Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise today in strong opposition to President Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  The Department he has been picked to lead is charged with protecting the health of all Americans, from safeguarding Medicare and nursing home care for seniors to investing in medical research, to safeguarding the Nation's food supply and supporting public health programs such as lead poisoning prevention and suicide prevention.

  One of the most important public health inventions of the last century is vaccines, making many deadly and debilitating diseases a thing of the past. The Secretary of Health and Human Services has an outsized role in making vaccines available to children and adults throughout the country, and that is something that gives me great pause about Mr. Kennedy's nomination.

  For those of us who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, polio was an insidious threat that sent fear literally through every home in this country until Dr. Salk invented a vaccine. And it literally saved the lives--many, many lives--of generations of Americans. It was approved, and then it went forward. But I can recall lining up--in fact, my parents pulling me along and urging me to stand in line to get the first shot, and then the following year, get the next shot, because to them it was not just a medical routine. It could eliminate the constant worry and concern that one day their child could be subject to polio.

So this notion of vaccine that is prompted by Mr. Kennedy is, I think, contrary to the great experience, at least, of those who have been through that period of time.

  Mr. Kennedy has spent the last decade or more spreading lies about vaccines and encouraging families not to vaccinate their children. He is not just an advocate with a loud bullhorn spreading that message. Indeed, Mr. Kennedy has made a living making millions of dollars, no less, questioning the safety of vaccines--safety that has been proven time and time again.

  Mr. Kennedy chaired one of the most prominent anti-vaccine organizations, the Children's Health defense, for almost a decade, stepping aside only to run for President in 2023.

  Mr. Kennedy had a long and successful career as an environmental lawyer, and he has a compelling personal history overcoming addiction and should be commended for that. However, Mr. Kennedy's only work in the health space has been deeply detrimental to the public health of the United States and, indeed, across the globe. There is no starker example of this than his work in Samoa 5 years ago.

  In 2018, in a tragic mistake, two infants in Samoa died after receiving their measles vaccine. The vaccines had been improperly prepared--improperly prepared--with a muscle relaxer instead of water. To be clear, nothing about the vaccine itself killed these children. Indeed, two nurses were imprisoned for 5 years for the mistake they made that day.

  Children's Health Defense, again, chaired by Mr. Kennedy, seized on the opportunity and began questioning the safety of the measles vaccine online. Between the tragic accident and the spread of misinformation, the vaccine rate in Samoa fell to dangerously low levels.

  Children's Health Defense pressed on, paying for Mr. Kennedy to travel to Samoa, with a prominent anti-vaccine activist, to meet with the Prime Minister and other government officials, as well as other anti-vaccine activists.

  And the damage was done. A measles outbreak began a few months later and, with such low vaccination rates, spread rapidly. By January 2020, there were almost 6,000 cases of measles, which resulted in the death of 83 people, and nearly all of the deaths were in children under the age 5.

  Two truly tragic deaths spiraled into over 80 deaths, mostly of young children. And really think about that: children dying of a vaccine-preventable illness, with a vaccine widely available. And Mr. Kennedy was one of the leading voices opposing vaccination, encouraging places like Samoa to embrace a natural experience to see what happens when we stop routine vaccinations.

  We have seen what happens. Children die.

  And on top of that, Mr. Kennedy not only maintains no wrongdoing; he takes no responsibility. He denies the reality of what happened. In his confirmation hearing, he claimed that the cause of these children's death wasn't clear. Nothing could be further from the truth. We know exactly what happened, and Mr. Kennedy is still peddling misinformation to the U.S. Senate and to the people of America.

  Now, I mentioned that Mr. Kennedy stepped down from Children's Health Defense in 2023 to run for President, which leads me to my next concern. It has been reported that Mr. Kennedy, in fact, approached both the Trump and Harris campaigns offering his support if he could take on a prominent role in the winning campaign's administration.

  Then-Candidate Donald Trump took him up on his offer. In short order, Mr. Kennedy abandoned his campaign, endorsed President Trump, and, it appears, agreed to do whatever President Trump would demand of him in the new role as Secretary of HHS.

