In his first confirmation hearing before senators as President Trump’s health secretary nominee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday tried to distance himself from his past statements on abortion and vaccines, but offered no concrete details on how he would tackle the nation’s chronic disease epidemic.
Kennedy, while surrounded by many supporters, faced sometimes combative questions on dozens of topics, spanning from President Trump’s recent executive orders and funding freezes to Medicaid, public health agencies, infectious disease outbreaks, the food supply, and more.
Among the comments he was pressed on were those he had made about vaccines, including the debunked claim that they can cause autism — an idea RFK Jr. has persistently spread over many years, even as recently as 2021, according to private emails obtained by STAT. In multiple exchanges, members of the Senate Finance Committee mentioned a deadly outbreak of measles that occurred in Samoa shortly after Kennedy visited and that he has been blamed for fueling.
RFK Jr. insisted he supports vaccines, that his previous comments had been taken out of context, and that he had nothing to do with the Samoa outbreak. “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 receiving the vaccines, he said. Twice during Kennedy’s rebuttals, hecklers in the room stood up and shouted, once yelling, “You lie!” before being quickly escorted out.
More heat on vaccines was to come. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pointed to Kennedy’s financial ties to a law firm that has pursued litigation on vaccines. She asked if he would promise to forgo collecting legal fees from lawsuits against drug companies; Kennedy refused to do so.
According to financial disclosures, Kennedy plans to “retain an interest” in some cases brought by the law firm, Wisner Baum, but will not accept fees from cases involving the government or the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. RFK Jr. was entitled to 10% of the fees awarded in contingency cases he referred to the firm. Under the Department of Health and Human Services’ ethics rules, he could not act in a formal capacity on issues from which he or his associates might benefit financially.
Kennedy’s long-standing relationship with Children’s Health Defense, the vaccine-challenging nonprofit he helped found, also came under scrutiny during Wednesday’s hearing. Kennedy led the group until he launched his presidential campaign in 2023. Through the years, the organization has helped bolster and spread his critiques of vaccines. (Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense, was in the room for Kennedy’s hearing, and greeted his relatives and allies during a break.)
In perhaps the hearing’s most memorable exchange, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) displayed a posterboard with images of CHD merchandise — two baby onesies emblazoned with the slogans, “Unvaxxed Unafraid” and “No vax. No problem,” respectively. Sanders then asked Kennedy if he would pull the products off the market. “Are you supportive of these onesies?” Sanders repeated several times in the contentious exchange. RFK Jr. responded that he had no power over CHD’s products, and that he is “supportive of vaccines.”
Senators on both sides also pressed Kennedy on his abortion views, given his previous statements in support of reproductive rights (some of which were displayed on posterboards behind Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan during the hearing). To those questions, RFK Jr. repeated nearly a half-dozen times that he agreed with Trump that “every abortion is a tragedy.” He said he believed, like the President, that states should decide the issue but late-term abortions should be illegal.
Kennedy’s careful handling of the abortion questions, in particular, reflected the issue’s centrality to his chances of confirmation, since much-needed Republican votes may hinge on his views. If all Democrats vote against him, RFK Jr. can only afford to lose three Republican votes and still be confirmed. Former Vice President Mike Pence visibly opposed RFK Jr.’s nomination due to his prior pro-choice comments.
How will he MAHA?
Notably missing from Kennedy’s responses to hours of questioning was a concrete plan for how he’d plan to “make America healthy again” — the broad pledge that helped him build popular momentum even before being nominated by Trump. While RFK Jr. made clear that he was extremely familiar with certain statistics on chronic disease rates, he offered little insight into specific policies he would pursue to address the issue.
Kennedy’s attention was mostly trained on perceived problems: The National Institutes of Health’s lack of research focused on the root causes of chronic disease, as RFK Jr. sees it, and a misguided focus on pharmaceuticals.
Even when he was asked by a MAHA-friendly lawmaker, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), about his prescription for improving the nation’s health, Kennedy stumbled through recycled statistics before mentioning U.S.-specific food additives and chemicals used during farming. “Something is poisoning the American people,” he said. “We need to fix our food supply, and that’s the number one.”
At other points during the hearing, Kennedy called for the NIH and Food and Drug Administration to conduct more research on potential links between food additives and chronic disease. He also mentioned the need to limit ultra-processed foods in schools and the availability of sugary drinks on SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The issue, along with some of Kennedy’s other nutrition-focused positions, has earned bipartisan support.
Even so, on Wednesday, he left room for flexibility. “I don’t want to take food away from anybody,” he said. “If you love a McDonald’s cheeseburger and Diet Coke, which my boss loves, you should be able to get them.”
The public should just know the risks of those choices, he added. It was not clear how he’d plan to make that happen as health secretary.