Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will testify on Capitol Hill on Thursday to defend President Trump’s plan to slash his department’s budget by more than 12 percent, in the first of a string of congressional hearings that will set the stage for a political debate over American health policy in the run-up to the midterm elections in November.
Mr. Kennedy is scheduled to testify before seven congressional committees or subcommittees over the next week, including two on Thursday alone. His appearances will be the first time he has faced lawmakers since he pushed out the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the summer.
Mr. Kennedy’s tenure at the Department of Health and Human Services has been marked by upheaval, including mass layoffs, grant terminations, lawsuits and high-level turnover. The C.D.C. still lacks a permanent director, and the nomination of Dr. Casey Means, a functional medicine physician and wellness influencer, as surgeon general is stalled in the Senate.
Mr. Trump’s 2027 budget proposal calls for a $5 billion cut to the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s biomedical research agency. It proposes eliminating several institutes or centers in their entirety, including one focused on alternative medicine — a surprise, given that Mr. Kennedy’s followers are generally supportive of alternative therapies.
While Mr. Kennedy defends those policies, Democrats will use the hearings to assail him and Mr. Trump for rising health costs. On Wednesday, Brad Woodhouse, the president of Protect Our Care, a Democratic-aligned health policy group, called on Mr. Kennedy to resign.
“He’s proudly carrying out Trump’s Big Ugly health care cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act that are jacking up premiums, denying coverage to millions, laying waste to public health infrastructure and shuttering hospitals — all to pay for more unwanted war and billionaire tax breaks,” Mr. Woodhouse said in a statement.
The group also released a report, “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vs. Public Health,” arguing that Mr. Trump and Mr. Kennedy have created “chaos inside agencies and confusion for families, clinicians and states.”
Mr. Kennedy came into office promising to restore trust in public health through “radical transparency” and “gold-standard science.” But polls have found that trust is still at very low levels.
A recent poll by the nonpartisan Annenberg Public Policy Center found that fewer than 40 percent of Americans were very confident or somewhat confident that Mr. Kennedy is providing the public with “trustworthy” information. More than half of Americans felt that way about Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Mr. Kennedy’s nemesis.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg is a correspondent based in Washington for The New York Times, covering Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Trump’s health agenda.
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