Live Updates: Pressed About Key Health Programs, R.F.K. Jr. Seems to Struggle
Mr. Kennedy, appearing before the Senate Finance Committee as he seeks the job of health secretary, repeatedly confused Medicare and Medicaid, programs that cover more than 150 million Americans.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose antipathy toward vaccines helped him build a large national following, faced a bruising series of questions from Republican and Democratic lawmakers in his first confirmation hearing on Wednesday, stumbling in a long exchange about Medicaid policy and struggling to convince lawmakers that he is not “anti-vaccine.”
“I am pro-safety,” Mr. Kennedy, President Trump’s nominee for health secretary, said about his views in his opening remarks, adding that he had been mistakenly labeled anti-vaccine in news reports, despite years of comments raising suspicions about the safety of inoculations. He was quickly interrupted by a protester in the audience who shouted, “He lies!”
Mr. Kennedy’s appearance before the Senate Finance Committee, his first of two confirmation hearings, soon gave way to a series of angry, argumentative exchanges with Democrats on the panel who read many of Mr. Kennedy’s anti-vaccine comments back to him, their voices raised.
Mr. Kennedy also faced scrutiny from Republicans, appearing to have little familiarity with the enormous health insurance programs that he would oversee as health secretary. He stumbled over basic facts when Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana and a key vote in Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation battle, pressed him on his knowledge of Medicare and Medicaid, which cover over 100 million older and low-income Americans.
Mr. Kennedy at one point described Medicaid’s premiums and deductibles as being too high when, except in very rare cases, the program’s enrollees do not pay either of those types of fees.
Mr. Kennedy’s unorthodox views on a range of matters — not just vaccines, but fluoridated water (he opposes it) to raw milk (he embraces it, though federal regulators say it is dangerous) — have made him one of Mr. Trump’s most polarizing cabinet picks. They have also made him a hero to many Americans who say that corporate influence in American government has corrupted oversight of food and vaccines.
“Frankly, you frighten people,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, said to Mr. Kennedy, referencing a recent measles case in his state.
Here’s what else to know
Some Republicans are still skeptical. Should Mr. Kennedy’s nomination come before the full Senate, most Democrats are likely to vote against him — leaving his fate in the hands of the few undecided Republicans who might be willing to cross Mr. Trump. Here’s more about the ones to watch today and Thursday.
Kennedy’s own words. Mr. Kennedy has lately shifted his emphasis away from vaccines and toward consensus ideas like combating the nation’s chronic disease epidemic and curbing ultra-processed foods from the American diet. But his contrarian views extend well beyond vaccines. Here’s what Mr. Kennedy has said recently about several issues his department would influence, and the facts.
Pushback from the family. Caroline Kennedy, who served as ambassador to Australia during the Biden administration, released a letter on Tuesday that urged senators to reject Mr. Kennedy. In her letter, Ms. Kennedy cast her cousin as unfit, citing his anti-vaccine advocacy, and called him a “predator” addicted to attention and power.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s pick for health secretary, suggested on Wednesday that the White House would continue a Biden administration initiative that allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.
A news release from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, released Wednesday as Mr. Kennedy’s first confirmation hearing was getting underway, also indicated that the Trump administration would embrace the policy.
While President Trump has long decried the high cost of prescription drugs in the United States, his position on this particular approach to taming them has been unclear. He has been highly critical of the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden-era law that created the negotiation authority.
“Senator, my understanding is that the White House issued an executive order, I believe today, supporting the drug negotiations under the I.R.A.,” Mr. Kennedy said, responding to a question about the high cost of drugs from Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat of Nevada. “President Trump was very aggressive during his first term about negotiating, uh, drug prices.”
The president has not signed an executive order on the subject, but the news release said that “Lowering the cost of prescription drugs for Americans is a top priority of President Trump and his Administration,” and said the new administration would work to improve the transparency of the negotiation process.
In its final days, the Biden administration identified the next 15 drugs that would be subject to the negotiation process. It included Ozempic and Wegovy, the popular and expensive drugs for diabetes and obesity.
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Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, looks like he will be a wild card — it’s unclear how he will vote — but otherwise it doesn’t seem like any minds on the panel were changed. Kennedy, who will appear before the Senate Committee on Health, Education Labor and Pensions tomorrow, will have to brush up on details about Medicare and Medicaid, which would be a big chunk of his portfolio. He got several answers wrong. He sought to steer the conversation toward chronic disease and away from vaccines, and found some success. The award for the most memorable line of the day goes to Senator Bernie Sanders who, asking Kennedy about anti-vaccine slogans on baby apparel sold by an organization he founded, demanded to know: “Do you support these onesies?”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Wednesday that food allergies are on the rise, citing his own children’s experiences as an example and raising questions about what might be behind the increase in that and other chronic conditions.
