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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at a campaign rally with President Donald Trump at Alico Arena on the campus of Florida Gulf Coast University, October 23, 2026, in Fort Myers, Florida. (AP/Mark Schiefelbein)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced widespread rebuke from civil rights groups, healthcare advocates and Democrats on Tuesday over his anti-Arab comments that the Council on American-Islamic Relations cast as “a textbook display of unvarnished racism and bigotry.”

In his remarks on Monday at a campaign event in Michigan where Republican Mike Rogers is running for the US Senate against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, the US health secretary falsely claimed that Arabs had not won major international awards and “don’t produce” science and literature.

“There are 500 million Arabs in the world, and yet they don’t produce science, they don’t win the Nobel Prize, they don’t win the Fields prize, they don’t win the Wolf…