Summary Lawmakers attack Kennedy’s vaccine stance amid measles outbreak

Kennedy defends major cuts and mass firings at health agencies

Protesters disrupt hearing, criticize Kennedy’s vaccine views

Health secretary pledges to work with Democrats on drug pricing

WASHINGTON, May 14 (Reuters) – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came under fire on Wednesday from lawmakers who said he has made false statements over vaccine testing and safety since taking the nation’s top health job.

Kennedy made his first appearance in Congress since his confirmation as Health and Human Services Secretary in February, facing questions over everything from his mass layoffs at federal health agencies to his handling of a worsening U.S. measles outbreak.

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Some of the most heated exchanges centered on his remarks on vaccines. Kennedy has for years sown doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, but pledged to maintain the country’s existing vaccine standards to secure his appointment in the Trump administration.

Republican U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician from Louisiana who helped pave the way for Kennedy’s confirmation, corrected the secretary’s assertion that the COVID-19 vaccine is the only shot tested against a placebo in clinical trials.

“The Secretary said no vaccines, except for COVID, have been evaluated against placebo. For the record, that’s not true,” said Cassidy, who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

“Coronavirus, measles, and HPV vaccines have been, and some vaccines are tested against previous versions, just for the record,” said Cassidy, who chairs the Senate HELP Committee.

Democratic Senator Christopher Murphy of Connecticut said Kennedy had not lived up to his commitment to Cassidy and the committee during his confirmation hearing.

“As soon as you were sworn in, you announced new standards for vaccine approvals that you proudly referred to in your own press release as a radical departure from current practice, and experts say that departure will delay approvals,” said Murphy.

“You also said, specific to the measles vaccine, that you support the measles vaccine, but you have consistently been undermining the measles vaccine,” Murphy said. “You told the public that the vaccine wanes very quickly… and said that the measles vaccine was never properly tested for safety. You said there’s fetal debris in the measles vaccine.”

“All true,” Kennedy shouted back as Murphy listed his comments. “I’m not going to just tell people everything is safe and effective if I know that there’s issues,” he said.

The measles vaccine has been shown to be safe and highly effective at preventing infection and does not contain fetal debris.

Kennedy has drawn condemnation from health officials for what they say is a weak endorsement of measles shots during an outbreak that has infected more than 1,000, mostly unvaccinated, people and killed three.

Item 1 of 7 U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before a Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee hearing on the Department of Health and Human Services budget, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 14, 2025. REUTERS/Leah Millis [1/7] U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before a Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee hearing on the Department of Health and Human Services budget, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 14, 2025. REUTERS/Leah Millis Purchase Licensing Rights , opens new tab

Audience members at the HELP hearing wore stickers saying “When Bobby lies, children die,” and “anti-vax, anti-science, anti-America” in reference to Kennedy’s vaccine views.

Some protesters shouting opposition to Kennedy’s positions, were dragged out by capitol police, including Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.

“You’re killing poor kids in Gaza and paying for it by cutting Medicaid for kids here,” shouted Cohen, who had attended a pro-Palestine event with Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib earlier on Wednesday, referring to Medicaid cuts proposed in the Republican spending bill and U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

‘UP TO ME’

Kennedy has said his top priorities as health secretary include identifying the environmental contributors to autism and tackling rising rates of chronic disease.

He has vowed to remake the nation’s health agencies, including cutting 10,000 jobs at the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

Wednesday’s Senate hearing and one before a House Appropriations subcommittee earlier in the day were meant to review Kennedy’s health-related spending plans under President Donald Trump’s budget proposal, including an $18 billion cut to NIH funding and $3.6 billion from the CDC.

Democrats and other critics have portrayed the cuts as a gutting of the country’s public health infrastructure. Kennedy told the Appropriations Committee they would save taxpayers $1.8 billion per year and make the department more efficient.

“Our reductions have focused on aligning HHS staffing levels to reflect the size of HHS prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw around a 15% increase in the number of employees,” Kennedy said in his opening statement to the House subcommittee.

The cuts and firings were his decision, not edicts from Elon Musk , Kennedy said when asked about the billionaire Trump ally’s involvement. Musk is leading the DOGE initiative to cut government funding and reshape the federal bureaucracy.

