Kennedy Rejects Criticism, Data and Decorum in Contentious Hearing
A combative Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended his tenure as health secretary in a Senate hearing. A prominent Republican told him that his actions were “denying people vaccine.”
"Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced tough questions about his tumultuous tenure as health secretary during a contentious hearing before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday.
During his nearly seven months in office, Mr. Kennedy has upended the Department of Health and Human Services, overseeing widespread changes to the institutes under his leadership. None has been hit harder than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommends vaccines for Americans.
Mr. Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, has undermined immunizations; fired the C.D.C.’s independent advisers on vaccines and replaced them with vaccine critics; and ousted the center’s director less than a month into the job after she refused to fire top officials and rubber-stamp decisions from the advisers he had appointed.
Over three loud and contentious hours, Mr. Kennedy was remarkably combative and dismissive with senators, refusing to budge from his stance on vaccines, autism, Medicaid and the C.D.C.
Here are five takeaways from the hearing:
Both Republicans and Democrats pressed Mr. Kennedy on vaccine access.
“It’s been obvious from the start that Robert Kennedy’s primary interest is to take vaccines away from Americans,” said Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the committee’s ranking Democrat. “His actions reveal a steadfast commitment to elevating junk science and fringe conspiracies.”
He and other senators pushed Mr. Kennedy on the health secretary’s attempts to restrict access to vaccines. Under Mr. Kennedy’s leadership, health officials have narrowed who is eligible for updated Covid vaccines. Several senators, including Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, pointed to the obstacles some Americans are facing in accessing the vaccines. Major pharmacies in some states are currently requiring that even people who are at high risk get prescriptions for the shots.
“Effectively, we’re denying people vaccine,” said Mr. Cassidy. He supported Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation, despite some misgivings, but has become increasingly critical of him in recent weeks.
“This is from Erick Erickson, good conservative out of Atlanta, Ga. Occasionally gives me hell. ‘My wife has Stage 4 lung cancer. She is one of the people the Covid vaccine actually helps. Thanks to the current mess at H.H.S., CVS is unable to get her vaccine.’ Secondly, an email from a physician friend of mine. ‘Hey Bill, I’m not even sure what I’m asking you, but we’re all confused and concerned about who can get the Covid vaccine. We are having our attorney try and render an opinion, but there’s no firm guidance and concern about liability if vaccines are given to a patient requesting it, but not on the current C.D.C. list. Pharmacists are requiring a prescription now, even for patients over 65, creating a huge headache.‘ I submit these for the record.” “Without objection.” “I would say effectively we’re denying people vaccine.” “Senator Cantwell.” “You’re wrong.”
Several senators pushed Mr. Kennedy on his opposition to mRNA technology — used for the first time in the Covid vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna — asking him to reconcile his criticisms with President Trump’s championing of those vaccines through Operation Warp Speed.
Mr. Kennedy has canceled $500 million in mRNA research and has falsely claimed the mRNA Covid shots are the “deadliest” vaccines ever made. But during the hearing he maintained both that Mr. Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for his efforts and that mRNA vaccines were harmful.
Senators also assailed Mr. Kennedy’s firing of all 17 advisers on the C.D.C. vaccine recommendation panel in June. Mr. Kennedy handpicked new members of the committee, several of whom have cast skepticism on vaccines and Covid shots in particular. He plans to appoint seven additional new members to the committee, which is scheduled to meet later this month. Some senators expressed alarm that the committee may vote to change recommendations on routine childhood immunizations like the hepatitis B vaccine.
Mr. Kennedy stood his ground.
The hearing was punctuated with heated back-and-forth exchanges, with Mr. Kennedy effectively getting into shouting matches with several senators.
He yelled that Senator Maggie Hassan, Democrat of New Hampshire, was “just making stuff up” after she said that Mr. Kennedy had made it harder for Americans to get vaccines.
“To Senator Cassidy’s colleagues’ points that they’re going to have to go off label —” “This is crazy talk —” “To prescribe, to prescribe a vaccine for children. I’m not making things up. Do you know how the F.D.A. approval process works and what happens?” “I know exactly —” “Do you know what an off-label —” “I know exactly how it works. I know exactly how it works.” “So why, so why behind closed doors —” “It’s not behind closed doors. The industry makes the studies, and they could not provide a study that said that it is effective for healthy kids.” “When have you produced the data that you relied on and that this F.D.A. relied on to change those parameters? You did it behind closed doors.” “The data is all public.” “Now, parents who decide that they do want their children to have —” “You’re just making stuff up.” “I’m not.” “You’re just making stuff up.” “Sometimes when you make an accusation, it’s kind of a confession, Mr. Kennedy.”
