On the second day of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s contentious confirmation hearings, GOP senator and health and education committee chair Bill Cassidy appeared to be balancing his support for President Trump against his serious misgivings about Kennedy heading the Department of Health and Human Services — and how one could harm the other.
“If there’s someone that is not vaccinated because of policies or attitudes you bring to the department, and there’s another 18-year-old who dies of a vaccine-preventable disease … it’ll be blown up in the press,” said Cassidy, referring to a young woman he treated who experienced liver failure as a complication of vaccine-preventable Hepatitis B. “The greatest tragedy will be her death. But I can also tell you an associated tragedy: that it will cast an absolute shadow over President Trump’s legacy.”
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Kennedy, whose first day of testimony Tuesday before the Senate Finance Committee was rocky, can afford to lose the votes of only three Republican senators if all Senate Democrats vote against him. Cassidy holds particular sway because of his Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee chairmanship and his previous career as a physician. The Senate is expected to vote on Kennedy’s highly controversial nomination next week.
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Like many of his Republican peers, Cassidy noted his areas of agreement with Kennedy — such as the importance of removing ultra-processed food from American diets — but in a break from his party, he vehemently fought Kennedy on his anti-vaccination rhetoric.
“You’ve got a megaphone … with that influence comes a great responsibility,” Cassidy said. “Now my responsibility is to determine if you can be trusted to support the best public health.”
“That’s why I’m struggling with your nomination,” he added.
At both hearings this week, Kennedy tried to distance himself from his past anti-vaccination sentiments stating, “News reports have claimed that I am anti-vaccine or anti-industry. I am neither. I am pro-safety … I believe that vaccines played a critical role in health care. All of my kids are vaccinated.”
If confirmed, Kennedy would take control of an agency with a $1.7 trillion budget and 90,000 employees spread across 13 agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Historically, Kennedy has falsely linked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine schedule to a rise in chronic disease, saying at a town hall last year, “What I’m focused on is the bigger issue of chronic disease, and that is linked to the vaccine schedule in some cases, the explosion of chronic disease.”
When questioned this week, though, he pivoted, arguing that he supported the childhood vaccine schedule, which many state legislatures rely on to determine their school vaccine policies. Currently, all 50 states have vaccine requirements for children entering child care and schools.
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In one particularly tense exchange, Democratic Sen. Angela Deneece Alsobrooks of Maryland asked Kennedy to clarify previous remarks he had made about Black people requiring a different vaccine schedule than those of other races.
Alsobrooks, who is Black, asked, “What different vaccine schedule should I have received?”
When Kennedy began to respond, saying, “Blacks need fewer antigens,” she cut him off.
“With all due respect,” she said, “that is so dangerous. I will be voting against your nomination.”
Vaccines and autism
At one point, Cassidy pulled up a National Institutes of Health study titled “Vaccines Are Not Associated with Autism,” and began to share the data with Kennedy. In response, Kennedy doubled down, despite his earlier claims that if he were shown the data and research he would correct his record of linking vaccines to autism and publicly apologize.
“There are other studies as well,” Kennedy instead responded, pointing to one, which he said “shows the opposite.”
“I’d love to show those to you,” he said.
Multiple senators, including Democrats Bernie Sanders and Tammy Baldwin, pointed to the decades of research disproving the connection and expressed concern that Kennedy wasn’t already familiar with or convinced by the body of peer-reviewed research.
“That is a really troubling response,” Sanders said, when Kennedy noted he was open to looking at studies disproving his previous claims. “Those studies are there … it’s your job to have looked at them.”
Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, also a medical doctor, and Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, though, applauded Kennedy’s willingness to question science and keep an “open mind.”
“My God, if we didn’t question science, where would we be today?” asked Mullin.
“These are the nuances you’re unwilling to talk about,” said Paul, “because there’s such a belief in submission. Submit to the government.”
He then implied schizophrenia might also be linked to childhood vaccines or food.
School shootings and mental health
In 2024, on a podcast episode, Kennedy appeared to link school shootings with Prozac and other drugs used to treat mental illness. “There’s no time in American history or human history that kids were going to schools and shooting their classmates,” Kennedy told the comedian Bill Maher “It really started happening conterminous with the introduction of these drugs, with Prozac and the other drugs.”
On Wednesday, Sen. Tina Smith, Democrat from Minnesota, pushed him on this issue, asking if he still stands by that claim.
“I don’t think anybody can answer that question,” he responded, noting that it should be “studied along with other potential culprits.” He subsequently dodged a question about whether or not SSRIs, a class of drugs used to treat depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions, are dangerous, noting he knows people who have had a harder time getting off of these commonly prescribed drugs than heroin. Kennedy is a former heroin addict.
“These statements you’ve made linking antidepressants to school shootings reinforce stigmas” Smith responded.
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In a heated exchange, Michael Bennet, Democratic senator for Colorado and the former Denver Public Schools superintendent, accused Kennedy of giving disingenuous answers that did not mirror decades of public statements.
“Unlike other jobs we are confirming around this place,” he said, “this is a job where it is life-and-death for the kids that I used to work with in the Denver Public Schools and for families all over this country … It is too important for the games that you are playing, Mr. Kennedy.”
Medicaid and Medicare missteps
During both hearings, Kennedy flubbed basic questions related to Medicare and Medicaid. On Thursday, Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire grilled him about basic elements of Medicare, which provides coverage to older and disabled Americans. He responded to all questions either incompletely or incorrectly.
“You want us to confirm you to be in charge of Medicare, but it appears that you don’t know the basics of this program,” said
At the first hearing on Wednesday, he appeared to mix up Medicare and Medicaid, which covers low-income populations and provides billions of dollars to schools annually for physical, mental and behavioral health services for eligible students.
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A focus on the “MAHA moms,” and ultra-processed foods
Kennedy repeatedly spoke about pediatric chronic health issues — ranging from obesity to allergies — linking them to environmental toxins and ultra-processed foods, issues that serve as the backbone of his “Make America Healthy Again” movement.
“Something is poisoning the American people,” Kennedy said when asked what his recipe to fulfill the MAHA tagline would be. The food supply, he said, is the “primary culprit.”
He said the movement has been led largely by “MAHA moms, from every state, many of them who have traveled to be here yesterday and today. This is one of the most powerful and transcendent movements I’ve ever seen.”
Multiple Republican senators also referred to the MAHA moms, with one noting he would vote to confirm Kennedy in part to honor that group’s views.
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