Vaccines and public health dominated a frequently contentious hearing with Robert F Kennedy Jr on Thursday before the US House ways and means committee.
Kennedy, the health secretary and a longtime vaccine opponent, has overseen sweeping changes to routine vaccination recommendations and has promoted misinformation even amid the biggest measles outbreak in decades.
“We stand at a generational turning point. Our children are the sickest generation in modern history,” Kennedy said at the start of his testimony. While a common refrain from Kennedy, child mortality has fallen dramatically in recent decades, and Americans enjoy longer lives than ever before with record-setting life expectancy.
Food dyes, menopause treatments, and cuts to gender-affirming care were featured prominently in Kennedy’s opening remarks, but he did not mention any of the administration’s actions on vaccines – apparently under pressure from the administration not to bring up unprecedented cuts to vaccine recommendations and access, unpopular moves among voters.
Still, lawmakers mentioned vaccines and the hearing quickly became acrimonious.
“Did President Trump approve your decision to end CDC’s pro-vaccine public messaging campaign?” asked Linda Sánchez, a Democrat from California, referring to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“You’ve got a lot of misinformation,” Kennedy said. A tense exchange followed, with Sánchez repeating the question several times and Kennedy saying he wanted to address her misinformation, pointing to other global outbreaks (though the US outbreak has circulated domestically and even spilled into other countries, such as Mexico).
“I think you don’t want to answer the question, because I think you know the terrible, terrible decisions that impact very, very real lives, especially the lives of children,” Sánchez said.
Kennedy does not have a degree in medicine or public health, yet he is “overruling doctors, scientists and public health experts across our country”, said Mike Thompson, a Democrat from California. “Your dangerous conspiracy theories are undermining safe and effective vaccines.”
Thompson also highlighted the measles outbreak in the US. “Under just one year of President Trump, there are nearly 2,300 cases,” he said. “Kids have died because measles is running rampant under your watch.”
Kennedy also promoted misinformation within the hearing itself. Judy Chu, a Democrat from California, said it was “incredibly harmful” for the administration to stop universally recommending the hepatitis B vaccine at birth. Hepatitis B is extremely dangerous for children and can lead to long-term complications.
“Babies are not at risk unless – essentially at zero risk – unless their mother is infected. For all mothers are tested when they go into the hospital to have a baby,” Kennedy said. But as many as 500,000 pregnant patients (about 14%) are never tested in pregnancy for hepatitis B, and the test also has a high rate of false negatives. Babies may also get sick from caregivers, since hepatitis B is highly contagious and can persist on items such as nail clippers, for a week.
Kennedy also claimed, incorrectly, that the hepatitis B vaccine has not been studied properly and that “we don’t know what the risk profile is” despite decades of research on the safety and effectiveness of the widely distributed shots.
Republicans also objected to misinformation promulgated by Kennedy and other officials. When the Trump administration wrongly said Tylenol use in pregnancy causes autism, “My wife was hurt,” said Blake Moore, a Republican from Utah. She felt responsible for their 10-year-old’s autism diagnosis, Moore said. “That was a hurtful moment for her.”
An important public health taskforce is in Kennedy’s crosshairs. He is “reforming” the US Preventive Services Task Force, which makes recommendations on preventative health care such as mammograms and colonoscopies, which he said has been “lackadaisical and negligent for 20 years”.
Lawmakers also pushed Kennedy on cuts to Medicaid and Medicare. Some 850 agents and brokers suspected of fraud were reinstated under the Trump administration, Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat from Texas, pointed out. “Your administration was the one that let them all go back to work.”
Kennedy spoke over Doggett several times. “It’s not a credible story,” he said. Instead, Kennedy focused on alleged fraud by home health aides, including family members, who may receive payment from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for taking care of elderly and disabled people.
“These are family members getting paid to do things that they used to do as family members for free, and this is rife with fraud,” Kennedy said, claiming that the US is “paying for fraud now as much as for medicine”.
Previous racist comments Kennedy made about Black children resurfaced in the hearing. “Every Black kid is now just standard put on Adderall, on SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence, and those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get re-parented, to live in a community where there’ll be no cellphones, no screens,” Kennedy reportedly said on the 19Keys podcast in June 2024.
“Have you ever re-parented – or parented, I should say – a Black child?” Terri Sewell, a Democrat from Alabama, asked in the hearing. Kennedy responded that he did not “even know what that phrase means”, before doubting that he said it and refused to answer. When Sewell said Kennedy was “suggesting that the federal government should take Black children away from their families and re-parent them and send them off to some wellness farm”, Kennedy interrupted and said the congresswoman was “just making stuff up”.
Sewell pushed back: “I am absolutely not making this up, Mr Secretary. Even today, Black children are removed from their homes at higher rates than white children, not because of their greater harm but because of longstanding bias and built-in institutionalism. For you to suggest that Black families are not capable of raising their own children is deeply offensive, sir.” She later added the transcript of his 2024 remarks into the record.
Another explosive moment came when Steven Horsford, a Democrat from Nevada, spoke about his constituents’ struggle to access healthcare. “Calm down, congressman,” Kennedy said. “Don’t tell me to calm down. Healthcare is personal to me,” Horsford said. “If you can’t answer basic questions, then maybe come prepared next time.” But Kennedy countered that Horsford had “started screaming” at him, adding, “People scream when they don’t have much to say.”
The next speaker, Rudy Yakym, a Republican from Indiana, quipped: “It’s getting hot in here.”