“Elon Musk gave us help in trying and figuring out where there was fraud and abuse in the department,” Kennedy testified. “But it was up to me to make the decision, and there are many instances where I pushed back.”

Kennedy said he was willing to work with Democrats on lowering prescription drug prices in response to a question from Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who votes with Democrats.

Trump signed an executive order on Monday directing drugmakers to lower their prices to align with what other countries pay that analysts and legal experts said would be difficult to implement.

Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Additional reporting by Katharine Jackson in Washington and Michael Erman in New York; Editing by Andrea Ricci and Bill Berkrot

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In a hearing to discuss his agency’s 2026 budget before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended the Trump administration’s hefty budget cuts and mass layoffs—while also seemingly refusing to commit to his prior support for the measles vaccine.

“This agency has grown so big, so fast,” Kennedy said in response to questioning from Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ), who pressed the secretary about cuts at the HHS and the affected programs. It was important, Kennedy insisted, “to do decisive action quickly that could eliminate the metastasizing of this agency, which was growing, growing, growing as our health declined,” without offering specifics.

Nevertheless, Kennedy admitted that they went into the restructuring effort “knowing that there would be some mistakes made,” but said that the approach at the time was to “go back and reverse them when they are made.”

“We try to be as careful as we can about what we cut and what we didn’t; we made a couple of mistakes,” he added.

Meanwhile, when he was asked by Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) about the recent measles outbreak, Kennedy seemed to once again sow distrust against vaccination as a preventive practice.

Hassan directly asked Kennedy to “say clearly here today, to any parents who are watching, that the best way to protect their children from measles is to vaccinate them.” But the secretary sidestepped the question, instead saying that the U.S. gets “a measles outbreak every year” and that “we’ve handled this measles outbreak better than any other nation.”

Two children—both unvaccinated—have so far died because of the current measles outbreak in the U.S. These are the first deaths from the disease in more than 20 years, Hassan said during Wednesday’s hearing. Despite his documented history of vaccine skepticism, Kennedy wrote on X in April that “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine.” But earlier this month, Kennedy appeared to return to his usual rhetoric, asserting that the vaccines contain “fetal debris,” a claim that has been debunked by various experts. At Wednesday’s hearing, he appeared to distance himself from his prior statements, saying that “my opinions about vaccines are irrelevant.”

“I don’t want to make it seem like I’m being evasive,” Kennedy said, without directly answering Wisconsin representative Mark Pocan’s question on whether the secretary would give his child a measles vaccine. “I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.”

Former FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, speaking at an event by STAT News on Wednesday, took issue with that statement from Kennedy: “He is the leader of health and human services in the United States of America,” which Califf said is the “most powerful” institution in the world for health advocacy, as reported by Endpoints News.

Kennedy, according to Califf, is “flat out wrong” and is actively “doing harm to the American people with what he’s saying.”

Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

(WASHINGTON) — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., before a House committee Wednesday morning, defended the massive cuts to the department’s workforce and laid out his priorities for the Trump administration’s proposed budget — all while he is expected to field questions about his history of promoting conspiracy theories and controversial comments about vaccines.

Kennedy is appearing before the House Appropriations Committee Wednesday morning. He will then head to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee in the afternoon. The appearances mark the first time Kennedy has testified before Congress since his confirmation hearings in late January, and he may be forced to confront statements he made that critics say are evidence of promises broken.

In his opening statement before the House committee, Kennedy said his goal at HHS is to focus on the chronic disease epidemic and deliver effective services for those who rely on Medicare, Medicaid and other services by cutting costs to taxpayers.

“We intend to do more, a lot more with less. The budget I’m presenting today supports these goals and reflects two enduring American values, compassion and responsibility,” Kennedy said in his opening statement.

Kennedy said the new budget addresses priorities including tackling mental health and addiction; addressing nutrition, physical activity and healthy lifestyles; equipping the FDA to expand food safety experts; eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion funding; strengthening cybersecurity and rebuilding.

Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee, slammed Kennedy and the Trump’s administration for the cuts to HHS, including the elimination of entire divisions.

In April, HHS began laying off about 10,000 workers and consolidating 28 institutes and centers into 15 new divisions.

