Most cabinet nominees invite their families and key supporters to attend their confirmation hearing. Yet, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s team is calling upon thousands of Americans to descend on the nation’s capitol to rally behind his nomination.
Kennedy, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is set to appear before the Senate Finance and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committees Wednesday and Thursday flanked by a legion of “Make America Healthy Again (MAHA)” advocates. If busloads of supporters were to pack the Senate Dirksen building hallways as planned, it would be a striking display of grassroots support for one of Trump’s cabinet nominees whose confirmation fate is uncertain due to a number of Senate Republican holdouts.
We are here to MAHA people! pic.twitter.com/uqJxvvpexr
— Leener Tep
(@LeenerTep) January 29, 2025
(@LeenerTep) RFK Jr. supporters arrive in Washington, DC for his first Senate confirmation hearing!
— Holden Culotta (@Holden_Culotta) January 29, 2025
Kennedy’s numerous supporters, many of who are calling their senators or visiting their offices in person to lobby on his behalf — view the confirmation hearings — and Kennedy’s nomination more broadly — as a once in a lifetime opportunity to reverse Americans’ worsening health outcomes.
“This is a pivotal moment in history,” Zen Honeycutt, founding executive director of the medical freedom and health advocacy nonprofit, Moms Across America, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Look how many people are coming to DC. A year ago, people were like the government was completely bought out and felt hopeless. Most people have had a crisis of trust in the government [during former President Biden’s term].
“He’s [Kennedy] bridging the divide,” Honeycutt, a prominent MAHA advocate who traveled to Washington to support Kennedy, added. He’s bringing people together.”
Kennedy’s Opposition and Current Holdouts
Opposition to Kennedy’s nomination, partly funded by Big Pharma, appears to be formidable. The former Vice President Mike Pence-aligned group Advancing American Freedom is running ads hammering Kennedy for his longtime support for abortion rights while Democratic Party-affiliated groups — Protect Our Care, Committee to Protect Health Care and 314 Action — are highlighting Kennedy’s past comments on vaccines and labeling the nominee as a threat to public health.
Left-wing Democratic senators, including Patty Murray of Washington, have come out hard against Kennedy for his “dangerous” views on vaccines despite the HHS nominee maintaining that he will not seek to ban the shots, but subject them to further scientific study.
Kennedy can afford to lose the support of just three Republican senators on the Senate floor assuming all Senate Democrats oppose his nomination. But his nomination has to clear the Senate Finance Committee first and due to the panel’s 14-13 Republican majority, just one GOP senator could prevent Kennedy’s nomination from advancing out of committee.
GOP senators who sit on the finance committee and have thus far refrained from endorsing him prior to Wednesday’s confirmation hearing include Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
“Every Democratic Senate Senator and every Republican senator should be voting ‘yes’ on him,” Honeycutt told the DCNF, citing Kennedy’s commitment to tackle the various health crises facing Americans. “It should be practically impossible for senators to not confirm him.”
Kennedy’s team is also urging the HHS nominee’s supporters to call the offices of GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who are seen as potential “no” votes on Kennedy’s confirmation when his nomination reaches the Senate floor. All three notably voted against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s nomination last Friday.
MAHA advocates want Kennedy’s holdouts to understand that they are committed to funding and running primary challenges against senators who vote “no” on Kennedy’s nomination in their next election.
“Will they [senators] be on the right side of history,” Honeycutt questioned. “[Or] Will they be looking back at this point two years from now — before their elections — and be wondering maybe I should have listened to all of these Americans that were speaking up for Kennedy?
“They [Kennedy’s detractors] want to continue to be able to do business as the status quo, which is a corrupt system,” Honeycutt added.
An ‘Unstoppable’ Movement
Honeycutt and other MAHA activists are confident that Kennedy’s supporters outnumber his detractors, which they hope will be on full display during the HHS nominee’s back-to-back confirmation hearings.
“The MAHA movement is a tidal wave of people,” Honeycutt told the DCNF. “There are hundreds of us working together, collaborating — even people who don’t like each other — to ‘Make America Healthy Again’ right now.”
MAHA advocates’ conviction that senators must honor the will of the American people by confirming Kennedy and their determination to see his nomination through that could very well catch senators by surprise, Honeycutt told the DCNF.
“This has never happened before in the history of America that I remember where people have rallied for a [cabinet] appointee,” Honeycutt observed to the DCNF. “And I think this is a testament to the love that people have for Kennedy.”
“He has said I will die with my boots on for your children,” Honeycutt reflected. “He has inspired us and gives us hope.”
In the event senators were to reject Kennedy’s nomination, which MAHA advocates promise will be met with fervent backlash, the HHS nominee’s supporters believe the MAHA movement he helped launch will persist and demand accountability from the senators who chose to tank his confirmation.
“There’s no stopping it [the MAHA movement] even if Kennedy doesn’t get appointed,” Honeycutt told the DCNF. “There is an unstoppable movement of people who are fully aware that what Kennedy has been advocating for is absolutely correct.”
“[And] a lot of what Kennedy has been advocating for … is already underway,” Honeycutt added, citing the Biden administration banning the artificial food dye, Red No. 3 in the last weeks of the administration and Trump reinstating U.S. service members previously discharged for refusing to take the COVID-19 shots.
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