Secretary for Health and Social Welfare Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appears before the Senate Financial Commission in the building of the Dirksen Senate Office on September 4, 2025 in Washington (photo of Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Washington – Secretary for Health and Social Welfare Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He violently defended his actions on vaccines and other public health issues in terms of questioning both republican and democratic senators during a controversial hearing on Thursday.
Kennedy, confirmed mainly in the party line at the beginning of this year, has repeatedly justified the release of everyone in the influential advisory panel of vaccines, as well as the president Decision to remove Director for control and prevention of diseases, which served less than a month after the Senate was confirmed.
“During interrogations confirming you promised to keep the highest standards of vaccine. Since then, I have been very worried,” said Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo. “The audience saw the outbreaks of the Odra. Leadership of national health institutes challenging the use of mRNA vaccines. A recently confirmed director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has released. Americans do not know what to rely on.”
Video thanks to the courtesy of C-SPAN.
Barrasso, an orthopedic surgeon, tried to strengthen support for vaccines for Kennedy during the trial of the financial commission in the Senate, claiming that “it is estimated that they saved 154 million lives of human lives around the world.”
Republican senator Louisian Bill Cassidy, a doctor who received several concessions from Kennedy in exchange for voting in order to confirm him as secretary of HHS, raised numerous questions about Kennedy’s behavior. Cassidy is the chairman of the Health, Education, Work and Retirement Committee.
Cassidy seemed boxing in Kennedy on the Covid-19 vaccine, saying that President Donald Trump should receive the Nobel Prize for the speed of Warp surgery, which led to the development of a shot during the first term.
Kennedy agreed that Trump should “receive a prize, leading Cassidy to the question why he took actions as a secretary of HHS to remove trust and eliminate financing activities in the field of vaccine development.
“I am surprised that you think so high about the speed of Warp surgery when you tried to limit access as a lawyer,” said Cassidy. “It also surprises me because you canceled or HHS, but apparently under your direction, $ 500 million contracts using the MRNA vaccine platform, which was crucial for the speed of OSP surgery.”
Cassidy said that the cancellation is not only “an amazing waste of money, but also seems to be a commentary to what the president did in the WARP speed operation, i.e. the creation of a platform, thanks to which you can create vaccines.”
Cassidy also questioned Kennedy’s actions, eliminating everyone in the Advisory Committee for the Practices of CDC and replacing them with his own choices.
“If we put people who are witnessing for people posing vaccines, it really seems to be a conflict of interests,” said Cassidy.
Kennedy did not agree, testifying that “it could be prejudice. And this prejudice, if revealed, is fine.”
Tillis asks RFK Jr. for a response in writing
The Republican Senator of North Carolina Thom Tillis asked Kennedy a series of questions, but he said that he wanted the secretary to submit his answers in writing to explain some of his positions.
“Some of your statements seem to be contrary to what you said at an earlier interrogation,” said Tillis. “You said that you will allow scientists in HHS to do your work. I would like to see the evidence where you did it and I’m sure you’ll have some.”
Tillis said that he wanted Kennedy to react to reports, that he returned to his obligations towards senators, not to do anything “which hinders or discourages people from accepting vaccines” and that Kennedy “would” impose my faith on any of yours. “
“This again seems to be contrary to the exemption of the CDC director, the cancellation of the MRNA research agreements, the release of members of the Advisory Council, trying to stop financing NIH, eliminating funds for half a billion dollars for further MRNA research,” he said, referring to national health institutes.
Tillis said he had difficulty understanding why the former director of CDC Susan Monarez, whom Trump nominated in March, and the Senate voted with confirmation at the end of July, he was released so quickly.
“I do not understand how you go … from an expert on public health with unchanging scientific love, many years of MAHA values, caring and sympathetic and brilliant microbiologist-and four weeks later, slow her,” said Tillis.
CDC shooting, Monarez Suring was probing
Democratic Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock finally questioned Kennedy over the shooting of Monarez, as well Shooting in an agency based in Atlanta this summer.
Kennedy testified that he did not believe that he criticized Monarez during the meeting at the end of August for her comments after filming CDC that “disinformation can be dangerous.”
During this meeting, Kennedy said that he demanded that CDC scientists in the career of Fire Monarez to testify that he did not make her to accept the recommendations of the vaccine advisory panel without further review.
“I asked her that she stated that she was not going to log in, and I wanted to explain about it,” said Kennedy. “I told her that I don’t want her to have a role if she wasn’t going to sign her.”
Monarez wrote And on ED Published in the Wall Street Journal, just a few hours before the start of the trial that during the meeting with Kennedy, “she was told that preaprovroi recommendations of the advisory panel of newly filled with people who publicly expressed the rhetoric of Antivacciny.”
“The next meeting of this panel is scheduled for September 18-19,” Monarez said. “It is necessary that the panel recommendations are not covered by rubber, but they are rigorously and scientifically checked before accepting or rejection.”
Warnock asked Kennedy if he said CDC is “the most corrupt federal agency in the history of the world.”
Kennedy testified that he did not say it exactly, but he said: “He is the most corrupt agency in HHS and maybe a government.”
Warnock ended his five minutes of questions informing Kennedy that “it is clear that you implement your extremist beliefs” and that it is “a threat to the public health of the American nation.”
“For the first time we see the death of children from the Oder,” said Warnock. “We haven’t seen it for two decades. We see it under your watch. You are a threat to the health of the American people.”
Lankford, Daines asks about the abortion of medicines
Several senators, including the Republican Oklahoma James Lankford and Republican Montana Steve Daines, asked Kennedy about the continuous review of Mifepristone, one of two pharmaceuticals on prescription used in medical abortion.
Kennedy said that he talked to the FDA commissioner Marta Makara on this subject only yesterday and committed to informing senators, but it did not seem that they did not know anymore.
“I do not know if they intend to study insurance claims. This is one of the ways to do this. I do not know if they conduct epidemiological or observation tests. I don’t know exactly what they are doing,” said Kennedy. “But I know that yesterday I talked about it with Marta Makara, and he said that these studies are progressing and that they are pending. So I will inform your office at every stage.”
Kennedy testified that he did not know when exactly the study would be completed.
The FDA approved Mifepriston for the first time in 2000 before updating the guidelines for prescribing in 2016 and during the Coronirus pandemic.
It is currently approved up to 10 weeks of pregnancy and can be prescribed by teens and sent to patients. Mifepriston is the first pharmaceutical of drug abortion, and usually mizoprostol occurs.
The abortion of drugs accounted for about 64% of all abortions in 2023, according to tests from the Guttmacher Institute.
Supreme Court He rejected the effort To limit access to medicines abortion last year on the originally submitted by four anti -abortion medical organizations and four anti -seal doctors, which were represented by an alliance defending freedoms.
Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote the opinion that “federal provisions on conscience have protected doctors from life since the FDA approved Mifepristone in 2000.”
Many medical organizations, including American College of Obstetrician and Gynecologists and American Medical Association, he wrote the briefs to the Supreme Court in this case confirms the safety and effectiveness of Mifepriston.
“Scientific evidence is overwhelming: the main adverse events occur in less than 0.32% of patients,” wrote medical organizations. “The risk of death almost does not exist.”
