RFK Jr. appears on track to become US health secretary as he wins key Republican senator’s support

WASHINGTON (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vocal vaccine skeptic and activist lawyer, appeared on track to become the nation’s health secretary after winning the crucial support of Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a doctor who says Kennedy has assured him he would not topple the nation’s childhood vaccination program.

In a starkly partisan vote, the Republican-controlled Senate Finance Committee advanced Kennedy’s nomination 14-13, sending his bid to oversee the $1.7 trillion U.S. Health and Human Services agency for a full vote on the Senate floor.

All Democrats on the committee opposed Kennedy, whose family name had been synonymous with their party for generations before he aligned with President Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign. They sounded an alarm on Kennedy’s work to sow doubt around vaccine safety and his potential to profit off lawsuits over drugmakers.

A full Senate vote has not yet been scheduled, but with Cassidy’s vote no longer in doubt Kennedy’s nomination is likely to succeed absent any last-minute vote switches. Kennedy has been among the more contentious of Trump’s Cabinet choices, and Republicans coalescing around him showed another powerful measure of near lockstep allegiance to the president.

Cassidy had publicly detailed his personal struggle, as a doctor who has seen the lifesaving ability of vaccines, with Kennedy’s confirmation. “Your past, undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments, concerns me,” Cassidy told Kennedy last week.

Yet when it came to his vote Tuesday, he advanced Kennedy with a simple “aye.”

Cassidy, who is up for reelection next year and could face a primary challenge, later described “intense conversations” with Kennedy and Vice President JD Vance that started over the weekend and continued into Tuesday morning, just before the vote. Those conversations yielded “serious commitments” from the administration, Cassidy said. His reelection campaign had “absolutely zero to do with the decision,” he told reporters.