“I didn’t know anyone with a food allergy growing up,” Mr. Kennedy said, before asking: “Why do five of my kids have allergies?”
“Why are we seeing these explosions in diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, neurological diseases, depression, all these things that are related to toxic, to the environment?” Mr. Kennedy added.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called food allergies a growing public health concern, and says that roughly one in 13 U.S. children have them. But scientists don’t yet have a clear understanding of what factors are driving those diagnoses.
There are relatively few studies examining the relationship between environmental risk factors and food allergies, and those that do exist haven’t consistently shown a clear link. Scientists also don’t have a clear understanding of how environmental toxins might cause food allergies.
One 2022 review of the research noted that some studies have suggested that air pollution and dust may make people’s airways more sensitive, which could explain why food allergies occur more frequently in children who live in urban areas. But that review concluded that the data to support this theory was thin and, in some cases, contradictory.
For example, some of the studies included in the review found no clear evidence of a link between air pollution exposure at birth and the risk of developing common food allergies in childhood.
Other studies have looked at additional potential reasons for the rise in food allergies, including diet and exposure to microbes and bacteria during childhood. Public awareness of food allergies has also risen in recent decades, which some research has suggested could help explain the increase in diagnoses.
In response to pointed questions from both Republicans and Democrats, Kennedy often displayed a fundamental lack of expertise about the government’s main insurance programs, Medicare and Medicaid. But he clarified his position around Medicare Advantage, where private insurers provide coverage for older Americans. While he was generally supportive of the program, he also pushed back against what he called “the rapacious behavior by insurance companies,” suggesting he would might support some of the efforts undertaken during the Biden administration to crack down on some abusive tactics like denying care and overcharging the government.
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Kennedy’s wildly shifting views on abortion were one of several issues spotlighted in the hearing. Democratic senators repeatedly pointed that he expressed support for abortion rights as recently as last year, but is now saying that he would support whatever President Trump wants to do on abortion. He tried to avoid being pinned down on some of the most central questions, such as whether he would support attempts to sharply restrict the abortion pill mifepristone.
Despite his attempts to revise his image as an anti-vaccine cabinet pick, Kennedy was dogged by his many past comments disparaging vaccines and the scientific experts who have approved them for use. Senators were armed with facts and transcripts that flatly contradicted his current stance.
During the hearing to consider his nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke at length about issues in health and medicine, including the cause of chronic illnesses, Covid-19 and ultraprocessed foods.
Here is a running list of key health claims, fact-checked by our reporters.
Chronic Disease
Mr. Kennedy’s opening statement focused on rising chronic health conditions, saying there was a crisis in children’s health in the United States. Many experts agree — though they disagree about the causes.
Forty percent of children have a chronic health condition, and the figure is higher for adolescents when obesity is included.
Roughly one in 36 children is diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One in four has an allergy or eczema, and rates of Type 2 diabetes have been rising in those 19 and under every year.
And while Type 2 diabetes rates are rising, they are still low: According to the American Diabetes Association, it occurs in 0.35 percent of Americans under the age of 20.
Who Covid-19 Affects
Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado pressed Mr. Kennedy on a statement Mr. Kennedy made in 2023 in which he suggested that the coronavirus targeted and spared certain ethnic groups.
“Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people,” he said in a video from The New York Post. “The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
In response to Mr. Bennet, Mr. Kennedy referred to a federally funded study from the Cleveland Clinic published early in the pandemic that tried to decipher who was most susceptible to the virus.
Scientists have said that Mr. Kennedy’s interpretation of the study widely distorted the findings in the paper. While it found genetic differences that might make one individual more susceptible to Covid than another, the differences were too rare to make any generalizations about large groups of people.
Children’s Risk From Covid
During the hearing, Mr. Kennedy also asserted that 6-year-old children “basically” have “zero” risk from Covid.
The C.D.C. has noted that children with underlying medical conditions are at higher risk from severe outcomes from Covid, as well as infants younger than six months of age.
Ultraprocessed Foods and Obesity
Early in the hearing, Mr. Kennedy singled out processed food as a driver of the obesity epidemic.
“We shouldn’t be giving 60 percent of the kids in school processed food that is making them sick,” he said.
