was originally reported by Barbara Rodriguez of .

In mid-March, the parents of a 6-year-old girl in Texas who died of measles complications — the — decided to speak out about what happened to their daughter.

But it was not an interview with a news outlet. The parents had agreed to an exclusive on-camera interview with staff from the Children’s Health Defense (CHD), a nonprofit that promotes anti-vaccine sentiment and policies. Their daughter, Kayley, had been unvaccinated, a point the parents defended in the interview.

Kayley’s father, who spoke at times in a German dialect through a translator, said that measles is “not as bad as the media is making it out to be.”

A few weeks later, the father of an 8-year-old who became the second measles-related death, according to public health officials, also spoke with CHD through video. Asked if he regrets not vaccinating his child, Daisy, or his other children, the father said: “Absolutely not. And from here on out, if I have any other kids in the future, they’re not going to be vaccinated at all.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. met with these parents in April, he said , “to console the families and to be with the community in their moment of grief.” He advocated for the highly effective measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine in that same post. Hours later, in a separate post, .

As Kennedy tries to respond to the spread of measles cases in the United States — more than 700 cases have been reported in at least 25 states as of April 10, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — medical experts say that messaging has been mixed. But any focus on vaccination is also being undermined by CHD, the anti-vaccine nonprofit Kennedy chaired from 2015 to 2023, the year he launched a presidential campaign.

As of , Kennedy has said he is no longer officially affiliated with the group, which has repeatedly questioned the safety of vaccines, . But CHD still prominently displays its former ties to Kennedy. The secretary has a standalone tab on the group’s “About” section, which credits him as its founder. Its video site features public appearances that Kennedy has made in his current role as secretary, including a recent trip to Indiana and his first major news conference in the role.

This year, CDH published a website that mimicked the design of a CDC site — with nearly identical layout, logos and typefaces — that laid out what it called research that vaccines cause autism () alongside some data debunking the theory. first reported on the existence of the mock site.

When asked about the site by The New York Times, the secretary would send a request to ask the group to take down the site.

An HHS spokesperson for Kennedy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Representatives for CHD, contacted through a form on their website, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

CHD boasts a media apparatus that includes a video-focused site and podcast that shares claims about vaccine safety, including about the MMR vaccine. On these platforms, commentators and an array of guests openly criticize news coverage on the growing measles cases and related deaths, which public health officials say includes an unvaccinated adult in New Mexico as well as the two children. (Many of the videos also note that the hosts’ and guests’ views are not necessarily the views of Children’s Health Defense.)

“This constant fear mongering by the media … to see them rampage like this on inaccuracies and peddling falsehoods and just distortions, it’s terrible,” said one guest identified as a doctor to discuss one of the girls’ medical histories.

Measles, a highly contagious airborne disease, can appear through fever and a rash. It : 1 in 20 people get pneumonia; 1 to 3 in 1,000 people get brain swelling known as encephalitis; and 1 in 1,000 people die.

The scope of the CHD messaging — including interviews with parents expressing vaccine skepticism — shows how so-called anti-vaxxers may be weaponizing tragedy to promote an agenda, said Kelsey Suter, a partner at Upswing, an opinion research and strategy firm that supports Democratic candidates and progressive causes. Suter has monitored online disinformation about vaccines since around the start of the pandemic for several clients.

“This group in particular has long cherry-picked individual stories and sort of held them up to represent a broader trend that doesn’t exist,” she said, noting that CHD has shared parent-centered videos in the past about purported vaccine injuries.

Kennedy who tried to distance himself from that record during his contentious to lead the country’s expansive health department. Before Kennedy’s longshot bid for the Democratic presidential nomination — which culminated in an independent candidacy and subsequent endorsement of Republican President Donald Trump — he was closely tied to the Children’s Health Defense.

The nonprofit, previously known as the World Mercury Project, says it aims to end “childhood health epidemics by eliminating toxic exposure.” Kennedy, also its former chief litigation counsel, took a leave from CHD in 2023 to run for office. During a Wednesday news conference, could play a role in autism — a framing that autism groups . (CHD has publicly linked vaccines to autism, .)

CHD’s messaging — which includes a standalone site for “news and views” and an accompanying newsletter — highlights an evolution of how misinformation and disinformation over vaccines is being directed at parents at a time when vaccination rates for kindergarteners . Parents are already targeted by social media influencer accounts about their children’s health and wellness. Some of that information is packaged in video that can be more widely shared than in previous eras of vaccine skepticism, a phenomenon that has existed since the development of the first vaccine more than 200 years ago.

Some of the misinformation circulating online is that measles was not a dangerous disease when it spread rampantly in the 60s. (In the decade before a vaccine was available in 1963, . Between 400 and 500 died and thousands were hospitalized each year at the time.)

“It’a this kind of broader lifestyle perspective that incorporates vaccine hesitancy and is being sort of packaged up and targeted for moms in particular, but parents generally,” Suter said.

The two-dose MMR vaccine is safe and . Side effects, which pediatricians share with parents when their children are vaccinated, can include a sore arm and mild rash. Medical professionals say the benefits of the vaccine far outweigh the risks of being unvaccinated.

“We’re not hiding the side effects, we’re just telling you what they are and we’re putting it in context,” said Dr. Kathryn Edwards, a longtime expert in infectious diseases who recently retired. “What is a more grave danger — to get infected with measles or to get the vaccine? And that is a really easy question. , it is much, much better to be immunized than to get the disease.”

The videos on “CHD.TV” run the gamut in terms of programming. In the video of the parents of the 6-year-old girl, they say their child had a fever, leading to a visit to a nearby hospital where her condition worsened. She died in February. Her siblings were also infected with measles, according to her parents, but they recovered. They credit treatments that medical experts say do not have a therapeutic role in treating or preventing measles infection. Still, Kennedy has defended the treatments for secondary symptoms.

In a separate video, staff speculated about whether the 8-year-old died from a different ailment related to her hospital stay — a sentiment also expressed by her father and . CHD staff also criticized the scope of hospital care that the girls received.

Abram Wagner is an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan who studies vaccine hesitancy. He said building trust within a community that is hesitant about vaccines relies on messengers who are well-known members of that community. He said it can be potent for an anti-vaccine group to travel to these communities and highlight the personal stories of parents — including the narrative technique of imagery and voice through video — to emphasize an agenda because those parents are themselves potentially trusted messengers.

