Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill are still grappling with how to handle a trio of shocking Cabinet nominations this week by President-elect Donald Trump. Even as questions continue to swirl about the stunning choices of former Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to lead the intelligence community and Fox News host Pete Hegseth to head the Defense Department, Trump on Thursday dropped another bombshell pick: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., known for his anti-vaccine activism, as secretary of Health and Human Services.
Trump chose Kennedy to lead the massive department, a post that would have him oversee a sweeping range of health and medical efforts, from drug and vaccine approvals to food safety to core research. The department includes the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. It has more than 80,000 employees and is responsible for some $2 trillion in annual outlays as of fiscal year 2024.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump said in a statement announcing the pick.
Trump said Kennedy would restore public health agencies’ standards and push to end an epidemic of chronic disease in the country.
Kennedy, a controversial former Democrat who ran for the White House as an independent this year before endorsing Trump, had reportedly been promised a key role overseeing health policy. He has pledged to pursue a “Make America Healthy Again” agenda focused in large part on the country’s food and nutrition.
“I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines,” Trump said at a New York rally last month.
Why it matters: The prospect that Kennedy might be given broad influence over the nation’s healthcare programs has deeply alarmed public health experts, who fear that he could cause real damage if given an official platform from which to promote conspiracy theories, debunked medical claims or outright misinformation about vaccines and other topics.
“Basically, we’re putting not just a vaccine denier but a science skeptic in charge of all the nation’s premier health agencies,” Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a medical analyst and professor at George Washington University, said on CNN, equating the choice to “putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.”
Trump is testing the Senate: The Trump team reportedly knew that these latest staffing choices would send shockwaves through official Washington, D.C.
The choice of Gaetz, the caustic Florida lawmaker, to be attorney general was particularly startling to many lawmakers and pundits, but the choices of Gabbard as director of national intelligence and Hegseth for Defense secretary have also raised serious national security concerns and questions about whether the appointees are in any way qualified for the responsibilities they’d have.
Gaetz, who resigned from Congress after being nominated Wednesday, has faced ethics investigations. He would lead a Justice Department that he has routinely railed against — and one that has investigated him as part of a sex-trafficking probe, though it declined to bring charges against him. Gaetz has denied wrongdoing.
“I’ve got very few skills. Vote-counting is one,” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said. “I think he’s got a lot of work to do to get 50” votes in the Senate.
Gabbard has a history of spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories and defending Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. She has no background in the spy world or intelligence community. Hegseth, similarly, has little in the way of the traditional credentials required to lead a massive Pentagon bureaucracy or oversee global military strategy.
Taken together, the choices amount to a clear loyalty test for Senate Republicans newly in the majority — and a middle finger to the political establishment, pushing the limits of what lawmakers might accept.
“The point is to make your allies defend the indefensible,” political analyst Ron Brownstein told CNN, “and each surrender paves the path to the next surrender, because you’re basically pulling them out further and further beyond where they thought they would ever go.”
Trump has also demanded the ability to make recess appointments, essentially bypassing the Senate’s role in vetting and confirming some appointments. Some Republicans have expressed reservations about recess appointments and certain Trump’s nominees, but others have said they’re willing to go however far the president-elect wants and give him essentially complete deference in picking his Cabinet. And with each increasingly outrageous nomination, the confirmation prospects for prior nominees may get better given the GOP senators are unlikely to want to derail many of Trump’s early plans.
