Katherine Schwarzenegger Rips RFK Jr.’s Cuts as Kennedy Cousin Fights Cancer
Several members of the Kennedy clan are standing by one family member as they voice concerns about another.
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Katherine Schwarzenegger publicly blasted cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s healthcare cuts after another member of their famous Kennedy dynasty revealed she is battling terminal cancer.
Schwarzenegger on Sunday rallied behind her “extraordinary cousin,” former President John F. Kennedy’s granddaughter Tatiana Schlossberg, for her New Yorker essay detailing her harrowing fight with acute myeloid leukemia.
“I am and continue to be grateful for all the doctors and nurses helping her and encourage you to read her words about how the state of the country, the cuts and uncertainty, impacts and terrifies those in medicine and receiving treatment like Tatiana,” wrote the daughter of John F. Kennedy’s niece, Maria Shriver, and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Instagram.
Tatiana Schlossberg revealed that she has less than a year left to live.
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Her message aligned her squarely with Schlossberg, who used her emotional essay to criticize their cousin, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for straining the very healthcare system she depends on.
“As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers striving to improve the lives of others, I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines,” Schlossberg wrote in her essay, reflecting on the worries that arose after her cousin’s swearing-in as health secretary.
RFK Jr. has been promoting his "Make America Healthy Again" movement, despite criticism even from inside his family.
Heather Diehl/Getty Images
“I watched from my hospital bed as Bobby, in the face of logic and common sense, was confirmed for the position, despite never having worked in medicine, public health, or the government,” the mother of two wrote.
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Schlossberg, 35, revealed on Saturday that she has been diagnosed with the cancer following the birth of her daughter in May 2024, and has been given less than a year to live.
Schwarzenegger’s post came after her mother also praised the essay as an “ode to all the doctors and nurses who toil on the frontlines of humanity.”
The essay and the Kennedy family’s responses come as RFK Jr. admitted in a New York Times interview that he personally instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change their website to state that the claim that vaccines do not cause autism is “not an evidence-based claim,” despite an overwhelming number of studies showing otherwise.
RFK Jr. is a vaccine skeptic and has used his position to change the CDC website claims about vaccines.
UCG/Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
RFK Jr. has faced criticism from many in the Kennedy family over his views and political stance, including his younger brother, Maxwell Taylor Kennedy, who slammed him for undermining their father Robert F. Kennedy’s legacy. Kennedy Sr. was assassinated on June 6, 1968, when the health secretary was 14 years old.
“Bobby is a known skeptic of vaccines, and I was especially concerned that I wouldn’t be able to get mine again, leaving me to spend the rest of my life immunocompromised, along with millions of cancer survivors, small children, and the elderly,” Schlossberg writes in her essay, describing the fears her cousin’s position has instilled in her.
The daughter of Caroline Kennedy, the only surviving child of the late President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy, published her essay on the anniversary of JFK’s assassination, which occurred when her mother was five years old.
Schlossberg wrote that her brother, sister, and parents have been taking care of her children, whilst also fighting a battle against RFK Jr.
Clodagh Kilcoyne/Getty Images
Schlossberg highlighted that her family—her older sister Rose, 37, her younger brother Jack, 32, and her father Edwin, 80—have been “raising my children and sitting in my various hospital rooms almost every day for the last year and a half.” At the same time, her mother wrote a letter to the Senate attempting to stop RFK Jr.’s hearing, and her brother has been “speaking out against his lies for months.”
“For my whole life, I have tried to be good, to be a good student and a good sister and a good daughter, and to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry,” Schlossberg wrote. “Now I have added a new tragedy to her life, to our family’s life, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it,” she added.
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