Robert F. Kennedy’s wife Cheryl Hines long stayed coy on vaccines. But her appearance at the Children’s Health Defense conference with Russell Brand changes things.
Cheryl Hines was late. Dinner glasses clinked; a DJ played Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” to an empty dance floor. Many in the audience had waited years to hear the actress speak on the issue of vaccines. What was 45 minutes more?
Hines, in a fitted black top and knee-high leather boots, floated onstage. She was met with a standing ovation: The first lady of the anti-vaccine movement had finally arrived.
“Wow,” Hines beamed. “That was such a nice welcome.”
People have speculated for years about the actress Cheryl Hines’ views on vaccines — whether she shares or condones those of her husband, longtime anti-vaccine activist and current Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., or whether her beliefs align more closely with scientific consensus and overwhelming public opinion. Hines’ appearance at the annual conference for the nation’s largest and most profitable anti-vaccine organization, Children’s Health Defense, or CHD, leaves little room for doubt.
“CHD has been such supporters of families of parents with children that have been injured with vaccines or any sort of health issue,” Hines said to rousing applause. “Thank you for supporting CHD and Bobby for all these years.”
It was Saturday, the end of the first day of CHD’s conference in Austin, Texas. This was a private dinner for attendees who paid a few hundred dollars extra to see a conversation between Hines and the conspiracy theorist comedian Russell Brand.
“We are here, I think, to some degree, to provide some real star power and glamor to the event,” Brand explained in welcoming Hines.
In the hourlong interview, Hines praised CHD and Kennedy’s anti-vaccine activism for it. Brand repeatedly urged attendees to each buy four copies of Hines’ forthcoming memoir, “Unscripted,” to drive it to the top of the New York Times’ bestseller list. Publisher and CHD board member Tony Lyons told the crowd that all profits from that night’s book sales would be donated to the organization.
The appearance was the first time Hines had publicly aligned herself with the anti-vaccine nonprofit Kennedy founded, which describes itself as a “child health protection and advocacy group.” While it has long targeted childhood vaccines, the group became a hub for misinformation during the pandemic — spreading falsehoods about Covid-19, vaccines and public health guidance while bringing in millions in revenue. CHD has called the post-pandemic drop in childhood vaccination rates a “silver lining,” and during an ongoing measles outbreak it promoted conspiracy theories and downplayed the disease’s severity — even after two children in Texas died.
Kennedy was the star speaker at the most recent CHD conference. In 2023, while campaigning for president there, he vowed to gut federal health agencies and go after what he said were corrupt scientists and medical journals, claiming without evidence that they had hidden the dangers of vaccines from the public.
CHD had denied my request to attend the 2023 conference, its press office citing my “reporting on CHD’s themes and activities” as the reason. This year, I attended the first day of the conference by simply walking through security — no one asked for any credentials or a conference badge.
