The RFK Effect

The RFK Effect
by Clayton J. Baker, MD at Brownstone Institute

Over the last couple of weeks, a remarkable sequence of events involving two US Senators has unfolded that demonstrates the profound and positive influence that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is exerting on Washington, DC, which extends far beyond the halls of the CDC, FDA, and NIH. 

On June 12, 2025, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced a dramatic course correction. Four months after aggressively attacking Kennedy at his Senate confirmation hearings (and subsequently voting against him), Sanders has co-sponsored a bill named the “End Prescription Drug Ads Now Act” with Senator Angus King (I-ME), to outlaw direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising in the United States. 

On his website, Sanders states that “the bill would also answer Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s repeated calls to end prescription drug advertising, a position he promoted while campaigning for President Trump in 2024.”

As an increasing number of Americans have learned – and as Sanders notes – Pharma advertising is currently permitted in only two countries on Earth: the United States and New Zealand. This allows the pharmaceutical industry to effectively buy off the entire US mainstream media, silencing media criticism of its practices and products while bombarding the public with a constant stream of pro-Pharma propaganda and advertisements.

Sanders’ website does not hold back in its valid criticism of Pharma’s stranglehold on the media, stating:

Last year, the 10 largest drug companies made more than $100 billion in profits while the pharmaceutical industry spent over $5 billion on television ads. Prescription drug commercials now account for more than 30% of commercial time on major networks’ evening news programs. In the first three months of this year, Big Pharma spent more than $725 million advertising just 10 drugs.

Now, let us rewind to late January, back to the days of now-HHS Secretary Kennedy’s confirmation hearings. During the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) hearings, ranking committee member Sanders launched into a harsh attack on now-Secretary Kennedy that veered into the comical. At one point, Sanders posted photos of some baby onesies that Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy’s former nonprofit organization, had been selling online.

Barking furiously in his trademark Brooklyn accent (and growing increasingly unhinged as he went along), Sanders repeatedly demanded of Kennedy, 

“Are you supportive of these onesies?”

Later, Kennedy called out Sanders for the Senator’s Big Pharma campaign receipts, stating, “Bernie, you were the single largest acceptor of pharmaceutical dollars.”

And yet, a mere four months pass, and voila, Bernie Sanders sponsors the End Prescription Drugs Now Act, and name-checks Kennedy and Trump in his supporting arguments for the bill.

Has Senator Sanders had a 180-degree change of heart? Is Bernie suddenly supportive of those onesies?

Well, not so fast.

One day after the bill was announced, on June 13, Sanders wrote a letter to HELP Committee Chair Bill Cassidy (R-LA). In the letter, he states:

As you know, last week, in a dangerous and unprecedented decision that will have a profoundly negative impact on the lives of the American people, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)…

I am requesting that we immediately initiate a bi-partisan investigation into these firings and conduct serious oversight into the actions Secretary Kennedy has taken to mislead the American people about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines and erode public health.

Of course, Sanders makes no mention whatsoever of the extensively documented conflicts of interest that numerous prior members of the ACIP committee possess. Many received significant funding from relevant pharmaceutical companies. Others held patents on the products voted upon by the committee. Videos of past proceedings of ACIP meetings have been posted online, and they reveal the ACIP committee to be an embarrassing rubber stamp/kangaroo court composed of feckless functionaries.

Sanders’ pen pal from across the aisle, Bill Cassidy, has also been a staunch opponent of Kennedy’s efforts at reform. This may be explained by the fact that once Cassidy assumed the role of chairman of the HELP committee in 2023, he rapidly received a windfall of Pharma contributions, as evidenced by the April 2023 STAT news article entitled, “Pharma executives shower Bill Cassidy with Campaign Cash.” According to Open Secrets, Cassidy received over $290,000 from pharmaceutical Political Action Committees in 2023-4.

While Cassidy was harshly critical of Kennedy during the Senate confirmation, and while he insisted on Kennedy having monthly meetings with him once confirmed, Cassidy ultimately voted in favor of Kennedy to lead HHS. However, in other vital respects, Cassidy has continued to obstruct Kennedy’s work. 

Cassidy teamed with another Republican Senator on the HELP committee, Susan Collins of Maine, to effectively block Trump and Kennedy’s nominee for CDC Director, former Congressman David Weldon, from even coming before the committee. (Weldon has deep knowledge of the problems surrounding the vaccine approval process.) Ultimately, Weldon’s nomination was withdrawn on March 13.

