In major reversal, Kennedy tells senators he won’t take money from vaccine lawsuit
Win McNamee/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — After a bruising round of confirmation hearings this week that left Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation in doubt, the nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services declared in a written statement to senators on Friday that, if confirmed, he will divest his financial stake in an ongoing civil lawsuit against a vaccine manufacturer.
Kennedy’s commitment to walk away from the potential windfall is a major reversal for the nominee, who in his ethics plan submitted to federal officials earlier this month told lawmakers he was entitled to those proceeds so long as the U.S. government wasn’t involved.
Democrats had seized on Kennedy’s financial stake in the lawsuit, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., warning that he could use his perch in government to make it easier for lawyers – including himself – to sue vaccine manufacturers and drug makers in court.
The lawsuit alleges marketing fraud against pharmaceutical company Merck for its HPV vaccine, Gardasil, which Merck denies. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) maintains that the vaccine has been proven safe, with more than 160 studies finding no concerns.
“Kennedy can kill off access to vaccines and make millions of dollars while he does it,” Warren said at Kennedy’s confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
“Kids might die, but Robert Kennedy will keep cashing in,” she added.
Kennedy struggled to lock-up conservative support for his nomination after testifying this week. On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal’s right-leaning editorial board praised Warren, writing that her questioning “expose[d]” Kennedy.
The next day, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy said he was “struggling” with Kennedy’s nomination, noting at one point that Kennedy was “financially vested in finding fault with vaccines.”
Kennedy told senators in his testimony Thursday that he was giving away his rights to the fees in the lawsuit against Merck. However, it was unclear whether he misspoke because his ethics agreement still maintained that he was entitled to the fees.
In written answers provided to the Senate Finance Committee on Friday, Kennedy clarified that an amendment was forthcoming.
“An amendment to my Ethics Agreement is in process, and it provides that I will divest my interest in this litigation,” he said.
Kennedy has earned millions of dollars in referral fees from law firms in the past for lawsuits unrelated to vaccines, including one involving a pesticide. He had not earned money yet from the Merck case, which only recently was taken up in civil courts.
In his testimony, Kennedy said he wanted to retain the right to sue drug companies even if confirmed.
“You’re asking me to not sue drug companies, and I am not going to agree to that,” he said.
Pete Kiehart for The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Donald Trump, six weeks into a historic comeback to the White House, on Tuesday heads to Capitol Hill to address Congress and the nation as a reinvented president relentlessly testing the limits of executive power.
Trump will step up to the dais at 9 p.m. ET to lay out his goals for the next four years and tout the actions he’s taken so far, many of them challenging constitutional restraints on his authority versus Congress and the courts.
The president teased on Monday it would be a “big night” and House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News over the weekend to expect “fireworks.”
The theme of his address will be the “Renewal of the American Dream,” a White House official told ABC News.
Trump will focus, the official said, on his record thus far, the economy, border security, and what the official called the president’s plans for “peace around the globe.”
He will push Congress to pass more border security funding for deportations and the border wall, the official said, and on foreign policy, he’s expected to touch on his efforts to help broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia.
“President Trump has accomplished more in one month than any president in four years – and the renewal of the American Dream is well underway,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “In his Joint Address to Congress, President Trump will celebrate his extraordinarily successful first month in office while outlining his bold, ambitious, and common sense vision for the future. President Trump’s Joint Address will be MUST-SEE TV.”
The speech comes as Trump moves with lightning speed to enact his agenda, including an immigration crackdown and radical overhaul of the federal government — the latter with the help of his unelected enforcer Elon Musk, who will be in the House chamber looking on.
As some of the dust settles from that blitz, a 538 analysis of public opinion polls found Trump himself to be more popular than many of his administration’s policies. And his approval rating, while higher than at this same point in his first term, is still underwater at 45%, according to Gallup.
Promises kept?
Trump has signed 76 executive orders since his inauguration, according to the Federal Register.
Barbara Perry, co-chair of the Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, said she expects Trump’s speech to start off on the theme of “promises made, promises kept.”
