Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren Slam RFK Jr. for Ultimate Scam

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may have framed himself as a grassroots political candidate in the 2024 election, but Democrats during Wednesday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing to confirm the secretary of health and human services nominee weren’t buying it. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were quick to note that the self-admitted anti-vaxxer was making cash off of his extreme public health stances.

“I think the gist of what you’re trying to say today is that you’re really pro-vaccine, you want to ask questions—you have started a group called the Children’s Health Defense. You’re the originator of it,” Sanders said.

“Right now, as I understand it, on their website they are selling what’s called onesies—little things, clothing for babies. One of them is titled ‘Unvaxxed, unafraid’. Next one, and it’s sold for 26 bucks apiece, by the way, next one is ‘No vax, no problem’.”

“Now, you’re coming before this committee and saying you’re pro-vaccine,” the independent Vermont politico continued. “And yet your organization is making money selling a child’s product to parents for 26 bucks which casts fundamental doubt on the usefulness of vaccines.

“Can you tell us now, now that you are pro-vaccine, that you’re going to have your organization take these products off the market?” Sanders pressed.

In a disclosure form filed for his nomination, Kennedy claimed that he had resigned as chairman and chief legal counsel of Children’s Health Defense in December. He made roughly $326,000 for just three months of work at the nonprofit in 2023, according to the group’s 990 form that year. The same disclosure form revealed that the outspoken vaccine critic made roughly $10 million over the last year related to speaking fees, dividends from his vaccine lawsuits, and leading Children’s Health Defense.

Still, Kennedy told Sanders that he had “no power” over the organization, which he left just last month.

“You founded that; you certainly have power,” Sanders continued, raising his voice. “Are you supportive of these onesies?”

“I am supportive of vaccines. I want good science,” Kennedy said, refusing to say whether or not he would advise the group to reconsider such merchandise.

Warren had a similarly heated exchange with Kennedy, torching the familially ousted “predator” for making a business out of collecting fees on vaccine- and medication-related lawsuits.

“There’s a lot of ways you can influence those future lawsuits and pending lawsuits while you are secretary of HHS,” Warren said, pointing out that Kennedy could publish his anti-vax theories on U.S. government letterhead to influence juries, change vaccine labels, request that the CDC remove jabs from the vaccine schedules, or change which claims are compensated in the vaccine injury compensation program.

“I’m asking you to commit right now, that you will not take a financial stake in every one of those lawsuits so that what you do as secretary will also benefit you financially down the line,” Warren said.

But Kennedy wouldn’t commit to the specificity of that promise.

“I will comply with all the ethical guidelines,” Kennedy said, before claiming that Warren was simply asking him not to sue more vaccine companies. “That’s exactly what you’re doing,” he said.

“No one should be fooled here,” Warren said, addressing the room. “As secretary of HHS, Robert Kennedy will have the power to undercut vaccines and vaccine manufacturing across our country.

“The bottom line is the same: Kennedy can kill off access to vaccines and make millions of dollars while he does it. Kids might die, but Robert Kennedy can keep cashing in.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made several disturbing comments during his first Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday suggesting that, as Donald Trump’s secretary of health and human services, he’s hoping to limit access to the abortion pill mifepristone.

Representative James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma, asked Kennedy if he had plans to improve Food and Drug Administration transparency in regard to the side effects associated with mifepristone, one of the drugs used to induce abortions, which he claimed were not being reported under the Biden administration. The FDA approved mifepristone in 2000.

“It’s against everything we believe in in this country, that patients or doctors should not be reporting adverse events. We need to know what adverse events are, we need to understand the safety of every drug: mifepristone and every other drug,” Kennedy said.

“And President Trump has made it clear to me that one of the things—he is not taking a position yet on mifepristone, a detailed position, but he’s made it clear to me that he wants me to look at safety issues, and I’ll ask NIH and FDA to do that.”

The FDA has previously found that after decades of use by millions of women, mifepristone has proven to be “extremely safe” and that “serious adverse events are exceedingly rare.” But, given Kennedy’s other statements opposing abortion, it seems that he is interested in severely limiting abortion access, and calling for the FDA to review mifepristone’s safety could be his way to do just that.

When answering another question from Lankford about how he planned to handle Title X, an HHS policy that provides funding for family planning services, Kennedy replied, “I agree with President Trump that every abortion is a tragedy. I agree with him that we cannot be a moral nation if we have 1.2 million abortions a year. I agree with him that the states should control abortion.

“President Trump has told me that he wants to end late-term abortions, and he wants to protect conscience exemptions, and he wants to end federal funding for abortions here or abroad,” Kennedy said. “I serve at the pleasure of the president, I’m gonna implement his policies.”

(Reproductive health experts have warned that the term “late-term abortion” is scientifically meaningless and is actually a tool anti-abortion activists use to fearmonger that people are committing infanticide.)

Kennedy’s stance represents a significant change-up from his past statements about abortion—and Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire, brought receipts.

“In 2023, you came to New Hampshire and said, ‘I’m pro-choice, I don’t think the government has any business telling people what they can or cannot do to their body,’” Hassan said. “So, you said that, right?”

“Yes,” Kennedy replied.

“But you also said, ‘We need to trust the women to make that choice because I don’t trust government to make any choices.’ You said that too, right?”

“Yes,” Kennedy said.

“It is remarkable that you have such a long record of fighting for women’s reproductive freedom, and really great that my Republican colleagues are so open to voting for a pro-choice HHS secretary,” Hassan said.