Wagner said it’s important for the public to take into account the framing of these interviews involving the parents of unvaccinated children. He noted they had experienced trauma — the loss of a child — and that makes them vulnerable in such settings. He also wondered about the social impact of losing a child in a close-knit community. Both families are members of a at the epicenter of the outbreak in West Texas.

It sets up hard work for the public health officials, including state officials, who go into these communities to counter anti-vaccine messaging, Wagner added. This week, a CDC official told a vaccine committee that federal officials were “scraping to find the resources and personnel needed to provide support to Texas and other jurisdictions” as it relates to the outbreaks.

“The issue is, how do you create trusted messengers and how do you develop that over time?” said Wagner.

Suter said she is not surprised that the MMR vaccine has been targeted in disinformation messaging, since falsely tied that vaccine to autism.

“The MMR vaccine was really the first modern vaccine to be targeted with this kind of disinformation questioning its safety,” she said.

Suter said that before the pandemic — which propelled distrust of COVID-19 vaccines — being against vaccines still included some left-wing partisan perspective that included “crunchy” mothers. But vaccine hesitancy is now rooted in a broader topic of distrust of government officials and of the health care system.

“Now, being anti-vaccine is not exclusively right-wing coded, but is much more integrated into right-wing politics than it used to be,” she said.

Edwards said Kennedy has opened a messaging vacuum on measles and the MMR vaccine that groups like CHD have filled. Edwards noted that when Kennedy was asked in late February about the growing measles outbreak that began in Texas, he said such outbreaks are “not unusual,” a description that . Kennedy later said that the decision to vaccinate “is a personal one” for parents — a framing that Edwards disagrees with.

“At that point, there should have been a strong message that vaccination should be done and will prevent disease,” she said. “The fact that there has been so much indecision and lack of clarity, in terms of what Secretary Kennedy has said and what he lets other people say, has really confused things. That has made families think that it’s appropriate not to vaccinate.”

In 2011, the Maryland Board of Physicians , who is not a physician and has only a bachelor’s degree, with illegally practicing medicine alongside his father, Mark Geier, a doctor who died last month. The two treated children with Lupron, a drug used to lower testosterone or estrogen levels in patients with prostate cancer, endometriosis and other diseases, along with chelation therapy, which leaches heavy metals from the body, as in lead poisoning.

Those treatments follow a widely discredited theory that blames autism on exposure to mercury in preservatives used in vaccines. Kennedy has promulgated that theory even though more than two dozen large, rigorous studies have discredited any link between vaccines and autism.

Autistic advocates decried Kennedy’s appointment, fearing his refusal to give up on efforts to establish one would refocus federal resources on finding a “cure” for what most scientists now believe is a naturally occurring human neurotype.  

“Anyone who would fleece families with fake cures should not be trusted to interpret a scientific study, let alone conduct one,” the Autistic Self Advocacy Network said in David Geier’s hiring. “This move toward conspiracy theories and junk science puts all our lives at risk.”

A request for comment from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was not immediately answered. The Geiers’ Institute of Chronic Illnesses, Inc., does not have a website.   

The network’s statement calls Kennedy’s selection of Geier “a clear indication that the Trump administration plans to rig the upcoming study and claim that it proves vaccines cause autism. This will set public health back decades at a time when vaccine hesitancy and infectious disease are both spreading at alarming rates.”

Among other claims, the Maryland board found that the Geiers diagnosed precocious puberty — a medical condition where children’s bodies mature too early — in an unusually large number of patients, did so without using the standard protocol for establishing whether the children in fact had the condition and failed to tell their families that the chelation drug prescribed was not authorized for use in the United States. 

Mark Geier’s medical licenses eventually were suspended by the seven states where he and his son operated autism treatment centers under a variety of names, including the Genetic Centers of America. The Geiers conducted several studies linking vaccines to autism, only to have them from publication by scientific journals. They in hundreds of lawsuits brought by people who claim to have been injured by immunizations. 

Lupron is a brand name for a GnRH analogue drug that pauses puberty without causing permanent physical changes. The drugs are for children who experience gender nonconformity or gender dysphoria at the onset of puberty. 

In January, a published in JAMA Pediatrics found the drugs were prescribed for fewer than 0.1% of youth in an insurance claims database covering more than 5 million patients ages 8 to 17. Only 926 youth with a gender-related diagnosis received puberty blockers from 2018 through 2022. No patient under the age of 12 was given the drugs.

Nonetheless, in recent years, 26 states have banned gender-affirming care for young people. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on challenges to the laws. In a January executive order, President Donald Trump to restrict such care.  

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is more directly promoting measles vaccinations following the death of a second unvaccinated child. But he continues to highlight remedies that medical experts say do not prevent or treat the virus. As the number of measles cases grows around the country, experts worry that parents and other caregivers are getting mixed messaging about the safety of vaccines.

Over the weekend, Kennedy traveled to Texas for the funeral of an 8-year-old who public health officials say died this month of complications from measles. Kennedy met with the child’s family, as well as the family of a 6-year-old in the state who died in February of measles complications. . (An unvaccinated adult in New Mexico who died recently also had measles, .)

“The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the [measles-mumps-rubella] vaccine,” , the day of the funeral. In the lengthy post, he said he had redeployed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention teams to Texas at the request of the state’s governor. He said staff previously helped supply pharmacies and clinics with MMR vaccines, medicines and medical supplies, and supported contact investigations and community outreach.

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The MMR vaccine, which is , .

But in , which included photos with the impacted families, Kennedy also noted that he had visited with “two extraordinary healers” — Dr. Richard Bartlett and Dr. Ben Edwards. Kennedy claimed the two men have “treated and healed” about 300 children from at the epicenter of the outbreak using aerosolized budesonide and clarithromycin.

Aerosolized budesonide can open airways to . Clarithromycin is an antibiotic that can . But Patsy Stinchfield, an infectious disease nurse practitioner and a past president of the (NFID), told The 19th that neither is a measles antiviral medication.

Stinchfield said to suggest either treatment healed hundreds of children from measles “is distracting.” , though doctors can try to treat secondary symptoms that might emerge from an infection.