Senators read aloud Mr. Kennedy’s words from previous hearings, noting that he had promised not to take anyone’s vaccines away and that he would empower agency scientists to do their work. Many said he had done neither. Senator Tina Smith, Democrat of Minnesota, said Mr. Kennedy had made contradictory statements.
“When were you lying, sir?” she said. “When you told this committee that you were not anti-vax, or when you told Americans that there’s no safe and effective vaccine?”
Mr. Kennedy replied: “Both things are true.”
Senator Ben Ray Luján, Democrat of New Mexico, pressed Mr. Kennedy to provide protocols for studies meant to find a cause for autism. In a tense exchange, Mr. Kennedy claimed not to understand the request: “You’re talking gibberish,” he said to Mr. Luján.
In one contentious exchange with Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, Mr. Kennedy said he did not know how many Americans had died of Covid and whether the vaccines prevented Covid-related deaths. “The problem is they didn’t have the data,” he said, prompting the senator to reply: “You are sitting as secretary of health and human services. How can you be that ignorant?”
In fact, the data are readily available. Hundreds of reports have tracked the efficacy of the vaccines since they debuted in 2021. The shots have saved millions of lives in the United States and elsewhere, dozens of studies have estimated.
The turmoil at the C.D.C. is likely to worsen.
Since Mr. Kennedy took office, the C.D.C. has been in a state of chaos. Thousands of employees were fired, and many others left. The agency was also the target of a shooting in August.
Mr. Kennedy suggested he was not done with the agency, accusing it of corruption and claiming that it was responsible for the rise of chronic diseases in the United States and for Covid’s toll on Americans.
“What we’re going to do is reorganize C.D.C.,” he said, adding, “I need to fire some of those people.”
In his opening remarks, Mr. Kennedy nodded to the shootingoutside the agency’s headquarters in Atlanta, but C.D.C. employees have said they were furious that Mr. Kennedy gave interviews after the incident, in which he called into question their integrity.
The gunman is thought to have been motivated by a belief that the Covid vaccine caused him to be ill. Many C.D.C. employees hold Mr. Kennedy directly responsible for such misinformation.
Conflicts of interest were a hot topic.
Mr. Kennedy has said he fired all the members of the vaccine panelbecause they had financial conflicts of interest, a claim that has repeatedly been refuted. Members of the panel are carefully vetted for potential conflicts; when members may have indirect conflicts, they recuse themselves from the relevant discussions.
But many of the new members Mr. Kennedy appointed to the panel have biases of their own. They include people who have filed court declarations in cases challenging vaccines or mandates. New members include a doctor who has served as an expert witness on behalf of people who claimed they were harmed by vaccines, and another doctor who, in a testimony before state lawmakers, compared Covid vaccines to thalidomide, a drug that decades ago caused serious birth defects.
Rural hospitals and pharmacy benefit managers rounded out the discussion.
Concerns about the fate of rural health care in the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s domestic policy bill and sweeping cuts to Medicaid also surfaced. Republican senators pushed Mr. Kennedy to discuss the $50 billion in funding targeted to hospitals and clinics in rural areas, which have been struggling to stay afloat.
“We’re infusing more than 50 percent increase in the amount of money that is going to rural communities over the next five years,” Mr. Kennedy said.
But Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, pushed back, noting that the legislation was expected to result in a net loss of $100 billion in funding as millions of Americans lose their insurance because of the legislation’s rollback of the program. Advocates estimate dozens of hospitals could be at risk of closing and many more will cut vital services like labor and delivery.
“We’re infusing more than a 50 percent increase in the amount of money that is going to rural communities over the next five years. It’s going to be the biggest infusion of federal dollars into rural health care in American history.” “You know why? Because you’re cutting $150 billion for rural hospitals. You’re putting $50 billion back. That’s not an infusion. That’s a loss of $100 billion.”
Mr. Kennedy was also pushed by Republicans to support bipartisan legislation aimed at better regulating giant pharmacy benefit managers, which are owned by three health care conglomerates, CVS Health, Cigna and UnitedHealth Group.
He assured senators he would support such efforts, noting Mr. Trump’s support, and said he had been in discussions with the companies about reforms.
Senator Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, also raised longstanding concerns about rising health care costs.
He argued Americans faced an “affordability crisis.”
Republican senators who voted for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, were among his harshest inquisitors on Thursday at a combative hearing where he faced a barrage of questions over his vaccine policy and his recent firing of the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The three-hour-long Senate Finance Committee hearing at times devolved into a partisan slugfest, with Democrats who have long criticized Mr. Kennedy calling for his resignation and one accusing him of being hazardous to Americans’ health.
