President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services faces an uphill battle for confirmation because of his embrace of conspiracy theories and his controversial views on vaccination. But some Democrats appear to be steeling themselves for the likelihood of having to find common ground with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the event that he is confirmed.
While it’s hard to find Democrats willing to offer even faint praise to many of Trump’s Cabinet picks, some Senate Democrats are offering tentative support to Kennedy’s advocacy for better nutrition and his pledge to Make America Healthy Again.
“I’ve heard him say a lot of things that are absolutely right. I have concerns, obviously, about people leading in our country who aren’t based in science and fact,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., told reporters. “I have concerns about the nominee but I tell you, when he speaks about the issues I was just speaking about, we’re talking out of the same playbook.”
Kennedy, who is scheduled to meet mostly with GOP senators on Capitol Hill next week, can only lose three Republicans during his confirmation process if all Democrats and independents vote against him.
Several Republicans — including Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa — say they aren’t 100 percent sold, though a spokesman for Grassley said he makes it his policy never to announce his vote on cabinet-level nominations until they’ve had a Senate hearing.
But while multiple Senate Democrats said they plan to grill Kennedy on his endorsement of debunked theories that vaccines cause autism and other chronic diseases, some acknowledge the possibility of common ground on other policy issues, like nutrition and tobacco regulation.
None, however, have gone so far as to say they’ll vote to confirm him.
Common ground
A key area of common ground between Kennedy and Democrats could be nutrition.
Democrats focused on nutrition during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing last week, during which Chair Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., sounded strikingly similar to Kennedy in his questioning of Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf over the agency’s slow progress to develop a front-of-package nutrition labeling rule.
Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement focuses on improving nutritional access and stamping out chronic disease — two issues that Democrats are sympathetic to.
Jeff Hutt, spokesperson for the Make America Healthy Again PAC, said in an interview that the group advised both Republicans and Democrats as lawmakers prepared for last week’s Senate HELP hearing, providing background information and suggesting questions.
Of the Democrats who spoke during the hearing, only Sen. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., used his time to denounce Kennedy.
Hutt underscored that Kennedy already has personal relationships with Democrats from his past in the Democratic Party, and it could be Republican senators that he’s meeting for the first time when he goes to the Hill next week.
Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., said after last week’s hearing that he hadn’t spoken yet with Kennedy but he will have “a lot of questions” when they meet.
“He’s pointed out a number of startling and challenging issues, but he’s also said some things that have been interpreted as anti-science, have been widely disproven,” Hickenlooper said. “He’s going to have a huge amount of authority if he’s confirmed for that office, so we’re going to have to look at overall what his vision is.”
Kennedy has said he’d like to shake up how the FDA handles nutrition, and that the agency staff isn’t doing enough to protect kids from artificial additives in foods like Froot Loops.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, also said he has reservations about Kennedy, but sees areas where they could work together, like tobacco policy. He said he would like to meet with Kennedy, but does not have a sit-down scheduled yet.
“There’s a lot of interest in a wide array of issues, you know,” Wyden said “There are areas where he’s made some statements that I think are quite outlandish and he’s going to get questions about that.”
‘Entirely destructive’
While some Democrats search for policy middle ground with Kennedy, many Democrats and public health experts say their concerns about Kennedy’s insistence that vaccines cause autism is enough to deter them from working with him.
“These are things that perhaps there’d be an opportunity to make progress on, but it would be an incredible price to pay if we make progress on chronic diseases at the cost of seeing outbreaks of measles, whooping cough and other diseases that shouldn’t be occurring in American communities,” said Richard Besser, the former interim CDC director and current CEO of the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation.
Robert Weissman, co-president of the progressive advocacy group Public Citizen, said that Kennedy’s views are such that he shouldn’t receive any support.
“To focus on the areas of overlap is to miss the overall importance of who is in the space of public health, and I think he is entirely destructive,” he said.
He said some of Kennedy’s issues around food and nutrition actually fall under the Department of Agriculture and it’s unclear how he’ll implement them in his role as HHS secretary.
Weissman said Kennedy’s approach to pharmaceutical regulation could inform his thinking when it comes to food and nutrition. In his view, Kennedy’s approach to taking on “big pharma” by lowering regulatory standards misses the point. He said that the FDA instead needs to enforce strong scientific judgment when it comes to approvals of medical products.
“That suggests that we should be skeptical, too, about what he’s saying in the food and agriculture space,” he said.
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