Hawaii’s Democratic governor and physician, Josh Green, visited Capitol Hill this week to lobby lawmakers to oppose the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). In a Tuesday op-ed for the New York Times, he said “our children’s lives depend” on preventing Kennedy from leading the agency.
Green, who worked as a physician before entering politics, continued to practice in the emergency room throughout his legislative career. In 2019, as governor of Hawaii, Green assisted in efforts to increase vaccination rates in Samoa during a measles outbreak in the region. Green arrived in the nation’s capital on Sunday evening to begin his traveling meetings and return to Hawaii on Thursday.
“As a doctor-only governor, I need to explain what are the good decisions and what are the bad decisions in the cabinet,” Green said in a video before his trip to Washington, noting that his lobbying for Kennedy is not. anything personal or political. “[RFK Jr’s] being appointed to be the head of Health and Human Services is not compatible with the safety of our children,” he said.
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During his trip to Washington, Green said he will be talking with lawmakers and other leaders to explore “a better place [RFK Jr.] to be” instead of HHS, calling his possible confirmation “a bad idea.”
Hawaii Gov. Josh Green speaks at the 2024 summer meeting of the National Governors Association, Thursday, July 11, 2024, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
Questions about the chances of Kennedy’s confirmation took a turn this week after Sen. Bill Cassidy, R–La., the incoming chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, called the potential future HHS Secretary “wrong” on the vaccine issue. The criticism follows concerns that Kennedy may want to scrap the polio vaccine, after news emerged that one of his former colleagues at Children’s Health Defense, the health-focused former chairman Kennedy, asked the government in 2019 to withdraw its approval.
Green’s criticism of Kennedy centered on his anti-vaccination views, particularly Kennedy’s response to the measles outbreak in Samoa, where the prospective HHS Secretary encouraged skepticism about the effectiveness of the vaccine, according to Green and others, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Those efforts included a letter that Kennedy sent to the prime minister, as chairman of Children’s Health Defense, suggesting that the measles vaccine could have exacerbated the outbreak.
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President-elect Trump has nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead HHS. (Getty Images)
The Democratic governor wrote an op-ed published in the New York Times on Tuesday, further testing Kennedy’s anti-vaccination efforts in 2019 amid a measles outbreak in Samoa. According to Greene, Kennedy “used false information to scare all Samoans into not vaccinating” and used it to “torpedo” the country’s vaccination efforts.
“So much depends on our commitment to the truth and the life-saving power of vaccines to entrust Mr. Kennedy with the direction of these programs. Our children’s lives depend on it,” Green wrote.
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Kennedy’s team did not respond to Fox News Digital’s repeated attempts to contact him, but in 2023, Kennedy said during an appearance in a short film that he “never told anyone not to vaccinate” and that he “never left. [to Samoa] for any reason to do that.” Moreover, amid concerns about how Kennedy would get the polio vaccine, he told reporters on Capitol Hill last month that he was “all ready for the polio vaccine.”
A medical injection that prepares a vaccine or treatment. (Stock)
Supporters of Kennedy’s nomination suggested that his proposed plans, if confirmed, would be based on logic and science.
“I think Kennedy intended to advocate for evidence-based policy changes,” said Nina Teicholz, a nutritionist and founder of The Nutrition Coalition, a New York-based nonprofit.
“Currently, the media is writing RFK Jr. badly and unfairly, giving him no credit for ideas that are within the bounds of discussion,” added Dr. Vinay Prasad, in an article published by the Free Press. “Many of RFK Jr.’s ideas make sense.”
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Fox News Digital reached out to Green’s office for comment but did not respond by press time.
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