Including the roughly 10,000 people who have left over the last few months through early retirement or deferred resignation programs, the overall staff at HHS is expected to fall from 82,000 to around 62,000 — or about a quarter of its workforce.

“Mr. Secretary, you are gutting the life-saving work of the Department of Health and Human Services and its key agencies while the Republicans in this Congress say and do nothing,” DeLauro said. “Because of these cuts people will die.”

In a video statement posted on X prior to the layoffs, Kennedy said that he plans to bring to the agency a “clear sense of mission to radically improve the health of Americans and to improve agency morale.”

Kennedy has defended the cuts as necessary to weed out wasteful spending at one of America’s largest departments, but he has drawn criticism for laying off people who are responsible for regulating tobacco usage, monitoring lead exposure in children and diagnosing black lung disease in miners.

The secretary himself has appeared not to know about some of the cuts, telling CBS News last month he was “not familiar” with several cuts cited by the outlet.

Before the House committee, Kennedy also rebuked criticism of his agency’s response to the measles outbreak.

“We are doing a better job at CDC today than any nation in the world controlling this measles outbreak. I’m happy to elaborate on that afterward,” Kennedy said.

DeLauro replied that Kennedy’s comparison of the U.S. response to measles to the response of other countries was unfair.

“Mr. Secretary, you keep comparing the U.S. to other countries compare us to Europe, but the Europe you are referring to is the WHO European region has 53 countries in Europe and in Asia, including those with low vaccine vaccination rates like Romania and that has never eliminated measles,” she said. “If you compare us to western Europe countries that we often compare ourselves to, like Great Britain, they have seen no measles death.”

Kennedy argued that the U.S. is doing better than other countries in the Americas with smaller populations, including Canada and Mexico.

Kennedy said several times during his hearing in January that he supports vaccines, although he refused to unequivocally say that vaccines don’t cause autism, despite numerous existing studies already showing there is no link.

“I support the measles vaccine. I support the polio vaccine. I will do nothing as HHS secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking either of those vaccines,” Kennedy said.

However, in March, the HHS confirmed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will study whether vaccines cause autism.

Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan asked Kennedy if he would vaccinate his own children today with the measles vaccine, chickenpox vaccine or polio vaccine, and Kennedy refused to say he would.

“My opinions about vaccines are irrelevant,” Kennedy said. “That question directly, it will seem like I’m giving advice to other people, and I don’t want to be doing that.”

“But that’s kind of your jurisdiction, because CDC does give advice, right?” Pocan replied.

DeLauro scolded Kennedy for promoting vaccine skepticism in the wake of a measles outbreak spreading across the U.S.

In the wake of several ongoing measles outbreaks across the U.S. and over 1,000 cases so far this year, Kennedy has shared contradicting views about vaccines.

In a post on X on April 6, Kennedy said that the “most effective way to prevent the spread of measles” is to receive the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine. However, in a post later that evening, he said more than 300 children have been treated with an antibiotic and a steroid, neither of which are recognized treatments or cures for measles.

Kennedy’s embrace of anti-vaccine ideas nearly put his confirmation in jeopardy, as he faced resistance from Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician who heads the HELP committee. Cassidy expressed concerns about Kennedy’s views on vaccines before ultimately voting to move him through the confirmation process in February.

Cassidy said, at the time, that Kennedy assured him he would not alter vaccine policy without “ironclad” scientific evidence. The senator added that Kennedy and Trump officials promised him an “unprecedentedly close collaborate working relationship” with the secretary.

Kennedy’s controversial moves on fluoride came up with Republican Rep. Mike Simpson, a dentist, telling Kennedy he was concerned about the secretary’s comments on it.

Last month, Kennedy said he plans to assemble a task force and ultimately change the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance to stop recommending adding fluoride to drinking water and other products. He has claimed that fluoride in drinking water affects children’s neurological development.

The Food and Drug Administration said it will conduct a scientific review of fluoride-containing supplements sometimes used to strengthen children’s teeth by late October with the aim of removing them from the market.

“I’ve seen the benefits having been a practicing dentist for 22 years. … You don’t prevent cavities by fluoride killing the bacteria in the mouth,” Simpson said. “What it does is make the enamel more resistant to decay. So, I want to see the studies on this and where we’re headed with this.”

