Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced a barrage of questions on Thursday during a fiery Senate hearing in which he defiantly defended his vaccine policy, blamed the nation’s public health agency for a rise in chronic disease and repeatedly clashed with Democrats, whom he accused of “making stuff up.”
The three-hour hearing before the Senate Finance Committee revealed that Mr. Kennedy was on uncertain ground even with some Republicans who voted to confirm him. When Mr. Kennedy courted their votes, he promised, repeatedly and in writing, to do nothing “that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking vaccines.”
On Thursday, he insisted that he had lived up to his word. “I’m not taking vaccines away from anyone,” he said.
But in the seven months since he was sworn in, Mr. Kennedy has delivered a lukewarm endorsement of the measles vaccine; dismantled a panel of experts who make vaccine recommendations to the government; taken steps that will effectively restrict access to Covid-19 vaccines; canceled $500 million of grants and contracts for the development of mRNA vaccines; and, just last week, forced out the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention because she disagreed with him on vaccine policy.
President Trump memorably said he would let Mr. Kennedy “go wild on health.” On Thursday, Mr. Kennedy faced questions about whether he might have gone a little too wild.
Several Republicans — including Senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, John Barrasso of Wyoming and Thom Tillis of North Carolina — suggested pointedly that he had broken the promise he made when he was confirmed. Mr. Cassidy, a physician and a fierce proponent of vaccination, agonized publicly over whether to vote to confirm Mr. Kennedy and in the end decided to do so.
“Effectively, we’re denying people vaccine,” Mr. Cassidy said Thursday, noting that pharmacies may no longer offer Covid shots now that Mr. Kennedy has announced they are not recommended for healthy children and adults under 65.
“You’re wrong,” Mr. Kennedy shot back.
Thursday’s hearing was ostensibly convened to give Mr. Kennedy an opportunity to defend President Trump’s 2026 budget proposal for the Department of Health and Human Services, which he oversees. And it did touch on other matters, including mifepristone, a prescription drug that is used in combination with another medicine to end a pregnancy; cuts to the Medicaid program, which insures low-income people; and rural health care, an issue of importance to senators of both parties.
But it also descended into a free-for-all, in part over Mr. Kennedy’s approach to vaccination, the turmoil at the C.D.C. and especially his decision last week to fire Susan Monarez, the C.D.C. director. Mr. Kennedy made no apologies.
“What we’re going to do is reorganize C.D.C.,” he said, adding: “We are the sickest country in the world. That’s why we have to fire people at C.D.C. They did not do their job. This was their job to keep us healthy. “
Speaking for the first time about the meeting that led to Dr. Monarez’s dismissal, Mr. Kennedy told senators that he ousted her because she responded “no” when he asked her whether she was “a trustworthy person.”
In an opinion article published early Thursday in The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Monarez, an infectious disease researcher, accused the secretary of “a deliberate effort to weaken America’s public-health system and vaccine protections.” After the hearing, her lawyers called Mr. Kennedy’s claims “false and, at times, patently ridiculous.”
The removal of Dr. Monarez, just one month after she was confirmed by the Senate, has irked senators of both parties, who say it negates their own role in the confirmation process. Among them is Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader.
“We go through all the work and confirm somebody to one of these important posts, and then a month later they’re gone,” Mr. Thune told reporters on Wednesday, in advance of the hearing. He added, “The person, whoever ends up in that position, it shouldn’t be disqualifying to be in support or in favor of vaccines.”
Mr. Kennedy had heartily endorsed Dr. Monarez when Mr. Trump nominated her in March. He pushed back against those within his “Make America Healthy Again” movement who accused her of embracing vaccine mandates and other Covid-era policies concerning infectious disease control.
“I handpicked Susan for this job because she is a longtime champion of MAHA values, and a caring, compassionate and brilliant microbiologist and a tech wizard who will reorient CDC toward public health and gold-standard science,” Mr. Kennedy wrote on social media.
But it was clear from their confirmation hearings that the two had differences. Even as he insisted that he was not going to take away anyone’s vaccines, Mr. Kennedy refused to state unequivocally that there was no link between vaccines and autism — a long-ago debunked theory that grew out of a 1998 medical journal article that was later retracted.
Dr. Monarez, by contrast, told senators that she had “not seen a causal link between vaccines and autism.”
While Democrats called for Mr. Kennedy to resign or be fired, it is unlikely that Thursday’s hearing, contentious though it was, will change anything. Despite the C.D.C. upheaval, and Mr. Kennedy’s harsh criticism of the Covid vaccine program developed under Mr. Trump’s watch, there is little sign of a crack in the mutually beneficial alliance between the president and his health secretary.
