WASHINGTON — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vehemently defended his actions on vaccines and other public health issues under questioning by both Republican and Democratic senators during a contentious hearing Thursday.
Kennedy, confirmed on a mostly party-line vote earlier this year, repeatedly justified firing everyone on an influential vaccine advisory panel, as well as the president’s decision to remove a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director who’d served for less than a month after confirmation by the Senate.
“In your confirmation hearings, you promised to uphold the highest standards for vaccines. Since then, I’ve grown deeply concerned,” said Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo. “The public has seen measles outbreaks. Leadership of the National Institutes of Health questioning the use of mRNA vaccines. The recently confirmed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fired. Americans don’t know who to rely on.”
Ossoff, Warnock say Kennedy should resign
Georgia’s two Senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, have joined a growing chorus of public health experts and advocates calling for U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to step down from his role as head of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department amid mounting criticism over his leadership.
The calls from Georgia’s two Senators, who are both Democrats, came as Kennedy appeared before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance to provide updates on President Donald Trump’s health agenda and answer questions about the management of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the past month, the agency has faced a deadly shooting at its headquarters in Atlanta, as well as the ousting of former CDC Director Susan Monarez, who held her position for less than a month. In an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal, Monarez claims she was dismissed for refusing to preapprove recommendations from a vaccine panel that did not align with scientific evidence.
Ossoff, who appeared at a Thursday press conference organized by health care advocacy organization Protect Our Care, called for Kennedy to resign, citing the secretary’s history of questioning the safety and efficacy of vaccines, and promoting widely debunked claims about vaccine harm.
“It is one thing to be a skeptic or a reformer,” Ossoff said. “It is quite another to be a fool and a wrecking ball. And the destruction of the CDC in Georgia, the systematic dismantling of American public health, is putting children and families across the country at risk every single day.”
Ossoff also highlighted recent upheaval at the CDC in his calls for Kennedy to step aside. Three senior CDC officials recently resigned in the wake of Monarez’s expulsion, and over 1,000 current and former HHS employees have now signed a letter calling for Kennedy’s resignation.
Warnock, who sits on the Senate finance committee, also criticized Kennedy’s leadership during his tenure as head of the HHS.
“It is abundantly clear that Secretary Kennedy is unfit for this position,” he told reporters. “Not only do I think he’s unqualified, but he’s proven to be dangerous and completely unserious. Right now, the biggest threat to the health of the American people is the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Barrasso, an orthopedic surgeon, sought to reinforce support for vaccines to Kennedy during the Senate Finance Committee hearing, saying they “are estimated to have saved 154 million lives worldwide.”
Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician who received several concessions from Kennedy in exchange for voting to confirm him as HHS secretary, raised numerous questions about Kennedy’s behavior. Cassidy is the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Cassidy appeared to box in Kennedy on the COVID-19 vaccine by saying President Donald Trump should receive the Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed, which led to the development of the shot during his first term.
Kennedy agreed Trump should “absolutely” get the prize, leading Cassidy to question why he’d taken actions as HHS secretary to erode trust and eliminate funding for vaccine development activities.
“It surprises me that you think so highly of Operation Warp Speed when, as an attorney, you attempted to restrict access,” Cassidy said. “It also surprises me because you’ve canceled, or HHS did, but apparently under your direction, $500 million in contracts using the mRNA vaccine platform that was critical to Operation Warp Speed.”
Cassidy said the cancellation represents not only “an incredible waste of money but it also seems like a commentary upon what the president did in Operation Warp Speed, which is to create a platform by which to create vaccines.”
Cassidy also questioned Kennedy’s actions eliminating everyone on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replacing them with his own choices.
“If we put people who are paid witnesses for people suing vaccines, that actually seems like a conflict of interest,” Cassidy said.
Kennedy disagreed, testifying that “it may be a bias. And that bias, if disclosed, is okay.”
Tillis asks RFK Jr. to respond in writing
North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis asked Kennedy a series of questions but said he wanted the secretary to submit his answers in writing in order to clarify several of his positions.
“Some of your statements seem to contradict what you said in the prior hearing,” Tillis said. “You said you’re going to empower the scientists at HHS to do their job. I’d just like to see evidence where you’ve done that, and I’m sure that you will have some.”