“The way that it’s being framed is confusing and misleading and kind of off the main message, which should be to vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate,” she said.

Both “healers” have a history of challenging . Bartlett faced disciplinary action from the Texas Medical Board in 2003 for “unusual use of risk-filled medications,” . At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he claimed vaccines were not needed and a combination of drugs, including budesonide, for treating the virus.

Edwards, who said mass infection is “God’s version of measles immunization,” , runs a facility in Texas where he reportedly treats some people for measles-related ailments with budesonide. A nearby store distributes cod liver oil, . Cod liver oil, which , is not a preventive measure for measles, Stinchfield said, and should not be used in place of the MMR vaccine.

HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in an email that Kennedy has offered “clear guidance that vaccines are the most effective way to prevent measles” and defended the use of budesonide and clarithromycin to treat secondary symptoms.

Dr. Adam Ratner, who serves on an infectious diseases committee for the , said in an email to The 19th that there is no evidence to support the use of either treatment to care for children who have been infected with measles.

“Promoting unproven medications for measles treatment puts children at unnecessary risk, and the only way to prevent measles is by vaccination with the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine,” Ratner wrote.

Dr. John Swartzberg, a clinical professor emeritus at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, made the same point in a separate email to The 19th.

“Budesonide and clarithromycin have NO therapeutic role in treating or preventing measles infection,” he wrote. “There is no credible science to support their use for this purpose.”

An HHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Kennedy is traveling to parts of the Southwest this week.

Kennedy’s first expansive remarks on the measles outbreak came in an published on Fox News in early March, when the secretary encouraged parents to consult their health care providers about getting the MMR vaccine. He said at the time that the decision to vaccinate “is a personal one.”

Stinchfield said that messaging can dilute from efforts to end the current outbreaks, .

“When we’re talking about the most contagious virus that we have and how easily it spreads to other children, when someone chooses not to vaccinate … it is not a personal choice anymore,” she said. “You have now endangered other individuals, and especially little children, pregnant women. So an unvaccinated person is potentially a walking infectious risk to others.”

In his , Kennedy recommended that some people administer vitamin A under the supervision of a physician to reduce related measles deaths. Cod liver oil also contains vitamin A.

While people who are malnourished or have a weakened immune system may be treated with vitamin A — along with AAP and NFID — any other use of vitamin A is not recommended, and importantly, .

At Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, Texas — which has treated children infected with measles — a representative confirmed to The 19th that its staff had encountered cases of vitamin A toxicity among unvaccinated children who were initially hospitalized due to measles complications. Some patients used vitamin A for both treatment and measles prevention. As of late March, the staff had reported fewer than 10 vitamin A toxicity cases.

“This topic has garnered extensive attention on social media and other platforms,” according to a statement from Dr. Lara Johnson, pediatric hospitalist and chief medical office of Covenant

Health-Lubbock Service Area, which includes Covenant Children’s Hospital. “While there are potential benefits, it is crucial to consult with your primary care physician before initiating any new treatment regimen.”

Stinchfield said the takeaways from Kennedy’s posts are offering mixed messaging to parents at a time when the federal government should already have more urgent calls for immunization.

“We should be in all hands on deck mode and pouring resources into stopping the measles outbreak and I am not seeing that,” she later wrote in an email.

Kennedy has a long history of anti-vaccine views that he has tried to dispel as he begins to oversee HHS. During his Senate confirmation hearings, Kennedy told lawmakers that .

But since then he has alarmed some people within his own agency. In March, a top vaccine official within the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is run under HHS, announced he would .

“It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,” Dr. Peter Marks wrote in his resignation letter as director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. According to , Marks said he was asked to find data on brain swelling cases and deaths tied to the MMR vaccine — data that Marks said did not exist. Marks has encouraged parents to get the MMR vaccine for their children.

Swartzberg said he appreciates that Kennedy is “finally” stating that the best way to control measles infections and deaths is vaccination, but noted that it’s been months since the first cases were reported. He believes Kennedy’s promotion of vitamin A and other drugs has also steered people, including parents, away from vaccinating their kids.

“This came very late in the game,” he said. “And, he has never stated that the vaccine is safe.”

Stinchfield helped address a measles outbreak in Minnesota within the Somali community and measles outbreaks in the early 1990s. She’s seen firsthand how children suffer from a measles infection. It can include brain swelling, long-term complications and death. have been declining since around the start of the pandemic, a dynamic that some medical experts believe is partially attributed to a growing distrust of the government.

Stinchfield encouraged parents to seek reliable sources of information — including from , and trusted pediatric providers — amid an onslaught of misinformation online.

“You really need to make sure that you’re getting reliable information from people who know what they’re talking about,” she said.

was originally reported by Barbara Rodriguez of . Read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

of those infected so far are vaccinated. The remaining patients are either unvaccinated or their vaccine status is unknown. 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the newly confirmed head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has a long history of around vaccines, including the one for measles. He recently put vaccine advisory meetings — where a panel of experts establish a vaccine schedule used to inform state policies — on indefinite and wields power over how organizations within HHS, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, respond to such crises. 

Earlier this month, his anti-vaccine organization, Children’s Health Defense, put out a blaming the Texas outbreak on the vaccines themselves, arguing, “The real issue is not a failure to vaccinate but a failing vaccine.”

“As measles outbreaks continue to surface, the mainstream media is now using them as a political weapon, attempting to blame … Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for so-called ‘anti-vaccine rhetoric,’” the statement read. “His warnings about vaccine-induced injuries and failures are validated by the very outbreaks being reported today.”

Rekha Lakshmanan, chief strategy officer at The Immunization Partnership, a Texas-based education advocacy organization that promotes childhood and adult immunization, said she is “just absolutely flabbergasted that there is intentionality to put blame on the vaccine when that is not where anybody should be spending their time or their effort. Our effort should be supporting families, making sure they’ve got the right information and supporting helping our public sector partners so we can try to get to the end of this crisis sooner rather than later.”

“CDC is aware of the death of one child in Texas from measles, and our thoughts are with the family,” Andrew Nixon, director of communications at HHS, wrote in a statement to The 74. “CDC continues to provide technical assistance, laboratory support, and vaccines as needed to the Texas Department of State Health Services and New Mexico Department of Health, which are leading the response to this outbreak.”

