Earlier this year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seemed destined for a short tenure in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. Now, the Make America Healthy Again movement’s footing looks surer in the administration and those around Kennedy say they believe the health secretary is here to stay.
Incoming White House chief of staff Stephen Miller is friendlier to Kennedy’s priorities than ousted chief Susie Wiles, who former Kennedy advisor and MAHA activist Calley Means excoriated over the last few days for shutting down MAHA initiatives. Trump is enthusiastically backing top Kennedy efforts into researching autism and vaccines.
And while Democrats — soon to control Congress — are preparing to release their fury on the polarizing Democratic defector with fringe vaccine views, at least one Democrat has left the door open to working with Kennedy on food and pesticide legislation that was harder to advance under Republican rule.
“There is no indication that he plans to leave,” a senior administration official told The Washington Sun.
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Del Bigtree, who served as communications director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign and is regularly in touch with him, said he, too, doesn’t believe the secretary will leave his role of his own volition.
“I really believe he’s in for the haul as long as Trump will have him in that position,” Bigtree said.
The White House could soon be a friendlier place for Kennedy. Under Wiles, the White House stalled efforts to define ultra-processed food and proposed food additive regulations that catered to some industry demands. Means resigned last month citing deep frustration and accused Wiles and other White House officials of prioritizing entrenched interests, in scathing interviews with podcaster Joe Rogan and CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Means charged that Wiles, adviser James Blair and other top White House advisers repeatedly shut down Kennedy’s efforts to regulate food in favor of advancing special interests on glyphosate and vaping. He characterized Trump as often unaware of these efforts.
“I think he wants to empower Bobby more,” Means told Rogan, referring to Trump. The episode aired Friday shortly before Trump installed Miller as his chief of staff.
On Sunday, Means told CBS that the president was receiving “severe poor advice” from some in the White House around some MAHA priorities.
“I am sure that the president realizes that he has a generational coalition with Secretary Kennedy, he respects Secretary Kennedy, he wants to go hard on the issue of improving health for children,” Means said.
Miller has called Kennedy “a crown jewel” of the administration. Although he’s said little publicly about the MAHA movement, his wife Katie Miller has hosted Kennedy on her podcast and posts photos of dishes prepared with ingredients like Greek yogurt made with raw milk as well as einkorn flour.
“Next to me, Stephen Miller is the strongest MAHA supporter in the administration,” Kennedy wrote on X on Friday. “It’s time to unleash the Kraken.”
Asked whether Trump plans to keep Kennedy in his job next year, White House spokesperson Allison Schuster said Kennedy “has done an exceptional job working to Make America Healthy Again” and pointed to his work on new dietary guidelines, boosting oversight of food additives and investing in regenerative farming.
If Kennedy remains in his perch, he’ll face repeated summons to Capitol Hill to explain his unprecedented changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, his handling of measles outbreaks around the country and cuts to staff and grants at the Department of Health and Human Services.
As Democrats return to Washington this week for the first time since the midterms, they’ll be debating exactly how to handle him. They’re “crazy mad” over his actions on vaccines and response to measles outbreaks, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) told The Sun.
Pingree, one of a few Democrats in Congress to vocally embrace elements of Kennedy’s MAHA movement, said that even as Democrats go after Kennedy she also hopes they’ll find common ground.
Other Democrats are much less willing. Some called for Kennedy’s resignation last week.
“The time is now. RFK Jr. must resign or be fired. End of discussion,” Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Maryland) wrote on X on Nov. 4.
“Unless RFK Jr. is interested in spending the next two years in front of Congressional committees, he should go ahead and resign now,” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia) wrote on X on Friday.
Annie Andrews, a Democrat who just won a Senate seat in South Carolina, said she wants to impeach Kennedy calling him “an absolute threat to the public health of this country.”
“I think their instinct is going to be head-on-a-platter,” one GOP health care lobbyist said.
But there’s no consensus on how draconian to go on Kennedy, even as lawmakers plan to debate impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is broadly disliked including by some Republicans. Democrats have named the administration’s deals with drug companies and Kennedy’s changes to vaccine recommendations as areas ripe for oversight.
Rep. Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee who is in line for the chairmanship, has introduced bills providing more oversight of ingredient additives. In the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, its soon-to-be chairman Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has worked to get food labeling on the front of packages, also a top Kennedy priority.
Pallone’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Pingree herself has a bipartisan bill she calls “People Over Poison,” which would strip pesticide makers of liability shields from being sued over failing to warn consumers about health risks.
“If [Kennedy] survives it all, I’m going to work with him,” Pingree said.
Leaving HHS wouldn’t shield Kennedy from oversight. While there might be less political juice from investigating a former secretary versus a current one, Kennedy would also lose out on full institutional defense should he leave the agency.
“He has greater protection in the administration than outside the administration,” said Kevin Barstow, a former HHS lawyer in the Biden administration.
Kennedy, who ran for president as a Democrat in 2024 before dropping out and endorsing Trump, has repeatedly denied he intends another presidential bid. He’s also in the midst of advancing priorities dear to Trump, including overseeing research into the causes of autism. Trump has said he likes that Kennedy is “different” and deployed him liberally in the midterms, although Kennedy and his message ultimately had little impact on sweeping Republican losses.
HHS press secretary Emily Hillard said, “oversight hearings will not distract him from serving the American people.”
And dispositionally, those around Kennedy say he is often inclined to walk towards a fight, not away from one. He has spent years suing pesticide makers and challenging medical consensus on vaccines.
“When he gets up there in those pitched battles with Democrats trying to pull a Spartacus, I don’t think he sits there and thinks ‘I hate that,’” said Rodney Whitlock, a longtime Republican health policy expert who formerly worked for Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
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