For the most part, the funeral of Tatiana Schlossberg in New York City Monday was like other Kennedy funeral, a public spectacle that draws members of the large, famous family mingling with some of America’s most powerful and politically connected people.
Schlossberg was a 35-year-old environmental journalist, daughter of Caroline Kennedy and granddaughter of John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The mother of two young children died Dec. 30 following a year-and-a-half-long struggle with acute myeloid leukemia, which she documented in a moving essay in the New Yorker in November.
Among those seen entering and leaving the otherwise private service, held at The Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, were Schlossberg’s parents and husband; her congressional candidate brother, Jack Schlossberg; former President Joe Biden; former Secretary of State John Kerry; and other high-profile Democrats and celebrities, including Jill Biden, Michael Bloomberg, David Letterman and Seth Meyers, Fox News and other outlets reported.
But not seen attending the service was the Kennedy family’s most controversial member: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Schlossberg’s cousin. RFK Jr.’s wife, Cheryl Hines, likewise did not appear to attend the service, which was said to be invitation only.
Of course, the couple’s presence at Schlossberg’s funeral would be its own spectacle, which probably wouldn’t sit well with the Kennedy family. Prior to Schlossberg’s death, she, her mother and her brother railed against RFK Jr. and his actions as Donald Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services.
In her New Yorker essay, Tatiana Schlossberg wrote that she was dying and over several paragraphs launched a scathing attack against her former Democratic cousin, describing him as an “embarrassment” to the Kennedy family and writing how his massive cuts to research in cancer and other diseases had left her shaken and frightened as she battled a rare and aggressive form of blood cancer.
Prior to RFK Jr. being confirmed as a Trump cabinet member, Schlossberg recalled how her mother wrote to the Senate, appealing for his nomination to be rejected while her brother “had been speaking out against his lies for months.”
Schlossberg wrote that she began a clinical trial for the immunotherapy a year ago, just as Kennedy was in the process of being confirmed. “I watched from my hospital bed as Bobby, in the face of logic and common sense, was confirmed for the position, despite never having worked in medicine, public health, or the government,” she said, noting that her treatment had been developed over many decades with millions of dollars of government funding.
Schlossberg described her horror as he cut hundreds of millions of dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers. She said he slashed billions in funding from the National Institutes of Health and threatened to oust the panel of medical experts charged with recommending preventive cancer screenings. She also worried that his attacks on vaccines could be a threat to the health of millions of people.
“Bobby is a known skeptic of vaccines, and I was especially concerned that I wouldn’t be able to get mine again, leaving me to spend the rest of my life immunocompromised, along with millions of cancer survivors, small children, and the elderly,” she continued.
Meanwhile, even though Hines has tried to position herself as her husband’s supportive but not-overtly-political spouse, she has not been spared the wrath of the Schlossberg family. Back in March, Jack Schlossberg went on social media to accuse the actor of being complicit in her husband’s actions in Trump’s administration and in his buy-in to Trump’s MAGA agenda. The occasion for Jack Schlossberg’s criticism was the death of an unvaccinated child in Texas due to a measles outbreak.
“Hey Cheryl Hines, it’s Jack Schlossberg, I just got out of the shower,” Jack Schlossberg said in a video. “We’ve never met, but I’ve got a favor to ask. I need you to call up the family of the child who died of measles, and say sorry. Can you do that for me, babe?”
Hines never responded to Jack Schlossberg’s taunt. Fast-forward to late last month. In the past, Hines probably would have posted a tribute to Tatiana Schlossberg, expressing her sadness that such a well-regarded in-law had died under such tragic circumstances. Hines notably honored her husband’s mother, Ethel Kennedy, with a social media post after she died in October 2024. She and her husband also were front and center at the matriarch’s high-profile funeral with other prominent Kennedy family members.
But it sounds like Hines may have never met Schlossberg, if she had never met his brother. And, it’s likely that any public comment from her would not be welcome. So instead of marking Schlossberg’s death, both she and RFK Jr. posted photos of themselves, enjoying the holidays with their children in different picturesque locations. “So grateful for Christmas in the Rockies with my children,” RFK Jr. captioned a photo of himself with two of his children. And sometime after news broke that Schlossberg died, Hines wrote on social media, “Happy New Year!”