Which States Allow Vaccine Exemptions for Children
All 50 states have some vaccination requirements for children entering school. All allow medical exemptions, while some allow exemptions based on religious or personal reasons.
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Kennedy has been remarkably salty and dismissive with the senators at times today. As Senator Wyden, who was sharply critical of him from the start, made some closing remarks, Kennedy took out his phone, looked down at it, and began to scroll.
Moments later, after three loud and contentious hours, the hearing arrived at its close. Asked if he would like to make any final comments, Kennedy declined, saying, “I think I’ll have mercy on everybody and let us adjourn.”
Ron Wyden, the committee’s ranking Democrat, is getting a final word as the hearing nears its close. He pressed Kennedy to commit that he can assign his best scientists to review the safety of mifepristone, a drug used in medical abortions, and elicited a rare calm response in a combative hearing. Kennedy agreed that his agency would deliver “good science and good scientists.”
Senator Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, pressed Kennedy on a perennial problem in the United States that has gotten worse in recent years: rising health care costs. “We have a health care affordability crisis in this country,” he said, noting that Obamacare premiums are increasing significantly in his state.
Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia pushed Kennedy on the reported motives of the gunman who attacked the C.D.C. headquarters in Atlanta last month. The shooter had believed that the Covid vaccine had made him ill, and wanted to raise awareness of that issue, the senator said. He pointed out that Kennedy had never been to the agency before the shooting, and had not been briefed by any of its scientists about vaccines.
Kennedy did visit the premises after the shooting, but no employees were present. Many C.D.C. employees hold Kennedy directly responsible for the misinformation that may have led to the shooting.
Kennedy said Covid vaccines were much less necessary now because “the virus has mutated, it’s much less dangerous, where there’s a lot of natural immunity and herd immunity and so the calculus is different, and it’s complicated.”
Setting aside the incorrect claim about herd immunity, Kennedy makes good points. There is indeed much more immunity in the population. But his argument does not account for groups that are still at risk, including healthy pregnant women. Nor does it allow for healthy people who may wish to be vaccinated — because they live with an immunocompromised person or because of occupational exposure — to opt to get the shot.
Kennedy and Senator Marshall are raising questions about the hepatitis B vaccine. Kennedy has repeatedly raised doubts about whether newborns should receive the hepatitis B vaccine.
Mothers who have hepatitis B can pass the virus to their babies during birth. The C.D.C. has recommended the hepatitis B vaccine for all infants since 1991. The shots protect against the virus, which can lead to liver disease that can require transplants, cause lifelong illness and even lead to death. Over the last few days, Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana and a physician, has posted on X about the importance of vaccinating all newborns against the virus.
Senator Roger Marshall, Republican of Kansas, repeated Kennedy’s misleading summation that children receive 76 vaccination jabs — Kennedy had said as many as 92 — by age 18. Marshall also pointed out that Kennedy’s decision to restrict vaccines to adults older than 65 is in line with the policies in Britain and France. But what the senator did not say is that the vaccines are still approved in those countries for people who would like to take it. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has limited approval of the vaccine to older adults, meaning others must seek the vaccine off-label and may need to pay out of pocket. That makes access essentially impossible.
Senators have repeatedly read Kennedy’s words from previous hearings back to him, noting that he had promised not to take anyone’s vaccines away, and that he would empower agency scientists to do their work. Several contend that he has done neither. Senator Tina Smith, Democrat of Minnesota, said Kennedy had made contradictory statements depending on his circumstances.
“When were you lying, sir?” she said. “When you told this committee that you were not anti-vax? Or when you told Americans that there’s no safe and effective vaccine?”
Kennedy replied, “Both things are true.”
Senator Bernie Sanders came prepared to take on Kennedy’s repeated claims that lawmakers were unduly influenced by campaign contributions from pharmaceutical companies. In a prior hearing, Kennedy referred to a sheet of paper showing how many dollars each senator accepted from drug companies. Sanders pushed back on Thursday, suggesting that Kennedy claims that every entity in the medical establishment is corrupt “but you.”
“You know we have a corrupt campaign finance system,” Sanders said.
Kennedy said he was restricting access to the Covid vaccines because there “was no clinical data” for the newer versions. But he is leaving out an important distinction. At this point, when people have had multiple Covid vaccine doses and infections, it would be impossible to conduct clinical trials. The trials would need to be conducted when many people could get infected.
