Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s first appearance in Congress following the upheaval at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and mass calls for his removal brought explosive exchanges between officials presenting very different versions of recent events.
Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee confronted the secretary Thursday on his policies and leadership and told their colleagues RFK Jr. has repeatedly broken promises made during confirmation and lied to committee members during testimony.
In shouting exchanges, they sparred with RFK Jr. on whether he had politicized public health. Amid cries of “charlatan” and “liar,” Democrats denounced the secretary for icing out government scientists and professional groups on issues like vaccine approvals and “stacking the deck” by replacing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC's) Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices (ACIP) with members who share his skepticism of vaccine safety.
Such actions and others have undermined decades of work establishing public health institutions as credible sources of guidance, Democrats said, and are already threatening Americans’ ability to access treatment.
“I didn’t politicize ACIP. I de-politicized it,” RFK Jr. said in response to criticisms from the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.
“But all over the country, Mr. Secretary, scientists and doctors are saying otherwise,” Wyden responded. “They’re all wrong, too? They’re all lying, according to you?”
“The scientists and doctors are supporting me all over the country,” Kennedy said. “There is division on opinion.”
“I don’t get letters from thousands of people—who are not political—saying that this set of changes is going to damage American healthcare and particularly these agencies for decades to come,” Wyden said.
“Maybe you’re listening to a selective list of people,” RFK Jr. responded as the pair began to argue over each other. “I’ll tell you what, senator, I’ll put my mailbag against your mailbag any day of the week.”
Democrat committee members, in comments throughout the hearing and in a joint Thursday release, demanded RFK Jr. resign from his post. Their position follow similar calls for removal, published yesterday, from more than 1,000 HHS employees, and another from more than 20 health organizations including the American Public Health Association and the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.
RFK Jr. disputes ousted CDC director's account of firing
RFK Jr., the sole witness of a hearing intended to review the White House’s 2026 healthcare agenda, spent much of his time defending changes at his agencies. In particular, he said the CDC—where hundreds have been laid off, Director Susan Monarez, Ph.D., was removed and other senior leaders resigned in protest—had failed the public on addressing chronic disease and in its recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’re the sickest country in the world—that’s why we have to fire people at the CDC,” he said. “They did not do their job. This was their job to keep us healthy, and I need to fire some of those people to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., asked the secretary a series of questions about his moves at the CDC during the weeks following the Aug. 8 shooting at the agency's headquarters, which officials have said was motivated by misinformation regarding COVID-19 vaccines. RFK Jr., who has been accused of fueling such beliefs and vilifying the agency, told Warnock he believes the CDC is the most corrupt agency "in HHS, and maybe the government."
Of concern to several lawmakers were reports and claims that RFK Jr. moved to fire Monarez because she refused to preapprove the upcoming recommendations of the revamped ACIP, which is set to meet later this month for potential recommendation votes on COVID-19 vaccines, the hepatitis B vaccine, the measles, mumps, rubella, varicella vaccine and respiratory syncytial virus. Monarez herself recounted the secretary’s actions in a Thursday morning op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal.
RFK Jr. flatly rejected Monarez's account during his testimony, saying he did ask her to request certain officials resign but that her own removal over a request related to ACIP recommendations was “inaccurate.”
“So you’re saying she’s lying?” asked Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. “And, let me get this straight: This is the same person who less than a month earlier you stood next to her and described her as ‘unimpeachable,’ and you had full confidence in her and that you had full confidence in her scientific credentials? In a month she became a liar?”
“Yes, you should ask her what changed,” RFK Jr. said.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., suggested that Monarez would get a chance to give her account to Congress in an upcoming hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, for which he is the ranking member.
Republicans' physician senators take lead on vaccine policy scrutiny
Most Republican senators focused their comments on RFK Jr.'s broader campaign of addressing chronic illness and underlined his role in executing key healthcare items of the summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, such as efforts to crack down on fraud and a $50 billion fund for rural hospitals that partially offsets the legislation’s larger hospital Medicaid funding cuts.