“I suspect there will be some chest-pounding and drawing attention to the fact that historically, this is one of the most active and productive first 100 days and we’re not even at the 100-day mark yet,” Perry said. “They’re off the blocks really quickly.”
His executive actions include many of the culture war issues he campaigned on — such as ending federal DEI programs, making English the country’s official language, declaring the government will only recognize a person’s sex assigned at birth and banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports.
On immigration, Trump could promote border crossings dropping significantly in January and the Department of Homeland Security arresting thousands of migrants illegally in the country. But his “border czar,” Tom Homan, has expressed frustration with the pace of deportations so far, and the administration abruptly cleared migrants from Guantanamo Bay after pledging to use the military base to house the “worst of the worst.” Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship, another signature 2024 pledge, has been temporarily blocked by the courts.
On foreign policy, in addition to his efforts to start peace talks to end the Russia-Ukraine war, the White House official said he can be expected to talk about the Middle East, although his brazen Gaza takeover plan has little public buy-in from regional power players and the administration’s reversal of American policy toward Russia and away from Ukraine has prompted concern among European allies.
On the economy, Trump can be expected to highlight tariffs he’simposed against Canada and Mexico that went into place on Tuesday, as well as additional taxes against China. But inflation continues to be a persistent problem, with some economists predicting tariffs could raise prices more, and the cost of eggs have skyrocketed amid the prevalence of avian flu.
But the Trump initiative that’s been the most controversial is the slashing of the federal bureaucracy, which is being largely overseen by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. The dismantling of agencies like USAID, wholesale firings of federal workers and cutting of funds already appropriated by Congress is prompting widespread confusion and several legal challenges. Trump has defended Musk so far, including in his first Cabinet meeting last week where Musk spoke despite not being a Cabinet member.
His message to Congress?
Trump will address Congress as Republicans hold majorities in both the House and Senate. Despite the trifecta, Trump is pushing an expansive view of executive power that questions the role of Congress and the courts to serve as a check over federal agencies.
How aggressively he articulates that stance in front of the lawmakers and Supreme Court justices in attendance will be something to watch, said Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
“I think the big question is, what does he feel like he needs from Congress? The general sense of the second Trump administration has been to come out of the gates guns blaring, wanting to accomplish everything themselves,” Wallach said. “In some ways, it seems like they mostly want Congress to stay out of their way and to cheer them on in their effort to transform the government.”
“But it’s not clear just how far they can go without new laws from Congress, including some that go ahead and dismantle previous programs,” Wallach noted.
The first big legislative test will be the budget reconciliation bill that will fund much of Trump’s agenda, though more pressing will be averting a government shutdown next week.
Back in 2017, during his first-ever joint address to Congress, Trump made a pitch for unity. It was generally regarded as one of his best political speeches, said University of Michigan speech and debate expert Aaron Kall.
Kall doesn’t expect the same tone for Tuesday night’s address, contending Trump views himself as having a “mandate” from voters after winning both the electoral college and popular vote (though data shows the victory isn’t the total landslide Trump has often portrayed it as).
“I think it will be very totalizing, very self-assured and very partisan in tone,” Kall said of Trump’s upcoming address. “This will be more in the ilk of a campaign speech.”
(WASHINGTON) — Multiple Trump administration officials who allegedly held classified discussions on an open messaging platform have in the past condemned the mishandling of classified records by others, including former President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
National security adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have called for “consequences” for individuals who improperly shared classified materials, regardless of their intention. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth lambasted Biden for “flippantly” mishandling classified documents and suggested that if he had behaved similarly, he would have expected to be “court-martialed.”
The condemnatory language these senior administration officials have used about prior breaches of protocol in handling sensitive materials adds a layer of irony to what experts are calling an unconscionable misuse of classified information.
John Cohen, a former national security official in both Republican and Democratic administrations, said, “from a security perspective, there is no scenario that justifies this type of information being discussed over a non-government controlled communication platform.”
