Donald Trump wants Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on a tighter leash as the White House trains its focus on this year’s crucial midterm elections.
Insiders told CNN the administration is preparing a personnel shake-up at the Department of Health and Human Services ahead of a drive to promote Trump’s healthcare policies in the run-up to the November polls.
The move is described as part of “an effort to keep closer tabs on Kennedy and an HHS leadership that has struggled at times to coordinate with its own agencies at the White House, frustrating senior Trump officials and generating dayslong controversies.”
A noted conspiracy theorist, who said Thursday he’s “not scared of a germ” because he “used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats,” Kennedy’s tenure as health secretary has been plagued by controversy since even before it began.
He engaged in heated exchanges with lawmakers during his Senate confirmation hearing on everything from his anti-vaccine crusade and promotion of bogus claims about the COVID-19 pandemic to his shifting stance on abortion and evasiveness about what programs the department might implement under his leadership.
After assuming office, Kennedy quickly fired all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, in many cases replacing them with known vaccine critics.
He went on to implement mass layoffs in a purge of top experts at the CDC after allegedly claiming staffers were “killing children,” and angrily fired his new CDC chief last summer after she said she refused to preemptively rubberstamp his vaccine recommendations.
Against broad scientific consensus, his department has since moved to eliminate or reduce longstanding childhood recommendations on immunization for diseases like influenza and meningococcus.
The CDC has now also revised its website to suggest a possible connection between vaccines and autism, contradicting decades of evidence showing no causal link between the two.
Kennedy has further come under fire for his handling of a major measles outbreak, describing the situation as “not unusual” and emphasizing personal choice rather than clear vaccination recommendations.
Authorities declared the disease eliminated in the United States in 2000. Medical experts credit its resurgence to waning vaccination rates.
Amid these and other scandals, Kennedy’s own family has joined calls for his resignation.
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a threat to the health and wellbeing of every American,” Joe Kennedy III, the health secretary’s nephew, wrote on X in September.
Personnel changes at Kennedy’s department instituted by the White House include “installing four new senior counselors who will be charged with more closely managing the department’s daily operations and communications across the federal government,” CNN reports.
HHS confirmed the new appointments Thursday, with Kennedy writing he is “proud to elevate battle-tested, principled leaders onto my immediate team.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and Kennedy’s department for comment on this story.
