Impeach RFK Jr.? This House Democrat plans to try.

Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens of Michigan announced Thursday that she plans to introduce articles of impeachment against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., citing his unscientific medical practices as a threat to public health.

“RFK Jr. is making our country less safe and making healthcare less affordable and accessible for Michiganders. His contempt for science, the constant spreading of conspiracy theories, and his complete disregard for the thousands of research hours spent by America’s top doctors and experts is unprecedented, reckless, and dangerous,” she said in a statement.

Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens of Michigan

Stevens added that she believes that Kennedy has violated his oath of office and that she intends to “lead the charge to remove him.”

Similar to that of the president, articles of impeachment must pass the House, followed by a Senate trial. If convicted in the Senate, an official can then be removed from office.

Stevens has accused Kennedy of dereliction of duty, citing cuts to vital research, promotion of medical falsehoods and conspiracies, lying about his views during his confirmation hearing, and failing to administer the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which are under his control.

The impeachment charge follows President Donald Trump’s widely derided presentation on Monday, where Kennedy appeared alongside Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Mehmet Oz. Together, they falsely claimed that autism can be linked to vaccines and the use of acetaminophen

In response, scientists and doctors from around the world have lashed out at the Trump administration, highlighting the dangers of their unscientific medical claims—particularly among vulnerable children.

But despite the public outcry, the autism quackery embraced by Trump, Kennedy, and Oz has received support from key GOP figures.

A cartoon by Pedro Molina.

“God bless President Trump and RFK Jr. for asking the questions and starting to use their positions, their platform, to give parents informed consent,” Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said.

The autism debacle is just the latest in a string of failure and embarrassment from health agencies on Kennedy’s watch. His decision to censor CDC reports and muzzle experts contributed to an unprecedented measles outbreak in Texas earlier this year.

Kennedy has repeatedly pushed unscientific fears about COVID-19 vaccines and beefed up the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices with compliant followers who have limited access to vaccines.

In his confirmation hearings, Kennedy said that he would uphold existing vaccine standards, but in office he has done the opposite. He’s also pushing to limit access to abortion pills while trying to pressure international scientists against publishing objective research on the effectiveness of vaccines.

Americans have died as a result of Kennedy’s malpractice, which has been enabled by Trump. If successful, Stevens’ impeachment plan could put a stop to it all.

McConnell announces he’s done taking a dump all over democracy

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the former Senate Republican leader who is in large part responsible for helping destroy American democracy, will announce on Thursday that he is not running for reelection, the Associated Press reported

“Seven times, my fellow Kentuckians have sent me to the Senate,” McConnell will say in a speech on the Senate floor, according to prepared remarks obtained by the AP. “Every day in between I’ve been humbled by the trust they’ve placed in me to do their business here. Representing our commonwealth has been the honor of a lifetime. I will not seek this honor an eighth time. My current term in the Senate will be my last.”

It’s hard to pinpoint the worst things McConnell has done in office, because he’s done so many horrendous things. McConnell is responsible for breaking the Senate, weaponizing the filibuster to keep legislation from passing.

He is also responsible for stealing not one but two Supreme Court seats from Democratic presidents. In 2016, McConnell gleefully blocked former President Barack Obama from being able to fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, refusing to give Obama’s nominee a hearing, let alone a vote on the Senate floor because he said it was too close to an election. Then in 2020, he conveniently said that rule no longer applied when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, confirming Donald Trump’s pick to fill Ginsburg’s seat just eight days before the 2020 election.

It wasn’t just the Supreme Court that he helped stack. McConnell blocked dozens of Obama’s lower court nominees, holding those seats vacant so that Trump could fill the seats after he was elected. And he shepherded through Trump’s judicial nominees, including ones that were blatantly unqualified.

Even more galling is that when Trump won a second term in November, McConnell then cried foul when federal judges decided to no longer retire to keep Trump from choosing their replacements, accusing them of playing politics with the judiciary.

Trump and McConnell

“They rolled the dice that a Democrat could replace them, and now that he won’t, they’re changing their plans to keep a Republican from doing it,” McConnell, the master of playing politics with the judiciary, said in a speech on the Senate floor.

McConnell stepped down from GOP Senate leadership in 2024, saying it was time to pass the torch.

“One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” McConnell said in February 2024. “So I stand before you today ... to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate.”

Since then, he’s seemingly found his spine, criticizing Trump’s worst impulses and voting against Trump’s unqualified and dangerous Cabinet nominees, including now-Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and now-Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Yet McConnell voted for Trump in 2024, even though he thought Trump was, in his own words, a “stupid … narcissist.”

And Trump wouldn’t even be in the Oval Office now if McConnell had done the right thing in Trump’s 2021 impeachment and voted to convict Trump of inciting the insurrection at the Capitol and bar him from running for the presidency again. 

McConnell believed Trump was responsible for the attack, saying that the insurrectionists, “were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like.”

But McConnell voted against convicting Trump, and did not work to convince other Republican senators to vote to ban Trump from seeking federal office in the future.

Ultimately, McConnell has been a menace in American politics. He will not be missed.

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Trump’s team has this ironic request of Cabinet nominees

Susie Wiles, Donald Trump’s pick for chief of staff, issued a memo Sunday to Trump’s Cabinet nominees ordering them to stop making social media posts without approval ahead of the upcoming Senate confirmation hearings.

“All intended nominees should refrain from any public social media posts without prior approval of the incoming White House counsel,” the memo said, according to the New York Post.

Wiles also noted, “I am reiterating that no member of the incoming administration or Transition speaks for the United States or the President-elect himself.”

The missive comes after the spectacular flame out of former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s nomination for attorney general and the ongoing controversies of several other nominees, including Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mehmet Oz, and Tulsi Gabbard.

Gaetz’s nomination was withdrawn after the resurfacing of sordid allegations of illicit drug use and sexual behavior, including sending money to multiple women via PayPal and Venmo. Gaetz’s activity on social media was a key part of the controversy, as the House Ethics Committee's report notes.

“From 2017 to 2020, Representative Gaetz made tens of thousands of dollars in payments to women that the Committee determined were likely in connection with sexual activity and/or drug use,” the report states.

Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, has been accused of financial mismanagement, sexual assault, and public drunkenness. In response to reporting on these allegations, Hegseth has taken to social media to complain about “anti-Christian bigotry” in the media, the “lying press”, and the “Left Wing hack group” ProPublica.

Anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has also made strange social media posts. He recently posted a meme on X characterizing the medical industry as “financially dependent on you being sick,” as well as a video of himself with CGI-generated electric eyes and a link to his merchandise site.

An anonymous source with the Trump transition team claimed that the order to stop social media posts is not related to the recent online infighting between Trump megadonor Elon Musk and anti-immigration MAGA supporters. But the timing of the edict, coming directly from Trump’s right-hand woman, is extremely convenient.

Musk recently went on a posting frenzy, calling MAGA fans “upside-down and backwards” in their understanding of immigration issues, while telling one person to “take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face.”

The controversy generated international headlines, and Trump was dragged into commenting on the discussion—a less-than-ideal situation as he prepares for his inauguration.

Trump of all people telling others to be more mindful about social media posts is an ironic development. Trump made a name for himself as a political figure largely due to constantly posting inflammatory messages online. Most notoriously, he called on his supporters to protest the results of the 2020 election after losing to President Joe Biden.

“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” he wrote.

In the aftermath of his post, more than a thousand were arrested (including Trump), several related deaths occurred, and Trump was impeached for a second time.

But, hey, Trump’s Cabinet nominees won’t be posting on social media for a little while.

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