SAC.“The article detonates like a political shockwave: RFK Jr.’s younger brother unleashes a blistering attack on the Health Secretary, accusing him of ‘betraying’ their father’s legacy and even being ‘complicit’ in Trump’s alleged ‘cruelty.’ The fiery family feud has erupted into full public view — and readers can’t stop asking how this Kennedy drama spiraled so explosively.”

Maxwell Taylor Kennedy; Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Credit :

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin; Jason Mendez/Getty

NEED TO KNOW

• RFK Jr.’s younger brother, Maxwell Taylor Kennedy, wrote a scathing takedown of Donald Trump’s health secretary in a new op-ed
• The piece is a tribute to their father, Robert F. Kennedy, who worked to champion several federal aid programs that RFK Jr. and the Trump administration are now attempting to cut
• “It’s a betrayal of all that my father worked for,” Maxwell wrote

Robert F. Kennedy would have turned 100 this week. In recognition of the milestone, his son, Maxwell Taylor Kennedy, penned an op-ed for the Boston Globe that celebrates his father’s legacy and offers a scathing takedown of how his namesake son, RFK Jr. is “betraying” that legacy.

“Were he alive, he would certainly be taking stock of the country he loved and served,” said Maxwell, the ninth of 11 children RFK shared with his wife, Ethel.

“Of course, there is no way to know precisely what he would have thought. But I do know what he cared about most deeply: the injustice of poverty in the richest nation in the world and our duty as citizens to make sure that no child goes to bed hungry,” he continued. “And I know, specifically, that he would have been appalled by the cruelty the Trump administration has directed toward America’s neediest.”

“It’s a betrayal of all that my father worked for,” Maxwell wrote. “And all those complicit in that betrayal have lowered themselves — not least my brother, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s secretary of health and human services, who knows my father’s legacy as well as anyone.”Robert F. Kennedy, wife Ethel and 10 of their 11 children.

Bettmann/Getty

Maxwell conceded that his father never knew hunger as a child, growing up in one of the most powerful families in America. However, as he and his older brother, John F. Kennedy, began political campaigns that took them around the country, they were astounded by the poverty they saw and felt called to do something about it.

JFK started a pilot system for food stamps, which President Lyndon B. Johnson expanded following President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. But RFK was the one who helped pioneer several major programs that still provide aid today.

After being elected a senator from New York in 1964, he was inspired by the testimony of a young Black attorney named Marian Wright, who had fought her way out of poverty in Mississippi to graduate from Yale Law School.

RFK and three other senators traveled with Wright to Jackson, Miss., to see the conditions firsthand — a trip that Maxwell said changed his father forever.

“My father listened, face to face, to the people who bore this country’s hidden hunger. He knew that empathy was at the root of wisdom in politics, that you cannot govern a people you refuse to meet,” he wrote. “His power came not from commanding a crowd or speaking to the cameras but from showing up — from listening to a child. That is what set him apart from those who mistake cruelty for strength.”

“The insanity of the war in Vietnam led him to run for president, but it was poverty more than anything that motivated his conscience,” Maxwell said.Robert F. Kennedy in his Justice Department office in 1964. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

Like his brother, RFK’s political career was also cut short by an assassin’s bullet. But thankfully, he’d had time to set some important things in motion.

“After his death, Senator George McGovern took up the fight and helped win expansion of the three main pillars of federal policy — SNAP, WIC, and the National School Lunch Program — that provide sustenance for poor Americans. But it took the dedicated support of President Richard Nixon to expand food stamps to every state. And it was legislation signed by President Jimmy Carter that ended a requirement for beneficiaries to pay into the program.”

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Those programs recently suffered a major blow during the government shutdown, which froze benefits to many in need as Congress deadlocked and aid ran out. Potentially even more devastating, Maxwell wrote, are the changes to those programs that were part of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which was signed into law in July, “tightening eligibility requirements and all but ensuring that millions will lose benefits.”

“Today hunger remains an acute problem in America and those programs my father fought for are being dismembered or dismantled,” Maxwell wrote. “With an almost Dickensian cruelty, the Trump administration is zeroing out funding for the poor, while handing untold riches to itself and to its wealthy donors. This is unacceptable.”

“And it is unacceptable, too, that my brother Bobby stands side by side with Donald Trump as these programs, particularly SNAP, are diminished. Preventing hunger is the primary duty of every public health official. You cannot Make America Healthy while denying food to our most vulnerable citizens,” he continued.

“My father said: If we cannot prevent our fellow citizens from starving, ‘we must ask ourselves what kind of country we really are.’ Those words are as essential now as they were then.”

Maxwell is far from the only member of the Kennedy family to criticize RFK Jr.’s role in the Trump presidency. During his confirmation hearing earlier this year, his cousin Caroline penned a letter to senators calling him a “predator.” And in September, his nephew Joe Kennedy III called on him to resign after RFK Jr. defended his decision to fire the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which provides guidance on the use of vaccines.