5 takeaways after RFK Jr. is grilled by senators during confirmation hearings
GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, a doctor, said Kennedy's vaccine stance "concerned" him.
In two public sit-downs with the Senate that will decide his possible future as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced nearly eight total hours of questions about his decades-long public record.
Kennedy, a former Democrat from a legacy political family who threw his weight behind President Donald Trump in 2024 with the "Make America Healthy Again" movement, is a longtime environmental lawyer. But he's perhaps most known for his work in questioning the safety and effectiveness of vaccines -- a topic that he at times sought to placate senators on, but about which both Democrats and Republicans remained skeptical.
Kennedy can only afford to lose three Republicans and still be confirmed, assuming no Democrat swings behind him to make up for the lost support.
If confirmed, Kennedy would be in charge of overseeing a vast federal agency that manages the health care of some 170 million Americans, regulates access to drugs and vaccines, and tracks urgent outbreaks of diseases and foodborne illnesses.
Kennedy sat for a hearing on Wednesday before the Senate Finance Committee and on Thursday before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
Here are five key takeaways:
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1. RFJ Jr. gives vocal support to vaccines, despite a career spent casting doubt
Kennedy said several times during his hearing on Wednesday that he supports vaccines, often in blunter terms and with more vigor than his previous public comments. But that rhetoric contradicted years of false statements he has made spreading misinformation about vaccines.
"News reports have claimed that I'm anti-vaccine or any industry. I am neither. I am pro-safety," Kennedy said in his opening statement.
He pledged, after a grilling Wednesday from Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, to "do nothing as HHS secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking" the measles and polio vaccines.
"I support the measles vaccine. I support the polio vaccine," Kennedy said.
Drilling down on Kennedy's shift on vaccines on Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont asked Kennedy about onesies sold on the website of an organization of which Kennedy is a founder, the nonprofit Children's Health Defense, which pursues anti-vaccine causes. The onesies were stamped with phrases such as "Unvaxxed, Unafraid" and "No Vax, No Problem."
![PHOTO: Sen. Bernie Sanders questions Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Kennedy's nomination to be Health and Human Services Secretary, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 29, 2025.](https://i.abcnewsfe.com/a/3fb9996a-183b-4054-b6cc-d27a8a7b0780/kennedy-hearing-29-rt-gmh-250129_1738172286735_hpEmbed_3x2.jpg)
"Can you tell us now that you will, now that you are pro-vaccine, that you're going to have your organization take these products off the market?" Sanders asked.
Kennedy said only that he had resigned from the board and holds "no power over that organization."
While Kennedy has, in the past, denied he is "anti-vaccine" and has said his children have been vaccinated, he has promoted views on vaccines that decades of evidence has refuted. Kennedy has openly questioned the widespread administration of both measles and polio vaccines, saying during a podcast interview last year that he would not take the measles vaccine himself and downplaying the deadliness of the disease by attributing measles-related deaths in Africa to "malnutrition," not the disease itself.
However, both measles and polio can be deadly. Before the measles vaccine was introduced in the United States, roughly 400 to 500 people died each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Before the polio vaccine was developed, the virus killed or paralyzed nearly half a million people worldwide each year in the mid-20th century, according to the World Health Organization.
Kennedy also expressed support during the hearing for the childhood vaccine schedule, which suggests what vaccines children should get and when.
"I'll support vaccines. I support the childhood schedule," Kennedy said Wednesday.
But he has frequently criticized the schedule. In a 2021 podcast interview, Kennedy said, “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, ‘Better not get him vaccinated.’”
Kennedy has falsely linked the vaccine schedule, and the number of vaccines children receive, to a rise in chronic disease, saying during a campaign event last year, "What I'm focused on is the bigger issue of chronic disease, and that is linked to the vaccine schedule in some cases, the explosion of chronic disease."
Childhood vaccines have steadily increased in recent decades as new shots have been approved following robust clinical trials on their safety and efficacy, increasing the number of diseases that are now preventable via vaccine, the CDC says.
According to the CDC, even if babies receive several vaccinations in one day, their immune systems are under significantly more pressure from the new bacteria and viruses they encounter daily in their environment at that age.
2. RFK Jr.'s refusal to acknowledge that vaccines don't cause autism puts GOP vote in jeopardy
Though Kennedy on Wednesday and Thursday broadly said that he would support vaccines as HHS secretary, senators who drilled down on Kennedy's past comments were dismayed by a refusal to acknowledge settled science, holding fast to dangerous claims.
Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a necessary Republican vote for Kennedy to secure the nomination, described Kennedy as “financially vested in finding fault with vaccines” and said he was still “struggling” with his vote.
Cassidy is a longtime doctor who helped to create a free vaccination program for children in his state after watching a young patient suffer liver failure. He is also the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and said he has constituents who credit Kennedy with their decision not to get vaccinated.
“Your past of undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments concerns me,” Cassidy said in his opening remarks. “Can I trust that that is now in the past? Can data and information change your opinion? Or will you only look for data supporting a predetermined conclusion? This is imperative.”
At issue was Kennedy’s repeated refusal throughout the hearing to say that vaccines were not linked to autism, while still insisting he supports vaccination.
