Republican senators are sending clear signs of disapproval and unhappiness with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., making it plain to President Trump that they want the administration to address the chaos that Kennedy has caused by trying to rewrite the nation’s vaccine policies.
GOP senators have stopped short of calling on Kennedy to resign and haven’t yet said they regret voting for him in February, but they want him to back off efforts to change vaccine policy recommendations without sound scientific backing as the administration faces a growing public backlash.
Kennedy received an unusual admonishment from Senate Republican Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), an orthopedic surgeon, when he testified before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday.
“I support vaccines. I’m a doctor. Vaccines work,” said Barrasso, the Senate’s No. 2-ranking Republican leader.
“Secretary Kennedy, in your confirmation hearings, you promised to uphold the highest standards for vaccines,” he said. “Since then, I’ve grown deeply concerned.
Barrasso pointed to a national measles outbreak, the sudden ouster of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez, and questions raised by the leadership of the National Institute of Health over mRNA vaccines as raising troubling questions.
“Americans don’t know who to rely on,” he said. “If we’re going to make America health again, we can’t allow public health to be undermined.”
Barrasso said there “are real concerns’ that safe, proven vaccines for serious diseases such as measles and hepatitis B could now be in jeopardy.
Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who attended the hearing, said Kennedy’s policy changes have made it tougher for people to get vaccines.
He read aloud a social media post by conservative commentator Erick Erickson who said that his wife, who was diagnosed with cancer, couldn’t get a vaccine at CVS.
“I would say, effectively, we’re denying people vaccines,” Cassidy bluntly told Kennedy.
Cassidy then grilled the Cabinet official over his past statements and actions as the former lead attorney for Children’s Health Defense, a non-profit group that questions the safety of vaccines.
He drew Kennedy into a contradiction by asking him whether he agreed that Trump deserves a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed, the government-backed initiative that developed the COVID-19 vaccine during Trump’s first term.
When Kennedy replied, “Absolutely,” the senator pounced.
“But you just told Sen. Bennet that the Covid vaccine killed more people than Covid,” Cassidy pointed out.
“As lead attorney for the Children’s Health Defense, you engaged in multiple lawsuits attempting to restrict access to the Covid vaccine. Again, it surprises me that you think so highly of Operation Warp Speed when as an attorney you attempted to restrict access,” Cassidy said.
Cassidy declined to say after the hearing whether or not he still has “confidence” in Kennedy’s ability to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
“I will let the exchange today speak for itself,” he said, noting that the Senate Health Committee is going through a “process” to determine whether the leadership at HHS is putting political objectives ahead of science.
“We’re in a process in the HELP Committee, I’m not prejudging. It’s about children’s health, it’s incredibly important, and about radical transparency. So we’ll go through our HELP process and then we’ll come to conclusions after that,” he said.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), another member of the Finance panel, challenged Kennedy for not sticking to his earlier promises to senators to empower the scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and CDC to do their jobs without political interference and not to make it more difficult for people to get vaccines.
“I do also believe that some of your statements seem to contradict what you said in the prior hearing. You said you’re going to empower the scientists at HHS to do their job, I’d just like to see evidence where you’ve done that,” Tillis said.
Tillis noted that Kennedy also earlier pledged to senators to do nothing to make it difficult or discourage people from taking vaccines.
“There seem to be several reports that would seem to refute that,” he said.
The North Carolina senator said Kennedy’s decision to fire CDC Director Susan Monarez, to cancel mRNA research contracts, and to fire all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) was “contradictory” to his pledge to senators earlier this year “not to impose” his “beliefs” about vaccines on the nation’s health agencies.
Tillis aired his concerns about Kennedy’s leadership in a long statement delivered at the hearing and said he would follow up by submitted questions for the record to Kennedy and his staff.
He said he wants more information about Kennedy’s plan to reduce the Department of Health and Human Services’ workforce by 24 percent and whether they have “a structured plan.”
He also wants to scrutinize Kennedy’s claim that he pushed out scientists because they “lied.”
“I’m going to get to the bottom of it,” he pledged.
Tillis questioned whether Kennedy is too committed to his skeptical view of vaccines to consider alternative viewpoints objectively.
“He’s not a scientist, he’s a trial lawyer,” Tillis noted. “Trial lawyers are naturally driven to present the information that helps their case. My question is, ‘Is he fairly considering other information that could undermine his case to come up with a balanced decision?’”
Asked if Kennedy can stay in his job, Tillis replied, “I’m going to be asking a series of questions.”
“If I get no answer, I’m going to assume the worst-case scenario,” he warned.
Polls show that Kennedy’s management of the nation’s health agencies is becoming a bigger political problem for Republicans.
An Economist/YouGov poll of 1,691 adults nationwide found that just 26 percent of respondents said they “somewhat” trust Kennedy’s medical advice while 48 percent said they distrust him.
A CBS News/YouGov poll found that 74 percent of U.S. adults say that government health agencies should make vaccines more available while 39 percent of respondents say that Kennedy’s policies are making vaccines less available. Only 9 percent of U.S. adults said Kennedy is making vaccines more available.
The survey of 2,344 adults found that Kennedy has a 45 percent job approval rating and a 55 percent disapproval rating.
Republican senators’ views of Kennedy are souring compared to when almost the entire GOP conference voted to confirm him in February. Former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was the only Republican to vote against his nomination.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on Wednesday vented his frustration with the chaos at the CDC following Monarez’s sudden termination as director less than a month after the Senate confirmed her.
“Honestly, he’s got to take responsibility,” Thune told reporters for Semafor and Politico, referring to Kennedy. “We confirm these people, we go through a lot of work to get them confirmed, and they’re in office a month?”
Two other key members of the Senate Health Committee — Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) — declined to comment on Kennedy’s performance Thursday.
Murkowski said broadly she wasn’t answering media questions and Collins said she didn’t have a chance to view the hearing or its highlights.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back on the criticism of Kennedy’s leadership in a social media post Thursday afternoon.
“Secretary @RobertKennedyJr is taking flak because he’s over the target,” she posted on X. “The Trump Administration is addressing root causes of chronic disease, embracing transparency in government and championing gold-standard science. Only the Democrats could attack that commonsense effort.”
Vice President JD Vance also defended Kennedy but his push back appeared more directed at Democrats than fellow Republicans.
“When I see all these senators trying to lecture and ‘gotcha’ Bobby Kennedy today, all I can think is: You all support off-label, untested, and irreversible hormonal ‘therapies’ for children, mutilating our kids and enriching big pharma,” Vance posted on X.
“You’re full of s‑‑‑ and everyone knows it,” he declared.