Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may need every vote he can get to win confirmation as President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of health and human services.
No Senate Democrats have said they’d back Kennedy yet.
But New Jersey’s Cory Booker shares RFK Jr.’s concerns about the U.S. food system, as he made clear in a post to X this morning, which said that the system prioritizes “corporations feeding us unhealthy products” while flooding us with “dangerous chemicals.”
Kennedy took note, thanking Booker in a post “for your long history of leadership on this issue.”
Last week, Booker, who tries to stay healthy by avoiding processed sugar and animal products, acknowledged that he and Kennedy have had similar ideas on the connection between food and health — but said he didn’t trust the coming Trump administration.
“I feel like he’s lifted paragraphs from my speech talking about this crisis,” Booker said of Kennedy. “Color me skeptical about a president that did a lot of things in his last administration to undermine people’s access to healthy, quality food, tried to lower nutrition standards and do the kind of things that [are] not making America healthy.”
Booker was among the Senate Democrats most opposed to Trump’s Cabinet nominees during his first administration, voting aye only four times, for Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, VA Secretary David Shulkin, Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.