PinnedUpdated Sept. 4, 2025, 9:45 a.m. ETRobert F. Kennedy Jr. will appear before a Senate panel on Thursday to defend his record as President Trump’s health secretary, with members of both parties expected to grill him on his vaccine policy and whether he misled them in his confirmation hearings.When Mr. Kennedy appeared before the Senate Finance Committee in January, he repeatedly promised to “do nothing as H.H.S. secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking” vaccines. Since then, he has installed skeptics to guide vaccine policy, restricted access to Covid-19 vaccines, canceled grants and contracts for vaccine development and given a lukewarm endorsement of the measles vaccine.“He’s got to reconcile what he said during his confirmation process with what we’ve seen over the past few months, particularly on vaccine policy,” said Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, a member of the committee that is reconvening for Thursday’s hearing.Lawmakers were rattled last week when the White House fired Susan Monarez, the C.D.C. director whom Mr. Kennedy once endorsed. Her lawyers called the dismissal unlawful and “a warning to every American: Our evidence-based systems are being undermined from within.” On Thursday, she published an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, accusing Mr. Kennedy of “a deliberate effort to weaken America’s public-health system and vaccine protections.”Dr. Monarez’s firing plunged the C.D.C., the United States’ premier public health agency, deeper into turmoil. Experts and former high-ranking agency officials said they feared the C.D.C. was losing its legitimacy, with lasting consequences for public health.Here’s what else to know:Florida: On Wednesday, Florida officials announced theirs would be the first state to end all vaccination requirements for children attending school, a long-sought goal of the medical freedom movement that Mr. Kennedy leads.Kennedy’s defense: In an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Mr. Kennedy wrote that his actions would restore trust in the C.D.C., blaming its failures on “politicized science, bureaucratic inertia and mission creep.” He said he aimed to “restore the C.D.C.’s focus on infectious disease, invest in innovation, and rebuild trust through integrity and transparency.”The hearing: The official focus of the hearing, which was planned before Dr. Monarez was fired, is President Trump’s 2026 budget for the Department of Health and Human Services, which Mr. Kennedy leads. But the C.D.C. and vaccines were expected to dominate the proceedings, and Mr. Kennedy also is expected to face questions about other programs, including Mr. Trump’s plan to not renew expiring tax credits that have helped millions of people buy health insurance under the program known as Obamacare.Sept. 4, 2025, 10:03 a.m. ETA big crowd has gathered outside the Senate Finance Committee hearing room. Kennedy has arrived. People inside the hearing room could hear shouts of “We Love You Bobby!” from the hallway.But there were plenty of Kennedy detractors as well, including a group from Doctors for America, wearing white lab coats with stickers that read FIRE RFK, and a 25-year-old woman who was engaged in a spirited debate with an older woman over the value of vaccination. The 25-year-old, Laura Williams, said she was not vaccinated until she went to college because her mother “fell into a lot of the research” — and here, she used air quotes — that Kennedy cites.Kennedy has entered the hearing room and is greeting senators. He is about to be sworn in.Sept. 4, 2025, 9:53 a.m. ETSusan Monarez, ousted last week as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, launched a broadside against Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who pushed her out because she refused to accede to his demands on vaccine policy.In an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal, she accused Kennedy of leading “a deliberate effort to weaken America’s public-health system and vaccine protections.” She cited his decision to dismiss all 17 vaccine experts who advised the C.D.C. and replace them with vaccine skeptics. “Once trusted experts are removed and advisory bodies are stacked, the results are predetermined,” she wrote. “That isn’t reform. It is sabotage.”Kennedy will appear before the Senate Finance Committee at 10 a.m., where he is expected to face a grilling from members of both parties. Some Democrats have called for his resignation, and some Republicans are for the first time expressing unease with his leadership.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York TimesVideoInside the Turmoil at the C.D.C.Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s assault on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may usher in harsh consequences for public health, experts fear. Apoorva Mandavilli, a science and global health reporter at The New York Times, describes what’s happened at the agency and what could be next.Sept. 4, 2025, 5:04 a.m. ETRobert F. Kennedy Jr. during his confirmation hearing in January.Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesRobert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s most prominent vaccine skeptic, courted the votes of senators considering whether to confirm him as health secretary by promising, repeatedly and in writing, to do nothing “that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking vaccines.”Seven months have passed since he took office. In that time, Mr. Kennedy has delivered a lukewarm endorsement of the measles vaccine; dismantled a panel of experts who make vaccine recommendations to the government; taken steps that will effectively restrict access to Covid-19 vaccines; canceled $500 million of grants and contracts for the development of mRNA vaccines; and, just last week, forced out the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention because she disagreed with him on vaccine policy.On Thursday, Mr. Kennedy will come before the Senate again with his department in turmoil.President Trump memorably said he would let Mr. Kennedy “go wild on health.” Now the health secretary is expected to face questions from lawmakers who suggest he may have gone a little too wild. Uneasy Republicans, who until now have been reluctant to criticize Mr. Kennedy, are wondering aloud whether his actions contradict the pledges of restraint he made to win the job. Angry Democrats say his tenure is a danger to public health and have called on him to resign.“He’s got to reconcile what he said during his confirmation process with what we’ve seen over the past few months, particularly on vaccine policy,” said Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina and a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which is convening the hearing.Videotranscriptbars0:00/0:14-0:00transcriptAt his Senate confirmation hearing, Mr. Kennedy agreed that the polio vaccine was “safe and effective,” and said he would not reduce its availability as health secretary.“Do you think that the polio vaccine is safe and effective?” “Yes I do.” “And so, would you seek to reduce its availability in any way?” “No, not at all.”At his Senate confirmation hearing, Mr. Kennedy agreed that the polio vaccine was “safe and effective,” and said he would not reduce its availability as health secretary.Senator Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the finance panel, asked the questions that elicited Mr. Kennedy’s written pledge to not restrict vaccine access. Mr. Wyden said in an interview on Wednesday that he agreed with others in his party who have called on Mr. Kennedy to resign, and he was unequivocal when asked whether Mr. Kennedy had lived up to his word months ago.“Absolutely not. Capital A, capital N,” Mr. Wyden said, adding, “My fear is that all childhood vaccinations are at risk.”Mr. Kennedy had already had an unmistakable effect on American culture with respect to vaccines, both for children and adults. On Wednesday, Florida officials announced theirs would be the first state to end all vaccination requirements for children attending school, a long-sought goal of the medical freedom movement that Mr. Kennedy leads.The Trump administration fired Dr. Susan Monarez as C.D.C. director last week after she refused to resign.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York TimesBut it was his abrupt dismissal of Susan Monarez, the C.D.C. director, that rattled lawmakers in Washington.After the coronavirus pandemic, Congress passed legislation requiring Senate approval of C.D.C. directors. Ms. Monarez, the first director subject to the new law, was confirmed at the end of July.Because she was a presidential appointee, subject to Senate confirmation, Mr. Kennedy did not have the authority to remove her. After she resisted his efforts to fire her, the White House announced that she had been terminated from her position.Her removal irked senators of both parties, who say it negates their own role in the confirmation process. Among them is Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader.“We go through all the work and confirm somebody to one of these important posts, and then a month later they’re gone,” Mr. Thune said on Wednesday, adding, “The person, whoever ends up in that position, it shouldn’t be disqualifying to be in support or in favor of vaccines.”But much of the attention on Thursday will be on Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, who is a member of the Finance Committee and also serves as chairman of the Senate’s health committee. Mr. Cassidy, a physician and a fierce proponent of vaccination, agonized publicly over whether to vote to confirm Mr. Kennedy and in the end decided to do so.Mr. Cassidy, who is up for re-election next year and already faces primary challengers, promised after Ms. Monarez’s ouster that the health committee would “conduct oversight.” He would not say on Wednesday whether he still had confidence in Mr. Kennedy. “I am reserving judgment,” he told reporters.Despite the C.D.C. upheaval, and Mr. Kennedy’s harsh criticism of the Covid vaccine program developed under Mr. Trump’s watch, there is little sign of a crack in the mutually beneficial alliance between the president and his health secretary.A spokesman for Mr. Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. But on Tuesday, in the wake of an essay by nine former C.D.C. directors who argued that he was dangerous for the nation, the health secretary defended himself and launched a broadside against the agency.Writing in The Wall Street Journal, he complained about what he characterized as decades of “bureaucratic inertia, politicized science and mission creep” within the C.D.C. He also accused the agency of presiding over a rise in chronic disease — “a true modern pandemic,” he wrote — that he said caused the United States to fare far worse than other nations during the coronavirus pandemic.Mr. Kennedy had heartily endorsed Ms. Monarez when Mr. Trump nominated her in March. He pushed back on those within his Make America Healthy Again movement who accused her of embracing vaccine mandates and other Covid-era policies concerning infectious disease control.“I handpicked Susan for this job because she is a longtime champion of MAHA values, and a caring, compassionate and brilliant microbiologist and a tech wizard who will reorient CDC toward public health and gold-standard science,” Mr. Kennedy wrote on social media.But it was clear from their confirmation hearings that the two had differences. Even as he insisted that he was not going to take away anyone’s vaccines, Mr. Kennedy refused to state unequivocally that there was no link between vaccines and autism — a long-ago debunked theory that grew out of a 1998 medical journal article that was later retracted.Videotranscriptbars0:00/0:32-0:00transcriptMr. Kennedy avoided answering a question about whether vaccines cause autism during his Senate confirmation hearing in January.Vaccines do not cause autism. Do you agree with that?” “As I said, I’m not going to go into H.H.S. with any pre-ordained —” “I asked you a simple question, Bobby. Studies all over the world say it does not. What do you think?” “Senator, if you show me those studies, I will absolutely, as I promised to Chairman Cassidy, I will —” “That is a very troubling response because the studies are there. Your job was to have looked at those studies as an applicant for this job.”Mr. Kennedy avoided answering a question about whether vaccines cause autism during his Senate confirmation hearing in January.Ms. Monarez, by contrast, told senators that she had “not seen a causal link between vaccines and autism.”Those differences spilled out into the open last week after Ms. Monarez refused two of Mr. Kennedy’s demands: to fire top C.D.C. leaders, and to give blanket approval to future recommendations of his handpicked committee of vaccine advisers. That led, ultimately, to her firing by the White House. Three top C.D.C. officials then resigned, citing her removal as a final straw.Thursday’s hearing, planned before the firing of Ms. Monarez, was intended to give Mr. Kennedy an opportunity to testify about Mr. Trump’s budget for the C.D.C.’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, which Mr. Kennedy heads.The sprawling department is a collection of multiple agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, which is responsible for biomedical research; the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees drug approval and food safety; and the Health Resources and Services Administration, which funds health care programs.Mainstream public health leaders are horrified by Mr. Kennedy’s tenure so far.“He’s worse than we thought he would be,” Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said in an interview on Wednesday. “Because not only has he broken just kind of simple verbal promises, but he’s also taken apart the core infrastructure of our vaccine system.”But Mr. Kennedy, who has long insisted that vaccination should be a personal choice subject to “shared decision-making” between parents and pediatricians, has a strong base of supporters, many of whom are delighted with his changes.“What’s clear and promising is that the very paradigms and people who drove us into this mess are finally being challenged and cleared out,” said Leah Wilson, executive director of Stand for Health Freedom, an Indiana nonprofit that recently sued the C.D.C. and asked a court to replace the agency’s vaccine schedule with a recommendation for shared decision-making.If history is any guide, Mr. Kennedy may flash his defiant side on Thursday. His upbringing in a storied Democratic clan has given him an ease and familiarity with the ways of Washington; as a little boy, he played in the Oval Office when his uncle John F. Kennedy was president.As health secretary, he has openly challenged and sometimes berated lawmakers during previous hearings. He once addressed Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, as “Bernie” — a definite violation of Senate protocol — and accused him of accepting millions of dollars in pharmaceutical industry