A former Forbes legal reporter said Republicans “are getting in bed” with the plaintiffs’ bar.
“Republicans have figured out the big money is getting in bed with mass tort lawyers,” Daniel Fisher, former Forbes legal reporter, posted on X. “They must hope voters don’t figure out they’ll get stuck with the tab.”
Fisher is a longtime legal and financial journalist who previously served as a senior editor at Forbes, where he covered legal affairs, corporate finance, and the intersection of law and business, after earlier reporting roles at Bloomberg Business News and major regional newspapers.
His comments came a month after plaintiffs’ attorney Aaron Siri, who STAT reports has “ties to health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,” told Inside Health Policy that he anticipates U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will amend the federal Vaccine Injury Table to remove vaccines that are no longer routinely recommended, which would open manufacturers to standard product-liability lawsuits.”
Siri is managing partner of Siri & Glimstad LLP. He also “represented Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. during his presidential campaign,” reported Fortune in Dec. 2024, and “is now helping him [Kennedy] interview and choose candidates to fill the Health and Human Services Department."
“If every vaccine maker is sued out of existence, there will be zero incentive to bring new products to market,” Ross Marchand, executive director of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA), told Patient Daily. “That's terrible for patients and sets an awful precedent for other industries, which have benefitted from various tort reforms that have made it easier to do business. Lawmakers should maintain liability protections and keep American innovation moving forward.”
Plaintiffs’ attorneys “are the new power brokers on the right,” wrote Texans for Lawsuit Reform President Dick Weekley in a Dec. 2025 op-ed in the Houston Chronicle.
“The same trial lawyers who once bankrolled Democrats are now spending heavily to influence Republican primaries in Texas, hoping to buy influence where voters least expect it,” wrote Weekley. “This isn’t a partisan conversion. It’s an infiltration. A charade.”
While Weekley said this is happening in states across the country, he wrote, “two of Texas’s most prominent Democratic trial lawyers — Kurt Arnold and Jason Itkin — have begun writing six-figure checks to Republican candidates in key primaries” and “they recently funded their PAC with a $10 million donation that is now being used to influence GOP races.”
Kennedy, who ran for U.S. President as a Democrat before transitioning to an Independent candidate and then dropped out to endorse President Donald Trump, spent his career as a plaintiffs’ attorney.
He disclosed in an ethics filing that he intends to retain legal fees earned from private litigation that does not directly involve the federal government if confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services, reported Reuters.
The filing states Kennedy receives 10% of contingency fees in cases he refers to the plaintiffs’ firm Wisner Baum and reported at least $857,000 in referral income from the firm, said the report.
The disclosure also showed Kennedy reported $8.8 million in partnership profits from Kennedy & Madonna, the plaintiffs’ firm he co-founded, which was recently renamed Madonna & Madonna.
According to the Reuters report, Kennedy has collaborated with Wisner Baum on mass-tort litigation involving Merck’s Gardasil vaccine and Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, and that he has worked on contingency matters with plaintiffs’ firm Morgan & Morgan.
“As HHS Secretary, RFK Jr. is spouting the same junk science theories to make nationwide policy decisions that trial lawyers have used in courtrooms for years,” said Lauren Sheets Jarrell, vice president and counsel for civil justice policy at the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA).
Her comments came as ATRA released a report called “The Junk Science Playbook,” which said that policy shifts at HHS mirror litigation strategies long used in mass tort cases.
According to the report, changes to advisory panels, regulatory interpretations, and public health messaging could weaken long-standing liability frameworks that protect vaccine manufacturers and other health care innovators from expansive lawsuits. ATRA said that trial attorneys often rely on evolving regulatory positions to bolster claims in court, and that federal policy shifts can directly influence litigation trends.
The report points specifically to the stability of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VCIP), which was established by Congress in 1986 under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act to provide a no-fault alternative to traditional litigation while maintaining vaccine supply.
ATRA said in its report that undermining that structure could increase exposure to large-scale lawsuits.
