RFK Jr. skipped meeting where officials planned fight against a future pandemic (original) (raw)

As Biden officials packed up the White House last week and their Trump counterparts prepared to move in, dozens of senior leaders in both administrations trundled into the neighboring Eisenhower Executive Office Building to game out how the new government would respond to an emergency, such as a pandemic.

For two hours, incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio, South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem and other intended members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet hashed out their roles and responsibilities in the event of a crisis — splitting their time between a hypothetical avian flu outbreak and a hypothetical terrorist attack in New Orleans — as outgoing Biden officials shared lessons and guidance from their real-world experience. National security officials in previous administrations have characterized the exercise, which is a required part of the presidential transition, as essential preparation to ensure that a new government is ready for an emergency on Day 1.

But a top figure was notably absent: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, the pivotal agency when a pandemic strikes.

“The one guy who should’ve been there wasn’t there,” said one attendee, who, like several others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private session led by the National Security Council. Most of those attendees said they were mystified by Kennedy’s absence and wondered where he was.

Kennedy was two miles away, on Capitol Hill, seeking to sway senators skeptical of his candidacy to serve as the nation’s top health official, according to three people with knowledge of his schedule that day. Rather than reassuring lawmakers of his readiness to face an emergency, Kennedy left some of them deeply rattled by sharing debunked theories about vaccines and making other questionable assertions, the people said.

For Kennedy’s critics, including some in the Trump administration, the episode encapsulates several of their fears about his controversial candidacy. If confirmed as HHS secretary, the longtime environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist would take charge of a nearly $2 trillion agency that approves vaccines and medications, manages the nation’s emergency stockpile of medical countermeasures, and helps coordinate disaster response. HHS officials also are closely monitoring potential threats such as avian flu and other circulating viruses.

If one of those blossomed into a pandemic, it would fall to Kennedy — who has never held a senior government role nor steered an emergency response — to oversee key decisions, or make them himself.

Much of Kennedy’s recent preparation has been consumed with trying to win over lawmakers wary of his criticism of childhood vaccine recommendations, his debunked claims such as his denial of a link between HIV and AIDS, and other views that have alarmed scientific leaders. Kennedy has maintained that he is not anti-vaccine.

It is not clear that Kennedy has the required support of 50 senators to be confirmed, with Sens. Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), Bill Cassidy (Louisiana) and other Republicans rebuking his views on vaccines. Some GOP lawmakers and conservative leaders have also questioned whether the longtime liberal, who has renounced the Democratic Party, is truly committed to restricting access to abortion and other conservative goals.

The White House defended Kennedy’s absence from the emergency-planning exercise and said there would be opportunities for health officials to do further preparations.

“Mr. Kennedy was unable to attend due to scheduling conflicts related to his ongoing Senate confirmation process,” Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the National Security Council, wrote in an email. Hughes noted that Jim O’Neill, Kennedy’s intended deputy, attended the event.

A spokesperson for Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment. Kennedy’s advisers have touted that he has met with more than half of the nation’s senators as he seeks to shore up support before his two confirmation hearings next week.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), one of the senators with whom Kennedy met in lieu of attending the emergency-planning session, was so alarmed by her conversation with him that she immediately released a statement warning about how “dangerous” it would be to confirm him.

“I came out of my meeting with RFK Jr. stunned,” she told The Washington Post this week. “I have never left a meeting with a Cabinet nominee as disconcerted and troubled by their words in my entire career.”

Murray’s office said she was unaware that Kennedy had skipped an emergency-planning session to meet with her and other lawmakers.

The HHS secretary plays a central role when a health crisis strikes the nation. Alex Azar, who served as health secretary during Trump’s first term, helped conceive of Operation Warp Speed, which accelerated the development of vaccines that have been credited with saving millions of lives during the coronavirus pandemic. Kennedy, meanwhile, challenged the safety of those vaccines as the pandemic raged. He has maintained that he is not anti-vaccine and recently told reporters that he is “all for” the polio vaccine but that he has concerns that vaccines’ effects have not been fully investigated. Public health experts have said that vaccines, which have been credited with saving more than 150 million lives around the world, are among the most studied scientific interventions in history, given the billions of people who have received them.

In interviews, former health and national security officials said Kennedy needs as much preparation as possible for his potential responsibilities, and they questioned his priorities.

