U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited the Arizona Capitol Tuesday to celebrate the passage of two bills that he said advance President Trump’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. But the visit was met with criticism from Democrats.
Kennedy praised Arizona lawmakers for passing a bill (HB2165) to seek approval from the USDA to prohibit the use of food stamps to purchase soda and another (HB2164) to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches.
“They poisoned the food supply in our country. And they made it nutrient-anemic. We're now the fourth-most obese country in the world. And, for the first time in history, we're seeing obesity and malnutrition in the same people,” Kennedy told a crowd of Republican lawmakers and parents of school-aged children. “We need to take care of these little ones, it is our obligation.”
The healthy school lunch bill passed with unanimous support from Republicans and Democrats in the state House and Senate. But many Arizona Democrats expressed disapproval over Kennedy’s event to mark the bill’s passage.
Speaking alongside Democratic lawmakers and public health professionals at a press conference ahead of Kennedy’s remarks at the Capitol, Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes called the visit shameful. Mayes pointed out Kennedy’s recently announced plans to revoke more than $11 billion in public health grants that had been promised to states. She said Arizona stands to lose more than $200 million from the cuts.
“It doesn’t ‘Make America Healthy Again’ to slash nurses for public health clinics in rural Arizona — that’s what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just tried to do,” Mayes said.
And Democrats raised concerns about Kennedy’s long history of vaccine skepticism.
“If we don’t maintain high vaccination rates, we risk the spread of contagious diseases, and we will quickly turn into a public health crisis without remedy,” state Sen. Lauren Kuby said at the press conference.
In a seeming change of stance, Kennedy on Sunday posted on his X account, “The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine."
Kennedy took few questions from reporters following his remarks. When one reporter tried to ask Kennedy for additional explanation of his statement about vaccines amid a growing measles outbreak that has infected more than 600 people and has led to three deaths in the U.S., Republican lawmakers cut the question off and shouted the reporter down.
When another reporter asked if the Make America Healthy Again agenda does enough to address root causes of health disparities, such as poverty or access to health care, Kennedy answered that epidemics affect all Americans.
“We’re seeing them everywhere, in every demographic, and the reason for that is our food,” Kennedy said.
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