They also often teed up the broader arguments for the secretary’s public health shake-up—high healthcare spending, substantial chronic disease burden, diminishing trust in public health authorities and disgruntlement over the federal response to COVID-19.
Among the Republican lawmakers present at the session, the more contentious issues such as RFK Jr.’s vaccine views were primarily broached by the party’s physician members—Bill Cassidy, M.D., of Louisiana, John Barrasso, M.D., of Wyoming and Roger Marshall, M.D., of Kansas—as well as Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
Comments from the former senator have been particularly anticipated due to his key role in voting to confirm the secretary earlier this year. Cassidy, who chairs the HELP Committee, also gave statements last week promising more oversight and demanding next month’s ACIP meeting be postponed amid the allegations of bias.
Cassidy started on a politically cautious note, praising President Donald Trump’s role in authorizing rapid COVID-19 vaccine development under Operation Warp Speed during his first term, which “saved millions of lives globally, [and saved] trillions of dollars of reopened economies.”
He requested RFK Jr. join him in applauding the project—which the secretary did—and then asked how that position aligned with his prior legal work to restrict COVID vaccine access, his cancellation of $500 million of mRNA research contracts and a statement from earlier in the session that “the COVID vaccine killed more people than COVID.”
“It just seems inconsistent that you would agree with me the president deserves tremendous amount of credit for this,” Cassidy said.
Tillis also said he was having trouble reconciling the secretary's stances on Operation Warp Speed with his broader, conflicting views on COVID-19.
"Was it good, was it bad, were there things that worked, were there things that didn’t work?" he asked. "I, for one, can’t discern that from what you said here."
RFK Jr., in response to Cassidy, said his support for Operation Warp Speed stems from how quickly it delivered a targeted vaccine when other alternatives were unavailable.
“But he also brought in therapeutics like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin and protocols for treatment—and there were no mandates,” the secretary added. Despite early research interest, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin are both not recommended for the treatment of COVID-19.
Cassidy went on to cite a peer-reviewed study disputing RFK Jr.'s claims that prior ACIP members had near-unanimous conflicts of interest. He asked how the replacement members nominated by the secretary with backgrounds advocating for clients seeking damages from drugmakers over vaccine injury claims did not constitute conflicts of interests—to which the secretary said there “may be a bias, and a bias, if disclosed, is OK. It’s not a financial conflict of interest.”
Cassidy wrapped his time by recounting messages from peers who said changes to COVID-19 vaccine recommendations authorized by RFK Jr. had restricted their access to the shots and raised confusion over issues of liability.
Barrasso, in his comments, echoed his support for vaccine access and said he has become “concerned” amid this year’s measles outbreak, statements from HHS officials questioning the use of mRNA vaccine technology and Monarez’s firing. Similar to Cassidy, he said physician colleagues in his state are confused over the federal guidelines.
“If we’re going to Make America Healthy Again, we can’t allow public health to be undermined,” Barrasso said.
Marshall was the most forgiving of the Republican physicians. While stressing that he was “not anti-vaccine either,” he sought a middle ground between RFK Jr.'s calls for safety investigations and the imposition of new restrictions on vaccine eligibility.
“Sometimes my friends across the aisle feel like there’s a one-size-fits-all, that they should be telling parents what to do,” he said. “And what you and I are fighting for is we want to empower parents to make these decisions.”
“They think I’m being evasive because I won’t make a statement that’s almost religious in nature,” RFK Jr. later said amid repeated claims there is no conclusive evidence confirming the number of lives saved or damaged by COVID-19 vaccines (to the bewilderment of Democrats citing such data). “…I’m not going to sign on to something if I can’t [have] scientific certainty. It doesn’t mean I’m anti-vax. It means I’m pro-science.”
RFK Jr.'s detractors, citing his frequent rejection of conflicting data and the access restrictions already stemming from changes in federal vaccine recommendations, did not appear convinced.
“I would say, effectively, we’re denying people vaccines,” Cassidy said at the end of his questioning.
"You're wrong," Kennedy said.
For a pharmaceutical industry-focused recount of the hearing and more details on lawmakers and the secretary's vaccine policy disputes, click here for Fierce Pharma's additional coverage.