After per week of fast-moving shakeups on the nation’s well being company, Well being and Human Companies Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will come before the powerful Senate Finance Committee, which has oversight over his division, on Thursday for hours of questioning that’s positive to middle on his vaccine coverage.
It comes per week after the Meals and Drug Administration (FDA) significantly narrowed access to the COVID-19 vaccine, a transfer that precipitated a public fallout and ousting of the newly installed director of the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC) Susan Monarez. 4 high CDC officers additionally resigned in protest.
The brand new FDA approval for COVID pictures permits for people who find themselves aged 65 and older to get the vaccine, or youthful Individuals who’ve an underlying situation that places them at a better threat of extreme sickness from the virus.
Public well being officers and pharmacist teams have mentioned the change will make it harder for younger and wholesome folks to get the vaccine — ought to they nonetheless select to — and raises questions on the place they will get it or whether or not insurance coverage will cowl it.
Thursday would be the first time Kennedy has faced questions from senators since May, when he testified earlier than a Senate committee and a Home committee, defending the large cuts to the division’s workforce carried out in April.
Kennedy is predicted to tout the overhauls at HHS to date, which he has mentioned are geared toward eliminating bloated paperwork and conflicts of curiosity at public well being companies that get in the best way of “gold-standard science.”
Secretary of Well being and Human Companies Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks throughout a cupboard assembly with President Donald Trump within the Cupboard Room of the White Home in Washington, August 26, 2025.
Mandel Ngan/AFP through Getty Photographs
In a press release, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon mentioned Kennedy will use the listening to to “reaffirm his dedication to Make America Wholesome Once more: restoring gold-standard science at HHS, empowering sufferers with extra transparency, decisions and entry to care, and reestablishing belief in public well being.”
Whereas Republicans like Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo will try to maintain the focus on persistent illness and Kennedy’s “Make America Wholesome Once more” agenda, Democrats and even some Republicans are anticipated to push Kennedy for solutions on the FDA’s newest change in addition to an upcoming CDC assembly on vaccines, which may result in extra modifications to the nation’s vaccine coverage.
The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which discusses vaccine knowledge and makes suggestions for which vaccines Individuals ought to get and when, goes to weigh in on the FDA’s newest change, additional informing insurance coverage corporations and pharmacies of tips on how to perform the coverage.
However ACIP can also be going to debate a slate of various vaccines, together with the COVID vaccine; hepatitis B vaccines; the measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (MMRV) vaccine; and the Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccine.
In June, Kennedy replaced all 17 sitting members of the committee with his own hand-selected members, together with some who’ve expressed vaccine-skeptic views fervently sought to discredit the security and efficacy of mRNA COVID vaccines.
Chatting with reporters on Tuesday, Republican Sen. Invoice Cassidy of Louisiana, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, mentioned he had spoken to different members of his caucus who agreed that they wanted to research what potential modifications Kennedy and the CDC committee have been weighing to the childhood vaccine suggestions.
“The problem is about youngsters’s well being, and there are rumors, allegations, that youngsters’s well being, which is at concern right here, could be endangered by a number of the selections which might be presupposed to be made. I do not know what’s true,” Cassidy mentioned. “I do know that we have to get there. And I’ve talked to members of my Republican Caucus, a number of of them. They’ve agreed with me that we have to get at it.”
Cassidy, who pushed Kennedy throughout his affirmation hearings to concern assist for vaccines and publicly struggled over his vote for him, has tasked the committee he chairs, the Senate Committee on Well being, Training, Labor and Pensions (HELP), to do “oversight” of Monarez’ ousting, he wrote on X final week.
Cassidy maintained that he is not “presupposing somebody is correct or fallacious.” “I simply know we have got to determine it out,” Cassidy mentioned.
Cassidy has additionally known as for the CDC assembly to be postponed till “important oversight has been performed,” citing “critical allegations” in regards to the “assembly agenda, membership and lack of scientific course of.”
Sen. Invoice Cassidy votes aye on the ultimate second because the Senate Finance Committee holds a roll name vote to approve the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to steer the Well being and Human Companies Division, on the Capitol, Feb. 4, 2025.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who’s on the HELP committee with Cassidy, instructed reporters on Wednesday that she is “involved” and “alarmed” by Monarez’s firing.
“I do know that the president has the appropriate to fireplace whomever he needs in relation to that form of appointment, however I do not see any justification for it,” Collins mentioned.
Monarez, who was within the job for less than a month, was pushed out after she declined to fireplace high officers and assist Kennedy’s vaccine coverage modifications in a gathering with the secretary early final week, a supply accustomed to her conversations with the secretary instructed ABC Information.
“When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fireplace devoted well being specialists, she selected defending the general public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been focused,” Monarez’s attorneys Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell mentioned in a press release late final week.
White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt instructed reporters President Donald Trump had fired Monarez as a result of she “was not aligned with the president’s mission to make America wholesome once more.”
“It was President Trump who was overwhelmingly reelected on November 5,” Leavitt mentioned. “This lady has by no means obtained a vote in her life, and the president has the authority to fireplace those that are usually not aligned together with his mission.”
Different CDC officers who adopted Monarez out the door included:
- Deb Houry, Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director for Program and Science
- Dr. Dan Jernigan, Director of the Nationwide Middle for Rising and Zoonotic Infectious Ailments
- Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, Director of the Nationwide Middle for Immunization and Respiratory Ailments
- Dr. Jennifer Layden, Director for the Workplace of Public Well being Knowledge, Surveillance, and Know-how.
The officers cited the political local weather and a refusal to simply accept science that did not align with Kennedy’s beliefs.
Daskalakis, in an interview on ABC News’ “This Week”, mentioned he thought the modifications Kennedy has to date made are “the tip of the iceberg.”
Along with the current FDA modifications for the COVID vaccine, Kennedy has additionally canceled up to $500 million in analysis and improvement for mRNA vaccines and altered the COVID vaccine suggestions for youngsters and pregnant ladies.
“I imply, from my vantage level as a physician who’s taken the Hippocratic oath, I solely see hurt coming. I could also be fallacious. However primarily based on what I am seeing, primarily based on what I’ve heard with the brand new members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, or ACIP, they’re actually transferring in an ideological course the place they wish to see the undoing of vaccination,” Daskalakis mentioned.
Federal staff wait in line to entry to the Mary E. Switzer Memorial Constructing that homes the US Division of Well being and Human Companies in Washington, D.C., April 1, 2025.
Roberto Schmidt/AFP through Getty Photographs
Kennedy, when he testified in his confirmation hearings to be well being secretary in January, denied that he was anti-vaccine and mentioned he helps “the childhood schedule” for vaccinations.
“I’m pro-vaccine. I’m going to assist the vaccine program. I would like youngsters to be wholesome, and I am coming in right here to do away with the conflicts of curiosity throughout the company, guarantee that now we have gold normal, evidence-based science,” Kennedy mentioned.
When pressed by Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, Kennedy dedicated to supporting the measles and polio vaccines.
“Senator, I assist the measles vaccine, I assist the polio vaccine. I’ll do nothing as HHS secretary that makes it tough or discourages folks from taking both of these vaccines,” Kennedy mentioned.