Many public health and nutrition experts say that ultraprocessed foods — which make up an estimated 73 percent of the U.S. food supply — are probably a factor in the obesity crisis in the United States, and it would be beneficial to cut back on them.
But other researchers say that the obesity epidemic is likely a result of many entangled factors, both environmental and genetic, and that the phenomenon may have started long before there were ultraprocessed foods.
The category is also wide-ranging, and it’s not clear if all ultraprocessed foods are harmful, experts say. There may be downsides to avoiding some ultraprocessed foods, like flavored yogurts and whole wheat breads and cereals, they add, because they can provide valuable nutrients.
Lindsey Smith Taillie, an associate professor of nutrition at the U.N.C. Gillings School of Global Public Health, said that it would be “transformative” to remove ultraprocessed foods from school lunches. But, she added, schools would need more resources to prepare meals from scratch.
Medicare and Medicaid
Throughout the hearing, Mr. Kennedy struggled with the nuances of Medicaid and Medicare.
He suggested “more people would rather be on Medicare Advantage” but can’t afford it because it’s more expensive. In fact, Medicare Advantage is generally less expensive on a monthly basis for beneficiaries.
He also described Medicaid as being fully federally funded. Spending is actually split between the states and the federal government. He went on to describe the premiums and deductibles as being too high when, except in very rare cases, Medicaid enrollees do not pay either of those types of fees.
Fluoride in Water
Mr. Kennedy referenced a recent study that found an association between fluoride and I.Q. — research that he felt vindicated his earlier concerns about the dangers of fluoridated drinking water.
While the description of the study’s findings was accurate, there are notable caveats.
The study, by scientists from the federally funded National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, was an analysis of dozens of fluoride studies, which found higher fluoride exposures were linked to lower I.Q. scores.
However, researchers cautioned that none of the studies included in the analysis were conducted in the United States, where recommended fluoridation levels in drinking water are very low. At those amounts of fluoride, evidence was too limited to draw definitive conclusions.
The C.D.C. has noted that its experts “have not found convincing scientific evidence” linking community water fluoridation with adverse health effects.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe hearing has concluded. Senator Mike Crapo told Kennedy he had “done well” and deserves to be confirmed.
Before the hearing concluded, Senator Tina Smith brought up the avian influenza outbreak, that has affected nearly 1,000 dairy herds and infected 67 people, and is showing worrying signs of pandemic potential. “Do you intend to give research on bird flu a break?” she asked. Kennedy says he will dedicate resources to preventing pandemics. “That’s a central part of my job.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, returns to the measles epidemic in Samoa, eliciting groans from Kennedy supporters. She asks Kennedy if he accepts “even a sliver of responsibility” for the drop in vaccination and the subsequent deaths there. “No, absolutely not,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy wrongly claimed that the measles vaccine was responsible for the deaths of two infants in Samoa. That is incorrect: Two nurses gave the babies incorrectly mixed vaccines, which caused their deaths. The nurses were prosecuted and convicted.
All the senators have finished questioning, and the members of the panel are about to be called to the floor for a vote. Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and the top Democrat on the committee, began Democrats’ final five minutes by accusing Kennedy of delivering a “word salad” and ducking issues.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTAs the hearning nears its end, it’s looking like a partisan split over Kennedy — with a wild card in Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana and a doctor. I asked Cassidy during the break how he thinks Kennedy is doing, and he told me he wants to wait until after tomorrow’s hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education Labor and Pensions. Cassidy chairs that committee and he has been keeping his cards close to his vest. He’s traditionally been a strong ally of the nation’s public health establishment. But he’s also facing a primary challenge in 2026.
It was Cassidy’s line of questioning that revealed Kennedy’s lack of familiarity with the major health care programs he would oversee, Medicare and Medicaid. Cassidy has a long history of working on prominent health policies. He was a leading voice in the 2017 discussion of repealing Obamacare and also a key figure in passing legislation to ban surprise medical bills in 2020.
Senator Welch of Vermont pointed out that President Trump championed the race to develop a Covid vaccine, and Kennedy disagreed with that move. “That really deeply worries me,” Welch said. Many public health experts share his concern as the bird flu outbreak in the country escalates.
The hearing has been very light on discussion of Kennedy’s character, and there has been almost no mention of his struggle with heroin, except when he brought it up. Senator Peter Welch, Democrat of Welch, just noted that there are some “sketchy things” that Kennedy has acknowledged about his past, including his addiction. Welch also referenced the letter from Caroline Kennedy sent the committee, accusing her cousin of leading his siblings and other family members into the path of drug addiction.
