The Senate on Thursday confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as President Donald Trump’s Health Secretary, putting the prominent vaccine skeptic in control of $1.7 trillion in federal spending, vaccine recommendations and food safety as well as health insurance programs for roughly half the country.

Nearly all Republicans fell in line behind Trump despite hesitancy over Kennedy views on vaccines, voting 52-48 to elevate the scion of one of America’s most storied political — and Democratic — families to secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. Democrats unanimously opposed Kennedy.

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who had polio as a child, was the only “no” vote among Republicans, mirroring his stands against Trump’s picks for the Pentagon chief and Director of National Intelligence.

“I’m a survivor of childhood polio. In my lifetime, I’ve watched vaccines save millions of lives from devastating diseases across America and around the world,” McConnell said in a statement afterwards. “I will not condone the re-litigation of proven cures, and neither will millions of Americans who credit their survival and quality of life to scientific miracles.”

The rest of the GOP, however, has embraced Kennedy’s vision with a directive for the public health agencies to focus on chronic diseases such as obesity.

“We’ve got to get into the business of making America healthy again,” said Sen. Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican, adding that Kennedy will bring a “fresh perspective” to the office.

Kennedy, 71, whose name and family tragedies have put him in the national spotlight since he was a child, has earned a formidable following with his populist and sometimes extreme views on food, chemicals and vaccines.

His audience only grew during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Kennedy devoted much of his time to a nonprofit that sued vaccine makers and harnessed social media campaigns to erode trust in vaccines as well as the government agencies that promote them.

With Trump’s backing, Kennedy insisted he was “uniquely positioned” to revive trust in those public health agencies, which include the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes for Health.

Last week, U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, said he hoped Kennedy “goes wild” in reining in health care costs and improving Americans’ health. But before agreeing to support Kennedy, potential holdout Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a doctor who leads the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, required assurances that Kennedy would not make changes to existing vaccine recommendations.

During Senate hearings, Democrats tried to prod Kennedy to deny a long-discredited theory that vaccines cause autism. Some lawmakers also raised alarms about Kennedy financially benefiting from changing vaccine guidelines or weakening federal lawsuit protections against vaccine makers.

Kennedy made more than $850,000 last year from an arrangement referring clients to a law firm that has sued the makers of Gardasil, a human papillomavirus vaccine that protects against cervical cancer. If confirmed as health secretary, he promised to reroute fees collected from the arrangement to his son.

Kennedy will take over the agency in the midst of a massive federal government shakeup, led by billionaire Elon Musk, that has shut off — even if temporarily — billions of taxpayer dollars in public health funding and left thousands of federal workers unsure about their jobs.

On Friday, the NIH announced it would cap billions of dollars in medical research given to universities and cancer being used to develop treatments for diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s.

Kennedy, too, has called for a staffing overhaul at the NIH, FDA and CDC. Last year, he promised to fire 600 employees at the NIH, the nation’s largest funder of biomedical research.

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.

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A new measure would give family members of murder victims a second crack at finding a perpetrator in cold cases across the state.

Tamarac Democrat Sen. Rosalind Osgood filed legislation (SB 694) named “The Decker Act,” which would outline the procedures for reviewing and reinvestigating these cases.

A cold case is defined in the bill as a murder that has not had any perpetrators identified for at least five years after the murder was committed, with law enforcement investigations completed and all probative leads exhausted.

Law enforcement agencies would be required to review any cold case upon receiving a written application from a family member or legal representative. The review would need to determine if a full investigation would result in any new leads that could identify a likely suspect.

If the review of the cold case concludes that a reinvestigation could result in new leads and the identity of a perpetrator, a full investigation would need to be conducted, including the analysis of new evidence, interviewing witnesses and updating the case file.

The bill would require that law enforcement agencies develop written applications for review requests and adopt new procedures to ensure compliance, while providing training to appropriate employees.

Law enforcement agencies must further confirm they have received applications and report any data to the Global Forensic and Justice Center located at the Florida International University. The center would maintain a case tracking system and public website with information on cold case investigations.

This would include the number of written applications for cold case reviews filed with each law enforcement agency, the number of full reinvestigations initiated and closed, the total number of cases in which the time for review is extended, and statistical information on the number of cold cases, defendants, arrests, indictments and convictions.

If the cold case was initially investigated by multiple agencies, those agencies would be required to coordinate with each other to review the case files or launch a reinvestigation. These agencies would further be able to request investigative assistance from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Funding is subject to appropriations and would apply to cold cases that occurred on or after Jan. 1, 1970. If passed, the act would come into effect on July 1, 2026.

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State Attorney Melissa Nelson and Northeast Florida Sheriffs are looking to shut down a high school pastime with serious repercussions.

The “senior assassin” game is in fact no game at all, Nelson said in Jacksonville, as the recent trend of students targeting each other with water guns is taken far more seriously than the putative intent, leading law enforcement to ask for help in “shutting the game down.”

The warnings come after a student participating in the activity was shot in Yulee by an off-duty Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent on that agent’s private property.

“Yesterday, this game culminated in what could have been a fatal tragedy right here in our circuit. Our office responded to a shooting in Nassau County early yesterday morning,” Nelson said, regarding the confusion of a senior assassin with a home invader.

“While the game involves water guns, it often occurs in the dark in the late hours of night or the early hours of the morning,” Nelson added.

“Play occurs off school campus and often pervades the boundaries of private property, including yards, driveways, garages and cars, and the water guns often look like real firearms, certainly in the dark. It sometimes can involve masks, camouflage and other gear intended to obscure identity. And while intended to be really a simple and fun game, these tactics can obviously create a dangerous environment with potentially fatal consequences.”

Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper noted that three Bishop Kenny students targeted another BK student in his home driveway, after “lurking around vehicles.”

“The homeowner was alerted,” Leeper said, noting that a water pistol used “looks like a gun in the dark.”

“Thankfully, the student is still alive. But a couple of inches over, the parents would be looking at a funeral,” Leeper said. “They call it senior assassins. But doing something like that, I call it dumb assassins.”

“This can be a deadly game,” he added, “in the right situation.”

Leeper noted that the agent, a homeowner, had the right to defend their property, though an investigation is ongoing.

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