Observe reside updates on RFK Jr.’s second affirmation listening to.
Showing earlier than the Senate Finance Committee at his affirmation listening to on Wednesday to be well being secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. looped on a blue tie with embroidered birds. It seemed to be a nod to Mr. Kennedy’s pastime of elevating birds, one thing he has shared along with his followers in some affable missives on social media. A falconer, Mr. Kennedy has raised ravens for years, however his tie’s molted yellow, crimson and inexperienced birds appeared extra like a flock of parrots.
Right here was some delicate sartorial diplomacy in motion: Mr. Kennedy was not the predator that his cousin Caroline Kennedy referred to as him in a letter on Monday in opposition to his affirmation, however as a substitute a nature-loving softy. (The model of Mr. Kennedy’s tie wasn’t instantly clear, although primarily based on previous pictures he does appear to have a factor for ties with embroidered critters.)
This wasn’t the one message Mr. Kennedy, 71, broadcast by means of his garments on Wednesday. Beneath his nothing-to-it navy go well with, he wore a button-down shirt, his tie twisted right into a nimble knot concerning the dimension of an natural strawberry. It was a proportional, preppy combo that might have been simply the factor his father, Robert F. Kennedy, and even his uncle John F. Kennedy, the paragon of the Ivy League look within the Nineteen Sixties, might need worn.
If Mr. Kennedy was sending some unstated sign of familial coziness right here, it landed extra loudly due to the best way everybody else from the Hill dressed. The phalanx of lawmakers he confronted wore spread-collar shirts and distended Windsor-knotted ties — what appears to be the uniform of at the moment’s senators.
Mr. Kennedy’s apparel was, as a substitute, a silk and cotton reminder that by means of all of it, even with a few of his household distancing themselves from him, he nonetheless carries, if not the values, then a minimum of the aesthetic sensibilities of America’s weightiest political dynasty.
Nonetheless, Mr. Kennedy stays in contrast to any Kennedy seen earlier than.
As he hunched ahead in his chair, Mr. Kennedy’s biceps pressed in opposition to his go well with, hinting on the gym-rat physique that has turn into central to his singular picture. Some on-line opined that Mr. Kennedy’s tie was too skinny. It’s definitely extra reedy than Donald J. Trump’s squat crimson ties, however Mr. Kennedy’s broad construct solely emphasised the stringiness.
His face, tanned to toasted pumpkin, bore the fruits of dwelling in California for many years. (Mr. Kennedy’s spouse, the actress Cheryl Hines, her kohl eye shadow matching her darkish go well with, might be noticed over his shoulder all through the listening to.)
This listening to was, like so lots of the administration’s affirmation hearings, a tonal curler coaster. Whereas Republican senators piled reward on Mr. Kennedy, Democratic senators, armed with stacks of Mr. Kennedy’s previous statements on vaccines, Lyme illness, AIDS, processed meals and so forth, solid him as radical, properly outdoors the traditional considering on well being on this nation. When it was their flip, the listening to took on the air of a rhetorical prize combat. (It was becoming that Mr. Kennedy, like Mike Tyson storming the ring, was greeted by chants from the gallery of “Bobby! Bobby!” as he entered the listening to room.)
As he strove to elucidate his personal phrases, Mr. Kennedy blinked steadily and spoke emphatically in a rasp brought on by the situation spasmodic dysphonia. Pushing in opposition to Democrats’ depictions of him, he punched exclamation factors within the air along with his index finger.
By noon, it was the sundry topics of the listening to — the dialogue of the origins of Lyme illness, the squabbling over vaccines — that made evident to anybody watching that this listening to was occurring right here, in Trump’s America in 2025, not Kennedy’s America in 1960. No twee tie or throwback button-down collar was going to alter that.