“So Mr. Kennedy, I’m confused,” she continued. “You have clearly stated in the past that bodily autonomy is one of your core values. The question is, do you stand for that value or not? When was it that you decided to sell out the values you’ve had your whole life in order to be given power by President Trump?”

Hassan wasn’t the only lawmaker to go after Kennedy over abortion. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat from Nevada, also got in on the action.

“A pregnant woman with a life-threatening bleeding from an incomplete miscarriage goes to the E.R., and her doctor also determines that she needs an emergency abortion. But she’s in a state where abortion is banned,” Cortez Mastro said. “You would agree also as an attorney that federal law protects her right to that emergency care, correct?”

“Um. I don’t know,” Kennedy sputtered. “I mean, the answer to that is I don’t know.”

“Well, let me ask you this, as an attorney, doesn’t federal law preempt state law?”

“The federal Constitution does. Not every federal law preempts state laws,” Kennedy replied.

Donald Trump’s Justice Department is moving to drop the charges against his two former Mar-a-Lago employees, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, in the classified documents case.

The DOJ filed a motion Wednesday to dismiss an appeal to revive the charges against the pair, thus ending the last traces of the federal criminal cases against the president. In July, Trump appointee Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the 42 felony charges against Trump, Nauta, and De Oliveira, on the grounds that special counsel Jack Smith had been illegitimately appointed. The Justice Department appealed the decision, asking that the charges against Nauta and De Oliveira remain.

The pair were accused of helping Trump move boxes of classified documents at his Florida estate so that federal investigators could not find them and of trying to delete security footage that showed them moving boxes. Trump also asked Nauta to lie on his behalf to the FBI and promised him a pardon if he faced any charges.

Earlier this month, Nauta and De Oliveira had also sought to block special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on the classified documents case from being released, but their appeal was denied. Cannon, who showed clear bias toward Trump during his classified documents case, did manage to block the release of a selected volume of Smith’s report to select members of Congress last week, leaving parts of the case still unknown to the public.

In November, following Trump’s election victory, Smith moved to have the federal charges against the president for trying to overturn the 2020 election dismissed without prejudice, meaning that they could be refiled after his term of office ends in 2029. For Nauta and De Oliveira, Wednesday’s action might be the end of the classified documents case. But for Trump, will it resurface four years from now?

The federal government’s most important hiring office is now overrun with Elon Musk’s underqualified stooges.

Wired reported on Tuesday that the highest positions at the Office of Personnel Management are now held by people close to Musk. And some of them have a woeful lack of experience.

Two people in OPM leadership are so young that Wired refused to name them. One is a 21-year-old who worked at Peter Thiel’s Palantir firm, and the other is a 2024 high school graduate whose résumé consists of a summer job at Musk’s Neuralink company, as well as previous experience as a camp counselor and bike mechanic. They were set to start college last fall.

There’s also OPM’s new chief of staff, Amanda Scales, who has worked for Musk’s AI-company xAI, the startup founded by Musk himself. Before that, she worked at other tech companies like venture firm Human Capital, defense technology company Anduril, and Uber. Her hire is seen as a key move in the further politicization of the federal hiring process.

Musk’s henchmen taking over OPM may explain much of the concerning news coming out of the agency in the last week. That includes a mass test email sent to every single federal employee, reports that OPM is funneling employee info to Musk himself, and most recently, an ultimatum to federal employees who don’t want to return to the office. That so-called “buyout” sounded eerily similar to an email Musk sent to Twitter employees in 2023.

The takeover comes as the world’s richest man begins his work with DOGE, hoping to continue Trump’s efforts in drastically culling the federal government.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was thoroughly and categorically torched by Democrats during his Senate Finance hearing on Wednesday.

Colorado Senator Michael Bennet held Kennedy to the flame on his own language around disease and vaccines, which included claiming that Covid-19 was a “genetically engineered bioweapon that targets Black and White people but spared Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people” and that Lyme disease was constructed by the military.

“I didn’t say it was deliberately targeted, I just quoted an NIH-funded and NIH-published study–” Kennedy rattled out about Covid.

“Did you say that Lyme disease is highly likely a militarily engineered bioweapon?” Bennet said, changing the topic. “Did you say Lyme disease is a highly likely militarily engineered bioweapon?”

“I probably did say that,” Kennedy responded.

“OK, I want all of our colleagues to hear it, Mr. Kennedy. I want them to hear it. You said yes,” Bennet pressed, raising his voice. “Did you say that exposure to pesticides causes children to become transgender?”

Kennedy denied having said that, to which Bennet replied, “I have the record.”

“Did you write in your book that ‘it’s undeniable that African AIDS is an entirely different disease from Western AIDS’?” Bennet continued.

“I don’t know,” Kennedy shrugged back, to which Bennet once again informed the committee chairman that he would hand over records of Kennedy’s past remarks on the topic.

“This matters,” Bennet said, again raising his voice. “Because unlike other jobs we’re confirming around this place, this is a job where it is life and death.

“It’s too important for the games that you’re playing, Mr. Kennedy.”

“What is so disturbing to me is that out of 330 million Americans, we’re being asked to put somebody in this job who has spent 50 years of his life not honoring the tradition that he talked about at the beginning of this conversation, but peddling in half-truths, peddling in false statements, peddling in theories that, you know, create doubt about whether or not things that we know are safe are unsafe,” Bennet said.

Kennedy is slated for two confirmation hearings this week in his quest to become Donald Trump’s secretary of health and human services. He is appearing before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday morning 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 dot the country.

In December, 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 U.S. 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 five.

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.”