Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced a bipartisan grilling Thursday at a contentious, three-hour-long hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, where outraged Democrats and some skeptical Republicans challenged him over the changes to vaccine policy he has overseen and the turmoil he has created at the nation’s top health agencies.
In a hearing that was supposedly about President Trump’s healthcare plans, the questioning frequently turned into fiery exchanges of shouting as Democrats and a few Republicans questioned Kennedy’s leadership and criticized changes that will make it more difficult for many Americans to get the Covid vaccine.
A combative Kennedy aggressively defended his actions and agenda as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, including his removal of 17 members of a vaccine advisory panel and his push to oust Dr. Susan Monarez, the recently installed head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kennedy again pushed misinformation about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, and he claimed that health officials had misled the public throughout the Covid pandemic.
“We were lied to about everything,” he said.
Democrats tore into Kennedy right away: “Every single day, there’s been an action that endangers the health and wellness of families,” Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the committee, said in his opening remarks. “Robert Kennedy has elevated conspiracy theorists, crackpots and grifters to make life or death decisions about Americans’ health care.”
Democrats criticized the healthcare cuts in the recently passed Republican megabill and said that Kennedy has allowed turmoil to engulf HHS through cuts to personnel and programs. A report issued by Wyden and Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland laid out what they called the “costs, chaos and corruption” under Kennedy, including areas where he has gone back on sworn testimony and commitments he made during his confirmation process.
In one sharp exchange, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia asked Kennedy if he accepts the fact that a million Americans died from Covid. Kennedy said he doesn’t know how many died. “I don’t think anybody knows that because there was so much data chaos coming out of CDC…” Kennedy said, and he alleged that the data under the Biden administration was dismal and politicized.
Warner was incredulous, his voice rising in anger. “The secretary of Health and Human Services doesn’t know how many Americans died from Covid, doesn’t know if the vaccine helped prevent any deaths, and you are sitting as secretary of Health and Human Services? How can you be that ignorant?”
A dozen Democrats on the committee called for Kennedy to resign, saying he poses a danger to Americans’ health. “By discarding well-established science related to vaccines, elevating conspiracy theorists and self-interested charlatans to positions of public trust, and presiding over the largest cut to American health care in history, Robert Kennedy has reinforced every fear families had about him,” they said in a statement.
Kennedy fired back repeatedly, accusing Democrats of allowing a rise in chronic illnesses and of aligning with the pharmaceutical industry and accepting its political donations.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Kennedy, saying the administration “is addressing root causes of chronic disease, embracing transparency in government, and championing gold-standard science. Only the Democrats could attack that commonsense effort.”
Some Republicans confronted Kennedy, too: GOP Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Barrasso of Wyoming expressed skepticism about Kennedy’s leadership.
Cassidy, a doctor and head of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, honed in on an HHS decision under Kennedy to cancel $500 million in contracts for mRNA vaccine research. He noted that Kennedy agreed with the idea that President Donald Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed, the 2020 initiative to develop a Covid vaccine — but that he continues to criticize that vaccine and the technology used to create it, a seeming contradiction.
Cassidy finished his questioning by reading messages he had gotten complaining about the new complexity in getting vaccine shots. “I would say effectively we’re denying people vaccine,” Cassidy said.
“You’re wrong,” Kennedy responded.
In questioning by Tillis, Kennedy said he agreed with a claim that the mRNA Covid vaccine “caused serious harm, including death, particularly in young people.”
Disputes about what happened at the CDC: In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal Thursday, Monarez accused Kennedy of “a deliberate effort to weaken America’s public-health system and vaccine protections.” She said she “was told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric” and was fired after 29 days on the job “because I held the line and insisted on rigorous scientific review.”
Kennedy disputed Monarez’s account and said she was lying. “I told her she had to resign because I asked her, ‘Are you a trustworthy person?’ and she said ‘No,’” Kennedy claimed. He did confirm, though, that he asked Monarez to fire some top scientists at the CDC. Monarez has said she was fired after refusing to fire those staffers without cause.
The bottom line: Television news producers may have been thankful for the few hours of fireworks that the hearing provided, but it’s not clear anything will come of the pressure and criticism lawmakers piled on Kennedy. “The hearing offered no sign that Kennedy intends to slow down his efforts to upend the agencies he oversees,” STAT’s Daniel Payne and Isabella Cueto noted.