Senator Todd Young of Indiana asked Kennedy how he will work to regain Americans’ trust in public health. Kennedy noted that fewer Americans have been opting for boosters, but did not repeat his previous inaccurate comments that the vaccines killed many people.
Kennedy pointed to limited Covid vaccine uptake as evidence that Americans do not trust public health agencies. Under 23 percent of U.S. adults have received the latest updated Covid vaccine, according to the C.D.C.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. didn’t dwell on mental health care Wednesday morning during his confirmation hearing, with senators focusing more on other issues. But in response to a question by Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, he laid out a clear position: That American kids are taking too many central nervous system drugs, both for A.D.H.D. and mental illnesses.
Mr. Kennedy said that “15 percent of American youth are now on Adderall or some other A.D.H.D. medications, even higher percentages are on S.S.R.I.’s and benzos,” referring to benzodiazapines, medications that are sometimes prescribed for anxiety. “We are not just overmedicating our children, we are overmedicating our entire population,” he said.
The use of prescription stimulants to treat A.D.H.D. has been rising steadily since 2012, and doubled from 2006 to 2016, with adult women, in particular, using the medication in growing numbers. But prescriptions have remained stable or declined for children and adolescents.
He overstated the number of children taking medication, according to the most recent estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other studies. In 2022, only 9.3 percent of children took medication for mental health or concentration, according to the C.D.C. Around 11 percent of children aged 5 to 17 have been diagnosed with A.D.H.D., according to the C.D.C.
A 2023 cross-sectional study found that 12.9 percent of children with parent-reported A.D.H.D. received medications for the condition.
Senator Tina Smith, Democrat of Minnesota, speaks openly and passionately about her own battle with illness in questioning Kennedy on his views about anti-depressants. She accuses him of spreading misinformation and adding to the stigma around mental illness. Kennedy has raised questions about antidepressants and has suggested, without evidence, that the majority of school shooters take antidepressants.
transcript
“You’ve described Americans who take mental health medications as addicts who need to be sent to wellness farms to recover. Is that what you believe?” “Of course, I didn’t say that anybody should be compelled to do anything.” “No, but you said they should be sent —” “I said they should be available to them. I didn’t say they should be sent.” “You said that —” “Kicking and screaming.” “Folks that take antidepressants are like addicts. That — I can provide that.” “They should have the availability. Listen, I know people, including members of my family, who’ve had a much worse time getting off of SSRIs than they did than people have getting off of heroin. It’s the withdrawal period is, I mean, and it’s written on the label.” “I have some experience with this myself Mr. Kennedy. This is personal for me. When I was a young woman and I was struggling with depression, thankfully, I had the resources to help me get through it, including a new generation of SSRI reuptake inhibitors, which help to clear my mind, get me back on track to being a mom and a wife and a productive, happy person. And I’m really grateful for that therapy. So I have some experience with this, and I think that everyone should have access to that care. And your job as secretary is to expand access to care, not to spread lies and misinformation.”
Smith offered her own personal story: As a young woman, she took SSRIs, a class of antidepressants, and they “helped me clear my mind, get me back on track to being a mom and a wife and a productive, happy person. And I’m really grateful for that therapy.”
In defending his stance, Kennedy cited the drugs’ “black box” warning, which states that some antidepressants may be linked to suicidal ideation and behaviors in adolescents and young adults. The F.D.A. based its decision on an analysis of drug trials in which there was a significant risk of suicidal thoughts but no suicides. But other studies have found S.S.R.I.s to be associated with lower suicide rates as well as a lower risk of suicidal behavior among young people, which has caused some experts to call for the warning to be reevaluated.
Kennedy states that he wants to eliminate “conflicts” from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which advises the C.D.C. on vaccine policy. The committee’s members are required to disclose their connections with the industry and many have them because pharmaceutical manufacturers develop and test vaccines, partnering with doctors who run clinical trials. Kennedy wants to eliminate that practice, but doing so would also mean that some of the nation’s top experts on vaccines could not serve on the panel.
Kennedy said 97 percent of the people on the commitee had conflicts of interest. Some members may have conflicts, but when they do, they recuse themselves from relevant discussions.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTKennedy has repeatedly returned to the issue of chronic disease, and his supporters see his project as the health secretary nominee as essentially grafting his Make America Healthy Again agenda onto the massive bureaucracy of the Health and Human Services Department. But some of his exchanges with lawmakers, including with Senator Cassidy over Medicaid and Medicare policy, and Senator Cortez Masto over abortion access, revealed limited familiarity with the complex programs and rules that much of his time as secretary would be devoted to.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has not been a promoter of the new class of drugs that cause weight loss, known as GLP-1s.