There are now also at least nine reported cases in neighboring  

Kennedy that he’s following updates on the outbreak, which he noted was mainly in the Mennonite community. Despite the confirmed death of a child, Kennedy appeared to downplay the spread, saying, “It’s not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year.”

Measles were declared eliminated in the United States in but there’s been a resurgence of cases as vaccination rates have dropped.

Mary Koslap-Petraco, a pediatric nurse practitioner who treats underserved children in New York state, said that when she heard about the child’s death Wednesday morning, “Quite frankly, I broke down in tears. This was [99%] preventable.”  

She placed much of the onus on the anti-vaccination movement, saying they planted “seeds of distrust” that ultimately scared parents.

“I know this family only wanted the best for this child,” she said, “and I’m really sorry that they weren’t able to encounter someone who could help them through this misinformation that they’re hearing to feel comfortable enough to vaccinate their child.”

‘Primed for something like this to happen’ 

Measles is a highly contagious which can be serious and sometimes fatal in children. If one person has it, up to 9 out of 10 people nearby will become infected if they , though spread is preventable through the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, which is safe and about . The infection is often marked by a high fever, sore throat and rash; more severe complications can include pneumonia and swelling of the brain.

In a statement Wednesday, the Texas Department of State Health Services said the best way to prevent measles is through the vaccine. The department  it was “working with local health departments to investigate cases, provide immunizations where needed, and keep the public informed.”

Texas is one of 18 states that allow school-aged children to of vaccine requirements for medical, religious or “personal belief” reasons.

The majority of measles cases so far are in Gaines County, a small, rural county in West Texas, with one of the state’s highest vaccine exemptions rates: up from just over 4% a decade ago. And the actual number of unvaccinated kids in the county is likely significantly higher, because there’s no data for the many children who are homeschooled, according to reporting from the

Some of the initial cases appeared to be connected to . 

To be exempted for “reasons of conscience,” a parent or legal guardian has to submit a form to the school. Under certain circumstances — like an official emergency or epidemic — these students might not be allowed to go to school.

None of the four public school districts serving Gaines County immediately responded to a request for comment. The county’s small Loop Independent School District of K-12 students had a conscientious exemption for immunizations in 2023-24. The statewide vaccine exemption rate is 2%.

“We know based on a ton of research that these kinds of exemptions cluster,” Lakshmanan said. “They cluster geographically, they cluster in schools, they cluster in neighborhoods, they cluster in faith-based communities. Sadly we are seeing the practical reality of this type of loophole … when we start to see high exemption rates, we are bound and we are primed for something like this to happen.”

Kindergarten measles vaccination rates in Texas generally have fallen to below 95% since the pandemic, though they still remain just above national averages, according to a recent data analysis from  

A number of Texas parents who previously had not vaccinated their children are now changing course. “We’ve vaccinated multiple kids that have never been vaccinated before, some from families that didn’t believe in vaccines,” Katherine Wells, director of public health for Lubbock’s health department, told

Yet, as the outbreak spreads, Texas lawmakers are preparing to consider bills that would further loosen exemption requirements.

“Now is not the time to be playing a game of roulette with children’s lives or Texans’ lives and even contemplate making the exemption process easier,” Lakshmanan said.

The Finance Committee vote, which could have ended Kennedy’s bid, appeared to hinge on Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a former physician who was outspoken about his trepidation during last week’s heated hearings. Moments before Tuesday’s session he on X indicating his final position: “With the serious commitments I’ve received from the administration and the opportunity to make progress on the issues we agree on like healthy foods and a pro-American agenda, I will vote yes.”

On the second day of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s contentious confirmation hearings, GOP senator and health and education committee chair Bill Cassidy appeared to be balancing his support for President Trump against his serious misgivings about Kennedy heading the Department of Health and Human Services — and how one could harm the other.

“If there’s someone that is not vaccinated because of policies or attitudes you bring to the department, and there’s another 18-year-old who dies of a vaccine-preventable disease … it’ll be blown up in the press,” said Cassidy, referring to a young woman he treated who experienced liver failure as a complication of vaccine-preventable Hepatitis B. “The greatest tragedy will be her death. But I can also tell you an associated tragedy: that it will cast an absolute shadow over President Trump’s legacy.”

Kennedy, whose first day of testimony Tuesday before the Senate Finance Committee , can afford to lose the votes of only three Republican senators if all Senate Democrats vote against him. Cassidy holds particular sway because of his Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee chairmanship and his previous career as a physician. The Senate is expected to vote on Kennedy’s next week. 

Like many of his Republican peers, Cassidy noted his areas of agreement with Kennedy — such as the importance of removing ultra-processed food from American diets — but in a break from his party, he vehemently fought Kennedy on his anti-vaccination rhetoric. 

“You’ve got a megaphone … with that influence comes a great responsibility,” Cassidy said. “Now my responsibility is to determine if you can be trusted to support the best public health.”

“That’s why I’m struggling with your nomination,” he added.

At both hearings this week, Kennedy tried to distance himself from his past anti-vaccination sentiments stating, “News reports have claimed that I am anti-vaccine or anti-industry. I am neither. I am pro-safety … I believe that vaccines played a critical role in health care. All of my kids are vaccinated.”

If confirmed, Kennedy would take control of an agency with a budget and 90,000 employees spread across 13 agencies, including the and the . 

Historically, Kennedy has falsely linked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine schedule to a rise in chronic disease, saying at a town hall last year, “What I’m focused on is the bigger issue of chronic disease, and that is linked to the vaccine schedule in some cases, the explosion of chronic disease.”

When questioned this week, though, he pivoted, arguing that he supported the childhood vaccine schedule, which many state legislatures rely on to determine their school vaccine policies. Currently, all 50 states have vaccine requirements for children entering child care and schools. 

In one particularly tense exchange, Democratic Sen. Angela Deneece Alsobrooks of Maryland asked Kennedy to clarify previous remarks he had made about Black people requiring a different vaccine schedule than those of other races. 

Alsobrooks, who is Black, asked, “What different vaccine schedule should I have received?”

When Kennedy began to respond, saying, “Blacks need fewer antigens,” she cut him off.