“Communicating sensitive, operational information in this manner increases the likelihood of inappropriate disclosure which places military personnel at risk,” said Cohen, who is also an ABC News contributor. “There will also be questions about whether doing so violated statutes governing the safeguarding and retention of government information.”
More recently, many of these senior administration officials had much to say about the yearlong investigation into Biden’s handling of classified materials. The investigation did not result in any charges.
In January 2023, Hegseth, than a “Fox & Friends Weekend” co-host, appeared on Fox News and called Biden’s actions “nefarious, sloppy and dumb.”
“If the top man in the job was handling classified documents this flippantly for that long, why was that the case? Was it really that he didn’t know? When you take something out of the SCIF [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility] if you’re a senator, you know exactly what you’re doing. You had to sneak it out,” he said. The report included photos of boxes, including one damaged one that contained classified materials, including documents about Afghanistan that was found in the garage of Biden’s home in Delaware “near a collapsed dog crate, a dog bed, a Zappos box, an empty bucket, a broken lamp wrapped with duct tape, potting soil, and synthetic firewood.”
In January 2023, Rubio, also appeared on Fox News, where he said, “Any time documents have been removed from their proper setting — it’s a problem, I don’t care who did it.”
During her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton drew controversy by using a private email server for official public communications rather than using official State Department email accounts maintained on federal servers. The way many officials reacted has come back to haunt them.
In 2016, Hegseth told Fox News, “If it was anyone other than Hillary Clinton, they would be in jail right now… because the assumption is in the intelligence community, if you are using unclassified means, there is likelihood that foreign governments are targeting those accounts.”
Reacting to a Politico article on Clinton, Waltz, who apparently added Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, to the Signal chat, criticized the Department of Justice for its handling of the situation.
“Biden’s sitting National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan sent Top Secret messages to Hillary Clinton’s private account. And what did DOJ do about it? Not a damn thing,” Waltz said.
In January 2016, Rubio also appeared on Fox News, demanding that Clinton to be held accountable.
“Nobody is above the law … people are going to be accountable if they broke the laws of this country,” he said.
In August 2022 Stephen Miller, now Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy who was also in the Signal chat group, also posted his thoughts on X reacting to the Clinton email scandal.
“One point that doesn’t get made enough about Hillary’s unsecure server illegally used to conduct state business (obviously created to hide the Clintons’ corrupt pay-for-play): foreign adversaries could easily hack classified ops & intel in real time from other sides of the globe,” he said.
Only two weeks ago, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced a crackdown on leaks within the intelligence community.
“Any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such,” she said in a press release.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday suspending security clearances of Mark Pomerantz and those who work at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. The order also restricts government access to lawyers and employees at the New York-based law firm.
“Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order to suspend security clearances held by individuals at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP (Paul Weiss) pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest,” the White House said in a fact sheet.
Pomerantz oversaw the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office’s investigation into Trump and his business practices.
Notably, the executive order was signed the same day that Trump spoke at the Department of Justice, where he attacked those who prosecuted him.
The new executive order is the third time Trump has taken action against a law firm. On Wednesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked parts of Trump’s executive order targeting Perkins Coie, ruling the order was unconstitutional.
The language in this executive order mirrors that of the order that targeted Perkins Coie.
Judge Beryl Howell said the actions being taken by the Trump administration targeting these firms are “terrifying” to the legal community and noted that the DOJ’s arguments in support sent “chills down my spine.”
This firm also has other high-profile Democrats among its ranks, including former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former Homeland Security Secretary Jey Johnson, and was among the biggest donors to Democrats and former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 election.
“The executive order is focused on the activities of Mark Pomerantz, who retired from the firm in 2012 and went on to work at the District Attorney’s office nearly a decade later,” Paul Weiss said in a statement to ABC News. “Mr. Pomerantz has not been affiliated with the firm for years. The terms of a similar order were enjoined as unconstitutional earlier this week by a federal district court judge.
ABC News’ Alexander Mallin and Katherine Faulders contributed to this report.