“The first line of response should be lifestyle,” he told Jim Cramer in a CNBC interview on Dec. 12.
Before the election, Mr. Kennedy told Fox News that Novo Nordisk, the Danish company that makes the weight loss drug Wegovy, is counting on selling the drug “to Americans because we are so stupid and so addicted to drugs.”
His preferred solution? “If we just gave good food, three meals a day, to every man, woman and child in our country, we could solve the obesity and diabetes epidemic overnight,” he said.
In December, Mr. Kennedy did concede to Mr. Cramer that the new weight loss drugs “have a place.”
What he and many others don’t say, though, is that avoiding obesity is not a simple matter of choosing to eat healthy foods and exercising.
Despite claims that Americans — and most of the rest of the world — got fat because of a proliferation of ultraprocessed foods, no single cause for the obesity epidemic has been identified. Researchers say that the epidemic is likely a result of many entangled factors, both environmental and genetic, and that the phenomenon may have started long before there were processed foods.
The biggest experiment to limit factors thought to contribute to obesity, such as consumption of sweetened beverages, was in Philadelphia. There a tax on sugar-sweetened drinks reduced sales but did not reduce obesity in children.
Additionally, adult body mass indexes decreased by a barely perceptible 0.32 points after three years of taxation.
Educating people on what they should eat has also not helped — people know which foods are loaded with calories. Exercise can improve health, but studies have repeatedly shown that an exercise program alone is unlikely to result in significant weight loss.
Most people with high B.M.I. have tried assiduously to lose weight and succeeded temporarily, only to gain pounds back. Obesity researchers say that is not because they lack willpower. Instead, it is because their weight is not something they can control except within a narrow range.
When people lose a significant amount of weight, their metabolism slows and they become ravenously hungry, a combination that makes them regain pounds. When people gain a significant amount of weight, their metabolism speeds up and they lose their appetites, a combination that brings their weight back to its former range.
The new obesity drugs, and the many like them in development, are like nothing seen before. People who take them lose their desire to eat as much as they used to. The side effects are minimal and the demonstrated benefits, in addition to weight loss, keep multiplying. They include a reduction in the risks of heart disease, kidney disease, sleep apnea and arthritis.
Senator Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia and pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, pointedly asks Kennedy about his past criticism of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some of Warnock’s constituents and church members are C.D.C. employees. “There’s nothing I’m going to do that is going to harm C.D.C.,” Kennedy insists.
Warnock directly challenged Kennedy’s comments comparing C.D.C. employees to members of the Catholic church who covered up sexual abuse scandals. Kennedy denied making those comments and said, “I don’t agree with that.”
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe hearing has resumed. Kennedy keeps saying “something is poisoning the American people,” and blaming chemical and processed foods for obesity and other chronic diseases. But he has carefully avoided blaming vaccines. Yet over the past decade, he has often linked vaccines to the chronic disease epidemic. Children’s Health Defense, the organization that Kennedy founded, suggests a link on its website: “The parallel between rising disease rates and the increasing number of childhood vaccines is hard to ignore.”
Kennedy spoke about the number of food ingredients used in processed foods in the United States and suggested that food additives may be contributing to chronic diseases. “We need to fix our food supply, and that’s the number one,” he said. He has not offered details about which additives may be contributing or how he would address them.
Kennedy says pesticides and other chemicals used in farming are associated with chronic diseases. Many child health experts agree, pointing to mounting evidence linking early-life exposure to chemicals including phthalates, brominated flame retardants and certain insecticides, along with toxins like lead and mercury, to impaired cognitive function, lower IQs and neurodevelopmental disorders.
Abortion has come up repeatedly during the hearing. The Trump administration has taken several actions in opposition to abortion rights, although it has not taken the most serious actions that abortion opponents seek and abortion rights supporters fear. One step it has taken is reinstating what is known as the “Mexico City policy,” which prevents federal funding of any overseas nongovernmental organization that supports abortion rights or discusses the option of abortion as part of family planning services. The policy, also called the “global gag rule,” was made more restrictive during Trump’s first term and was rescinded under the Biden administration. Supporters of reproductive rights have said that cutting off this funding in the past has harmed a range of family planning services overseas and led women to obtain unsafe abortions, causing some women to die.
