Robert F. Kennedy Jr. swears he’ll have a prominent role in a new Trump administration, as he stumps around the country promising to end the “FDA’s war on public health” with sweeping policy changes. But Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party are trying to keep attacks on him simple — sidestepping his claims about the dangers of vaccines or pledges to remake the U.S. agriculture system in favor of a tight focus on abortion policy.
“Putting an anti-abortion conspiracy theorist in charge of our public health agencies says everything you need to know about how Donald Trump would govern,” Harris wrote on X on Wednesday.
Harris’ message came in response to a video of Kennedy saying that Trump “promised” him “control of the public health agencies,” including “HHS and its subagencies, CDC, FDA, NIH and a few others, and then also the USDA.”
Harris also responded on Thursday to a video of Trump saying that Kennedy would work on “women’s health,” writing simply, “No,” along with a heart emoji.
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While Kennedy has been best known in the past for his anti-vaccine advocacy, including during the pandemic, COVID-19 and vaccines have not played a large role on the 2024 campaign trail. In a September poll by KFF, both Republican and Democratic voters who were asked what health care issues they would most like to hear the candidates discuss named abortion as a key issue — and neither group named COVID-19 or vaccines.
An adviser to the Democratic National Committee told NOTUS that the DNC’s content testing had shown that targeting Kennedy’s multiple positions on abortion was one of the most, if not the most, potent attacks on Kennedy available to Democrats. That’s both because abortion is a central topic for many voters in this election and because Kennedy’s contradictory statements about abortion sometimes sounded like he was minimizing its importance.
Kennedy, who has proposed a range of health-oriented policies for a future Trump administration, has given mixed messages on abortion — sometimes warm, sometimes cold and sometimes absent.
While still running his own presidential campaign, he stated that he was against any government limits on abortion throughout the gestation period, then walked back those statements, saying that abortion should be allowed for a certain number of weeks but then restricted “in the final months of pregnancy.” In June, he posted on X that “abortion should be legal up until a certain number of weeks, and restricted thereafter” but added that “every abortion is a tragedy.”
Since joining the Trump team in August, Kennedy has not been publicly vocal about abortion. He recently starred in a pro-Trump ad targeting Catholic voters in Pennsylvania, but the ad didn’t include any mention of abortion. The president of CatholicVote, the conservative organization that paid for the ad, told Semafor that Kennedy was conflicted when it came to the “bodily autonomy” aspect of abortion.
Kennedy’s longtime anti-vaccine advocacy centered around preserving bodily autonomy when it came to mandatory vaccinations. He has maintained his stance in his new role supporting Trump, reportedly telling the co-chair of the Trump-Vance transition team that he would like to obtain federal data to prove vaccines are unsafe and remove them from the market. Kennedy’s other policy proposals for improving public health have focused on improving food quality and nutritional value by limiting ultra-processed foods and food additives, which he and experts say can contribute to chronic diseases.
Neither the Trump campaign nor the Kennedy team responded to requests for comment on Kennedy’s possible role in shaping abortion policy. The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment about their strategy on Kennedy.
Other Democratic organizations echoed Harris’ abortion-forward language on Kennedy, tying it to his unfounded claims about the dangers of vaccines.
“The truth is that whether it is spreading dangerous conspiracies about vaccinations or supporting a national abortion ban, RFK Jr. is an extremist when it comes to public health across the board,” a spokesperson for the Democratic opposition research group American Bridge said in an email to NOTUS.
Kennedy has made his wish to run a public health-related agency in a new Trump administration clear. During a rally in Nevada on Thursday, Trump said that he would allow Kennedy to “do anything he wants” with regard to health care policy, adding that Kennedy wants to “look at the vaccines” as well as pesticides.
Others in the Trump campaign have denied that Trump would nominate Kennedy for a cabinet post, and any potential Kennedy cabinet appointment would likely face a difficult Senate confirmation battle.
Regardless, the prospect of Kennedy in a public health leadership role puts many Democrats on edge — and leaves Trump open to attacks on a number of health-related fronts.
Jerome Adams, who was surgeon general under Trump, shared some of that anxiety this week.
“If RFK has a significant influence on the next administration, that could further erode people’s willingness to get up to date with recommended vaccines, and I am worried about the impact that could have on our nation’s health, on our nation’s economy, on our global security,” he said.
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Margaret Manto is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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