  The American people, I do not believe, can trust Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy has proven, time and time again, that he will bow to President Trump and his reckless agenda.

  For example, Mr. Kennedy has a long, lifetime record of being pro-choice. Yet he said at his confirmation hearing that he will do whatever President Trump wants on issues of reproductive health, perhaps taking away lifesaving care for women.

  During his confirmation hearings, Mr. Kennedy downplayed the work that he had done discrediting vaccines, no doubt to secure the votes he needed to get confirmed in this role. When asked about his affiliation with Children's Health Defense, which, again, promotes anti-vaccine views widely and he chaired for almost a decade, he acted like he had barely heard of it.

  When asked about his previous statement sowing doubts about vaccines, he claimed it was taken out of context or misrepresented. Yet these anti-vaccine statements are not things he has said once or twice; they are deeply held views that he has spent a lifetime pushing.

  In 2015, for example, Mr. Kennedy falsely associated autism with vaccines, saying:   

   They get the shot, that night they have a fever of 103 degrees, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone. This is a Holocaust, what this is doing to our country.

  He did later apologize for equating autism with the Holocaust, but he has only doubled down on his lies about vaccines and autism. As recently as 2023, in an interview he said:

   I've read the science on autism and I can tell you, if you want to know. David, you've got to answer this question: if autism didn't come from the vaccines, then where is it coming           from?

  Well, ask scientists, not Robert Kennedy.

  However, this wasn't the first time he had made references to such despicable examples as Nazi Germany when talking about childhood immunizations.

  When speaking at a conference in 2013 about his claim that vaccines cause autism--a claim that has been debunked decades before and many times since, he stated:

       To me this is like Nazi death camps, what happened to these kids.

  When asked why the CDC would cover up the supposed link between vaccines and autism, Mr. Kennedy said:

     I can't tell you why somebody would do something like that.

     I can't tell you why ordinary Germans participated in the Holocaust.

This is not the language of a thoughtful, insightful person dealing with a subject so critical to our country as vaccines. This is inflammatory, outrageous, and I think consistent with his behavior, unfortunately.

Now, Mr. Kennedy has also said that vaccine scientists should be imprisoned for their work. At the same conference he said of vaccine researchers:

       Is it hyperbole when I say these people should be in jail?

     They should be in jail and the key should be thrown away.

 In 2021, speaking on a podcast about how he encourages people not to vaccinate their children, he said:

       If you're walking down the street--and I do this now

     myself, which is, you know, I don't want to do--I'm not a

     busybody. I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little

     baby, and I say to him, ``Better not get him vaccinated.''

     And he heard that from me. If he hears it from 10 other

     people, maybe he won't do it, you know, maybe he will save

     that child.

  In case it wasn't clear, he repeated his position later in the same podcast saying:

       If you're one of 10 people that goes up to a guy, a man or

     a woman, who's carrying a baby and says, ``Don't vaccinate

     that baby,'' when they hear that from 10 people, it'll make

     an impression on `em, you know. And we all kept our mouth

     shut. Don't keep your mouth shut anymore. Confront everybody

     on it.

  In the summer of 2023, speaking on a podcast, he was asked if there was any vaccine he thought was good, and he responded:

       There's no vaccine that is safe or effective.

  That says it all. He has a long, long record of opposing vaccines and discouraging families from getting vaccinated.

  But now that Mr. Kennedy is facing a nomination vote in the Senate, he changes his tune. Mr. Kennedy said in his own confirmation hearing that he did not oppose vaccines and had, in fact, gotten all of his kids vaccinated.

  That is a hard pill to swallow for the families in Samoa whose children died after Mr. Kennedy and his organization convinced them not to vaccinate their children.

  If confirmed to this role, I don't know which Robert Kennedy we will get: the pro-choice, environmental lawyer with a penchant for conspiracy theories and pushing anti-vaccine propaganda or a mouthpiece for President Trump, pushing an anti-choice agenda, putting women's lives at risk, advocating for an end to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, and allowing Elon Musk and DOGE to undermine HHS at every turn.

  Either outcome is dangerous to the American people and their health, and I will oppose the nomination.