RFK Jr.’s Hearing Repeatedly Disrupted by Protests Over His Hypocrisy

Robert F. Kennedy’s first confirmation hearing Wednesday to become secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services was quickly interrupted by protesters over the Trump nominee’s vaccine positions.

During his opening remarks, Kennedy said under oath that he is “not anti-vaccine”—but people standing in the back of the room weren’t convinced.

“News reports have claimed that I am anti-vaccine or anti-industry. I am neither,” Kennedy said.

“You are!” one person shouted out before she was dragged out by security. “Yes, you are!”

When the room returned to order, the 71-year-old continued that he considered himself “pro-safety” and mentioned that he had vaccinated all of his children and believed that “vaccines have a critical role in health care.”

As he continued speaking, another protester disrupted his speech for a second time and was removed.

Kennedy’s “pro-safety” claim, however, flies in the face of his outspoken stances on the jab. During the hearing, Senator Ron Wyden torched Kennedy for claiming in a 2020 podcast that he would “do anything, pay anything, to go back in time and not vaccinate” his children. And in a July 2023 interview with podcaster Lex Fridman, Kennedy baselessly connected essential vaccines—such as the polio jab, which has practically eradicated the paralyzing disease from the planet—to lethal diseases such as cancer.

“You’ve talked about that the media slanders you by calling you an anti-vaxxer, and you’ve said that you’re not anti-vaccine, you’re pro–safe vaccine,” Fridman prompted the former independent presidential candidate. “Difficult question: Can you name any vaccines that you think are good?”

“I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably averting more problems than they’re causing. There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective,” Kennedy said at the time. This is false.

Kennedy claimed during a heated back and forth with Wyden that quoting him was “dishonest” and that Fridman had, at the time, interrupted a response that was supposed to extend to a philosophy that every medicine—including vaccines—have individuals who are sensitive to them. Unfortunately, Kennedy didn’t find a way to squeeze that seemingly retroactive detail into his more than two-hour interview with the podcaster.

Political campaign donors are getting more brazen about what they expect to buy with their dollar.

Nicole Shanahan, a Silicon Valley lawyer and investor, impressed upon a handful of lawmakers late Tuesday the importance of confirming her former third-party running mate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. But within the folds of the message lay a dark and direct warning for two specific senators whose campaigns she backed five years ago.

“This hasn’t been widely reported, but in 2020 I cut large checks to Chuck Schumer to help Democrats flip two Senate seats from red to blue,” Shanahan said in a video posted to X. “The two candidates I helped select: Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, please know I will be watching your votes very closely.

“I will make it my personal mission that you lose your seats in the Senate if you vote against the future health of America’s children,” she said.

The ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin then went on to challenge the potential “no” votes from multiple other politicians, promising to find and back political challengers to their seats if they didn’t swing for Kennedy.

“And more than that, I also want to say to Senators Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Bill Cassidy, Tom Tillis, James Lankford, Corey Booker, John Fetterman, Bernie Sanders, and Catherine Cortez Masto—this is a bipartisan message, and it comes directly from me, while Bobby may be willing to play nice, I won’t,” Shanahan warned.

“If you vote against him, I will personally fund challengers to primary you in your next election, and I will enlist hundreds of thousands to join me. You’re either on the side of transparency and accountability, or you’re standing in the way.”

Kennedy, a virulent vaccine conspiracy theorist, is slated for two confirmation hearings this week. He will appear before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. and will face further questioning from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension, or HELP, Committee on Thursday.

Kennedy’s history in public health is questionable at best. His stances, which include unscientific beliefs that AIDS is not caused by HIV and that a large number of vaccines should be stripped from the market, could have major impacts on the agency designed to protect America’s health, especially as bird flu outbreaks begin to dot the country.

In December, Donald Trump announced that Kennedy would spend his time at the top of HHS researching an already thoroughly debunked conspiracy that ties vaccine usage to autism rates.

And Kennedy’s vaccine conspiracies aren’t just easily refutable, anti-vax hogwash—they’ve caused legitimate, real-world harm. Preceding a deadly measles outbreak on the Pacific islands of Samoa in 2019, Kennedy’s anti-vax nonprofit Children’s Health Defense spread rampant misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines, sending the nation’s vaccination rate plummeting from the 60–70 percent range to just 31 percent, according to Mother Jones. That year, the country reported 5,707 cases of measles—an illness that was declared eliminated by the United States in 2000 thanks to advancements in modern medicine (read: vaccines)—as well as 83 measles-related deaths, the majority of which were children under the age of 5.

