Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced more than five hours of intense questioning from both sides of the aisle on Wednesday during his first set of hearings since his confirmation in February.
Members of the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee held hearings with Kennedy. The secretary was slated to discuss President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal, but the protracted hearings touched a host of issues, from abortion to measles.
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Democrats on the Appropriations Committee referenced Trump’s so-called “skinny budget” multiple times, particularly its cuts to the National Institutes of Health and $500 million in discretionary allotments for Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
Kennedy said during both hearings on Wednesday that reining in federal spending and the budget deficit is a health issue in and of itself.
“If we don’t staunch this unsustainable hemorrhage, we will ransom our children to bankruptcy, servitude, and disastrous health consequences,” Kennedy said during both hearings. “Yes, an exploding debt is a social determinant of health.”
Senate HELP Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and House Appropriations health subcommittee Chairman Robert Aderholt (R-AL) struggled to rein in their members to keep time and maintain composure during the several heated exchanges with the secretary.
Here are the other most important moments from Wednesday’s hearings.
HHS cuts and reorganization
Multiple representatives and senators pressed Kennedy regarding cuts to HHS, including the firing of about 20,000 employees. Kennedy said he tried to make sure changes were as careful as possible.
“Our agency was asked to make very, very serious budget cuts that were going to be painful, and some of them should not have been made,” Kennedy said in response to questions from Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ).
Kennedy said Department of Government Efficiency cuts to HHS had to be made very quickly to prevent inertia. He said that many administrations have tried to rein in the expansive department but have failed because they did not take swift action.
“It was more important to take decisive action quickly that would eliminate the metastasizing agency which was growing and growing as our health declined,” Kennedy said.
The secretary deflected questions related to his sweeping plan to reorganize several agencies under the HHS umbrella, saying his lawyers have instructed him not to answer such questions in light of a temporary injunction from a federal judge in the Northern District of California pausing all initiatives undertaken across the Trump administration to reorganize the federal workforce.
Kennedy told Sen. Rodger Marshall (R-KS) that the Biden HHS added 20,000 employees and that the department “grew 38% over the last four years.” The secretary said one of the changes he is implementing is to try to get the department “back to pre-COVID levels.”
The secretary also alluded to partisan individuals within the department being responsible for negative press about the reorganization and modernization efforts across HHS.
Kennedy told Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) of delayed checks being sent to Head Start preschools dependent on HHS funding that there “were people who wanted to make the Trump administration look bad.”
Ben & Jerry’s founder among protesters removed from Senate hearing
Ben and Jerry’s ice cream co-founder Ben Cohen was among the handful of protesters who were thrown out of the hearing Wednesday afternoon by Capitol Police.
“Congress sends the bombs that kill children in Gaza, and it pays it with cuts to Medicaid,” Cohen said, interrupting the hearing.
Cohen was escorted out of the hearing room in handcuffs by Capitol Police.
The ice cream company co-founder, well known for his left-wing activism, was referencing a proposed restructuring of the Medicaid program included by Republicans in a sweeping fiscal overhaul that they hope to pass through the budget reconciliation process.
When asked about proposed Medicaid changes, such as work requirements, that Democrats argue will reduce the number of enrollees, Kennedy said that it was a congressional issue and not one incorporated into the president’s budget.
Other protesters were kicked out of the hearing room after chanting and holding up signs saying that Kennedy “kills people with AIDS,” referencing his statements that Kennedy made in his 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci, which supports discredited theories that HIV does not cause AIDS.
“That was a made-for-C-SPAN moment,” Cassidy said once the disruption was cleared, thanking Capitol Police.
HIV and AIDS research was not discussed during the Senate hearing following the protest.
Vaccines and measles
Kennedy, a longtime proponent of the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism, faced several hard questions regarding vaccines during both the House and Senate hearings.
Kennedy reiterated during the Senate hearing that he believes the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine is the most effective means to prevent measles infection, but he refused to say that, without hesitation, they are safe.
“During my confirmations, I said I would tell the truth, that I would have radical transparency,” Kennedy said. “I’m going to tell the truth about everything we know and we don’t know. I’m not going to just tell people everything is safe and effective if I know that there’s issues.”
Kennedy said about the measles outbreak that started in February in West Texas during his House hearing that “we are doing a better job at CDC today than any other nation in the world.”
As of Friday, the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics, there have been 1,001 confirmed cases across 30 states and New York City, a separate jurisdiction in CDC data. There have been approximately 150 hospitalizations and three deaths in connection with the national outbreak.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) highlighted that Kennedy’s claim that the U.S. is doing better than other countries comes from a comparison to the World Health Organization’s European statistical area, which includes Eastern Europe and several western Asian countries that have low measles vaccination rates.
“If you compare us to Western Europe, countries that we often compare ourselves to, like Great Britain, they have seen no measles deaths this year,” DeLauro said.
Kennedy said that both Canada and Mexico have higher numbers of measles cases despite significantly lower populations than the U.S. Kennedy also said that Western Europe “has about 6,000, which is 10 times the number that we have.”
Abortion
Abortion was discussed during the more than five hours of testimony, even though it was not the main focus of either event.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) questioned Kennedy about whether the Food and Drug Administration would conduct new safety reviews of the abortion drug mifepristone after a new study found the complication rate to be 22% higher than initially estimated by the drug safety agency.
Kennedy told Hawley that he has asked FDA Commissioner Marty Makary to do a “complete review and to report back” about the safety data on mifepristone. He added that policy changes regarding the ability for healthcare providers to ship the drug to patients in the mail will “ultimately go through the White House.”
The secretary also said during the House hearing that funding for domestic and foreign nongovernmental organizations, including Title X family planning funding, has been cut for entities that are unable or unwilling to differentiate between abortion and nonabortion family planning services.
“I don’t believe that our nation can live up to its role as a moral authority around the globe when we have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of abortions per year in our country,” Kennedy said.
The secretary said that “the administration is now fed up” with nongovernmental organizations’ lack of clarity on the use of federal funding to provide abortions through the Title X program.
“We have said that as soon as they differentiate that we would begin refunding them,” Kennedy said.
NIH research
Much of both hearings focused on cuts to NIH research funding for universities across the country and the approximately 40% decrease in funding for the agency in Trump’s proposed fiscal 2026 budget.
Kennedy repeatedly told representatives and senators that he would spend whatever money Congress appropriated for next year’s budget, and he said the cuts to NIH would force the agency to “do more with less.”
“Seventy percent of the research funding of the world on biotech and biomedical research is coming from my agency, and we understand that it’s our aspiration as the United States to remain the hub of biotechnology around the globe,” he said.
Kennedy said the NIH’s research standards have slipped “because of the longevity of some of the leadership” and that the agency should focus on promoting younger scientists rather than the “old boys’ network.”
The secretary also highlighted that many of the cuts to NIH research proposed were to eliminate wasted spending on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and grants to foreign scientists from adversarial countries, including China.
During the House hearing, Kennedy again denied claims that the NIH canceled the 30-year Women’s Health Study.
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The secretary said the initial New York Times report about the termination of the program was “really badly inaccurate” and that NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya has done a great deal of his academic research using the WHS database.
“We have 42 maternal health programs throughout the agencies,” Kennedy said. “We’re going to continue that commitment. That’s a multibillion-dollar commitment.”