Tillis said he wanted Kennedy to respond to reports that he’s gone back on his commitments to senators to not do anything “that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking vaccines” and that Kennedy would not “impose my belief over any of yours.”
“That, again, seems to be contradictory to the firing of the CDC director, the canceling of mRNA research contracts, firing advisory board members, attempting to stall NIH funding, eliminating funding for I think a half a billion dollars for further mRNA research,” he said, referring to the National Institutes of Health.
Tillis said he was having difficulty understanding why former CDC Director Susan Monarez, whom Trump nominated in March and the Senate voted to confirm in late July, had been fired so quickly.
“I don’t see how you go … from a public health expert with unimpeachable scientific credentials, a long-time champion of MAHA values, caring and compassionate and brilliant microbiologist — and four weeks later, fire her,” Tillis said.
CDC shooting, Monarez firing probed
Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock questioned Kennedy at length over the firing of Monarez as well as a shooting at the Atlanta-based agency this summer.
Kennedy testified that he doesn’t believe he criticized Monarez during a meeting in late August over her comments following the CDC shooting that “misinformation can be dangerous.”
During that meeting, Kennedy said he did demand that Monarez fire career CDC scientists but testified he didn’t tell her to accept the recommendations of the vaccine advisory panel without further review.
“What I asked her about is, she had made a statement that she was not going to sign on and I wanted clarification about that,” Kennedy said. “I told her I didn’t want her to have a role if she’s not going to sign onto it.”
Monarez wrote in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal just hours before the hearing began that during the meeting with Kennedy, she “was told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric.”
“That panel’s next meeting is scheduled for Sept. 18-19,” Monarez wrote. “It is imperative that the panel’s recommendations aren’t rubber-stamped but instead are rigorously and scientifically reviewed before being accepted or rejected.”
Warnock asked Kennedy if he said that the CDC was the “most corrupt federal agency in the history of the world.”
Kennedy testified he didn’t say that exactly but did say “it’s the most corrupt agency at HHS and maybe the government.”
Warnock concluded his five minutes of questions telling Kennedy that “it’s clear you’re carrying out your extremist beliefs” and that he represents “a threat to the public health of the American people.”
“For the first time, we’re seeing deaths from children from measles,” Warnock said. “We haven’t seen that in two decades. We’re seeing that under your watch. You are a hazard to the health of the American people.”
Lankford, Daines ask about medication abortion
Several senators, including Oklahoma Republican James Lankford and Montana Republican Steve Daines, asked Kennedy about the ongoing review of mifepristone, one of two prescription pharmaceuticals used in medication abortion.
Kennedy said he spoke with FDA Commissioner Marty Makary about the topic just yesterday and committed to keeping senators informed, but didn’t appear to know much more than that.
“I don’t know if they’re going to do an insurance claim study. That’s one way to do it. I don’t know exactly whether they’re doing epidemiological studies or observational studies. I don’t know exactly what they’re doing,” Kennedy said. “But I know I talked to Marty Makary about it yesterday, and he said those studies are progressing and that they’re ongoing. So I will keep your office informed at every stage.”
Kennedy testified that he didn’t know when exactly the studies would be completed.
The FDA first approved mifepristone in 2000 before updating the prescribing guidelines in 2016 and during the coronavirus pandemic.
It’s currently approved for up to 10 weeks of gestation and can be prescribed via telehealth and shipped to patients. Mifepristone is the first pharmaceutical or medication abortion and is typically followed by misoprostol.
Medication abortion accounted for about 64% of all abortions in 2023, according to research from the Guttmacher Institute.
The Supreme Court rejected an effort to limit access to medication abortion last year in a case originally filed by four anti-abortion medical organizations and four anti-abortion doctors that were represented by Alliance Defending Freedom.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the opinion that “federal conscience laws have protected pro-life doctors ever since the FDA approved Mifepristone in 2000.”
Numerous medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association, wrote briefs to the Supreme Court in that case attesting to the safety and efficacy of mifepristone.
“The scientific evidence is overwhelming: major adverse events occur in less than 0.32% of patients,” the medical organizations wrote. “The risk of death is almost non-existent.”