It would not be ethical to withhold protection against a dangerous pathogen, as it would be to deny treatment to patients with a disease, by giving some people a placebo. Results from such a trial would also be available too late to be of use during that Covid peak, and may not be useful against the next variant. Instead, companies rely on lab studies that show that a newer version of the vaccine produces antibodies against a variant, a proxy for effectiveness.
Kennedy also said there was no data to indicate that the vaccines were necessary. In fact, even healthy pregnant women are at increased risk of complications, including stillbirth, from Covid.
Kennedy says that anyone can get the Covid booster. “I’m not taking them away from people,” he said. But some Americans report that they are already struggling to access Covid vaccines because of regulatory confusion around pharmacy rules and new narrowed eligibility criteria from the F.D.A.
Kennedy disputed Susan Monarez’s account of her firing as C.D.C. director. “I told her that she had to resign because I asked her, ‘Are you a trustworthy person?’ And she said no,” he said. Kennedy has previously refused to discuss his interactions with Monarez, saying he would not talk about personnel matters. He said she was “lying” when she said he had fired her because she would not accede to his demands on vaccine policy.
Most Republican senators breaking away from the hearing to go vote are reticent to speak on Kennedy’s combative appearance before the committee. “Rocking and rolling,” said Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, asked to respond to the secretary’s testimony. He had his own sharp exchange with Kennedy.
Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, brings up “overprescription” of stimulant drugs for children. This was included in the first report from the MAHA Commission that Kennedy chairs and is a frequent talking point of the health secretary. Rates of prescriptions of many mental health medications have grown over the past decade, in part because of more awareness around mental health conditions.
Senator James Lankford, a Republican of Oklahoma, pressed Kennedy on the use of mifepristone, the first pill in the two-drug medication abortion regimen, and whether his team would further restrict its use. Kennedy has referred the issue to the F.D.A.
Dr. Marty Makary, the F.D.A. commissioner, has said data on the medication is under review. Kennedy said he was not sure if the White House has a position on the matter, and told Lankford he would get back to him. More than 100 studies have concluded that the pill is a safe way to terminate a pregnancy.
Kennedy claimed that Black boys who receive the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine have a higher risk of autism. This claim, which has never been verified, stems from a decade-old controversy around the so-called C.D.C. whistleblower, an agency scientist named William Thompson.
He said in 2014 that the C.D.C. had published a study that omitted evidence of the increased risk. Thompson made his assertion in tape-recorded conversations with Brian Hooker, a biochemical engineer who has a son with autism and is now chief scientific officer at Children’s Health Defense, the group Kennedy founded to question vaccine safety. Hooker published his own study reanalyzing the C.D.C. data, but his study was retracted amid concerns over the validity of his methods.
Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, supported Kennedy’s claims that the Covid vaccines are dangerous, saying there are data showing that people who got the vaccines were more susceptible to chronic illness than those who did not. It’s unclear which data he is referring to, but dozens of studies across the globe have looked at Covid vaccines and concluded that the side effects, when they occur, are very uncommon.
It is also unclear how the data the senator referred to would separate effects of the vaccine from the impact of Covid, which is known to cause longlasting problems.
Kennedy claimed that American children receive “between 69 and 92 vaccines in order to be fully compliant between maternity and 18 years.” He has also repeatedly said that only one of those vaccines was tested against a placebo. Both statements need clarification. Most states mandate that children receive about 20 shots to enter school, but those shots include doses of eight or so vaccines (depending on which combination vaccines are used) that together protect against a dozen diseases.
Even including vaccines that are recommended and not required, such as a yearly flu shot, children may receive 35 shots by age 5. Kennedy’s math would be correct only if the number included vaccines given in pregnancy, and if each component and each dose of a combination product were considered a separate vaccine.
Researchers have compiled a spreadsheet of trials that did indeed test the shots against placebos. Newer versions of those vaccines would not be tested against placebo because it would be unethical to withhold lifesaving shots from children.
Kennedy claimed that the vaccine manufacturers could not produce a study showing that the Covid vaccines were effective for healthy children. That is incorrect. The companies did indeed test the vaccine in children, although they did so after the shots had been shown to be safe and effective in adults. That is typical for all products given to children.
Kennedy’s heated back and forth with Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire just now was the most striking example yet of his disdain for members of the committee, and his disregard for Capitol protocol.
“This is crazy talk. You’re just making stuff up,” Kennedy said to Hassan as she accused him of reducing transparency around health data and limiting access to vaccines.
“Sometimes when you make an accusation, it’s kind of a confession, Mr. Kennedy,” the Democratic senator replied."
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