“Particularly for someone with no prior government experience, exercises like this are critically important. I would question why he couldn’t just reschedule his congressional meetings to make room for this,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, who helped lead responses to pandemics in the Obama and Biden administrations. “There is no higher responsibility for the secretary of health and human services than protecting the American homeland from grave health threats.”

Beth Cameron, who served as a career diplomatic and national security official in the George W. Bush, Obama and first Trump administrations, and as a political appointee on the National Security Council in the Biden administration, said it was “significant” that Kennedy missed the event because it offered a rare opportunity for senior leaders to collectively prepare for a crisis, rather than attempt to hash out responsibilities in the middle of one.

“These are homeland exercises intended to ensure … a seamless handoff on issues that could affect the homeland on Day 1. Things like outbreaks, hurricanes, terrorism. Things that don’t pause when a government changes hands,” Cameron said. She said it was important that Pete Hegseth — Trump’s nominee to lead the Pentagon — Rubio and other Trump officials attended the session.

“As the lead for outbreak response and medical countermeasures development and delivery for the U.S. government — particularly with H5N1 [avian flu] circulating and Marburg cases emerging — I’d have wanted the nominated HHS secretary to be present and briefed,” Cameron said.

Ken Bernard, a former national security official in the Clinton and George W. Bush White Houses, was more sanguine about Kennedy’s absence from the session.

“A statutorily prescribed two-hour exercise on homeland security issues as broad as terrorism and pandemic response is only a small first step — hardly more than a meet-and-greet,” he wrote in a message.

Preparing for Day 1

The National Security Council exercise has been a mainstay of previous transitions, intended to clarify roles and responsibilities if a crisis hits. It has been revised over the years after previous administrations struggled to get a handle on threats such as coronavirus and Ebola, with new lessons imparted to incoming officials.

The session is also too large to fit in the White House’s Situation Room, said a former senior administration official with knowledge of its planning. Instead, about 40 top officials from the outgoing and incoming administrations attended the exercise on the third floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Jan. 15, with several dozen deputies watching virtually from an overflow room down the hall.

Biden officials also revamped the presentation to make it more interactive, particularly after previous sessions — which were more didactic — struggled to engage some attendees. Wilbur Ross, Trump’s pick to serve as commerce secretary during his first term, reportedly dozed off as outgoing Obama administration officials tried to warn the incoming Trump team about threats such as pandemic flu.

As Biden officials prepared for this year’s exercise, they winnowed down four potential scenarios to just two ripped from the headlines: the threat of a terrorist attack in New Orleans, like the one this month that killed 14 people and injured dozens in the French Quarter, and the prospect of avian flu spreading rapidly among humans. Avian flu is ravaging U.S. dairy andpoultry farms, and health officials this month reported the first death in the United States linked to the virus.

Liz Sherwood-Randall, Biden’s homeland security adviser, led the session. Top health officials such as Mandy Cohen, the outgoing director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Dawn O’Connell, the head of HHS’s emergency response division, virtually presented on the situation around avian flu and how the Biden administration had invested in surveillance and vaccines to protect against it. In the room, Paul Friedrichs, who led the Biden White House’s pandemic preparedness office, held up a revised pandemic playbook as a visual aid.

The Biden officials also stressed to their Trump counterparts: There is never just one emergency at any given moment, as government leaders must juggle geopolitical tensions, emerging viruses and other possible threats.

Sherwood-Randall, O’Connell and Friedrichs declined to comment for this report. Cohen did not respond to a request for comment.

Rather than finger-pointing, the session was apolitical and constructive, with about an hour spent on the risk of avian flu, according to the people who attended. Incoming Trump officials were highly engaged, the people said.

Rubio posed questions about how to coordinate with global partners, referencing his experiences in the U.S. Senate and Florida during earlier crises. Noem, Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security, wrote down her potential statutory responsibilities and acknowledged Biden officials as they laid out the steps for an emergency response, saying that it tracked with her experience in South Dakota. Chris Wright, Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Energy, asked an array of questions about cross-government responsibilities.

Spokespeople for Rubio and Noem did not respond to requests for comment. Wright did not respond to a request for comment.

Several moments subtly pointed up the difference between the administrations, two attendees noted, such as when Rubio asked about how the United States tracks the threat of emerging flu viruses abroad. That capability partly relies on the World Health Organization — a capability that could be diminished if the United States pulls out of the global alliance, as Trump intends.