“With all due respect,” she said, “that is so dangerous. I will be voting against your nomination.”

Vaccines and autism

At one point, Cassidy pulled up a National Institutes of Health study titled and began to share the data with Kennedy. In response, Kennedy doubled down, despite his earlier claims that if he were shown the data and research he would correct his record of and publicly apologize. 

“There are other studies as well,” Kennedy instead responded, pointing to one, which he said “shows the opposite.” 

“I’d love to show those to you,” he said.

Multiple senators, including Democrats Bernie Sanders and Tammy Baldwin, pointed to the decades of research disproving the connection and expressed concern that Kennedy wasn’t already familiar with or convinced by the body of peer-reviewed research.

“That is a really troubling response,” Sanders said, when Kennedy noted he was open to looking at studies disproving his previous claims. “Those studies are there … it’s your job to have looked at them.”

Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, also a medical doctor, and Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, though, applauded Kennedy’s willingness to question science and keep an “open mind.”

“My God, if we didn’t question science, where would we be today?” asked Mullin.

“These are the nuances you’re unwilling to talk about,” said Paul, “because there’s such a belief in submission. Submit to the government.” 

He then implied schizophrenia might also be linked to childhood vaccines or food.

School shootings and mental health

In 2024, Kennedy appeared to link school shootings with Prozac and other drugs used to treat mental illness. “There’s no time in American history or human history that kids were going to schools and shooting their classmates,” Kennedy told the comedian Bill Maher “It really started happening conterminous with the introduction of these drugs, with Prozac and the other drugs.”

On Wednesday, Sen. Tina Smith, Democrat from Minnesota, pushed him on this issue, asking if he still stands by that claim.

“I don’t think anybody can answer that question,” he responded, noting that it should be “studied along with other potential culprits.” He subsequently dodged a question about whether or not SSRIs, a class of drugs used to treat depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions, are dangerous, noting he knows people who have had a harder time getting off of these commonly prescribed drugs than heroin. Kennedy is a former heroin addict.

“These statements you’ve made linking antidepressants to school shootings reinforce stigmas” Smith responded. 

In a heated exchange, Michael Bennet, Democratic senator for Colorado and the former Denver Public Schools superintendent, accused Kennedy of giving disingenuous answers that did not mirror decades of public statements. 

“Unlike other jobs we are confirming around this place,” he said, “this is a job where it is life-and-death for the kids that I used to work with in the Denver Public Schools and for families all over this country … It is too important for the games that you are playing, Mr. Kennedy.”

Medicaid and Medicare missteps

During both hearings, Kennedy flubbed basic questions related to Medicare and Medicaid. On Thursday, Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire grilled him about basic elements of Medicare, which provides coverage to older and disabled Americans. He responded to all questions either incompletely or incorrectly. 

“You want us to confirm you to be in charge of Medicare, but it appears that you don’t know the basics of this program,” said 

At the first hearing on Wednesday, he appeared to mix up Medicare and Medicaid, which covers low-income populations and provides to schools annually for physical, mental and behavioral health services for eligible students. 

A focus on the “MAHA moms,” and ultra-processed foods

Kennedy repeatedly spoke about pediatric chronic health issues — ranging from obesity to allergies — linking them to environmental toxins and ultra-processed foods, issues that serve as the backbone of his “Make America Healthy Again” movement.

“Something is poisoning the American people,” Kennedy said when asked what his recipe to fulfill the MAHA tagline would be. The food supply, he said, is the “primary culprit.”

He said the movement has been led largely by “MAHA moms, from every state, many of them who have traveled to be here yesterday and today. This is one of the most powerful and transcendent movements I’ve ever seen.”

Multiple Republican senators also referred to the MAHA moms, with one noting he would vote to confirm Kennedy in part to honor that group’s views.

Kate Gould said the classroom became a dangerous place for her son after took over the Douglas County school board and the district removed masking requirements.

After a prolonged back-and-forth, involving a pulmonologist and a special education attorney, district leaders finally agreed to an accommodation for his classroom, mandating masks. But mere weeks later, the superintendent was fired and, under new leadership, the district again removed the masking accommodation without consulting doctors or Gould, she told The 74 in a recent interview. 

Now, almost four years later, Gould and her family live in Southern California — where they moved during the pandemic for its masking and eventual COVID vaccine requirements — and they and other parents, advocates and health experts are gearing up for what could be the next front of the school culture wars: a broader attack on school vaccine mandates by the incoming Trump administration.

Currently, all 50 states have vaccine requirements for children entering child care and schools. But with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who has peddled baseless conspiracy theories and “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” — potentially at the helm of the Department of Health and Human Services, advocates and parents are right to fear a rollback of requirements, enforcements and funding, according to interviews with about a dozen experts. 

“The anti-vax warriors have made it inside the castle walls,” said Richard Hughes, a George Washington University law professor who teaches a course on vaccine law.

Kennedy’s legitimization and the different levers he could pull, experts told The 74, could have an immense impact on vaccination rates and the spread of preventable, contagious diseases in school-aged kids.

If confirmed by the Senate, Kennedy would take control of an agency with a budget and 90,000 employees spread across 13 agencies, including the and the . Dave Weldon, nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to head the CDC, has also endorsed debunked theories, and some chronic diseases.

Kennedy, whose nomination faces from health professionals and scientists and questioning by , did not respond to requests for comment. He has said he would not take away vaccines but look to make more of their safety and efficacy data available. 

“We don’t know what he’s going to do,” John Swartzberg, a professor at the University of California Berkeley’s School of Public Health told The 74. “But if he tries to carry out the things that he’s publicly stated — not just recently but over a long, long time — then the implications for our children in school are dire.”

While most school vaccine requirements come from states, the recommendations they’re based on begin with federal agencies, such as the CDC, and enforcement is often left up to local districts. This leaves room for both federal influence and “a hodgepodge of enforcement,” said Northe Saunders, executive director of the pro-vaccine , who sees battles around school vaccination mandates playing out at the federal, state and school board levels.

Experts agreed the federal government is highly unlikely to attempt to take vaccines off the market or categorically ban mandates, and most don’t anticipate individual states will do away with their long-standing requirements.

But James Hodge, a public health law expert at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, pointed out, “You don’t actually have to pull the vaccine for people to stop using it. You have to raise doubts about it.”

