As Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s confirmation hearing approaches, more than 80 organizations have voiced opposition to his nomination to head Health and Human Services (HHS)— groups like the NAACP, the National Organization for Women, MoveOn, Reproductive Freedom for All, Indivisible, and Advocates for Trans Equality.
Standing out like a sore thumb among the dozens of left-of-center groups hoping to derail Kennedy’s confirmation is a conservative advocacy group founded by former Vice President Mike Pence.
Pence’s group, Advancing American Freedom (AAF), was founded in April 2021, and advocates for “conservative values and policy proposals.” The group’s opposition to RFK Jr.’s nomination is reportedly driven by his vaccine views, his alleged “checkered past,” and his libertarian views on drug legalization and abortion.
The environmental lawyer and vaccine safety activist ran for president in 2023/2024, first as a Democrat, then as an Independent, but eventually suspended his campaign when his presidential bid failed to gain traction. On August 23, 2024, Kennedy announced he and his V.P. pick Nicole Shanahan would back the Trump Campaign, unifying on key issues like the Ukraine war, chronic disease epidemic, free speech, and removing corporate influence out of government.
Advancing American Freedom argues RFK Jr. is “an anti-vax conspiracy theorist, former heroin addict, supporter of marijuana and psychedelic drug legalization, and backer of abortion rights,” Politico Pro reported.
Kennedy will have a chance to address all of these concerns and more during his confirmation hearings with two committees, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) and the Senate Committee on Finance, on Wednesday and Thursday respectively.
He has been an outspoken critic about the harms associated with vaccines for about 20 years and since the 2021 rollout of the COVID-19 gene therapy products, has seen his views gain wider acceptance.
His views on abortion are fairly moderate by today’s standards, hearkening back to the days when Democrats argued it should be “safe legal and rare.”
“Abortion has been a notoriously divisive issue in America, but actually I see an emerging consensus: that abortion should be legal up until a certain number of weeks, and restricted thereafter,” Kennedy stated in June 2024. “Every abortion is a tragedy, and by better supporting mothers, parents, and families, we can dramatically reduce abortions across the board.”
Kennedy has referenced his past addiction when discussing his Make America healthy again (MAHA) agenda, which “includes providing opportunities to help people recover from addiction.”
“I consider my addiction one of the biggest gifts that I’ve ever had, because I had access to a 12-step program that gave me insights and wisdom to first help myself and then the ability to help other people,” RFK Jr. posted on X last October.
Trump’s HHS pick explained his unorthodox views on psychedelic drugs during an interview on the Joe Polish Show in November of 2024.
He said that his mind was open to the idea of psychedelics for treatment because of an experience one of his sons had with a Native American plant-based psychedelic concoction called Ayahuasca several years ago.. Because the experience profoundly changed his son’s life for the better, Kennedy opined that people “ought to have the freedom and the liberty to experiment with these hallucinogens to overcome debilitating disorders.”
A longtime Democrat told Politico that Pence’s group “is throwing everything at the wall in a bid to convince Republican senators to stop Kennedy.”
“Any one of these controversies should be disqualifying for a potential HHS leader,” Advancing American Freedom’s president and chair of the board, Tim Chapman and Marc Short, wrote last Tuesday in a letter to the 53 Republican senators who will vote this week on whether Kennedy gets the job.
Advancing American Freedom is getting a major assist from conservative heavy hitter, Leonard Leo, Co-chair the Federalist Society, the conservative lawyers network. During Trump’s first term, Leo was widely known as a confidant to Trump, who counseled the president on his judicial picks. Historically, however, Leo has been a big backer of moderate Republican lawmakers like Senators Susan Collins (Maine), Joni Ernst (Iowa) and Tom Tillis (N.C.). and Rep. French Hill (Ark.).
According to Politico Pro, Leo’s consulting and public relations firm, CRC Advisors, is now helping to publicize Advancing American Freedom’s campaign to torpedo Kennedy.
Pence’s group is running a $250,000 digital ad campaign opposing the nominee on the grounds that he’s an anti-vax conspiracy theorist, former heroin addict, supporter of marijuana and psychedelic drug legalization and backer of abortion rights. The new ad campaign will include a mobile billboard that will drive around the Capitol complex and appear at the March for Life in Washington on Friday.
