ICYMI: Delaying RFK Jr. Confirmation Vote on Senate Floor, Warren Highlights Kennedy’s Egregious Conflicts of Interest, “Long History of Promoting Anti-Science Conspiracy Theories”
Warren, Democrats hold Senate floor for 30 hours to oppose “dangerous” RFK Jr. confirmation
“Kennedy’s actions speak louder than his latest words, and time and time again, Kennedy has shown us who he is: An anti-science conspiracy peddler who is willing to gamble with American lives. We know who he is, we need to pay attention.”
“[W]hile you and your family are forced to deal with the grave consequences of Kennedy’s conspiracy-driven health care decisions, Kennedy could set himself up to make millions of dollars off his anti-vaccine crusade – just like he’s been doing for decades. ”
Washington, D.C. – On the floor of the United States Senate, Senator Elizabeth Warren, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, joined Democrats in delaying a final vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Senator Warren warned that American families and children would pay the price for Mr. Kennedy’s “conspiracy-driven health care decisions,” while his serious ethics conflicts remain unresolved.
Senator Warren called on her colleagues to oppose his nomination. The Senate is scheduled to vote on Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation on the morning of February 13, 2025.
Transcript: Floor Speech Opposing the Confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services
U.S. Senate Floor
February 12, 2025
As Delivered
Senator Elizabeth Warren: Thank you, Mr. President. And I want to say thanks to the Senator from Minnesota for her leadership on this point. I know that the great research institutions in Minnesota that count on her support are out there fighting thanks to Donald Trump, as they are in Massachusetts. And the people all around this country that rely on those research institutions, who are looking for those cures, for those better treatments, for those opportunities in their lives that right now Donald Trump and his co-president, Elon Musk, seem to want to cut off. So we will stay in this fight. We will indeed.
I am here today because Americans didn’t vote to bring back measles.
Americans didn’t vote to bring back polio.
Americans didn’t vote to bring back dangerous diseases that we thought we had wiped out decades ago.
Americans didn’t vote to get rid of critical vaccines that we know — based on science — we know save lives.
But that is what Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vision would mean for Americans. That is the vision Donald Trump will empower him to carry out.
Kennedy not only worked to undercut vaccines at home and abroad, he’s made a lot of money doing it. In fact, Kennedy has made millions off of peddling harmful conspiracy theories that hurt real people. He opposed the life-saving Covid vaccine just six months into the pandemic. And he’s set himself up so that he and his family could make millions more from putting Americans’ health at risk.
One thing is very clear: We cannot trust Robert Kennedy to make health care decisions that will affect every person in this country.
Right now, millions of Americans are sitting down for dinner with their kids. And I hope we just think for a minute about what RFK Jr.'s plans would mean for them.
Will their teeth decay because Kennedy took fluoride out of our water based on some conspiracy theory?
Will they have to worry about getting measles at school because Kennedy is spreading anti-vax conspiracies on government letterhead?
Will parents have to risk their kids getting polio—and maybe dying—by sending them to daycare because Kennedy used HHS rules to open the door to a flood of bogus lawsuits that forced manufacturers to pull the vaccines?
Look, here’s the thing: Robert Kennedy has spent years on an anti-vaccine crusade, spreading baseless conspiracy theories under the guise of protecting children, so we don’t need to guess the level of harm he will cause; his past already tells us everything we need to know.
In July 2018, two children died immediately after receiving a measles vaccine that nurses had incorrectly mixed with a muscle relaxant. Within weeks, the Samoan Health Ministry publicly confirmed the nursing error and charged the nurses with manslaughter. Nevertheless, leading anti-vaccine groups, including Kennedy’s own organization, Children’s Health Defense, exploited public fears to question the reports and spread baseless claims.
On August 5th, 2018, Kennedy’s organization, Children’s Health Defense, posted on Facebook, and I will quote the post. “Were these once-healthy children the only two to receive MMR that day? If not, why were they the only ones to die? Research needs to determine susceptibility so that no child is ever injured.” Del Bigtree, Kennedy’s partner and former campaign manager, also released a video linking the tragedy to false claims about measles, and telling his followers to “share it with everyone you know. This is how we are changing the world.”
Now, amidst public distrust and a paused vaccine program in Samoa, the vaccination rates plummeted. About 10 months later, once the Samoan government had finally stood up against the disinformation and resumed the vaccine program, Kennedy visited the island to meet with the Prime Minister.
Later, recognizing the blowback that comes with how much went wrong when a conspiracy theory cost people their lives, Kennedy has since denied that his visit had anything to do with vaccines and said that anything suggesting otherwise was an “industry propaganda trope.” In other words, totally false. “Industry propaganda trope.”
