Heading into Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearings, his allies were confident that at least one or two members of the Democratic caucus, such as Bernie Sanders of Vermont or John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, would vote to confirm Kennedy as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services—more than enough to offset any Republican “no” votes.
But after two days of hearings in which Kennedy was slippery on questions about vaccines and uninformed about basic authorities he’d have as HHS secretary, it’s conceivable that Kennedy could get zero Democratic votes and even lose the vote of Bill Cassidy, the Republican senator from Louisiana who chaired Thursday’s confirmation hearing.
Combine a potential shutout among Democrats with the skepticism of Cassidy—plus a few more Republicans who have already shown some willingness to reject Trump nominees—and there is a real but uncertain path to Kennedy’s defeat in the Senate.
“I’m not really sure how much support is going to emerge after that,” Fetterman told CNN on Wednesday night. “I think we can all agree that was a really difficult performance.”
John McCormack is a senior editor at The Dispatch and is based in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining the company in 2023, he was Washington correspondent at National Review and a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. He is also a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. When John is not reporting on politics and policy, he is probably enjoying life with his wife and daughter in northern Virginia or having fun visiting family in Wisconsin.
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