Dear MoveOn member,
Today, RFK Jr. faced his first Senate confirmation hearing as Trump's nominee for the next leader of the Department of Health and Human Services.1 This means we have just days left to pressure our senators to vote no before the full Senate vote. RFK Jr. is a grave threat to our health and safety, and his confirmation must be rejected by the Senate.
Simply put, under RFK Jr.'s leadership, our people will become sicker. If his anti-science positions become policy, more people will suffer and die. This will be the result of his plans to stop infectious disease research, promote anti-vaccine conspiracies, and take away Medicaid from millions of people. And in his Senate hearing this morning, RFK Jr. just signaled that he would declare the abortion pill Mifepristone unsafe!2 We need a HHS secretary that supports access to abortion care, not someone conspiring against a safe FDA-approved pill.
It's critical that we flood Senate offices with phone calls to make clear he is the wrong choice to lead HHS!
During this phone bank, you will be calling fellow MoveOn members in key states to urge them to call their senators to demand they vote no on RFK Jr.’s confirmation. You'll introduce yourself as a MoveOn member, have a conversation about why RFK Jr. is a dangerous pick for this position, and ask if they’d like to be connected directly to their senator's office. MoveOn's technology will swiftly patch them through to their senator automatically!
And we've selected five Republican senators to target that we think, with enough pressure from constituents, could block RFK Jr.'s confirmation.
RFK Jr. wants to stop infectious disease drug development and research and does not believe infectious diseases are an enormous threat to public health. And with him in charge, we could see a deadly resurgence in illnesses like measles and polio.3
We've already seen the danger of RFK Jr.'s influence and anti-vaccine position. In 2019, RFK Jr. promoted anti-vaccine conspiracy theories in American Samoa that led to a measles outbreak which killed 83 people, mainly children. His dangerous fringe beliefs have and will lead to more deaths.4
The Department of Health and Human Services oversees 13 sub-agencies, including Medicare and Medicaid, and has a budget of well over $1 trillion and more than 80,000 employees. Millions of Americans count on the services and functioning of HHS, and RFK Jr. will run this agency into the ground.5
Donald Trump has nominated dangerous candidates for almost all of his Cabinet positions—RFK Jr's nomination is another example of Trump being out of touch with what Americans really need—a leader who will expand access to health care and encourage people to believe in science, not spew out anti-vaccine conspiracies and cut access to Medicaid.
For all these reasons and more, our senators must reject RFK Jr. as the next secretary of Health and Human Services. Together, we can mobilize thousands of people to call their senators to urge them to vote no on this dangerous nominee.
Thanks for all you do.
–Kelsey, Alexis, Britt, Nakia, and the rest of the team
Sources:
1. "RFK Jr. Senate confirmation hearing: Live updates," NBC News, January 29, 2025
https://act.moveon.org/go/201937?t=5&akid=422859%2E40999114%2ES_CCsA
2. "RFK Jr. hearing live updates: Democrats hammer RFK Jr. on vaccine comments, abortion," ABC News, January 29, 2025
https://act.moveon.org/go/201939?t=7&akid=422859%2E40999114%2ES_CCsA
3. "7 things about RFK Jr. you should know ahead of his Senate hearings," NPR, January 28, 2025
https://act.moveon.org/go/201938?t=9&akid=422859%2E40999114%2ES_CCsA
4. "Experts saw Samoa's plunging vaccination rates as a crisis. RFK Jr. saw an opportunity," NBC News, January 24, 2025
https://act.moveon.org/go/201936?t=11&akid=422859%2E40999114%2ES_CCsA
5. "'He’s not a manager': Former RFK Jr. staffers on how he'd run HHS," Politico, November 28, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/201694?t=13&akid=422859%2E40999114%2ES_CCsA
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