By Mike Tony, Charleston Gazette-Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia’s U.S. senators are holding their tongues on President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of a failed 2024 U.S. presidential candidate known for his false claims on public health issues to lead the agency responsible for public health protections.
The Senate will consider whether to confirm Trump’s nomination of Robert Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic that Trump has picked to head the Department of Health and Human Services.
West Virginia’s senators — current and incoming — aren’t objecting to the nomination of Kennedy, despite an outcry of public health advocates fearful that he’ll push junk science atop the 80,000-plus-employee agency with a $1.7 trillion budget that oversees food and drug safety, Medicare and Medicaid, and health care research.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., on Monday didn’t weigh in on Kennedy’s nomination announced Thursday in a statement provided by communications director Kelley Moore, instead observing that “[i]t is the president’s prerogative to nominate [C]abinet secretaries, and he has the right to nominate the team he would like to carry out his agenda.”