Previous reviews by public health experts and dental professionals have not shown any serious health risks with the addition of fluoride.

ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett and Anne Flaherty contributed to this report.

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RFK Jr. says people should not take medical advice from him, defends HHS cuts during hearings

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the nation’s most publicly recognized vaccine skeptics, took a softened approach on vaccines when he answered questions before a House committee Wednesday morning, avoiding sharing his personal views and instead deferring to the doctors running the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the nation’s most publicly recognized vaccine skeptics, took a softened approach on vaccines when he answered questions before a House committee Wednesday morning, avoiding sharing his personal views and instead deferring to the doctors running the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the nation’s most publicly recognized vaccine skeptics, took a softened approach on vaccines when he answered questions before a House committee Wednesday morning, avoiding sharing his personal views and instead deferring to the doctors running the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the nation’s most publicly recognized vaccine skeptics, took a softened approach on vaccines when he answered questions before a House committee Wednesday morning, avoiding sharing his personal views and instead deferring to the doctors running the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the nation’s most publicly recognized vaccine skeptics, took a softened approach on vaccines when he answered questions before a House committee Wednesday morning, avoiding sharing his personal views and instead deferring to the doctors running the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, speaking before a Senate committee Wednesday afternoon, Democrats are pushing Kennedy to answer for specific impacts of HHS cuts.

Kennedy has defended the massive cuts to the department’s workforce and laid out his priorities for the Trump administration’s proposed budget.

Kennedy’s congressional committee appearances mark the first time he has testified before Congress since his confirmation hearings in late January, and force Kennedy to confront statements he made that critics say are evidence of promises broken.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during an event in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, Monday, May 12, 2025, in Washington. AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

Senators push Kennedy on cuts: ‘You can’t fire 90% of the people and assume the work gets done’

Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee started the hearing off by questioning Kennedy on cuts to HHS — with a few testy exchanges.

In April, HHS began laying off about 10,000 workers and consolidating 28 institutes and centers into 15 new divisions.

Including the roughly 10,000 people who have left over the last few months through early retirement or deferred resignation programs, the overall staff at HHS is expected to fall from 82,000 to around 62,000 — or about a quarter of its workforce.

Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, quoting ABC News’ reporting last week, asked Kennedy about cuts to the CDC’s lead poisoning prevention program.

Though the program has been completely gutted and the expert staff has been laid off, Kennedy said he believes lead poisoning to be an “extremely significant concern” and said he does not intend to eliminate the program.

“Now, Secretary Kennedy, I want to start with what I hope is an easy question for you, do you think lead poisoning in children is a significant concern?” Baldwin asked.

“It’s a extremely significant concern,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy suggested that HHS would still spend the money appropriated to the program — but didn’t offer any details on how the work would continue without any expert staff.

In another very testy exchange, Democratic Sen. Patty Murray questioned Kennedy about cuts at NIH that have affected clinical trials for cancer patients. She shared the story of Natalie Phelps, a mother-of-two from Bainbridge Island in Washington state, fighting aggressive stage IV colorectal cancer.

Phelps has participating in a clinical trial the NIH Clinical Center but doctors have told her treatments have to be delayed due to the firings at NIH, Murray said.

“What have you — and I mean you personally — done to assess how those staff cuts are impacting patient care?” Murray asked. “My job is to be a voice for people like Natalie and countless other patients who are like her. So you’ve got to fix this.”

Kennedy responded claiming that “no clinical trials should be affected by the cuts” — despite reports that NIH workforce cuts have affected clinical trials.

Kennedy claimed later in the hearing that Phelps was not allowed in the trial because she was “medically ineligible,” but did not provide any evidence to support the claim. ABC News is reaching out to Murray’s office for additional information about Phelp’s case.

Murray also asked Kennedy about cuts to NIOSH, including the reinstatements that are mostly in Ohio and West Virginia. She said no one has been reinstated in the Western states, including at the Spokane, Washington, office that does research into miner safety.

“The work in NIOSH will not be interrupted,” Kennedy said. “We understand it’s critically important function, and I did not want to see it end.”

“I would just say you can’t fire 90% of the people and assume the work gets done,” Murray said.

