Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified Tuesday in front of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce over the department’s 2026 budget — and lawmakers grilled him on an array of topics, from federal funding cuts to vaccines.

During their five minutes of questioning each, several Democratic representatives called out the secretary for what they said are a lack of transparency and a lack of science in decision-making.

They also criticized proposed health funding cuts outlined in President Trump’s domestic policy legislation, or what he calls “one big beautiful bill,” which is currently being debated in the Senate. The bill includes changes to Medicaid, a program that provides government-sponsored health care, which could leave many low-income and disabled Americans without coverage.

“If there isn’t a funding mechanism in place, if there isn’t an act of Congress to replace that revenue stream, hospitals are going to close. People are going to die. … That’s the consequence of your policies,” Democratic Rep. Lori Trahan of Massachusetts said.

The Trump administration has already made cuts to funding for research at the National Institutes of Health and other resource and treatment programs.

“This isn’t a budget, it’s a death sentence,” said Rep. Marc Veasey, a Democrat from Texas, referring to proposed cuts to the HHS’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The agency announced last week that a part of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline dedicated to LGBTQ+ youth is being terminated.

Rep. Troy Carter, a Democrat from Louisiana, questioned Kennedy on cuts to HIV vaccine research. In May, the Trump administration moved to end funding for a broad swath of HIV vaccine research, saying current approaches are enough to counter the virus. But experts disagree, including Dennis Burton, an immunology professor at Scripps Research, who previously told CBS News it’s a “terrible time” to cut off the research, adding that it could not “simply be turned back on, even if a future administration decided to change course on HIV funding.”

Carter submitted to the record what he described as a “whole bunch of studies (that) debunk” many of Kennedy’s claims and prove he’s not “being forthright with us or the American people.”

Republican Rep. Nick Langworthy of New York allowed Kennedy to respond to what Langworthy described as Carter’s “outlandish claims.” Kennedy said he’s committed to doing “evidence-based, gold-standard science” to take care of “the most desperate, most vulnerable Americans, including people of HIV.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee Health Subcommittee on June 24, 2025. / Getty Images

Many of the Republican committee members came to Kennedy’s defense, including Florida Rep. Kat Cammack, who congratulated Kennedy for disrupting the “broken status quo,” and Iowa Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who said restructuring is “never an easy task.

Here are some other highlights from the hearing.

RFK Jr. retracts accusation against Rep. Frank Pallone

Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey accused Kennedy of trying to “defend the indefensible” with his actions as secretary.

“There’s no way that this budget or the actions you have taken thus far as secretary are going to make this country healthier,” Pallone said. “The science is not on your side. I just really think that people are going to die as a result of your actions.”

Pallone also criticized Kennedy for not allowing for a typical process of public comments when it comes to “major decisions about vaccines.”

“Are you just afraid of receiving public comments on proposals where you just think these are fringe views that are contrary to the views of most scientists and that the public comments will reflect this?” he said. “You say you want transparency, but there’s been no public process for any of this.”

Kennedy said the ACIP committee — the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices — was the public process for regulating vaccines.

“You fired the ACIP committee,” Pallone said.

“I fired people who had conflicts with the pharmaceutical industry,” Kennedy replied. Earlier this month, he replaced the entire committee with new picks, including some with ties to lawsuits against vaccine makers.

Later, Kennedy accused Pallone of taking money from the pharmaceutical industry, which prompted fellow Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado to call for a point of order for “impugning the reputation of a member of Congress.”

Chairman Buddy Carter, a Georgia Republican, asked Kennedy if he wanted to take it back, and Kennedy retracted his comments about Pallone.

Earlier in the hearing, DeGette questioned Kennedy on the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency’s “defend the spend” initiative, which the Washington Post reports has caused thousands of backed-up payments to doctors and nurses. Kennedy denied knowing about it.

“Do you know anything about the ‘defend the spend’ initiative?” DeGette asked.

“About what?” Kennedy asked.

“The ‘defend the spend’ initiative that your agency has?” she repeated.

