Yesterday, while HHS’s Robert Kennedy, Jr. was facing tough questioning before the U.S. Senate, Trump’s nominee for HHS general counsel, West Virginia’s Mike Stuart, was approved by the Senate Finance Committee. From Politico:

With a 14-13 vote along party lines, lawmakers approved the nomination of Gustav Chiarello as Health and Human Services’ assistant secretary for financial resources. Michael Stuart, the nominee for general counsel, also sailed through with a 14-13 vote.

And it's not that some of Stuart’s previous positions have gone unnoticed. From the medical news source, Stat:

HHS general counsel nominee Mike Stuart’s position on methadone puts him far outside the mainstream in American politics. https://t.co/3M2xjZaZY5

— STAT (@statnews) July 31, 2025

And at his meeting before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he consistently ducked questions. See here, for instance, on emergency treatment of women with sepsis.

Stuart does have a WV history. Last year, as a WV state senator, Stuart sponsored a resolution supporting Texas’ use of razor wire at the border. As the Charleston Gazette’s Phil Kabler wrote at the time:

The lead sponsor of the Senate resolution, Sen. Mike Stuart, R-Kanawha, not only also is lead sponsor of a bill directing $25,000 of state funds to Texas for the installation of additional razor wire, but touted his proposal on Twitter using a photo of a woman and child in harm’s way attempting to get past a razor wire fence.

How sick and twisted does one have to be to not only revel in the possibility of women and children being maimed and killed, but to advocate policy to increase the likelihood that such injuries and deaths occur? And this guy wants to be our Attorney General.

(Click on "Mike Stuart"in my index for additional examples.)

By the way, I noted in my previous post about Representative Riley Moore that he replaced Mike Stuart for the Dumbest X post in 2024 by a West Virginia Politician Award. Here was Stuart’s post:

🚨BREAKING: President Biden calls for Justice Ginsburg to retire after today's landmark 9-0 decision to keep former president Trump on state ballots. pic.twitter.com/KNSfXCTSaE

— U.S. Ministry of Truth (@USMiniTru) March 4, 2024

The “U.S. Ministry of Truth” is a satiric site and Ginsburg died in 2020. Is it asking too much of Stuart to have known that Ginsburg was no longer on the Supreme Court? To be fair, Stuart was just the United States Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia in 2020.

I think this is obvious: if Robert Kennedy continues to head Health and Human Services and Mike Stuart becomes his general counsel, the collective health of Americans can only get worse.