That can happen by planting seeds of misinformation, he said, or by starting to require that vaccines be assessed differently for approval or federal funding. Any slight dropoff in parents vaccinating their kids entering schools or day care can result in disease outbreaks, an outcome Hodge said he expects to see over the next year or so. Such declines are

As secretary, Kennedy could delay FDA vaccine development and influence the selection of CDC advisory committee members who make the vaccine recommendations that states then use to determine their requirements. Programs that provide free vaccines for kids could also see their funding cut.

“There’s short-term threats in terms of funding and what’s going to be available for state immunization programs,” Saunders said, “[and then] there’s long-term threats about immunization policy and what the future of the immunization landscape in the country can hold.”

Even in Democratically controlled California, Gould, the mom whose son has cystic fibrosis, said she’s concerned about shifts in vaccine rhetoric, particularly at the school board level. 

“I think what I have learned from my experience in Douglas County, Colorado, is that when these individuals take over majorities on school boards, it really affects everyone … Despite the fact that we are a highly educated, very liberal, coastal section of Southern California, you definitely have people that are trying to make inroads — and these are people who are anti-science.”

Are vaccines the new critical race theory?

Parents across the country are able to apply for exemptions if their child is unable to get vaccinated for medical reasons. Most states also have religious exemptions, and 20 have some form of personal , leaving a varied landscape. 

School vaccine mandates have been around for , and while some pushback has always existed, it wasn’t until COVID that there was a real spike in vaccine hesitancy, according to Kate King, president of the and a school nurse in Ohio.

The source of the skepticism has shifted, too: “Rarely have we seen the federal government behind those debates in a way that this next administration could be,” said ASU’s Hodge.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, sees the potential “unraveling of decades and generations of protective vaccines.”

“RFK believes he knows more than the totality of any science that has come before him,” she said. 

For a vaccine to get approved, it must first go through an advisory committee at the FDA. Another committee at the CDC then develops recommendations for vaccine schedules, which state legislators rely on to determine their school policies. Kennedy would have an enormous impact on who serves on these committees, and he could stack them with anti-vaccine advocates.

Kennedy could also request a review of all vaccines that have been previously approved by the FDA and subject them to new requirements. 

Many vaccines are paid for by the federal government. If Congress — under HHS’s direction or on their own — were to begin pulling that money, some of the most vulnerable children across the country could lose access to immunization. Trump has threatened to requiring vaccines for students. 

“The moment you start tacking on any price tag to a vaccination — any price tag whatsoever, even fairly minimal — you do see vaccination rates go down,” said Hodge.

Beyond policy actions, experts warned of the power of rhetoric. “We still rely — even under legal mandates that exist at the state level — on public acceptance of vaccines,” Hodge added, so for vaccine rates to remain high, so too must the public trust. The mere presence of a federal official who is skeptical and — at times outright hostile — towards vaccines gives the opposition more credibility.

Since the enforcement of these policies is typically left up to the district level, some advocates are anticipating increased pressure on school board members to take anti-vaccine positions. 

“The real tension is if a school board decides that they don’t want to support these [vaccine mandate] policies,” said Hughes, the GW law professor. “They can’t change the policies, but they might say, ‘We don’t support these policies. Not in our school district. No way, no how.’”

He said he’s already seen some groups use vaccines as a wedge issue, much like the debate over critical race theory — an academic framework used to examine systematic racism — that convulsed school boards a few years ago.

In , public health workers were recently forbidden from promoting COVID, flu and mpox — previously known as monkeypox — shots, according to a recent NPR investigation. And a regional public health department in Idaho is no longer providing COVID vaccines to residents in six counties after a by its board. 

There’s money in anti-vax anxiety

The anti-vaccination movement is not new. It can be traced back as far as the 18th century with Edward Jenner’s discovery of the smallpox vaccine. Because it was made from cowpox, people at the time were afraid that if they got the vaccine, they’d turn into a cow, said Swartzberg, the public health professor who has taught a course on the anti-vax movement for over a decade. 

“There’s always been opposition to vaccination because it’s the idea of the word inoculate, — meaning putting into you something foreign — and that scares people,” Swartzberg said. “I understand that. That’s where emotion has to be countered with data.” 

The group of people so stringently anti-vaccination that they refuse them is small but vocal, he said. Over the past few years, though, “something has dramatically changed in our society,” and the voices behind the movement have shifted from expressing personal fears to looking to monetize the fears of others. 

For example, Joseph Mercola, deemed one of the — the 12 people responsible for sharing the majority of anti-vax messaging on social media — made substantial sums of money by peddling far-fetched health claims and then as alternative treatments. Kennedy also appeared on the “Disinformation Dozen” list.

Others sell merchandise, books and tickets to events, offer exclusive paid content on platforms like Patreon, have sponsored content and display affiliate marketing links to anti-vaccine products.

“It’s turned into an incredibly lucrative field for anti-vaxxers, and what’s really facilitated this has been the internet and the lack of any monitoring of the internet for misinformation and disinformation,” Swartzberg said.

Just last week, Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, d that it will end its fact-checking program on social media posts. 

Using social media and other mechanisms, the anti-vax movement has targeted fairly insular groups around the United States with misinformation, he added. These include New York’s and the y in Minnesota, both of which have seen recent measles outbreaks. 

While the image of vaccine skeptical parents is often one of young, white “,” Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, also pointed to “well-earned” trepidation among Black and Latino parents. 

Historically, she noted, significant harm has been done to Black communities through the weaponization of medical trials, and families of color have had particularly negative experiences with the health care system —

During the pandemic, Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy’s anti-vaccine advocacy organization, seemed to tap into this distrust when it put out targeting Black Americans with disproven vaccine claims. 

Gould, the California mom, said if she were still living in more conservative Douglas County she’d fear that people would “believe the disinformation [and] stop vaccinating their children. For kids with chronic illnesses — or like my son, a life-limiting illness — that has massive consequences. It has life-or-death consequences.”

The former independent presidential candidate has a complicated past as a member of a famous Democratic political dynasty that includes his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, and his father, U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy, both assassinated in his youth. He struggled with addiction, and an arrest for heroin possession in the 1980s led him to volunteer with the Natural Resources Defense Council to fulfill community service hours, which jump-started his career in . 

