Pence Calls on Trump To Fire RFK Jr Over Abortion Drug

“It’s time to kick this progressive wolf in pro-life sheep’s clothing to the curb,” reads a memo from Pence’s group, the Advancing American Freedom Foundation, first reported by RealClearPolitics. “RFK Jr must go.”

The dissent signals that the Trump coalition may be fraying. Evangelical voters helped make him president twice. The Make America Healthy Again contingent, including a large number of disaffected Democrats, followed Kennedy into the Trump camp last year, increasing his margins of victory. Back in the White House, Trump has focused more on the alleged dangers of food dyes, Tylenol, and vaccines than on curbing abortion access.

In a statement to RCP, Pence noted the “key role” pro-life voters played in returning Trump to the Oval Office before blasting Kennedy for being “unable or unwilling to deliver on his many promises to the pro-life movement.” The HHS secretary hasn’t even cleared the lowest bar, he added, pointing to a still-incomplete review “of the dangerous chemical abortion pill that millions of pro-lifers consider the bare minimum for a pro-life administration.”  

“Kennedy should step aside and give President Trump the opportunity to select a new HHS Secretary who will deliver pro-life results for the American people,” Pence said.

Discontent has boiled beneath the surface with an administration led by the self-described “most pro-life president” in U.S. history. The issue has receded from the White House policy portfolio even as the annual number of abortions has increased after the Supreme Court reversed Roe v Wade. Anger bubbled over last week after Bloomberg News reported that the Trump administration was delaying a long-promised review of mifepristone until after the midterm elections.

A senior White House official denied that allegation, telling RCP, “The study is not being slow-walked. Comprehensive and exhaustive reviews take time.”

The frustration was initially focused on FDA Commissioner Marty Makary. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America first called for Makary to be fired. Lila Rose, president of Live Action, followed suit. “It’s politics over women,” complained Brad Kehr, government affairs director for Americans United for Life. “Votes over safety.” On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, wrote on social media that the “FDA lied to me and other members of Congress.”

In response, the White House shrugged.

“FDA Commissioner Marty Makary is working diligently to ensure that Americans have the best possible, Gold Standard Science study of mifepristone. The White House maintains the utmost confidence in Commissioner Makary,” Trump spokesman Kush Desai told RCP, pointing to “one landmark victory for the American people after another” from his crackdown on artificial food ingredients to the first safety review of baby formula in decades.

Pence joined the chorus of conservatives arguing last week for the FDA chief to be fired. Now he has escalated the argument by going after Makary’s boss, HHS Sec. Kennedy. A source familiar with the strategy told RCP that the goal is “to set the edge” for Republican lawmakers and “give them more running room to do what they need to do: Tell Trump RFK Jr needs to go.”

“If he wants to keep his coalition together,” the source said of the president, “it’s critical that he take this seriously. No one in his cabinet seems to be saying this to him.”

Kennedy, a pro-abortion Democrat before finding his way into the GOP fold, had to overcome lingering Republican skepticism during his confirmation hearing. He promised, among other things, to direct the FDA to conduct a safety review of mifepristone. The work was ongoing, he testified later in September, telling lawmakers that the Biden administration “actually twisted the data to bury one of the safety signals.” The next month, the FDA made the drug more available by approving a generic version of the abortion drug, infuriating social conservatives.

Prescriptions of the drug surged after the Supreme Court overturned the national right to an abortion in 2022, and the total number of abortions has increased nationally year after year. Nearly two-thirds of abortions are now carried out using the medication, which is readily available through the mail after the Biden administration reversed rules requiring an in-person doctor visit for a prescription.

In August, 22 Republican attorneys general called on the Trump administration to reinstate safety protocols for mifepristone, saying it poses “serious risks to women” and citing a study by the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, which claimed that one in 10 women experience a “serious adverse event,” including hemorrhage, emergency room visits, and ectopic pregnancy.

Republican states argue that so long as mifepristone remains available through the mail, state laws can easily be circumvented. Their concerns have fallen on deaf ears. The Biden-era policies continue under Trump.

The delayed review of mifepristone, the approval of a new generic version of the abortion drug, and the failure to reverse Biden’s policy on prescription, according to Pence, are strike one, two, and three for RFK Jr. The former vice president had already accused the Trump administration of stonewalling Congress, and in October, AAF filed a Freedom of Information Act request and later took HHS to court for documents related to the approval of a new generic. Their requests have not been answered.

The messy divorce between Pence and Trump concluded long ago. The former vice president fell out of favor when he refused to go along with a scheme to throw out the results of the 2020 presidential election. Their split was finalized when Pence unsuccessfully challenged Trump for the Republican nomination four years later. Trump later moved on to select JD Vance, another staunchly anti-abortion Republican, as his vice president.

Pence and Trump do not speak regularly. But it was Pence who calmed the concerns of social conservatives over a decade ago when the president was better known as a celebrity real estate tycoon who donated to Democrats. During their four years in office, the pair delivered numerous victories for an anti-abortion coalition, including the successful confirmation of three Supreme Court nominees who later voted to overturn Roe. A longstanding ally of anti-abortion activists, Pence now leans on that record in arguing that the HHS secretary should get the boot.

“Republicans gave RFK Jr a chance and he has failed. RFK Jr was confirmed under the belief that he would protect vulnerable women and children – not to pursue four more years of progressive pro-abortion policies at HHS,” concludes the memo from Pence’s group. “RFK Jr. must go.”