WASHINGTON — U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. highlighted nutrition and food safety in remarks before lawmakers Thursday but largely avoided questions about his efforts to overhaul the nationwide vaccination policy.
Kennedy also omitted mention of his work to identify the causes of autism from remarks at the first of his two congressional hearings Thursday, the latest sign that the nation’s top health official is sidestepping some of his most controversial positions ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters the White House recently urged health officials to redirect policy discussions toward more popular topics, as President Donald Trump and his Republican Party seek to shore up support for their slim majorities in Congress.
Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, faced a setback last month after a court ruling derailed key elements of his efforts to rewrite U.S. vaccine policy and revamp a CDC advisory panel on immunizations.
He appeared Thursday before the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee and is scheduled to appear later in the day before the House Appropriations Committee’s health subcommittee to discuss the health component of the Trump administration’s 2027 budget proposal. Next week he faces five more hearings before House and Senate panels.
Budget and vaccine policy pushback
The budget requests $111 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services run by Kennedy, a 12.5% cut from current levels, including a $5 billion cut to the National Institutes of Health and elimination of a low-income energy assistance program. Several key Republicans, including Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins of Maine, have criticized the cuts as unnecessary.
Ahead of Kennedy’s Thursday hearings, Democratic lawmakers rallied at the U.S. Capitol against the proposed budget cuts.
Democrats on the Ways and Means panel pressed Kennedy on rising health care costs, his undermining of confidence in vaccines, management of fraud and his stewardship of the nation’s largest measles outbreak in decades.
Mike Thompson of California asked Kennedy if he has a medical or public health degree, to which Kennedy responded he does not.
“Yet you are overruling doctors, scientists and public health experts across our country. Your dangerous conspiracy theories are undermining safe and effective vaccines,” Thompson said.
“Mr. Secretary, you shouldn’t be in this office,” he added.
Kennedy got into a heated exchange with California’s Linda Sánchez over the spread of measles, during which he acknowledged that vaccination could have saved the life of an unvaccinated child who died from the disease in Texas last year. He did not answer questions from Sánchez about ending a CDC campaign encouraging vaccination.
Children’s health emphasis
In his opening remarks before the committee, Kennedy emphasized achievements under his “Make America Healthy Again” initiative and other administration priorities, including efforts on nutrition, food safety, drug prices, fraud prevention and cutting children’s access to gender-affirming care.
“We stand at a generational turning point, our children of the sickest generation in modern history, and decades of failed policy captured agencies and profit-driven systems have caused it. Parents across the country demanded change, and we are delivering it,” Kennedy said.
Navigating competing constituencies
The Trump administration faces a delicate balancing act, standing by millions of MAHA supporters who helped reelect the president in 2024 but are now upset by Trump’s order to boost pesticide production, while managing low support among the wider public for Kennedy’s anti-vaccine platform.
Kennedy, who co-founded the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, has during his tenure pushed to reduce the number of recommended childhood vaccines, overhauled the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel of independent vaccine experts, and pledged to identify the cause of autism.
Kennedy and his supporters have repeatedly linked autism to vaccines, a theory long debunked by science, at times with Trump’s explicit backing.
Pollsters and strategists expect health care costs to be a primary issue for voters, who will decide control of Congress in November.
Story by Ahmed Aboulenein and Leah Douglas.
