When Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana went against his medical background and own gut instincts to clear the way for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s appointment as health and human services secretary, Cassidy tried to assuage his conscience by extracting promises from Kennedy that he would not subvert the nation’s vaccination program.
In explaining at the time why, despite his reservations about putting a notorious vaccine skeptic over the agency that sets the nation’s immunization policy, Cassidy cast the deciding vote to advance Kennedy’s nomination, the senator said he had received several assurances from Kennedy that calmed his fears as a doctor.
Cassidy said that Kennedy promised to stop fueling the growing vaccine resistance in the country with misinformation; to respect the scientifically based and long-established system for evaluating vaccine safety and effectiveness; and to “maintain” the vaccine recommendations of the 17-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices “without changes.”
It took only a couple of months for Kennedy to violate most of those promises, as underscored this week with his ouster of the entire immunization advisory committee — a precursor to what almost certainly will result in further changes to vaccine recommendations on top of those Kennedy already has unilaterally implemented that will significantly reduce COVID-19 immunizations.
Cassidy should have known better about trusting Kennedy’s word, and maybe he did, but the senator seemed more concerned about a predicted tough reelection campaign next year than stopping a clear and obvious threat to the nation’s public health. Cassidy was already being targeted by the MAGA wing of the Republican Party for voting in favor of Donald Trump’s impeachment for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. He wasn’t willing to risk a second act of political courage and torpedo Trump’s Cabinet choice of Kennedy, whose nomination had nothing to do with qualifications but as a reward for providing a slice of voters to aid Trump’s reelection last year.
Cassidy, who still chairs the Senate committee to which Kennedy theoretically reports, can pretend he has some control over the HHS secretary, but that’s already been thoroughly disproven.
The only way to keep Kennedy from further undermining a vaccination program that over the centuries has saved untold millions of American lives at a comparatively low cost is to remove him from office.
Congress might do it by impeachment, but that’s unlikely given the cravenness toward Trump and his appointees that pervades the party in power on Capitol Hill.
That leaves just Trump to do it. The president likes to fire subordinates, including those he once praised, if they later cross him. Would the president exact that same punishment against a Cabinet member who knowingly misled Congress in order to secure confirmation?
Doubtful, maybe, but it would be a termination well-deserved.