Then, about two decades ago, Kennedy became interested in vaccine conspiracy theories, including the disproven link between vaccines and autism, which has become a focal point of much of his work since. He has peddled other , including that Wi-Fi causes cancer, that chemicals in water can lead to children becoming transgender and that AIDS may not be caused by HIV. In 2021, he was named one of the of misinformation about COVID vaccines on social media. 

Doctors and advocates have expressed alarm about the impact he could have on the department, while some have applauded his more mainstream views, such as a focus on preventative care through healthy eating and exercise and a commitment to removing processed foods from .

His beliefs and proposals are particularly relevant for kids, amid heated debates around school vaccination policies and a in the percentage of kindergarteners who have gotten state-required vaccinations.

If confirmed by the Senate, Kennedy would take control of an agency with one of largest federal budgets — — that employs about 90,000 people across 13 agencies, including , (the latter pays for a host of for eligible children), the and the

To better understand the pediatric and school-based health care implications of some of Kennedy’s proposals, The 74’s Amanda Geduld spoke with Leana Wen, an emergency physician and contributing opinions columnist for . The parent of two school-aged kids is also a professor of health policy and management at George Washington University, a non-resident senior fellow at the and Baltimore’s former health commissioner.

Geduld then spoke with medical legal expert Richard H. Hughes IV about how likely Kennedy’s confirmation is and what kind of power he would wield if confirmed. Hughes is a professor at George Washington University’s law school, where he teaches a course on vaccine law, and a partner at the firm . He formerly worked as the vice president of public policy at Moderna — one of the co-producers of the first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccines — guiding the company’s policy strategy during the pandemic.

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

The medical perspective

The 74: Kennedy has a long record of promoting and even before the pandemic had built a following through his anti-vaccine nonprofit group, . 

In the past few weeks, he’s backed off these assertions a bit, but I’m still wondering what impact his rhetoric around vaccines could have— especially around parents vaccinating their kids. Can you also speak to some of the science behind vaccinating kids in the first place and what impact that’s had on pediatric health care?

Leana Wen: I think it’s important for us to start with the facts and to talk about what happened before there were vaccines for a variety of diseases. In the decades past, prior to vaccines, we used to see children succumbing to diseases that we now do not see anymore. We used to see children becoming paralyzed from polio and their parents being too scared for them to interact with others and go to school. We used to see children with severe, lifelong problems — including with their brains and other organs — because of measles, mumps and other diseases that we now consider to be eliminated thanks to vaccines. 

And so I think part of why vaccine misinformation has caught on is that the current generation of Americans have not experienced how terrifying these diseases have been that vaccines prevent. And I would really hate for us to see these diseases return before people recognize how much vaccines are life saving. 

I think it’s also important for us to mention the facts. It’s a fact that in 1900, 30% of all deaths in America occurred in kids under 5. Now that number is 1.4%. Back in 1900, the three leading causes of death were all infectious diseases. Now they aren’t. Thanks to antibiotics, thanks to sanitation, also thanks to vaccines. 

There was done recently that was published in the journal The Lancet. The study found that vaccines against the 14 most common pathogens saved 154 million lives globally over the past five decades, and that these vaccines cut infant mortality by 40%. 

And so it’s really heartbreaking to hear anyone spread misinformation about vaccines, but certainly it would be extremely concerning from a public health standpoint, if the individual in charge of science and health in this country is the one spreading such falsehoods. This could have a huge impact on trust in vaccines. And unfortunately, that could reduce vaccine uptake and lead to the return of these diseases that we thought were eliminated.

Kennedy has proposed removing processed foods from and limiting the use of food dyes, saying that the U.S. obesity epidemic, as well as a rise in chronic diseases like diabetes, are the result of He recently called out the nutrition department, which he says is Can you talk a little bit about what impact the food that we see showing up in school lunches has on kids, and what we know about food dyes?

I want to focus on ultra-processed food. We know that ultra-processed foods are associated with a whole variety of health problems — certainly things like diabetes, obesity, other chronic diseases like that — but also with depression and early dementia and potentially behavioral developmental issues in children as well. 

Unfortunately, some studies show that as much as 70% of the diet that Americans consume come from ultra-processed foods — that the calories from these diets come from ultra-processed food. I think it would be great if we can start reducing or removing ultra-processed food from school lunches. There has been some research done on food dyes and other additives. Reducing these in school lunches would also be a positive step.

He’s also mentioned that the same way that a doctor can prescribe Ozempic to treat obesity, they should also be able to prescribe, say, and have that covered by health insurance policies. I’m wondering what that might look like for kids as well, and what role pediatricians might play.

I don’t think any pediatrician would disagree with the idea that we have to focus more on prevention — that promoting healthy lifestyle, increasing exercise, improving diet, these would all be excellent for the promotion of health and well-being in our children. 

To be clear, it’s not these ideas that Kennedy is promoting that the medical profession would have an issue with. It’s that mixed in with many of these good ideas, are our concerns about misinformation around vaccines and that traditionally have not been considered to be safe and effective. 

After Kennedy’s nomination, he wrote on on Jan. 20, “The Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water.” Can you talk a little bit about the role of fluoride in drinking water — specifically for kids.

This is an area where re-examination of the current policy would be a good idea, because this is a nuanced and complicated issue. On the one hand, we know that fluoridating the water supply has reduced cavities in children, but that effect was seen the most before widespread use of fluoride toothpaste.

We also know that fluoride in large quantities has toxic effects, including on bone development, on teeth discoloration and potentially on the developing brain if consumed by the pregnant woman. And so the question then is, what is the amount of fluid that would be optimal for promoting both dental health and reducing other effects? …

I think these are all reasonable questions to be asking — again, though, using science as the basis and not approaching this as an activist who already has a preconception in mind.

Are there any other policy ideas that Kennedy has put forward that you have thought of as either welcome news and an exciting change or particularly concerning?

None of what we’re talking about here is new. I think we can divide the proposals by Kennedy into three categories. One are things that are good ideas. For example, removing ultra-processed lunch or ultra processed food from school lunches. 

The second category are things that deserve a re-examination, and depending on what we find, may or may not be a good idea. That includes the fluoridation.

