. Cassidy, a physician specializing in liver diseases and a vocal supporter of vaccination, had questioned Kennedy sharply in a hearing about his views on shots.
“If confirmed, he will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ recommendations without changes,” Cassidy said during a speech on the Senate floor explaining his vote for Kennedy.
Kennedy was lying. He almost immediately went about violating those promises at HHS and its child agencies. He dismantled ACIP and rebuilt it with like-minded conspiracy theorists. He went about altering the childhood vaccine schedule. He has failed to actually support vaccines in America. He violated his pledge with the thoroughness of a completionist playing a video game. When hauled before Congress to ask just what the hell his problem was and why he did literally the opposite of what he’d promised, he yelled at Congress and lied some more.
And now he’s doing it all over again by disallowing states to get childhood COVID vaccines through the CDC’s Vaccine for Children program.
As respiratory virus season nears and fall vaccination drives get underway, more than half of US children are facing uncertainty over access to this year’s COVID-19 shot. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has unexpectedly delayed the distribution of the shots to a key federal program and some states.
Usually, the CDC would allow states to order the newly available seasonal COVID-19 vaccines through the federal Vaccine for Children (VFC) program, which provides vaccines at no cost to children who are uninsured, underinsured, Medicaid-eligible, or Indigenous people in the US. Approximately 52 percent of all US children are eligible for vaccines through the program.
“The delay in VFC means delays in these states’ ability to get vaccine for all children,” Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and chief medical officer at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, told The Guardian.
Now, when the federal government blocks vaccines for the greatest pandemic in several generations to potentially half of the children in the entire country and American territories, you’d have to think they have a good reason for doing so. Your guess is as good as mine as to what that could be, because HHS ain’t talking.
In a statement, the Department of Health and Human Services told Ars Technica that “CDC has not yet finalized procurement decisions for COVID-19 vaccines through the Vaccines for Children and Section 317 programs.” The department—currently run by ardent anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—declined to answer the question of why there was a delay in the decision. But the statement suggested that Trump officials were questioning whether children should get the vaccine.
“HHS and CDC are committed to … ensuring that vaccines purchased through federally funded programs are appropriate for the populations those programs serve,” the department said in the statement. It added that additional information about the decision will be released “soon.”
This is bullshit and it should result in congressional hearings. Kennedy must answer for this generally and explain yet another broken promise. He told senators, to their faces, that he would not be taking anyone’s ability to get vaccinated away from them. That was a promise made to the representatives of the American public and he lied about it. That must be answered for, or else there is no longer any point to having confirmation hearings, or perhaps to having oversight of the Executive Branch at all.
And Kennedy isn’t the only one who should be answering questions. Where the hell is Erica Schwartz in all of this? The new CDC Director was supposed to be one of the adults in the room. She was pitched as a bulwark against Kennedy’s insanity. Here, she appears to be completely out to lunch.
To the American Senate: do you all like being played for fools so publicly? Is this some sort of kink? If ever there was a cabinet secretary in the modern era worthy of being fired from his position, isn’t Kennedy it?
Don’t you have any pride?