Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday told members of the anti-vaccine group he founded that they had “a strong and steadfast friend at the White House” and that he would “die with my boots on” pursuing answers about the risks of vaccines.
His remarks, to a convention of Children’s Health Defense, signaled a notable shift from earlier this year when White House officials and political advisers had pushed Mr. Kennedy to sidestep the vaccine issue, given widespread support among voters for protecting children against deadly diseases. They came just one day after President Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, Dr. Nicole Saphier, gave a full-throated defense of the safety and efficacy of vaccines during her Senate confirmation hearing.
But Mr. Kennedy, after spending the first part of his speech on the far more politically popular topics of food safety and nutrition, plunged headlong into vaccines, in a conference riddled with misinformation and references to discredited studies.
The speaker before Mr. Kennedy was Mark Gorton, the president of the MAHA Institute, who called the success of the polio vaccine a “fraud,” priming the audience for the remarks of their former leader, who railed against vaccines for two decades. The speaker after him was Andrew Wakefield, a discredited British doctor whose retracted paper linked the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine with autism. Decades of research have proved that finding to be wrong.
With the midterm elections less than two months away and Republicans struggling in the polls, Mr. Kennedy has been trying to rally followers of his Make America Healthy Again movement, some of whom have expressed impatience with the pace of his policy changes.
He promised the crowd that he would “be in this fight” to the end, and said the work he was doing was methodical. He added that his team was launching studies after which, he said, “we will take appropriate action.”
He also generated applause when he announced that he would be looking at the health effects of electromagnetic radiation and so-called chemtrails, the trails left by airplanes that the Environmental Protection Agency has said are actually condensation, not chemicals.
Despite worries from his political advisers, Mr. Trump himself has recently jumped into the vaccine debate. Last month he signed an executive order that called for limiting the number of vaccines given to children. In a White House signing ceremony filled with misinformation, he falsely described the measles shot as “lethal.” Under persistent questioning, Dr. Mehmet Oz, one of the administration’s top health officials, corrected the president’s statement in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation”: “The M.M.R. vaccine is not a lethal vaccine.”
The support from the president appears to have emboldened Mr. Kennedy to play a star role at the Washington conference of his former nonprofit.
Mr. Kennedy was absent from the group’s conference in Texas last year when Mr. Gorton, whose group works to advance Mr. Kennedy’s agenda, exhorted the crowd of about 1,000 “to be more boldly anti-vax. ” On Thursday, Mr. Gorton said that “the success of the polio vaccine was a massive medical fraud” and that widespread vaccination was a “public health disaster.” He received a standing ovation.
Mr. Kennedy spoke next, linking arms with the group even as measles cases continue to rise, surpassing a 35-year record with about 3,300 cases. Officials in Pennsylvania reported a fourth measles death this week, adding an 18-year-old to a list that included two infants and a woman who was 40. The adults were both unvaccinated, and the infants were too young to receive the vaccine.
After the announcement of the first deaths, Mr. Kennedy publicly questioned whether measles played a role and suggested the deaths may have been “fabricated.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which he oversees, has refused to acknowledge them and is currently reporting no measles deaths for 2026.
Mr. Kennedy’s appearance at the conference sparked a fresh round of criticism from Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, who he had sparred with Mr. Kennedy in recent days over the measles death reports.
“In the midst of the largest and deadliest measles outbreak in America in 35 years, RFK Jr. chose to spend his time today addressing the premier vaccine-denial conference in America,” Mr. Shapiro said in a social media post. “He needed to say one sentence: I urge all Americans to get the measles vaccine now to protect themselves and their families during this deadly outbreak.”
In his speech, Mr. Kennedy also discussed his administration’s effort to require more information about minimally tested chemicals and additives to food. He said they are likely linked to health problems in children.
“That has to be one of the culprits,” he said. “And we know that many of those foods are associated with obesity, with neurological disorders, with A.D.H.D. and many, many of these other injuries.”
About 290 people attended the conference in person at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, and another 230 streamed it online, according to a Children’s Health Defense spokesman.
Children’s Health Defense also focuses on toxic exposures, such as from pesticides, and radiation exposure from cell towers, cellphones and other devices. But much of its advocacy centers on vaccines.
Mary Holland, the chief executive of the group, testified in New Hampshire earlier this year in favor of eliminating requirements for children to be vaccinated before starting school, a widely popular measure. That bill and others aimed at vaccine requirements for school entry did not pass.
At the start of the one-day conference, Michael Kane, the director of advocacy for Children’s Health Defense, marveled at Mr. Trump’s show of support for parental and religious rights, often invoked to refuse vaccination.
“When have we ever seen a president take on vaccine reform like this?” he asked. “Never. It has never ever happened.”
He added: “Just a few years ago, we were the hated stepchild in the corner. It was hard for us to get anything to happen. Now we are a national movement that isn’t going anywhere.”
The post Kennedy Assures Vaccine Skeptics That They Have a ‘Friend at the White House’ appeared first on New York Times.