Kennedy lied. A blog post that Kennedy himself wrote in 2021 admits he went to Samoa to meet with the Prime Minister, who wanted to discuss the possibility of “measur(ing) health outcomes following the ‘natural experiment’ created by the nation’s respite from vaccines.”
Think about what that means. Another way to say it is that Kennedy was interested in taking advantage of how the vaccination rate had plummeted, caused by misinformation, so that they could conduct uncontrolled trials on whether unvaccinated kids were healthier than vaccinated kids, a conspiracy theory he has spread widely. You see, at the time, one of his traveling partners was working on a similar study with two anti-vaccine activists, which was ultimately retracted following an investigation that “raised several methodological issues and confirmed that the conclusions were not supported by strong scientific data.”
Now, there’s no surprise here. The Prime Minister declined Kennedy’s outrageous proposal – he didn’t want his country to be Kennedy’s guinea pig. He didn’t want unvaccinated children to be studied to see what happened to them when measles or other diseases broke out. But that didn’t stop him from spreading his message. On this trip to Samoa, he met with various anti-vaccine influencers, one of whom said the meeting was “profoundly monumental for (the) movement.” A few months after Kennedy left, in October 2019, the vaccination rate in Samoa hit an historic low of 31%, down from 74% the prior year – and no surprise, a massive measles outbreak erupted. So here is Kennedy telling us now he had nothing, nothing to do with this, his trip to Samoa had nothing to do with the measles vaccine and calling any claim “industry propaganda trope.” And yet, he himself posted a blog about meeting with the Prime Minister and talking about a study to measure health outcomes following a natural experiment of studying children–some with no vaccination and some that were vaccinated. And the anti-vax groups that he met with talked about how profoundly important it is, then Mr. Kennedy leaves, vaccination rates drop down to 31%.
The measles outbreak was truly tragic. In total, more than 70 children died, right up until a door-to-door vaccination campaign brought the disaster to an end.
As HHS Secretary, Kennedy would be responsible for whether we keep our children vaccinated or subject them to, in his words, the same “natural experiment” he was interested in testing in Samoa.
Is that what we want for our kids? Is that what we want for our elderly parents? That is a living nightmare — and it could truly be our reality with Kennedy heading up the Department of Health and Human Services. And all the while that this is going on, while Kennedy is promoting this anti-vax theory, he and his family are profiting off of the plan.
Now, I’ve been sounding the alarm about Kennedy since the minute Donald Trump announced that he would nominate him for HHS Secretary. It’s not just that he’s unqualified — his long history of promoting anti-science conspiracy theories make him disqualified.
This is a man who claimed “there is no vaccine that is safe and effective.” “No vaccine.”
He said that the polio vaccine "killed many, many more people" than polio ever did. Now, Kennedy came to our committee and said don’t worry, he swears anti-vaccine. But he’s spent his entire career on an anti-vaccine crusade, spreading baseless conspiracy theories under the guise of protecting children and making millions in the process.
And when, in Senate hearings, he was confronted with his own words, he simply denied saying them. Denied saying them— despite the videotapes, the transcripts, the blog posts, and the people who heard them. Kennedy thinks he knows what he needs to say to try to get the job that will put him in charge of our vaccine program, so he says he didn’t say exactly what he said.
Kennedy’s actions speak louder than his latest words, and time and time again, Kennedy has shown us who he is: An anti-science conspiracy peddler who is willing to gamble with American lives. We know who he is, we need to pay attention.
Let’s do a quick count of some of the ways that, as HHS Secretary, Kennedy could make the anti-vaccine lawsuits — and his own payouts — even bigger. What could Kennedy do? Well, as Secretary of HHS:
- He could publish his anti-vaccine conspiracies, but this time on U.S. government letterhead — something that might impress a jury in a subsequent trial.
- He could appoint people to the CDC vaccine panel who share his anti-vax views and let them do his dirty work.
- He could tell the CDC vaccine panel to remove a particular vaccine from the vaccination schedule.
- He could remove vaccines from a special compensation program, which would “open up manufacturers to mass torts (lawsuits).”
- He could “make more injuries eligible for compensation even if there’s no causal evidence.”
- He could change vaccine court processes to make it easier to bring junk lawsuits that could get vaccines pulled from the market.
- He could turn over FDA (data) to his friends at the law firm, and they could use it however benefits their lawsuits.
In short, as HHS Secretary, Kennedy would have the power to make health care decisions that would affect millions of Americans — for working Americans, kids, seniors — on everything from vaccines to abortion to life-saving drugs. Kennedy would have the capacity, as head of HHS, to make it easier to sue vaccine manufacturers. And in an area where the profit margins on vaccines are quite modest, if those lawsuits mount up, vaccines could simply disappear from the market altogether. Manufacturers could decide, “you know, it’s just not worth the lawsuits. We’ll go produce other drugs.”
