Mike Pence, the former vice-president, urged Senate Republicans on Friday to reject Donald Trump’s choice of Robert F Kennedy Jr as health secretary – although he cited Kennedy’s support for abortion rights, while other critics are most outraged at his stance against vaccines.
Pence’s comments came as public alarm mounted among Democrats and in health circles about Kennedy, while there were bipartisan warnings that another of Trump’s choices, the far-right congressman Matt Gaetz for attorney general, faces “an uphill battle” to win confirmation in the US Senate, despite Republicans winning the majority in the upper congressional chamber.
Pence cited his conservative views on abortion for his opposition to Kennedy’s elevation to secretary of health and human services (HHS).
“The Trump-Pence administration was unapologetically pro-life for our four years in office. There are hundreds of decisions made at HHS every day that either lead our nation toward a respect for life or away from it, and HHS under our administration always stood for life,” Pence said in a statement released by his conservative non-profit, Advancing American Freedom.
“I believe the nomination of RFK Jr to serve as Secretary of HHS is an abrupt departure from the pro-life record of our administration and should be deeply concerning to millions of Pro-Life Americans who have supported the Republican Party and our nominees for decades.”
Prominent medical professionals have joined leading Democrats in speaking out against Kennedy, who has embraced a multitude of debunked health-related conspiracy theories, and whose proposed elevation to the government’s top health job represents “a clear and present danger to the nation’s health” and “a catastrophe”, according to some critics.
“I think this is an extraordinarily bad choice. He does not plan to lean on evidence and rigorous analysis to make decisions but instead to use his own ideas,” Dr Ashish Jha, Covid-19 coordinator for the Biden White House and dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, told CNN.
Dr Richard Besser, former acting director of the powerful US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told the network that Kennedy’s views criticizing childhood vaccines, including the false claim that they cause autism, were “dangerous”.
“Frankly, I find it chilling. He has done so much to undermine the confidence that people have in that incredible intervention,” he said.
Trump has been assembling a cabinet for his second term in office, making announcements this week from his residence in Florida, and on Thursday named Kennedy to lead HHS and its associated agencies.
He praised the politician, a former independent presidential candidate and outcast from the Democratic Kennedy political dynasty, at a black-tie gala at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday night.
“If you like health and if you like people that live a long time, it’s the most important position,” he said. Directly addressing Kennedy, who was in the ballroom of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private resort club, he added: “We want you to come up with things and ideas, and what you’ve been talking about for a long time.”
Democrats were quick to express outrage. The California representative Robert Garcia called it “fucking insane” and described Kennedy as “a tin foil hat conspiracy theorist”.
The Massachusetts representative Jake Auchincloss promised to “fight back in Washington to protect the integrity” of federal public health agencies if Kennedy is confirmed by the Senate.
“RFK Jr is a conspiracist & quack who threatens the health of Americans. He’s not simply angling for more sunshine & exercise (no one disagrees with that). He seeks to overturn evidence-driven, peer-reviewed research on medicines & more,” Auchincloss posted to X.
Shares in several of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies and vaccine manufacturers, including Moderna, AstraZeneca and GSK, plummeted on Friday in reaction to the news.
Kennedy has previously said “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” but told NBC in a post-election interview that he “won’t take away anybody’s vaccines”.
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Trump on Thursday nominated a vocal ally of his to be interior secretary – Doug Burgum, the Republican North Dakota governor. The role would put him in charge of national parks and public lands, and he has strong links to the fossil fuel industry, where many companies have strong appetites for government permits to drill and mine on federal land.
Republicans will have a majority of at least 53-47 seats in the chamber during the next Congress, but even so, two other of Trump’s picks are already receiving bipartisan pushback: Gaetz and the former Democratic congresswoman turned Republican Tulsi Gabbard, named for director of national intelligence. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton once described her as a “favorite of the Russians”.
Gaetz resigned as a US representative for Florida on Wednesday, in effect suspending the planned release on Friday of a report by the House of Representatives ethics committee into allegations of sexual misconduct, including that he had sex with a 17-year-old girl, which he has denied. His nomination as the nation’s leading law enforcement officer was seen by some as a direct challenge by Trump to the incoming Republican Senate majority to defy his authority.
“For me the message to the administration is simply that Matt Gaetz has a very long, steep hill to get across the finish line and it will require the spending of a lot of capital,” North Dakota’s Republican senator Kevin Cramer told the Washington Post.
“That ethics report is clearly going to become a part of the record.”
On Friday, Joni Ernst, Republican senator for Iowa, also said the report was expected to feature prominently in a confirmation hearing. “We’ll talk about it for certain, but I know he’s going to have an uphill battle [for confirmation],” she told NBC News.
Other Republicans demanded the release of the report, including Washington congressman Dan Newhouse and Texas senator John Cornyn.
Meanwhile former defense secretary and Republican US senator Chuck Hagel published an opinion piece in the New York Times challenging Trump’s controversial nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, as a potential “danger” to political independence, good ethics and progress towards equality in the US military. He also questioned the potential for Trump to sidestep Senate confirmations.
Trump has signaled he could resort to rare recess appointments, the archaic process allowing a president to install his nominees while Congress is not in session.