Further still, the 71-year-old’s private life has given pause to a number of lawmakers responsible for confirming him. Kennedy has publicly admitted to dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park, was accused of (and sort of apologized for) groping his children’s babysitter in the late 1990s, and last week was described by his cousin Caroline Kennedy as a “predator” who is “addicted to attention and power.”

“I have known Bobby my whole life; we grew up together,” the former ambassador to Australia and Japan wrote in a letter to lawmakers obtained by The Washington Post.

“His basement, his garage, his dorm room were the centers of the action where drugs were available, and he enjoyed showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in the blender to feed his hawks,” she continued. “It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence.”

Tim Kaine has a warning for any federal workers considering Trump’s buyout offer: It’s a scam.

The president announced on Tuesday that federal workers must return to the office full-time, or they can resign by next week with a buyout and severance pay through September 30. This is part of his effort to overhaul the federal bureaucracy in his own image, and with his own supporters.

“If you resign under this program, you will retain all pay and benefits regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025 (or earlier if you choose to accelerate your resignation for any reason),” the email read.

Aside from angering federal workers, the buyout raised immediate red flags for Democrats, and Senator Kaine particularly.

“The federal employees received an interesting email at the end of the day today,” Kaine said on Tuesday, referring to the buyout email. “So tender your resignation, and then boy it’s just gonna be a gravy train, you’re just gonna get paid for seven months without working. The president has no authority to make that offer!

“There’s no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work,” Kaine continued. “My message to federal employees who received this is: Yeah, the president has tried to terrorize you for about a week, and then gives you a little sweetheart offer if you resign in the next week.… Don’t be fooled! He’s tricked hundreds of people with that offer. If you accept that offer and resign, he’ll stiff you.… That promise is worth nothing.”

Some federal workers seem to be heeding Kaine’s warning.

“You can’t buy me off, scare me away, or intimidate me into resigning. I’m angry, spiteful, and resolute in holding the line and outlasting anyone trying to destroy the agency whose work I believe in and a mission I take to heart,” said one user in the popular r/fednews subreddit.

Donald Trump’s petty crusade for revenge continues: General Mark Milley will be the next of the president’s former advisers to lose his security detail.

Fox News reported Tuesday that according to multiple senior officials, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will announce that he is “immediately pulling” Milley’s security clearance and personal security detail.

Hegseth will also direct the inspector general to determine whether Milley should be stripped of a star in retirement for undermining the chain of command.

Milley refused Trump’s orders in 2020 to send the military to crush protesters in Washington in the wake of George Floyd’s death. He has also described Trump as a “fascist” and a “wannabe dictator.”

Ever since entering the White House, it seems Trump just can’t stop thinking about the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Within minutes of being sworn in, Milley’s portrait was stripped from the wall of the Pentagon. Last week, Trump posted that his presidential personnel office was “actively in the process of identifying and removing over a thousand Presidential Appointees from the previous Administration,” including Milley, whom he listed by name.

Trump has already pulled the security details for some of his other former colleagues turned political adversaries, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo. Each one has publicly criticized Trump, and the latter two had their security details removed despite warnings from the Biden administration that they were still receiving threats from foreign adversaries.

Tulsi Gabbard is facing more scrutiny over her foreign travels, specifically a trip she made to the Middle East while a member of Congress.

In 2017, as a member of Congress representing Hawaii, Gabbard made a trip to Syria and Lebanon to meet with Syrian leader Bashar Al Assad. But shortly after her visit, The New York Times reported, U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted a call between two Hezbollah officials in which they said that she met with “the boss” or “the big guy.”

Intelligence officials assume that the person in question was a senior Hezbollah official, or a high-ranking Lebanese government official with strong ties to Hezbollah. Gabbard denied meeting anyone from the militant organization and political party but acknowledged that she met with different Lebanese officials on her trip, including some close to Hezbollah, such as the head of Lebanese intelligence at the time. 

The Times spoke with unnamed people close to Gabbard who said that she disclosed all of her meetings from the trip and that the reports were misinterpreted. But this latest revelation is sure to introduce another snag into Gabbard’s confirmation process to serve as director of national intelligence. Gabbard hasn’t yet won over the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee, nor influential Senator Mitch McConnell. 

The report also notes that Gabbard found herself under additional scrutiny from a federal agency that protects flights, thanks to a trip she made to the Vatican for an event organized by a European businessman on the FBI watchlist.

Trump’s allies are trying to force the normally secret committee vote to be made public in the hopes of forcing skeptical Republicans, like Senators Susan Collins and Todd Young, to back her. Gabbard can’t afford to lose a single committee vote, stacking the odds against this particularly quixotic Cabinet choice.