Physician governor urges Capitol Hill to block RFK Jr.'s confirmation: 'Our children's lives depend on it'

Hawaii's Democratic Governor and practicing physician, Josh Green, is visiting Capitol Hill this week to lobby lawmakers against the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary. In a Tuesday op-ed for The New York Times, he argued that "our children's lives depend" on preventing Kennedy from leading the agency.

During his trip to Washington, Green said that he would be discussing with lawmakers and other leaders to explore "a better place for [RFK Jr.] to be" rather than HHS, calling his potential confirmation "a bad idea."

"Too much depends on our commitment to truth and the lifesaving power of vaccines to entrust Mr. Kennedy with the direction of these programs. Our children's lives depend on it," Green wrote.

Kennedy's team has not responded to repeated efforts by Fox News Digital to get in touch, but in 2023, Kennedy said during an appearance in a short film that he "never told anybody not to vaccinate" and that he "didn't go [to Samoa] with any reason to do with that." Furthermore, amid concerns about how Kennedy might approach the polio vaccine, he told reporters on Capitol Hill last month that he is "all for the polio vaccine."

"I think that Kennedy has aimed to stand for evidence-based changes to policy," said Nina Teicholz, a nutrition expert and founder of The Nutrition Coalition, a New York-based nonprofit organization. 

"Right now, the media is covering RFK Jr. poorly and unfairly, giving him no credit for ideas that are well within the bounds of discussion," added Dr. Vinay Prasad, in an article published by The Free Press. "Many of RFK Jr.'s ideas have a logic."

Fox News Digital reached out to Green's office for comment but did not hear back by publication time.