Kennedy says his ‘opinions about vaccines are irrelevant’

During the House hearing, Kennedy avoided sharing his own thoughts about vaccines — which have previously invited skepticism.

Asked by Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan if he would today vaccinate his own children for measles and chickenpox, Kennedy said “probably” for measles, but that “what I would say is my opinions about vaccines are irrelevant.”

“I don’t want to seem like I’m being evasive, but I don’t think people should be taking advice, medical advice from me,” Kennedy said.

He said he has directed NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya to try to “lay out the pros and cons, the risks and benefits, accurately as we understand them, with replicable studies,” for people to “make that decision.”

His comments mark a departure from his strong opinions about vaccines before taking office as HHS secretary.

During his confirmation hearing in January, Kennedy said that he supports vaccines, although he refused to unequivocally say that vaccines don’t cause autism, despite numerous existing studies already showing there is no link. However, in March, the HHS confirmed that the CDC will study whether vaccines cause autism.

Shortly after Kennedy said people should not take his medical advice, some public health experts criticized the comments — one of whom said that giving people guidance “is [ Kennedy’s ] job.”

“The problem is that is his job — the top line of his job description — is the nation’s chief health strategist. That is the top line of every health official, federal, state, local leader. That is his job, is to give people the best advice that he can. I believe that he’s giving up on, in my view, his chief responsibility,” Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told reporters on a call in which he and other health leaders responded to Kennedy’s testimony in front of the House Appropriations Committee.

Benjamin pointed out that Kennedy has, in fact, seemed to advise people on how to treat measles, leading them toward unproven remedies.

‘Because of these cuts people will die’

Kennedy continued to maintain that widespread cuts at HHS have not impacted key health programs, saying he has not withheld any funding for lifesaving research at NIH and continues to prioritize pillars such as Head Start, Medicare and Medicaid.

But in a tense back-and-forth with Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee, she demanded Kennedy’s assurance that he would not cut programs that have been approved and funded by Congress, which has “the power of the purse” ascribed to it in the Constitution.

Kennedy said he would spend appropriated money — which drew repeated exasperation from DeLauro, who pointed to $20 billion in cuts to NIH.

Kennedy said his goal at HHS is to focus on the chronic disease epidemic and deliver effective services for those who rely on Medicare, Medicaid and other services by cutting costs to taxpayers.

“We intend to do more, a lot more with less. The budget I’m presenting today supports these goals and reflects two enduring American values, compassion and responsibility,” Kennedy said in his opening statement.

DeLauro slammed Kennedy and the Trump’s administration for the cuts to HHS, including the elimination of entire divisions.

“Mr. Secretary, you are gutting the life-saving work of the Department of Health and Human Services and its key agencies while the Republicans in this Congress say and do nothing,” DeLauro said. “Because of these cuts people will die.”

DeLauro also finished the hearing with an impassioned plea for Kennedy to stop cutting programs, telling him he does not have the authority to go against what Congress allocated in the budget.

“You do not have the authority to do what you are doing,” she said.

Kennedy defends measles outbreak response

Kennedy rebuked criticism of his agency’s response to the measles outbreak.

“We are doing a better job at CDC today than any nation in the world controlling this measles outbreak,” Kennedy said.

DeLauro hit back, saying that Kennedy’s comparison of the U.S. response to measles to the response of other countries was unfair.

“Mr. Secretary, you keep comparing the U.S. to other countries, compare us to Europe, but the Europe you are referring to is the WHO European region has 53 countries in Europe and in Asia, including those with low vaccine vaccination rates like Romania and that has never eliminated measles,” she said. “If you compare us to western Europe countries that we often compare ourselves to, like Great Britain, they have seen no measles death.”

Kennedy argued that the U.S. is doing better than other countries in the Americas with smaller populations, including Canada and Mexico.

DeLauro scolded Kennedy for promoting vaccine skepticism in the wake of a measles outbreak spreading across the U.S.

In the wake of several ongoing measles outbreaks across the U.S. and over 1,000 cases so far this year, Kennedy has shared contradicting views about vaccines.

In a post on X on April 6, Kennedy said that the “most effective way to prevent the spread of measles” is to receive the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine. However, in a post later that evening, he said more than 300 children have been treated with an antibiotic and a steroid, neither of which are recognized treatments or cures for measles.