contributions.In back-to-back House and Senate hearings this spring, he said it was not his job as health secretary to make vaccine recommendations. He also lashed out at one of his Democratic critics, saying, “I don’t know if you understand this or whether you are just mouthing the Democratic talking points.”Axel Boada and Jamie Leventhal contributed video production.Sept. 3, 2025, 6:32 p.m. ETA meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta in June.Credit...Mike Stewart/Associated PressHealth Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to nominate seven new advisers to a scientific committee that recommends which vaccines Americans should take and when, according to two former federal officials with knowledge of the matter.The panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, wields enormous influence. Insurance companies and government programs like Medicaid are required to cover the vaccinations it recommends.After Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation hearing, Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, said he had received assurances that Mr. Kennedy would “maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes.”In June, Mr. Kennedy fired all 17 members of the panel, asserting without evidence that the committee members were “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest,” even though they had been carefully vetted for such conflicts.Two days later, he appointed eight doctors and researchers, half of whom had expressed skepticism of vaccines at some point. (One later stepped down because of financial conflicts of interest.)Mr. Kennedy has demolished the status quo at the C.D.C., which he once called “a cesspool of corruption.” He fired the agency’s director last week, prompted the resignation of several top officials and has gutted its budget and departments.In June, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the health secretary, fired all 17 members of the A.C.I.P. He incorrectly said the committee members were “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest,” though they had been carefully vetted for such conflicts.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York TimesThe seven new members of the panel include a cardiologist, a neurologist and a geneticist who have been critical of vaccines or mandates. The views of the new members on childhood vaccines generally are not yet known.The news was first reported by Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, in his Substack, “Inside Medicine.”“At first blush, none of these potential candidates appear to have vaccine expertise,” said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a pediatrician at Stanford University who served on the panel until June, when Mr. Kennedy dismissed it.“It seems that there is a theme of ‘mainstream’ Covid policy denial,” she added. “Covid is not the only disease we are dealing with now, and we should move on to dealing with the overall vaccine disease prevention landscape.”The new members will have little time to prepare for the next meeting, scheduled to begin Sept. 18. Among other matters, the panel may vote to remove important childhood shots from the immunization schedule.Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, declined to confirm the plans. “You will hear it from us when there are new members to announce,” he said.At their first meeting, the advisers nominated by Mr. Kennedy voted to rescind longstanding recommendations for a type of flu vaccine that contains thimerosal, a preservative that the anti-vaccine movement has falsely linked to autism.The vote was followed by a presentation by Lyn Redwood, a former leader of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group founded by Mr. Kennedy. Ms. Redwood, who is now employed at the department, claimed that thimerosal was dangerous and toxic to children.In her presentation, she said incorrectly that the only flu vaccine still containing thimerosal had 50 micrograms per dose, double the actual amount.Lyn Redwood, who once ran the anti-vaccine group that Mr. Kennedy founded.Credit...Shelby Lum/Associated PressThe new panel members include:Catherine Stein, an epidemiology professor and tuberculosis researcher at Case Western Reserve University. In 2022, she called for an end to vaccine mandates at universities and wrote that such rules were “unethical.”Dr. Stein confirmed that she expected to be named to the panel, but did not know when Mr. Kennedy might make the announcement.Dr. Kirk Milhoan, a cardiologist, is a member of the Independent Medical Alliance, which incorrectly claims that Covid vaccines have contributed to rising infant mortality, as well as to a 600 percent increase in heart problems among young men. (Robert Malone, a current member of the panel and a vocal critic of mRNA vaccines, is an adviser to the alliance.)Dr. John Gaitanis, a pediatric neurologist, has served for a number of years as an expert witness in a specialized federal vaccine court for families who believe they were harmed by vaccines.