Those kinds of decisions are critically important, and the consequences are grave. For many Americans, they may be the difference between life and death. And they can change lives forever.
So, while you and your family are forced to deal with the grave consequences of Kennedy’s conspiracy-driven health care decisions, Kennedy could set himself up to make millions of dollars off his anti-vaccine crusade – just like he’s been doing for decades.
Remember, the very first ethics agreement that Kennedy submitted to us on the Senate Finance Committee, he said that even while serving as HHS Secretary, he planned to keep his financial stake in ongoing litigation — including vaccine-related litigation. That means that from the jump, Kennedy’s plan was to keep making money off the backs of lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers, some of which directly related to the very products he would have the power to regulate as Secretary of HHS. So, there he is. He has the power to regulate these drugs. He has the power to make life a little better or a little worse for the vaccine manufacturers. He has the power to make it more likely that lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers would succeed. And his initial plan was even while he sat there as Secretary of HHS, he was going to keep on making money from that.
This was a damning conflict of interest, so we called it out. Kennedy told us okay, okay, he would submit an updated ethics agreement. Sounds good? What was his update?
Well, he said instead of personally keeping the millions he’d make off these ongoing lawsuits… he would hand that money directly to his son. Later, he confirmed that the son he’s handing his interests off to is the one who works at Wisner Baum—the same law firm that Kennedy has maintained his very lucrative arrangement with over years, so far netting him a reported $2.5 million just in the last few years. And Kennedy has made clear that he can use his tools as HHS Secretary to open up the door for more anti-vax litigation, and once he’s through as Secretary of HHS, go right back to Wisner Baum and cash in on the new flood of cases that Kennedy himself has unleashed.
So that is Kennedy’s idea of “fixing” an ethics issue.
And beyond that, Kennedy has flip-flopped countless times in his answers to the Finance Committee. He is untrustworthy. He has made so many contradictory statements that it’s come to the point it is hard to believe anything he says is true.
For example, Kennedy originally said he was not an attorney of record in any of these vaccine-related lawsuits. But we did a little homework and we found at least five cases related to the vaccine litigation that hadn’t been disclosed where Kennedy seems to be an attorney of record. That is important because what it means is that Kennedy is a lot closer to these cases than he’s revealing — cases that he and his family will be able to make bank off even as he serves as HHS Secretary.
The importance of this litigation can’t be overstated. Just 20 years ago, we watched vaccine makers pull their products off the market because they didn’t have protection from these kinds of lawsuits. The consequence of Kennedy’s ability to make those lawsuits easier is also the ability to shut down access and manufacturing for vaccines for every one of us. And I think that is a terrible mistake.
Kennedy claims that he is taking on Big Pharma, but that is the lie he is peddling to hide his conflicts. I pressed him on real ways to take on the industry, including using marching-in on Big Pharma’s patents when they use taxpayer funds to bring drugs to market and then turn around and jack up prices on hardworking Americans, and by having the government negotiate prices directly with Big Pharma on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries. But Kennedy, after talking a big game about taking on Big Pharma, said no, he doesn’t support march-in rights and no, he didn’t want to commit to defending Medicare price negotiations, two proven methods to take on the drug industry and put money back into Americans’ pockets. So whose side is he on?
Well, one thing is for sure: RKF Jr. is on the side of his own bottom line. He has also refused to share a list of cases that he stands to benefit from. Now, I told you. He said nope, he was not attorney of record on any cases. We dug around and we found five. How many more are there? Well, here's what Kennedy said when we said, just give us a list of the cases that you're participating in so we can take a look at the possible conflicts. His answer? The list is so long and the conflicts so clear that, evidently, it would be more damning than what we already know.
Kennedy’s list of ethics issues and financial issues are a mile long—and there’s still too much that he refuses to reveal. Think about this. He’s already told us enough about his conflicts, about how he plans to keep making money, even while he was Secretary of HHS. He revealed all that right upfront. He said “Yep, I'm going to make money while I'm Secretary of HHS.”
And yet on basic questions like can you just give us a list of the cases that you participated in? He says, “No, I can't do that,” which really makes you ask what on Earth is he hiding? He is dodging questions from the Senate, he is contradicting himself, and he keeps changing his answers in order to muddy the waters and really make it hard to understand what’s going on.
Look, no one is fooled about what is happening here. Kennedy has said he’ll, “slam shut the revolving door,” between government agencies and the companies they regulate. But what he won’t agree to is cut off his own family’s steady stream of money flowing in from lawsuits that he personally can directly affect while he is Secretary of HHS.
Kennedy knows that these conflicts are serious. And that’s why he scrambled to update his ethics agreement and hand off his interests to his son in a desperate attempt to “fix” things.
Video of Senator Warren’s full remarks can be found here.
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