More than a dozen senators questioned the HHS secretary in a contentious hearing on vaccines, chronic disease claims, and health care cuts.
In the aftermath of a fiery three-hour meeting before the Senate Finance Committee, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faces mounting bipartisan criticism for his evasive answers, combative style, and repeated falsehoods about vaccines and chronic disease.
On Thursday, more than a dozen senators questioned Kennedy about his vaccine recommendations, chaos at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, false autism claims, and the impact of the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act on health care.
Throughout the meeting, Kennedy argued with multiple senators, and at one point, he pulled out his phone to scroll through his feed. He insisted his goal is to make America healthy again, and he will do so by any means he deems necessary. But his message seemed to boil down to one refrain: everyone is corrupt but him.
Here are some of the highlights from the contentious meeting and what Democratic, Republican, and Independent senators said to Kennedy.
Black Boys, Vaccines, and Autism
In a long-winded monologue, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) thanked Sec. Kennedy for his efforts to investigate the data and science around vaccines. Johnson also spewed unfounded falsehoods about a link between vaccines and chronic disease and went on a tirade about how science has been corrupted.
In response, Kennedy claimed that a study identified that Black boys who got the MMR vaccine had a 260% greater chance of getting diagnosed with autism.
This is false. A 2004 CDC study was retracted after the paper’s author, Brian Hooker, was found to have manipulated data to support his predetermined conclusion that there is a link between the MMR vaccine and autism in Black boys.
#VaccineMisinformation #PublicHealth #SenateHearing
