Archive February 13, 2025

The United States Senate has approved former environmental lawyer Robert F Kennedy Jr to lead the federal government’s Health and Human Services Department (HHS), in the latest controversial vote over a cabinet nominee picked by President Donald Trump.

But Thursday’s vote was narrow, given Kennedy’s history of embracing anti-vaccine views and health-related conspiracy theories.

Fifty-two of the 100 members of the Senate voted yes, all of them Republican. Democrats and independents lined up to offer 48 “nay” votes.

Still, there was one notable Republican defection: Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a childhood polio survivor and former leader of the party in the Senate. He had previously warned Trump nominees to “steer clear” of “efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures”.

The leaders of the Democrats in the Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York, sought to appeal to Republicans in the minutes before the vote. He called the prospect of Kennedy leading a federal department tasked with ensuring public health “dangerous”.

“ My colleagues on the Republican side, you know the consequences of what you’re doing. My colleagues on the Republican side, you know how dangerous this is. My colleagues on the other side, you know you are not putting your constituents — their health, their families — first when you vote yes,” Schumer said.

Republicans, however, have small but solid majority in the Senate, holding 53 seats.

And Trump has so far been successful in getting all his nominees to high-level government positions confirmed, despite controversies over some of them.

That includes Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who was confirmed on Wednesday despite past statements expressing sympathy for Russia’s “legitimate security concerns” as it invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, meanwhile, was approved in January, though the Senate was evenly split, 50-50, over his nomination.

Questions had arisen over allegations that Hegseth had engaged in sexual misconduct and inappropriate behaviour in past leadership roles. Vice President JD Vance ultimately cast the tie-breaking vote.

Kennedy himself faced no shortage of controversy in the lead-up to Thursday’s vote.

His cousin, former US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, issued an open letter calling him a “predator” who has continued to “lie and cheat his way through life”.

Democrats have also sought to highlight his history of vaccine scepticism and his lack of experience in the medical field.

Though he testified in his confirmation hearings that his own children were vaccinated, Kennedy has publicly spread debunked conspiracy theories, including that vaccination was linked to autism.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he also made false statements claiming that the virus could have been manufactured to target certain groups.

“There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy was quoted as saying in the New York Post at a public event. “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people.”

In addition, in June 2019, Kennedy visited Samoa shortly before a measles outbreak claimed 83 lives on the island.

While Kennedy has denied his trip was about vaccines, an Instagram account showed him embracing a fellow vaccine sceptic during his visit, with a caption that included the hashtag “investigate before you vaccinate”.

Health officials on the island, including Director-General of Health Alec Ekeroma, have since accused him of helping to spread doubt about the efficacy of vaccination as a prevention tool.

Republicans nevertheless stood by Kennedy, who was formerly a candidate in the 2024 presidential election. Kennedy initially entered the race as a Democrat, only to splinter off in October 2023 and announce he would run as an independent.

Last August, however, Kennedy ended his presidential bid and threw his support behind Trump, who promised to let him “go wild on health”.

Kennedy, in turn, joined Trump on the campaign trail, offering his own spin on the “Make America Great Again” slogan: “Make America Healthy Again.”

Republicans on Thursday were quick to dismiss the concerns that have hounded Kennedy’s nomination.

“Contrary to the attacks that have constantly been made on him, he has made it very clear that he will support safe vaccinations and just wants to see that the research on them is done and done well,” said Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho.

He added that Kennedy would bring a “fresh perspective to healthcare”.

“ I agree with him. We’ve got to get into the business of making America healthy again.”

But in his final words before Thursday’s vote, Schumer warned Republicans against following Trump’s lead by approving Kennedy for the high-level health position, calling it “wrong, very wrong”.

He encouraged to buck the party leadership and vote with their conscience.

President Donald Trump’s outcries against government overreach and abusive tactics are numerous. But will he instruct his administration not to repeat these power abuses? Trump’s spokesman, Alex Pfeiffer, has asserted that FBI Director nominee Kash Patel will “end the weaponisation of law enforcement” and “target crime”. I find this unlikely. Patel’s statements suggest that, rather than ending such practices, the Trump administration will only increase persecution and attacks, both criminal and civil, on those perceived as political opposition.

