This weekend, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., America’s new health czar, once again demonstrated his general lack of qualifications for the job by taking his grandchildren swimming in a toxic Washington D.C. waterway.
Kennedy, who is Trump’s new director of the Department of Health and Human Services, inscrutably decided to take his grandkids for a dip in Rock Creek, a tributary near the nation’s capital that has been officially deemed not suitable for human activity.
“Mother’s Day hike in Dumbarton Oaks Park with Amaryllis, Bobby, Kick, and Jackson, and a swim with my grandchildren, Bobcat and Cassius in Rock Creek,” Kennedy posted on X, over the weekend.
Mother’s Day hike in Dumbarton Oaks Park with Amaryllis, Bobby, Kick, and Jackson, and a swim with my grandchildren, Bobcat and Cassius in Rock Creek. pic.twitter.com/TXowaSMTFY
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) May 11, 2025
This pastoral scene might be endearingly folksy, were it not for the fact that Rock Creek is the unfortunate dumping ground for the region’s sewage discharge. As such, the government has officially banned area residents from swimming, or even wading, in the creek.
“Swimming and wading are not allowed due to high bacteria levels,” the National Park Service has said, of the creek. “Rock Creek has high levels of bacteria and other infectious pathogens that make swimming, wading, and other contact with the water a hazard to human (and pet) health. Please protect yourself and your pooches by staying on trails and out of the creek. All District waterways are subject to a swim ban – this means wading, too!”
In the photos shared online by Kennedy, the HHS director can be seen dunking his grandson into the bacteria-laden water. Gizmodo reached out to the HHS for more information about this photo-op.
The HHS director happily dunking his head in a poop-polluted creek seems like an apt visual metaphor for national health policy right now. Indeed, Kennedy and the rest of the Trump administration seem to be doing everything in their power to make more areas of America like Rock Creek—that is, polluted and uninhabitable by humans. Over the past few months, the Trump administration has sought to drastically cut environmental regulations across the board—including for water and air safety. At the same time, the HHS, under Kennedy, has attacked vaccine programs and laid off thousands of federal workers at the Food and Safety Administration and other parts of the federal health workforce. At the same time, Kennedy has leaned increasingly into unproven conspiracy theory rhetoric, signaling a willingness to spend federal money and resources on his own personal preoccupations and fringe science.
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