Thanks to Cassidy, Trump’s replacement nominee to lead CDC, Susan Monarez, still awaits confirmation hearings, which according to the HELP website, are scheduled for June 25, 2025, more than 3 months after Cassidy forced the Weldon nomination to be pulled, and ironically on the same day as the upcoming and much-anticipated ACIP meetings. Multiple other key HHS positions remain unfilled to date due to similar Senate delays in the confirmation process.

Suddenly – literally as this essay is going to press – on June 23, 2025, STAT News has reported that Cassidy has called for a delay of the ACIP meeting, claiming that “advisers picked by RFK lack experience, and may be biased against some shots.” 

You literally cannot make this nonsense up. Bernie and Bill, these Keystone Cop Senators, their hair flagrantly afire, are riding off furiously in all directions, at the bidding of their Big Pharma owners, to do whatever they can to impede the will of the electorate.

The correct and absolutely necessary response, of course, is for Secretary Kennedy and his eminently qualified and morally unhindered (and yes, they are both) panel to proceed as scheduled, and render an honest and reasonable appraisal for the first time in the modern history of ACIP.

Cassidy, meanwhile, had better watch himself. He faces a reelection minefield in 2026, including a wide open primary from two experienced challengers, and reform of the state primary system that may work to his disadvantage. Cassidy’s decision to vote in favor of President Trump’s impeachment in February 2021 has already soured him with MAGA voters. Cassidy’s obstructionism toward Kennedy has alienated even more Louisianans.

As Cassidy’s reelection problems suggest, a Venn diagram of President Trump and Secretary Kennedy’s supporters would likely show far more overlap than most would have guessed a year ago.

Kennedy has only been HHS Secretary since February 13, 2025 – a little over 4 months. He has received more scrutiny in that brief period than perhaps all other HHS Secretaries combined since the office was created in 1980.

Based on Bernie Sanders and Bill Cassidy’s recent behaviors, Secretary Kennedy is having effects that reverberate well beyond the halls of the CDC, FDA, and NIH. His opponents don’t quite know what to do with themselves. It’s no longer possible to just do Big Pharma’s bidding in secret. Everyone’s watching now. And they’re not just watching Kennedy, but also the people trying to undermine and destroy him. And they consider attacks on Kennedy to be attacks on the President as well.

Could it be the progress that Trump and Kennedy’s NIH Director, Jay Bhattacharya, have made against deadly Gain-of-Function research, which we all now know to have been the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, that is driving this consensus? After all, what sane person wants our Deep State continuing to create superbugs at taxpayer expense?

Could it be the measured, step-by-step progress Kennedy has led toward reform of the US’s utterly corrupt vaccine approval and recommendation process – despite the opposition of Sanders, Cassidy, and the like? What sane person thinks the increase from 7 recommended childhood vaccines in the 1980s to 23 today promotes health, especially when American children today are dramatically less healthy? (In fact, much of the criticism Kennedy has faced from ordinary Americans is that this process of vaccine reform is happening too slowly.)

These trends in public opinion should surprise nobody. Only the most wicked and diabolical of people would impose an endless stream of toxic injections, medications, fake foods, ubiquitous pesticides, geoengineered weather, and the patenting, corporatization, and denaturing of life itself onto their fellow humans and the entire planet, while propagandistically denouncing a healthy, natural lifestyle for children and future generations. 

Ordinary citizens – be they MAGA, MAHA, reformed “Bernie Bros,” or common sense Cajuns – learned during the Covid years that these threats to their families and futures are not imaginary boogie men. They are the modus operandi of the real and destructive people and organizations that Secretary Kennedy – and by extension, President Trump – have taken on, on behalf of we the people.

While not nearly complete and very much a work in progress, the efforts and successes of the Kennedy-Trump alliance are real and significant. The recent confusion, mixed messages, and bloviations of Bernie and Bill are evidence that we are moving in the right direction. I’m not holding my breath, but may they and everyone see the light and join on board.

In the meantime, may Secretary Kennedy, President Trump, and their team at HHS stay the course.

The RFK Effect
by Clayton J. Baker, MD at Brownstone Institute – Daily Economics, Policy, Public Health, Society