By Dan Diamond, Fenit Nirappil, Lauren Weber, Rachel Roubein · The Washington Post (c) 2025
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursdaystruggled to answer questions about Medicare, refused to rule out a debunked link between autism and vaccines, and said he would entertain conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, in a second day of hearings as he tries to convince the Senate to confirm him as the nation’s top health official.
The former environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist, who is seeking to lead the nearly $2 trillion Department of Health and Human Services, faced sustained pressure from Democrats and the Republican chairman of the Senate’s health panel regarding his years of debunked assertions about vaccines.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), a physician and the panel’s chairman – who has emerged as a pivotal figure in deciding whether Kennedy’s nomination will succeed – opened the hearing by recounting his experience treating a young woman fighting for her life after contracting hepatitis B, a vaccine-preventable disease.
“It was the worst day of my medical career,” Cassidy said, adding that he has spent years trying to prevent children from dying from vaccine-preventable diseases – and that he worries Kennedy would set those efforts back. He closed the three-hour hearing by urging Kennedy to announce that there is no link between vaccines and autism.
Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), also seen as potential swing votes, raised concerns about Kennedy’s rhetoric on vaccines.
Kennedy denied being anti-vaccine and said he was open to reviewing further data about the benefits of immunization – a statement reflecting his long-standing defense when pressed on his debunked vaccine claims. He also pledged not to undermine vaccine confidence, although several lawmakers questioned if he would keep that commitment.
“I’m going to restore trust, and that will restore vaccine uptake,” Kennedy said, in response to Collins’s question about declining childhood vaccination rates. He also committed to work on priorities raised by Collins and Murkowski, such as combating Lyme disease, which afflicts residents of Maine and other Northeastern states and ensure health services for Native Alaskans.
In his testimony, Kennedy sought to keep the focus on his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, which promises to tackle the root causes of childhood illness, reduce the influence of the drug and food industries on regulations, and tackle public health problems such as obesity.
“We’ll reverse the chronic disease epidemic and put the nation back on the road to good health,” Kennedy said.
Republicans on the panel generally praised Kennedy as a brave truth-teller.
Thursday’s appearance, which followed Wednesday’s hearing in front of the Senate’s finance panel, was held in a smaller room and attracted less attention than Kennedy’s first day of testimony, which was repeatedly interrupted by protesters, jeers and applause from the crowd, and even a bathroom break.
Unlike the Senate’s finance panel, the health committee does not have the power to advance Kennedy’s nomination – but the hearing was a major opportunity to affect the prospects of his confirmation. If Kennedy does not win support from any Democrats, he can afford to lose only three Republican votes in the closely divided Senate, where he needs 50 votes to be confirmed.
Lawmakers have said for months that they had worries about Kennedy’s stance on vaccines, given the prospect that he will soon lead the agency that oversees the nation’s vaccine supply. Democrats on Thursday said they were unhappy that Kennedy evaded their questions about vaccines and other scientific interventions rather than answer them directly. Researchers have extensively examined the rise of autism, attributing it to environmental and genetic factors and increased access to early diagnoses and interventions.
“When people tried to pin you down on a point, you said, ‘Show me the data, or bring me the studies,’” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin). “I want to suggest that data is out there and those studies are out there.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), who serves as the top Democrat on the panel, praised Kennedy’s focus on chronic disease and the “Make America Healthy Again” branding but said the doubts he has sown about vaccines threatened to put Americans at risk.
“The evidence is there … vaccines do not cause autism. You agree with that?” Sanders asked Kennedy, who didn’t immediately provide an answer, prompting Sanders to swiftly interrupt him.
“It’s a simple question,” Sanders thundered at Kennedy.
Some Republicans, meanwhile, echoed Kennedy’s rhetoric about the need to question vaccines and seek more data about their benefits.
“My son and his wife have done their research about vaccines,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama), adding that his new granddaughter would not be a “pincushion. We’re not going to allow that to happen.”
Sens. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) and Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma) pointed to the growing roster of vaccines for children and said people should be allowed to ask whether that could be linked to the rising rates of autism – a link that medical experts have repeatedly debunked.
“My God, if we didn’t question science, where would we be today?” said Mullin, who suggested that Democrats didn’t want to praise Kennedy because of his alliance with President Donald Trump. He also asked why lawmakers were unwilling to explore the causes of autism.
The comments drew a sharp rebuke from Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-New Hampshire), who shared her own anxieties as the mother of an adult son who lives with cerebral palsy.
“The day does not go by when I don’t think about what did I do when I was pregnant with him that might have caused the hydrocephalus that has so impacted his life,” Hassan said in emotional remarks. “So please do not suggest that anybody in this body, of either political party, doesn’t want to know what the cause of autism is.”
Several Republicans stressed the benefits of vaccines. “These are measures that we should be proud of as a country,” said Murkowski, referencing Trump’s efforts to accelerate coronavirus vaccines.
Cassidy, a gastroenterologist, praised the benefits of childhood vaccines after Paul questioned them, including the hepatitis B vaccine.
“The vaccine on Day 1 of life prevents chronic hepatitis B 95 percent of the time,” Cassidy said.
Cassidy, alsoa member of the finance panel, appeared to confound Kennedy on Wednesday by asking direct questions about his plans for Medicare and Medicaid, which would fall under his purview. Hassan followed up Thursday by pressing Kennedy to explain key aspects of the roughly $1 trillion Medicare program, such as defining the differences between Medicare Parts A, B and C.
“Medicare Part A is mainly for primary care or physicians,” Kennedy responded. Hassan swiftly corrected him, noting that Medicare Part A provides health coverage for older Americans’ inpatient hospital care, and that Kennedy was thinking of Part B, which provides coverage for outpatient care.
Some Democrats had worried that lawmakers failed to use the first hearing to pose straightforward questions about how Kennedy would lead a government agency that touches Americans’ everyday lives.
“We kind of missed the mark,” Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vermont), a member of the finance panel, said in a brief interview after Wednesday’s hearing, praising Cassidy’s questions on Medicare and Medicaid as a model for how Democrats should focus.
“Kennedy was clueless,” Welch said, adding that he worried Democrats spent too much time rehashing Kennedy’s criticism of coronavirus vaccines and not enough on Kennedy’s qualifications to lead the health agency.
Democrats and some Republicans also invoked Kennedy’s past controversial claims, a strategy that lawmakers followed in the first hearing.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia), after reflecting on Wednesday’s plane crash near Reagan National Airport, pivoted to another tragedy: the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying they were an example of Kennedy’s willingness to undermine trust in government. He displayed a social media post from last year in which Kennedy refused to rule out conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“Virginians know what happened on 9/11,” Kaine said. “We don’t need folks giving oxygen to conspiracy theories about 9/11.”