At one point, Cassidy noted that studies involving 1.25 million kids found no confirmed link between autism and the measles vaccine.
Kennedy responded he was open to looking at that, but added, “There are other studies, as well, and I’d love to show those to you.”
“That is why I’ve been struggling with your nomination," Cassidy said. "I've approached [the issue] using the preponderance of evidence to reassure. And you have approached using selected evidence to cast doubt.”
Cassidy also described in stark terms the extraordinary pressure he is under, saying he supports President Donald Trump and his policies but worries that embracing vaccine hesitancy could “cost us,” he said, alluding to the Republican party.
Sanders, the ranking chair of the committee, picked up on Cassidy’s line of questioning about the debunked link between autism and vaccines, commenting on the rare show of bipartisan force. He prompted: “I asked you a simple question, Bobby. Studies all over the world say it does not. What do you think, Senator?”
“If you show me those studies, I will, absolutely, as I promised Chairman Cassidy, I will apologize,” Kennedy said.
For Sanders — much more clear on his “no” vote than Cassidy — that was disqualifying.
“That is a very troubling response, because the studies are there. Your job was to have looked at those studies as an applicant for this job,” he said.
3. After shifting abortion position, RFK Jr. promises to "implement [Trump's] policies"
When asked Wednesday about his views on abortion, which swung drastically throughout his campaign, Kennedy hemmed tightly to President Trump's position on the issue, saying he thinks "the states should control abortion."
Kennedy's own public stance on abortion has varied wildly throughout his presidential campaign, and he at times advocated for reproductive rights that would be in direct conflict with Trump's campaign promises.
"I agree with President Trump that every abortion is a tragedy. I agree with him that we cannot be a moral nation if we have 1.2 million abortions a year. I agree with him that the states should control abortion," Kennedy said on Wednesday.
Kennedy said he would support Trump in working to "end late-term abortions," a non-medical phrase used by the anti-abortion movement to describe abortions late in pregnancy, which the Guttmacher Institute says account for less than 1% of abortions and are frequently the result of complex medical issues.
Kennedy also vouched to protect "conscience exemptions," which would expand protections for health care providers who don't want to perform abortion procedures, allowing more providers to deny care.
"Forcing somebody to participate in a medical procedure as a provider that they believe is murder does not make any sense to me," Kennedy said.
Kennedy also committed to looking into mifepristone, the abortion pill that is used in nearly two-thirds of abortions nationwide. He said he would direct the Food and Drug Administration to look into the safety of the pill and consider rolling back telemedicine access to the pill -- both actions that could have wide-ranging impacts on access to the drug, which the FDA has determined safe to use as indicated and directed.
"President Trump has asked me to study the safety of mifepristone. He has not yet taken a stand on how to regulate it. Whatever he does, I will implement those policies," Kennedy said.
"I'm going to -- I serve at the pleasure of the president. I'm going to implement his policies," Kennedy said.
But as recently as March 2024, Kennedy told Reuters he thought it should be a woman's right to make a decision about abortion "throughout the pregnancy." He has also said he supports the same access and limitations that were provided by Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in all U.S. states.
Since Trump nominated him to lead HHS, Kennedy has faced stiff blowback from conservatives, notably former Vice President Mike Pence, who claim he is not sufficiently anti-abortion.
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Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire pushed Kennedy on his repeated shifts on the issue of reproductive rights.
"You have clearly stated in the past that bodily autonomy is one of your core values. The question is, do you stand for that value or not? When was it that you decided to sell out the values you've had your whole life in order to be given power by President Trump?" she said.
"Senator, I agree with President Trump that every abortion is a tragedy," Kennedy said.
4. RFK Jr.'s past comments come back to haunt him
Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado read aloud alleged past comments made by Kennedy, including unfounded claims about transgender children.
"Did you say that exposure to pesticides causes children to become transgender?" Bennet asked.
"No, I never said that," Kennedy replied.
However, Kennedy has repeated an unfounded conspiracy theory suggesting endocrine disruptors, including phthalates -- which make chemicals more durable -- and pesticides, can influence sexual orientation or gender identity.
"I want to just pursue just one question on these, you know, the other endocrine disruptors because our children now, you know, we're seeing these impacts that people suspect are very different than in ages past about sexual identification among children and sexual confusion, gender confusion," Kennedy said during an episode of his podcast in June 2022. "These kinds of issues that are very, very controversial today."
5. RFK Jr. shows a seemingly unclear understanding of Medicaid under HHS
Kennedy seemed to stumble when discussing aspects of the agency he would be tasked with running if he were to be confirmed as HHS secretary.
He claimed Medicaid, a federal health insurance program for disabled and low-income Americans, is “not working."
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"Most people who are on Medicaid are not happy. The premiums are too high. The deductibles are too high," Kennedy said during his hearing.
However, except in very narrow circumstances, there are no premiums or deductibles under Medicaid.
Kennedy also claimed that "almost nothing is studied" at the National Institutes of Health about the etiology, or the cause, of "our chronic disease epidemic."
There are several institutes and centers at the NIH dedicated to researching chronic diseases, as well as training health care professionals and disseminating information.