RFK Jr.’s Senate Testimony Is Haunted by His Track Record

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced two Senate committees this week in his bid to be President Donald Trump’s secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Senators were alternately sympathetic and combative toward Kennedy’s views on health during his confirmation hearings on Wednesday and Thursday.

Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and former Democrat, ran in the 2024 presidential race but suspended his campaign in August and endorsed President Trump. An outspoken vaccine critic who has previously promoted the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism, Kennedy has toned down his rhetoric in recent months while doubling down on his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. Whether the old Kennedy or the new one would be leading HHS, though, seemed to be top of mind for Democrats and at least a few Republicans.

Kennedy tried to assure senators that he would promote vaccines as head of HHS. “News reports have claimed that I’m anti-vaccine or anti-industry. I am neither. I am pro-safety,” he told members of the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday. But on Thursday, when he went in front of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, he did not directly answer the question of whether he still believes vaccines cause autism.

During the two days of hearings, he also distanced himself from previous pro-choice statements he made as a Democrat. He said that he agrees with the president that “states should control abortion” and that he would investigate the safety of the abortion medication mifepristone, despite decades of evidence showing that the drug is safe.

Kennedy floundered on questions about Medicare and Medicaid, which fall under HHS, when asked about specifics of those programs. Yet he found common ground with senators on both the left and right over his plans to promote nutrition, scrutinize chemical additives in food, and put more research effort into chronic diseases.

In his opening remarks both days, Kennedy focused on his Make America Healthy Again mission to tackle chronic diseases. “Today, Americans’ overall health is in grievous condition,” he said on Wednesday, noting rising rates of obesity, diabetes, and cancer. “The United States has worse health than any other developed nation, yet we spend far more on health care.” On Thursday, he reaffirmed his commitment to address the chronic disease epidemic, saying, “There’s never been an HHS secretary who came in to do this.”

Throughout more than eight hours of hearings spread out over two days, senators peppered Kennedy with questions about how he would handle a variety of other health issues that would be under his purview as head of HHS, including HIV/AIDS relief, rural hospitals, mental health care, and bird flu. On those issues, he said supports foreign assistance for controlling the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the use of AI and telehealth in resource-strapped rural hospitals, medications to treat addiction, and the development of vaccines for H5N1 avian influenza.

But Kennedy’s prior record of discrediting vaccines and his connection to the anti-vaccine movement was a major sticking point for Democrats and a handful of Republicans. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts suggested Wednesday that Kennedy could undercut vaccines by making changes to the country’s immunization schedule. In response, Kennedy said, “I support vaccines. I support the childhood schedule.” I will do that. The only thing I want is good science, and that’s it.”

Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine on Thursday also stressed the importance of vaccines and asked Kennedy to promise that he would use his position to promote confidence in them. “We can’t be going backward without our vaccines,” Murkowski said.

A top Republican, Senator Bill Cassidy from Louisiana, said in Thursday’s hearing he was “struggling” with Kennedy’s nomination. “As a physician who’s been involved in immunization programs, I’ve seen the benefits of vaccinations. I know they save lives,” he said. “Your past of undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments concerns me. 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?”

That past wasn’t all that long ago. Kennedy’s claims associating autism with vaccines go back years, but as recently as 2023 he said in an interview with Fox News, “I do believe that autism does come from vaccines.” Many large studies, however, have found no connection. In a podcast appearance the same year, Kennedy said, “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.”

Kennedy has previously raised doubts about the safety of the Covid-19 vaccines and HPV shot and questioned the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines for when children should get vaccinated. From 2015 to 2023, he chaired Children’s Health Defense, an activist organization that has spread vaccine misinformation and filed lawsuits challenging vaccines.

Kennedy attempted to walk back many of those controversial remarks this week, saying some of them were taken out of context, but he repeatedly dodged the question of whether vaccines cause autism when grilled by Cassidy and Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont. Instead, Kennedy asked why the CDC hasn’t done more to investigate the causes of autism. “Why don’t we know the answer after 30 years of a steady rise in the autism rate? Why don’t we know the answer to that? We should know the answer.”

In fact, researchers think there is no single cause of autism but believe a combination of genetic factors and environmental ones, such as exposure to pollutants or viral infections, are at play. The increase in autism rates is likely due to greater awareness of the neurodevelopmental disorder and more testing in recent years.

For many Republican senators, Kennedy’s prior comments on vaccines did not seem to be an issue. Senator Rand Paul, a Republican and eye doctor from Kentucky, chose to not ask Kennedy any questions on Thursday and instead came to his defense. “The discussion over vaccines is so oversimplified and dumbed down that we never really get to real truths,” he said. “We don’t know what causes autism, so we should be more humble in what we say.”

Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma echoed Paul’s sentiments, saying, “I don’t understand why my colleagues all of a sudden say we can’t question science.” Tommy Tuberville of Alabama said that his son and daughter-in-law have “done their research on vaccines” and that his granddaughter “won’t be a pincushion.”

It’s not clear from his confirmation hearings which Kennedy the American people would get as HHS secretary—the one that would erode public trust in vaccines or the one who openly supports them. And despite his reasonable, bipartisan positions on obesity and chronic diseases, his confirmation could hinge on the vaccine question.

The Senate Finance Committee is expected to vote next week on whether to advance Kennedy’s nomination to the full Senate, which will make the final decision on his confirmation. If confirmed, Kennedy would lead a vast agency with a $1.7 trillion budget that includes the CDC, Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.