RFK Jr. Gets Great Confirmation News After His Hearing Draws to a Close
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is far from confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services, but the prognosis got better on Thursday.
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a key swing vote in the Senate, reportedly told CNN’s Manu Raju that Kennedy handled himself well in his hearings so far.
That’s great news coming from the senator, but Collins hasn’t seen all of Kennedy’s testimony, and the nominee still has some GOP doubters to overcome.
Susan Collins seems satisfied with RFK Jr’s answers to her questions but said she needs to review the rest of his responses since she was also at the Tulsi Gabbard hearing.
On RFK Jr: “He answered my questions well,” she told me.
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 30, 2025
“Susan Collins seems satisfied with RFK Jr’s answers to her questions but said she needs to review the rest of his responses since she was also at the Tulsi Gabbard hearing,” Raju wrote in a post on the social media platform X.
Collins is generally considered one of the Senate Republicans most likely to oppose President Donald Trump on the tough votes — she was one of only three GOP senators who voted against the nomination of Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense. (The others were regular Republican hemorrhoid Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.)
Still, just for his nomination to be approved by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Kennedy might have more problems with another senator Trump has clashed with publicly in the past.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the committee and is himself a physician, grilled Kennedy on Thursday about his views on vaccines, according to The Associated Press.
Cassidy, according to the AP, repeatedly asked Kennedy to repudiate the idea that measles and hepatitis B vaccines could cause autism, the AP reported, but Kennedy would only hedge.
“If the data is there, I will absolutely do that,” he said, leaving the clear impression that he is not convinced.
As the hearing closed, Cassidy told Kennedy he was “struggling” with whether to vote for his confirmation, the AP reported.
Cassidy could single-handedly derail the nomination by voting NO in committee. He hasn’t said how he would vote. https://t.co/vSRDg7uiFJ
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 30, 2025
“Cassidy could single-handedly derail the nomination by voting NO in committee,” Raju wrote in another X post. “He hasn’t said how he would vote.”
Cassidy has taken positions in the past that infuriate conservatives, such as supporting gun control legislation, and he was one of only seven Republicans to vote for a conviction when Democrats impeached Trump for the second time. (That was a move that got him censured by his own state Republican Party.)
It’s all shaping up to be a showdown for the nomination for Kennedy, who is a lightning rod on both sides politically.
Conservatives have grounds for distrusting a member of the Kennedy dynasty who spent his entire life, until about five minutes ago, as a member in good standing of the liberal elite — a little eccentric for the left’s taste maybe, but a scion of royalty nonetheless.
His MAGA credentials are, to put it charitably, scant.
And on the left, liberals, who generally genuflect at the mere mention of the Kennedy name, basically spit fire when it comes to RFK Jr. because of his politics-makes-strange-bedfellows arrangement with Trump.
His nomination as HHS secretary has been one of Trump’s dicier picks — along with Hegseth and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s bid to be Director of National Intelligence — and how it plays out remains to be seen.
There’s no doubt, though, that with Collins expressing openness to supporting him — at least at this stage — his chances just got better.
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