RFK Jr., Senators Spar Over Vaccines, Health Policy in Fiery Hearing

Leslie M. Kantor, chair of the Department of Urban-Global Public Health at Rutgers University’s School of Public Health, discusses HHS secretary RFK Jr's recent moves after he appeared in front of a Senate panel Thursday morning. Kantor said “of course not” when asked if the Centers for Disease Control director should have been fired.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., head of Health and Human Services, batted away critics who questioned his moves to restrict vaccine access during a fiery Senate hearing Thursday by saying they’re lying or conflicted because of ties to pharmaceutical companies.

“I made it clear to the American people they were about to witness a once-in-a-generation shift in health care and public health policy,” Kennedy told the Senate Finance Committee, before detailing moves that included overhauling a key vaccine advisory panel and slashing US financial support for global immunization efforts.

Many of his changes were criticized during the hearing by Democrats and some Republicans. Questions quickly turned hostile as Kennedy repeatedly told senators they were wrong as he was grilled about his vaccine policies and his abrupt decision to fire the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director after just a few weeks on the job.

At times the room veered into yelling as senators repeated their lines of inquiry, contradicted Kennedy’s statements and presented data that the health secretary openly questioned or refuted.

“This is crazy talk,” Kennedy told Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat from Nevada, after she asked why access to Covid vaccines was quietly withdrawn for healthy American children. “You are just making stuff up, Senator. You’re just making stuff up.”

Noting that the shots that saved millions of lives are no longer approved and recommended for all Americans, Cortez Masto retorted: “Sometimes when you make an accusation, it’s kind of a confession, Mr. Kennedy.”

Earlier Thursday, the ousted CDC director Susan Monarez detailed her removal from the job to illuminate how Kennedy was operating behind the scenes, saying in an opinion piece that he asked her to preapprove all recommendations from his hand-picked vaccine panel, a request she called “a deliberate effort to weaken America’s public-health system and vaccine protections.” When Kennedy fired all the members of the CDC’s key advisory panel, he installed some new members with fringe, anti-vaccine views.

“Once trusted experts are removed and advisory bodies are stacked, the results are predetermined. That isn’t reform. It is sabotage,” Monarez wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

When asked about her comments, Kennedy said Monarez was lying and claimed he fired her because she admitted she was untrustworthy. He called the departures of top CDC officials “absolutely necessary adjustments” to restore the agency’s credibility.

Kennedy’s claims are “false, at at times, patently ridiculous,” Monarez’s lawyers said in a statement after the hearing ended.

Chronic Disease

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon called Kennedy’s health policies “fundamentally cruel” and said they “defy common sense.” Kennedy is “dead set” against children getting vaccines, Wyden said, adding that they will “die as a result.”

Protesters also showed up for the hearing, with several in lab coats that featured calls for Kennedy’s firing. A woman in a wheelchair yelled at him down the hall, saying “you’re killing millions of people.”

Kennedy doubled down on his refrain that he’s attacking a chronic disease crisis that has spiraled over the past few decades. In response to Wyden, he said chronic diseases have increased in children “and you said nothing. You never asked the question why is it happening?”

“It’s chronic disease that is bankrupting us and destroying our national security,” Kennedy said in response to a question about US health care spending.

In that, he has the support of the White House. The hearing “showed exactly why President Trump put Secretary Kennedy in charge of HHS: to fix this broken system that has overseen America’s unprecedented chronic disease crisis,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said.

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