Well, as we reported, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services cleared the Senate Finance Committee today.

Senators voting along party lines. It now heads to the full Senate for a final vote. Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin sits on that committee, and I spoke with him earlier today.

Thanks for being with us.

Thanks for having me on.

So the committee vote to advance RFK Jr.'s nomination followed, from what I understand,

was a fairly intense pressure campaign from Trump administration officials and Mr. Kennedy himself.

Your colleague, Senator Bill Cassidy, who happens to be a physician, said that his yes vote came

with conditions to ensure the public's continued access to vaccines. Take a listen.

To this end, Mr. Kennedy and the administration committed that he and I would have an unprecedentedly

close, collaborative working relationship if he has confirmed.

We will meet or speak multiple times a month.

This collaboration will allow us to work well together and therefore to be more effective.

So that raises the question.

If securing confirmation demands such unprecedented concessions, is RFK Jr. truly the right choice to begin with?

Well, first of all, I don't think those are particularly major concessions on the part of RFK Jr.

He wants to follow the science. He is not anti-vax. I'm surely not anti-vaax. We want to make sure that, you know, the vaccines that are on the

childhood schedule are as safe as possible, recognizing that nothing is 100% safe and that they're

effective. Certainly, we want to prevent childhood disease to the extent we can, but we also have to have an open mind.

I mean, there are, the reality is there are vaccine injuries.

They acknowledge that fact when they passed the Childhood Vaccine Safety Act back in 1986.

Injury, vaccine injuries are just unavoidable.

It happens. We need to take care of those individuals,

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