Leo is known for leading successful campaigns to help key conservative members of the Supreme Court, including Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, win confirmation. That success led to the 2022 Dobbs decision allowing states to ban abortion.
Both Pence and Leo have significant ties to Big Pharma.
In August 2023, David Ricks, who heads pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, made a major early donation to Pence’s PAC in what was described as “one of the first big 2024 donations from a major player in the pharmaceutical industry.”
Ricks in June donated $25,000 to a special political action committee called Committed to America, which was founded to support Pence. Ricks’ contribution ranks in the top 30 donations to the super PAC so far, according to federal campaign finance filings.
In April 2024, Rolling Stone reported on leaked documents that revealed several of CRC Advisors’ corporate clients, which included Eli Lilly.
Leo’s firm has also worked for Americans for Prosperity, which spent more than $40 million supporting former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s failed Republican primary campaign against Trump in 2023/2024.
Shanahan called out Leo’s anti-Kennedy gambit on X, writing: “Why is a ‘conservative’ PR firm spending hundreds of thousands of $ to try to sink RFK’s nomination? Could it be because they’re also pocketing millions from Big Pharma and super PACs that supported Nikki Haley’s campaign against Trump? This is the precise corruption the American public voted against in November!”
Attorney Mike Davis, who calls himself Trump’s “viceroy,” also took aim at the anti-Kennedy effort on social media.
Davis is the founder of the Article III Project, a non-profit advocacy organization that aims to promote the confirmation of conservative justices to the Supreme Court, bringing “brass knuckles to fight leftist lawfare.”
“Exhibit A why @Article3Project is helping Trump pick judges now: Federalist Society’s Leo is assisting with anti-RFK Jr. campaign,” Davis posted on X.
RFK Jr. is set to appear before the Senate Finance Committee Wednesday for the first of the two confirmation hearings. If confirmed, Kennedy would control over 18 agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Below is a short documentary put out by the Kennedy Campaign last May, narrated by actor Woody Harrelson.
RFK, Jr is not anti-vax. He is pro children. It is necessary to have a skeptic at HHS and not a yes man. Besides, I am sure you and Pence have reviewed the VAERS reports that documents the damage done and being done to people who trusted FDA/CDC, who are vaccine injured. Where is your transparency?
Are you addressing me, the author of this piece? If so, I’ve written literally dozens of posts about vaccine injuries and multiple pieces featuring RFK Jr.'s courageous work. Not sure what your beef is.
Anyone who has read RFK Jr.'s book “The Real Anthony Fauci”, understands how deep the rot is within the US healthcare system, medicine, and the bureaucracy. Fauci is emblematic of the army of bureaucrats who possess no self-restraint, moral compass or even humanity in pursuit of their goals. Fauci’s use of orphans for “experiments” (I wonder if what he did qualifies as torture) is especially unnerving. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to know how bureaucrats have commandeered multiple agencies for their Big Pharma masters, colluding with government to sicken Americans in the name of “health”. On that basis, and because RFK, Jr. is trying to get Americans to rethink all of the government “advice” about “health”, he is the perfect candidate. We NEED disrupters!
Most people want Science to remain free from politics, and from the influence of Big Corporations. If it takes a Kennedy to accomplish that purge at HHS and throughout the bureaucracy, it’s welcome. Mike Pence has lost all credibility out here in flyover country. I cannot imagine a person less able to stop anything Trump wants to do at this point. He should crawl back to Indiana.
The fact that backstabber, deep state stooge, Mike Pence is against Mr. Kennedy makes me enthusiastically in favor of him. Pence and his rude and nasty and rude wife , Karen, who he constantly “prays with” should go back to Indiana, never to be heard from ever again.
RFKJr’s views on food and medicine are unnuanced, to put it charitably, disqualifying to put it more aptly. We have far better food today than when I was a kid or even when I was in college. And we didn’t need the government to get it, other than by having it get out of the way. The “Big Pharma” bogey-man I hear so much about has created medicines that have improved the lives, in fact saved the lives, of probably millions of people. I would add the RFK is a global warming extremist and could wreak policy havoc in this area from the HHS position. Certainly, there are important, and complex, issues being raised about the health system, particularly in connection with Covid, but when did it become conservative, or smart for that matter, to support big-government nanny-statism?