Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s younger brother criticized him for aligning with President Donald Trump in the midst of the GOP’s reduction of food assistance programs that millions of Americans rely on, labeling his position as a “betrayal” of their father’s legacy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy Sr.
“There is no way to know exactly what he would have thought,” Maxwell Taylor Kennedy wrote in an op-ed published in The Boston Globe. “But I do know what he cared about most deeply: the injustice of poverty in the richest nation in the world and our duty as citizens to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry.”
The younger Kennedy stated that his father, who would have turned 100 this year, “would have been horrified by the cruelty the Trump administration has shown towards America’s most vulnerable.” He highlighted the government shutdown, when millions of Americans were at risk of losing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits in November.
“It’s a betrayal of everything my father fought for,” said Kennedy, who advocated for expanding what was then known as the Food Stamp Program. “And all those involved in that betrayal have demeaned themselves — especially my brother, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s secretary of health and human services, who understands my father’s legacy better than anyone.”
Kennedy is not the only sibling to criticize the health secretary. Earlier this year, his sister, Kerry Kennedy, condemned several conspiracy theories RFK Jr. has promoted during his time in the Trump administration.
“I love Bobby and find him incredibly charismatic. But I have said — and my other family members have been very clear about this — that we disagree time and time again on the things he has said,” she stated.
RFK Jr.’s cousin, Tatiana Schlossberg, disclosed in a personal essay published Saturday in the New Yorker that she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and criticized HHS federal research cuts that she claimed could harm other cancer patients.
RFK Jr., who has advocated to “remove soda from the food stamp program,” commemorated his father’s birthday in an Instagram post featuring a photo of the two of them.
In his op-ed, the health secretary’s brother criticized the Trump-supporting GOP for displaying “an almost Dickensian cruelty” by “eliminating funding for the poor” in favor of tax breaks for the wealthy in the “Big, Beautiful Bill” passed during the summer.
“This is unacceptable,” he wrote. “And it is also unacceptable that my brother Bobby stands shoulder to shoulder with Donald Trump as these programs, particularly SNAP, are diminished. Preventing hunger is the primary responsibility of every public health official. You cannot Make America Healthy while denying food to our most vulnerable citizens.”
