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Hawaii Gov. Josh Green wants Sen. John Curtis to vote against RFK Jr’s nomination. Here’s why.

“On the ground there, we had children die in our arms, die in the villages that we had just arrived at,” Green said of responding to the measles outbreak in Samoa.

With critical votes scheduled this week on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to be the next secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, groups opposing his nomination are trying to sway Utah Republican Sen. John Curtis — among a handful of others — to defeat his nomination.

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, a physician and former member of the National Health Service Corps working in rural parts of the islands, has been meeting with senators trying to convince them that Kennedy’s lack of medical experience and his actions that Green said led to a measles outbreak in Samoa make Kennedy unfit for the job.

In 2018, two children in Samoa died after a nurse improperly prepared a vaccine. Afterward, Kennedy began vocally questioning the safety of the vaccines and traveled to the island nation to meet with leaders.

Vaccination rates fell, and with immunity down, the nation experienced a major outbreak in 2019. Green said he was among the doctors who traveled to Samoa, along with 75 healthcare professionals and 300 aides, to vaccinate everyone.

“On the ground there, we had children die in our arms, die in the villages that we had just arrived at, and then would have to proceed to vaccinate everyone else around us,” Green said in a recent interview with The Salt Lake Tribune. “And over the course of the two days, the story became clear that this interloper — we later found out it was RFK Jr. — moved on Samoa when there was an opportunity to destroy any further confidence in vaccinations.”

Eventually, thousands of young children were sickened and 83 died during the outbreak. Green said that Kennedy spread misinformation about the safety of the measles vaccine and was paid millions of dollars by his nonprofit, the Children’s Health Defense, to do it.

“So now you’ve got several concerns,” Green said. “You’ve got the fact he has no experience; the second fact that he was morally willing to scare people who lack the knowledge or health literacy on prevention of disease; and then, because he has to show on his ethics forms, that he was paid all this money by Children’s Health Defense. ... Every senator should know that you can’t put a person that’s that morally flexible in charge of the health of our country, especially our kids.”

Green said he has been in Washington trying to make his case to as many senators as he could.

Curtis’s director of communication, Adam Cloch, would not say if Curtis met with Green or where the senator stands on Kennedy’s nomination.

A progressive group called 314 Action launched a digital ad campaign featuring Green and others highlighting Kennedy’s role in undermining vaccines and the Samoa outbreak, specifically, as well as the millions of dollars that, according to Kennedy’s disclosures, he received through the Children’s Health Defense.

Kennedy has previously denied any responsibility for the low vaccination rates in Samoa. During his confirmation hearings last week, Kennedy was asked about his role in the Samoa outbreak by two Democratic senators, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon, and said he wouldn’t do anything different today. “Absolutely not,” he said.

Kennedy said vaccination rates were already low when he went to Samoa to promote a medical information system that would help the government track health metrics.

“You cannot find a single Samoan who will say I didn’t get a vaccine because of Bobby Kennedy,” he said in a fiery response.

He said that he went to Samoa in June of 2019 and that the measles outbreak started in August, and that tissue samples on the 83 who died, Kennedy alleged, show most of them did not have measles. “We don’t know what was killing them,” he said.

Kennedy told Wyden that he supports the measles and polio vaccines and would do nothing as HHS secretary to undermine them.

Vaccines conspiracies have not been the only focus of Kennedy’s opponents. Former Vice President Mike Pence’s group, Advancing American Freedom, has been assailing Kennedy for his record on abortion.

(Mark Schiefelbein | AP) Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, speaks during a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Capitol Hill, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, in Washington.

When Kennedy announced his bid to be the Democratic nominee for president, he said that he was pro-choice and, in a podcast interview last year, said he would support a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy at full term if she chooses. Then, only days later, Kennedy changed his position and said that abortions should be prohibited after a “certain number of weeks.”

In his confirmation hearing, Kennedy echoed Donald Trump’s position on abortion. “I agree with President Trump that every abortion is a tragedy,” Kennedy told senators. He also said he would investigate the use of mifepristone, part of a pair of drugs used to end early-term pregnancies.

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician and chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, ended Thursday’s confirmation hearing saying he had issues with Kennedy’s record and his responses, questioning if Kennedy could “change his ways” after decades casting doubt on vaccines.

If the HELP and Finance committees, where Cassidy is also a member, approve Kennedy’s nomination, it will move to the full Senate, where Curtis’ vote is one of a handful of Republicans who could decide the fate of Kennedy’s nomination.

Utah’s senior U.S. senator, Mike Lee, has already expressed his support for Kennedy’s confirmation.