Over the weekend, Mr. Trump put out an oblique post on social media imploring drug companies to release information on whether the vaccine program, Operation Warp Speed, “was as ‘BRILLIANT’ as many say it was.”
The president lamented that the companies “let everyone rip themselves apart, including Bobby Kennedy Jr. and CDC, trying to figure out the success or failure” of the program. Mr. Kennedy, who once called the shots “a crime against humanity,” is now walking a fine line.
Testifying on Thursday, Mr. Kennedy allowed at one point that the shots had saved lives, saying they had been “perfectly matched to the virus at that time, when it was badly needed.” But he dismissed studies showing that millions of lives had been saved as “modeling studies,” insisting the true number of lives saved was unknown.
At the same time, he agreed with Mr. Cassidy and other Republicans that Mr. Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for presiding over their creation.
Mr. Kennedy has an easy familiarity with Washington: He has been around power since he was a little boy, playing in the Oval Office when his uncle John was president. His father and Uncle Ted were both senators. He has never adhered to the Capitol protocol of being deferential to lawmakers, and he did not do so on Thursday.
At one point, he lobbed an accusation at Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the committee. “Senator,” Mr. Kennedy said acidly, “you’ve sat in that chair for how long? Twenty, 25 years, while the chronic disease in our children went up to 76 percent and you said nothing.”
He also clashed bitterly with Senator Maggie Hassan, Democrat of New Hampshire. Ms. Hassan has an adult child with a developmental disability and in the past has spoken emotionally about the harm Mr. Kennedy has caused by asserting, without proof, that vaccines are linked to autism. On Thursday, she accused the health secretary of reducing transparency around health data and limiting access to vaccines.
“This is crazy talk. You’re just making stuff up,” Mr. Kennedy said.
“Sometimes when you make an accusation, it’s kind of a confession, Mr. Kennedy,” Ms. Hassan replied.
At times, Mr. Kennedy skirted the facts, or misrepresented them. When Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, asked Mr. Kennedy how many Americans died during the Covid-19 pandemic, he replied, “I don’t know how many died,” adding, “The problem is they didn’t have the data.”
In fact, the data is readily available. Hundreds of reports have tracked the efficacy of the vaccines since they first debuted in 2021. The shots have saved millions of lives in the United States and elsewhere, dozens of studies have estimated.
Mr. Kennedy also 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 of those statements are not quite correct. 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.
In addition, 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.
Mr. Kennedy had already had an unmistakable effect on American culture with respect to vaccines, both for children and adults. Blue states are moving to make vaccines more widely available, while red states are moving to loosen vaccine requirements.
On Thursday, Massachusetts announced a series of measures to ensure that state residents would be able to get vaccines for Covid, influenza, R.S.V., mumps, measles and other diseases. Officials said that they would require insurance carriers in Massachusetts to keep covering vaccines recommended by the state’s Department of Public Health, rather than relying on recommendations from federal agencies.
On Wednesday, Florida officials moved in the opposite direction, announcing that theirs would be the first state to end all vaccination requirements for children attending school, a long-sought goal of the medical freedom movement that Mr. Kennedy leads.
“What’s clear and promising is that the very paradigms and people who drove us into this mess are finally being challenged and cleared out,” said Leah Wilson, executive director of Stand for Health Freedom, an Indiana nonprofit that recently sued the C.D.C. and asked a court to replace the agency’s vaccine schedule with a recommendation for parents and doctors to make their own decisions.
But mainstream public health leaders are horrified by Mr. Kennedy’s tenure so far.
“He’s worse than we thought he would be,” Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said in an interview on Wednesday. “Because not only has he broken just kind of simple verbal promises, but he’s also taken apart the core infrastructure of our vaccine system.”
At the outset of Thursday’s hearing, the committee chairman, Senator Michael D. Crapo, Republican of Idaho, said he expected “spirited debate.” At the end, Mr. Crapo acknowledged that the session had produced the kind of partisan bickering he expected. He asked Mr. Kennedy whether he had anything to add.
He declined, saying, “I think I’ll have mercy on everybody and let us adjourn.”
Apoorva Mandavilli, Christina Jewett and Jacey Fortin contributed reporting.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg covers health policy for The Times from Washington. A former congressional and White House correspondent, she focuses on the intersection of health policy and politics.
Megan Mineiro is a Times congressional reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early-career journalists.
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