“No,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy defends NIH funding cuts, talks seed oils

In defense of his NIH funding cuts, Kennedy said he cut “thousands of studies” that were doing “nothing to improve American health” and instead offered other topics he thinks should be a focus of research.

“Very few of the studies that were being done by NIH were being done on chronic disease,” Kennedy said. “NIH should be telling us: what are seed oils doing to our children? What are — what is corn syrup doing to our children? What are food dyes doing to our children? What is the packaging and microplastics doing to our children? What are pesticides doing to our children?”

Kennedy also claimed he doesn’t know about the letter to NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya earlier this month from NIH scientists criticizing the administration’s deep funding cuts.

COVID vaccines and pregnancy

Kennedy said last month that he would remove the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation for children and healthy pregnant women to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Kennedy said “study after study shows adverse events” after COVID-19 shots during pregnancy. Without citing where the study came from, Kennedy said one study showed “27 adverse events during pregnancy.”

Officials at the Food and Drug Administration, however, recently reiterated that pregnancy was among the underlying conditions that warranted continued eligibility for COVID-19 vaccine approvals.

“We’re not depriving anybody of choice,” Kennedy said. “If a pregnant woman wants the COVID-19 vaccine, she can get it. We’re no longer recommending it because there was no science supporting that recommendation.”

“Not true,” Democratic Rep. Robin Kelly of Illinois rebutted. “We have a pediatrician that is on this committee. Not true.”

House Democrat Kim Schrier of Washington is a former pediatrician, who said during her allotted time that she found it “extremely alarming” that Kennedy announced changes to vaccine recommendations “without consulting the customary panel of experts.”

“You have lied to the American people”

In her line of questioning, Schrier accused Kennedy of “lying” to a U.S. senator about not making any changes to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and doctor, eventually voted to confirm Kennedy for HHS secretary. Kennedy denied lying to the senator about the vaccine panel.

“But then two weeks ago, you fired all 17 experts on that very committee,” Schrier said. “Did you lie to Sen. Cassidy when you told him you would not change this panel of experts?”

Kennedy responded by saying he “never made that agreement.”

“So are you saying that Senator Cassidy lied when he was on the Senate floor, lied to the American people?” Schrier said.

“If he said that I agreed to it, it would be inaccurate,” Kennedy said.

“It sounds to me like you gave him the answer he needed to hear in order to get his confirmation vote, and then as soon as you were secretary, you turned around and did whatever you want,” Schrier said.

“I’m complying with all the agreements I made with Sen. Cassidy,” Kennedy responded.

“Mr. Secretary, you’re now on the record. You lied to Sen. Cassidy. You have lied to the American people, you have lied to parents about vaccines for 20 years, and I also want to be clear that I will lay all responsibility for every death from a vaccine-preventable illness at your feet,” Schrier said.

In a statement to CBS News, a spokesperson for Cassidy said, “As Senator Cassidy has said publicly, the commitment was about the ACIP process, not staffing.”

Republicans praise Kennedy

Some Republicans referred to Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” or “MAHA” motto, including Langworthy, who told the secretary, “I appreciate your leadership and your vision and your efforts to make America healthy again.”

Dr. John Joyce, a Pennsylvania Republican and a dermatologist who serves as vice-chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, thanked Kennedy for his “commitments to unlocking American science that we know will lead to additional breakthroughs.”

Kennedy told Joyce he was committed to ensuring incentives for innovators are put in place to pursue “gold standard science for rare disease treatments and for their cures.”

Virginia Republican Morgan Griffith, seemingly making a comparison to Kennedy, said: “I would remind everybody that Galileo got an ‘F’ during his day and age, and that sometimes people who are trying to do cutting-edge work don’t get the response they expect from leading scientists of the day.”

During the hearing, Kennedy made other commitments to Republicans lawmakers, including expanding the use of the Trump administration’s new FDA priority vouchers because it “crashes through the red tape”; speeding access to prescription psychedelics; urging all Americans to use wearables like glucose monitors; promoting non-opioid painkiller Journavx; and redoing the dietary guidelines by August.

“We’re about to launch one of the biggest advertising campaigns in HHS history,” Kennedy said, referring to the glucose monitors.

contributed to this report.