And then the third area would be things that have been proven to be wrong. For example, misinformation around vaccines.

And so again, I think to your point, none of these things that have been brought up in the category of good ideas is new, but that’s how I would think about this.

The legal perspective

The 74: Speaking about Kennedy at a rally recently, Trump said, How accurate is that? Can he really go wild on health? What are some of the congressional stopgaps there, and how much power does Kennedy actually have to enact these proposed policies? 

Richard H. Hughes: I think we could break that down into sort of two parts: Is Trump going to make good on that promise? and How far will RFK go? 

I would say that President Trump is very intent on making good on that promise. He went through with the selection of RFK. If you look at the appointments across the board, the nominees he selected are very unconventional. He’s very intent on disruption. 

And if you look at the health appointees in particular, there is some consistency there, right? They all hold really unconventional views. They come from very unconventional backgrounds for these types of roles. There are some questions about the adequacy of some of their experience and qualifications for these roles. There is also some consistency across the nominees that this sort of unconventional, non-mainstream views on COVID and the COVID response, as well as this focus around infections versus chronic disease. A lot of them have said we think we should be focused on chronic disease. A lot of them have espoused misinformation about vaccines. 

In terms of the legal authority, Congress has given a lot of really sweeping power to the secretary. When Congress gives the authority to the executive branch to do something, and it does it really clearly, the executive branch has a lot of leeway … 

So I’ll just give you an example. A lot of the questions I’m getting are about vaccine recommendations and vaccine requirements. There is the (ACIP). That is a committee that is created by the secretary… 

There are all of these requirements for programs or payers to provide coverage of the vaccines that are recommended by the committee. And so there are really interesting questions about, well, if he stopped convening the committee, if he eliminated the committee, what impact would that have?

There’s a potential trickle down effect, because a lot of states actually either look to that committee to determine what their [vaccine] policy should be, or they just refer to the committee and require, say, you know, for school entry, they require vaccination in accordance with the schedule that’s determined by the ACIP. 

That’s sort of a very specific area … 

At the FDA, there’s a lot of room for someone to come in, introduce subjective views on science, and say, “Well, what do we mean by safety? What do we mean by efficacy? Your traditional randomized, controlled trial, that doesn’t tell me what I need to know…” [That] might be the view of somebody at the agency in this administration, and they might try to introduce alternative evidence, and they would have some latitude to do that.

Just turning a little bit more to vaccines, it sounds like whoever is running this agency and convening this committee has a lot of power to potentially help determine what vaccines are going to be covered by health insurance. Is that correct?

That’s right. Congress requires payers to cover vaccines that are recommended by that committee. If those recommendations are rescinded by the secretary, which the secretary has the authority to do, that really throws a lot into question there. 

Now I’m having a really healthy, friendly debate with one of my mentors over the legal challenges that one could bring to challenge that sort of decision. There are some potential checks on this in the courts, but it’s all going to be really circumstantial.

Thinking specifically about schools, you mentioned that folks look to this committee to help determine what vaccines are required for students. Can you explain a little bit about how that works? How might RFK’s policies impact that?

If you’re interested — it’s open access — I just wrote in this month’s issue of Health Affairs on the relationship between ACIP recommendations and state school requirements … 

But, this is the authority of the states, and it’s really interesting in a Republican administration to think about the federalism debate … and you’re going to see this tension play out in this administration over the role of the states and the federal government. 

And it’s going to play out in the arena of public health and around vaccine policy … The federal government can come in and play a really important role when you have a threat that, say, goes across state lines. But states have to be able to enact these measures to protect themselves, to protect their people. 

The Jacobson v. Massachusetts case recognized that states can require immunization. [In] 1922, [in] the case Zucht v. King — lesser known but very important case when we talk about school requirements — the Supreme Court came back and said that a school district was able to exclude a young girl from school when she wasn’t vaccinated, even though there was no active outbreak. 

And so that’s a really, really important case, because if you think about why we require kids to get vaccinated to go to school, it’s a decision that the state makes to impose these requirements so that we don’t have disease outbreaks. It’s the suppression of endemic disease. You take those requirements away, you weaken those requirements, you’re going to see outbreaks potentially. And we’ve seen that with measles outbreaks, where we weaken those policies. 

So it sounds to me less like RFK can put out a mandate that schools federally cannot require vaccines, but more that there could be a trickle-down effect of some of what he does at the federal level, and that might impact then state policies. Is that correct?

Well, yes, but this is something I’m thinking a lot about right now because there is this statute that some of us have looked at over time — — which is the old isolation and quarantine statute that allows, essentially, the CDC to come in and and impose certain measures when necessary to control communicable disease. 

And every semester, I ask students, “Would this actually allow the federal government to impose a vaccine mandate?” And we debate that endlessly, whether that language actually would allow it or not. 

And right now, I think that poses the question: there is preemption language in that statute, so could it potentially be used to set a policy that would undermine state requirements or weaken state requirements? And it’s just a really interesting academic question. I don’t know that realistically that’s something that RFK or the CDC would pursue, but I think we’re living in an era where everything’s on the table.

Well, all of that said, how likely is Kennedy to actually get confirmed? And could there be, from a policy or a legal standpoint, any roadblocks put up in his way?

Yeah, so I do think he’ll get confirmed. I think that what you have seen is President Trump came forward and put together a slate of nominees very rapidly. And all of the ways that you could say that President Trump is inconsistent, he has been very consistent with his health nominees — a lot of similarly held views, a lot of unconventional backgrounds. 

I think just if you look at the pool of appointments as a whole, there’s a lot to take aim at, whether it was Matt Gaetz, his AG nominee () or the selection of the defense secretary nominee (), there’s a lot to provide sort of political fog. And I think that in all of that noise you lose sight of the fact that RFK does not have really the ideal qualifications for the role [and] holds some views that are anti-science. 

And you look to the Senate and ask, “Well, is someone going to stand up and push back and say, ‘We’re not going to confirm this nominee because they lack the qualifications?’” … No one has come out and sort of put a stake in the ground and said, “We’re not going to confirm nominees who don’t meet these qualifications,” or “If they hold these views, there’s no way that they’re going to get a hearing.” 

We just haven’t seen that. And so I do think they’ll get confirmed. I think President Trump expects loyalty from his party.