Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump/Elon Musk got the Cabinet they wanted. That’s what happens when voters decide that they not only want to empower white supremacists in the executive branch, but they also want to ensure that the white supremacists have congressional carte blanche to dismantle the government in the most methed-out way possible. The Republican majority in the Senate ensures that even with a few “defectors,” all of Trump’s nominees are getting confirmed. That even goes for nominees whose families have come out to describe the nominees as predators (it’s happened more than once). So, Robert Kennedy Jr. was confirmed by the Senate as the secretary of Health and Human Services. The Polio Era is upon us.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the vaccine skeptic and former presidential candidate who fled his family’s party and threw his “medical freedom” movement behind President Trump, won Senate confirmation as the nation’s health secretary on Thursday and was sworn in hours later during an Oval Office ceremony.

The ceremony, conducted by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch as Mr. Trump looked on, capped a remarkable rise for Mr. Kennedy and a curious twist in American politics. He was confirmed by a Republican Senate, without a single Democratic vote, in a chamber where his father, Robert F. Kennedy, and his uncles, John F. Kennedy and Edward M. Kennedy, all held office as Democrats.

During the ceremony, Mr. Kennedy remarked that he first visited the Oval Office as a child in 1961, the year John F. Kennedy became president. He said Mr. Trump, whose presidential campaign he joined in August after abandoning his own, had been a blessing in his life: “On Aug. 23 of last year, God sent me President Trump.”

Mr. Trump said he intended to sign an executive order establishing the President’s Commission to Make America Healthy Again, named for the moniker Mr. Kennedy has given his movement. Of Mr. Kennedy, he said, “There’s no better person to lead our campaign of historic reforms and historic faith in American health care.”

The Senate vote to confirm Mr. Kennedy, 52 to 48, was almost entirely along party lines. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a polio survivor and the former G.O.P. leader, voted no, the lone Republican to oppose Mr. Kennedy. Mr. McConnell issued a searing statement explaining his vote. At the swearing-in ceremony, Mr. Trump criticized Mr. McConnell, calling him a “very bitter guy.”

[From The NY Times]

Kennedy is now in control of HHS, which oversees the FDA, the National Institute of Health and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Kennedy isn’t a “vaccine skeptic” – he is flatly anti-vaccine. While there is an abundance of legitimate concern about how badly Kennedy will f–k up any and all current and future pandemics and vaccine schedules, I would be willing to bet that one of the first things Kennedy does is f–k with the FDA’s long-standing approval of prescription abortion pills. Kennedy openly endorsed Trump’s anti-abortion stances during the campaign.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.