Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed by the U.S. Senate Thursday to be secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The vote was along party lines in the Republican-controlled Senate, with GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell the only member of his party to vote against Kennedy.

“The founder of one of the country’s most prominent anti-vaccine groups will now run the nation’s vaccine policy, which is just one part of the nearly $2 trillion federal health portfolio,” The Hill reported.

President Trump’s nomination of Kennedy was strongly opposed by top Hawaiʻi leaders.

“As I have said on numerous occasions, Mr. Kennedy’s positions on basic public health matters like vaccinating our children, will put their health in jeopardy,” Hawaiʻi Gov. Josh Green said in a press release. “His well-documented personal misinformation mission, which has taken the lives of vulnerable and innocent people, makes all of us less safe and will cost us dearly, in terms of lost lives and billions of dollars of added healthcare costs.”

Hawaiʻi Sens. Brian Schatz and Mazie Hirono both spoke out against Kennedy’s nomination in floor debate Wednesday.

“Mr. Kennedy, in his words, but more importantly in his actions, has proven over and over that he is a unique danger to society,” said Schatz, according to his office. “But he’s on the edge of becoming the country’s top health leader with the power to unleash bygone diseases and undermine trust in science for generations to come.”

Schatz noted that Kennedy traveled to Samoa in 2019 to discourage people from taking a measles vaccine “which ultimately led to an outbreak in which thousands of people were infected and 83, mostly children, died.”

In her remarks, Hirono said, “Mr. Kennedy will be guided not by science, but by the conspiracy theories he’s pursued for decades on vaccines, raw milk, stem cell treatment, and much more.”