For those wondering how an administration that favours headline-grabbing over justice and lawfulness might deploy weaponised law enforcement, baseless investigations, and political retaliation against those with differing viewpoints, there is much to be learned from the experiences of America’s Muslims.

For us, it is the same old story.

After 9/11, a broad range of Muslim organisations based in the US were targeted by law enforcement under the pretext of combating terrorism. This campaign involved high-profile investigations, asset seizures, and public accusations. American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) staff, in their 2009 report Blocking Faith, Freezing Charity, reported that “According to the 9/11 Commission staff, Treasury officials acknowledged that in the post-9/11 period, ‘some of the evidentiary foundations for the early designations were quite weak,’ and that the haste to designate charities after 9/11 ‘might [have] result[ed] in a high level of false designations’.” Many other groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organisation in the US, where I work, were similarly smeared. The consequences of these smears persist to this day.

Take CAIR, for example. If you are a Muslim in the US with political opinions, particularly on civil rights or issues affecting marginalised minorities, you have been subjected to government scrutiny. By 2011, then-Attorney General Eric Holder concluded that “the facts and the law” did not support any legal action against CAIR. The Bush administration had reached the same conclusion earlier. Undeterred by facts or law, however, internet warriors claimed the decision was due to political interference. US Attorney James Jacks, a key figure in one prosecution, later issued a statement addressing these allegations, saying, “The decision to indict or not indict a case is based upon an analysis of the evidence and the law. That’s what happened in this case.”

Still, the labels and rumours persist. Be prepared, as this is likely what you – alongside anyone publicly expressing a dissenting opinion or standing opposition to a government position – will face under Trump 2.0. Facts? Law? Not in this case. The same old story: Disinformation serving political agendas. It will make your allies hesitant to come to your defence. It will make donors nervous. It will obstruct your ability to advance charitable causes.

In the case of American Muslims, analysts have identified various motivations behind these attacks, many of which were unrelated to “public safety”.

Following 9/11, the US government was under intense pressure to prevent further attacks. Prosecuting or investigating Muslim organisations allowed officials to promote a narrative of actively combating domestic terrorism.

Anti-Muslim racism, rather than evidence of criminal activity, led to the perception that Muslim organisations were inherently suspicious. Recently, Elon Musk, billionaire X owner heading Trump’s newly minted Department of Government Efficiency, has used his social media platform to perpetuate a narrative of moustache-twisting Muslim villains.

Since 9/11, US government agencies have repeatedly been rewarded with increased funding and expanded authority for implementing counterterrorism programmes targeting Muslims, even when those programmes were based on stereotypes and unfounded science, and contributed nothing to public safety. The NYPD’s Muslim surveillance and mapping programmes resulted in zero prosecutions. The Obama Administration’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) programmes produced dubious indicators, such as the idea that growing or shaving one’s beard could be a sign of malevolent intent. Meanwhile, concerns about the threat posed by ideological extremists such as white supremacists were downplayed.

In 2009, a report by the Extremism and Radicalization Branch of the Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division warned of the rising threat from white supremacists and violent antigovernment groups. Congress torched it. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) disavowed the report. The DHS analyst behind it left his job. His team was dissolved.

By 2011, journalist R Jeffrey Smith noted that “as many as 40 analysts” were focusing on al-Qaeda and its ideological allies. By contrast, in 2012, Wired journalist Spencer Ackerman reported that the DHS had only a single analyst tasked with tracking all forms of domestic non-Islamic extremism. In 2017, the Government Accountability Office reported that 62 of the 85 extremist terrorist incidents in the US post-9/11 were carried out by white nationalists.

Through this government overreach, America’s Muslims have learned a hard lesson: When those in power want to target you, there is little you can do to stop it. Ducking for cover or appeasing your oppressors are not viable strategies. However, there are steps you can take: Prioritise serving your community, develop resilience, refuse to change who you are to please those in power, enhance legal preparedness, and build your ability to communicate directly with the American people. It is a difficult road, but movements that champion justice will ultimately thank you.

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