In another step, the Trump administration’s acting HHS secretary, Dorothy Fink, issued a statement saying that one of the department’s priorities would be to strengthen enforcement of conscience protections that allow health care providers who oppose abortion to avoid being involved in providing or assisting with abortion services. The department also intends to strictly enforce the Hyde Amendment, a 50-year-old law that prevents federal funds from being “used to pay for or promote elective abortion,” her statement said.
Senator Mike Crapo, the committee chairman, calls a 5-minute restroom break. Kennedy exits to more clapping and cheers. His supporters have clearly made an effort to pack the room.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once again betrays his ignorance about Medicaid. “The premiums are too high, the deductibles are too high, and everybody’s getting sicker,” he said. But Medicaid has no premiums or deductibles; its the state-federal program for low-income people.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTSenator Maria Cantwell of Washington reminds Kennedy that her state was the first to see a Covid case and asks him to defend his plans to give infectious disease research a break for eight years. Kennedy says the N.I.H. does not study the "etiology" -- the causes -- of chronic diseases, but that is not correct. At least seven of its institutes are dedicated to studying such conditions.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice to lead the nation’s health agencies, formally asked the Food and Drug Administration to revoke the authorization of all Covid vaccines during a deadly phase of the pandemic when thousands of Americans were still dying every week.
Mr. Kennedy filed a petition with the F.D.A. in May 2021 demanding that officials rescind authorization for the shots and refrain from approving any Covid vaccine in the future.
Just six months earlier, Mr. Trump had declared the Covid vaccines a miracle. At the time Mr. Kennedy filed the petition, half of American adults were receiving their shots. Schools were reopening and churches were filling. Estimates had begun to show that the rapid rollout of Covid vaccines had already saved about 140,000 lives in the United States.
The petition, on behalf of the nonprofit that Mr. Kennedy founded and led, Children’s Health Defense. received little notice when it was filed. Mr. Kennedy was then on the fringes of the public health establishment, and the agency denied it within months.
President Trump has asked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to study the safety of the abortion pill, mifepristone, the health secretary nominee said during his Senate Finance Committee hearing, noting that the president had not yet taken a position on how to regulate it.
“Whatever he does, I will implement those policies, and I will work with this committee to make those policies make sense,” Mr. Kennedy said.
A large scientific record shows that the pills, which are regulated and approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration, are safe. A New York Times review in 2023 found that more than 100 scientific studies, spanning continents and decades, concluded that a regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol is a safe and effective method for patients who want to end a pregnancy in the first trimester.
A claim that the abortion pill is dangerous was at the heart of a case that reached the United States Supreme Court last year. A group of anti-abortion doctors sought to sharply curb access to the pills by rolling back the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug. The court dismissed the case, ruling that the plaintiffs lacked standing. But three states — Missouri, Idaho and Kansas — are expected to pursue the case in a lower court this year.
“There may be a political fight here, but there’s not a lot of scientific ambiguity about the safety and effectiveness of this product,” said Dr. Caleb Alexander, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a co-director of the Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTKennedy has said little about mental health care until now, but in response to Senator Blackburn he laid out a clear position: That American kids are taking too many central nervous system drugs, both for ADHD and mental illnesses.
“Fifteen percent of American youth are now on Adderall or some other ADHD medications, even higher percentages are on SSRIs and benzos,” Kennedy said, referring to benzodiapines. “We are not just overmedicating our children, we are overmedicating our entire population.”
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTRobert F. Kennedy Jr. ran for president as a “pro-choice” candidate and vowed to keep the government out of women’s reproductive decisions, but he has shown more willingness in recent months to let the government restrict abortions. As health secretary, he would oversee agencies that regulate the abortion pill, track data on abortions and offer funding for the procedure in certain circumstances.
Mr. Kennedy has been publicly quiet on the issue in the weeks leading up to his hearings, but he has assured some lawmakers that he will support President Trump’s anti-abortion agenda. Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, stated on X that Mr. Kennedy had promised he would “reinstate President Trump’s prolife policies at HHS” and that “all of his deputies at HHS would be prolife.”
R.F.K. Jr.’s statements on abortion
Mr. Kennedy gave his first full statement on abortion to the Senate Finance Committee, in response to a question from Senator Jim Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma.
“I agree with President Trump that every abortion is a tragedy,” he said. “I agree with him we cannot be a moral nation if we have 1.2 million abortions a year. I agree with them that the states should control abortion. President Trump has told me that he wants to end late-term abortions. He wants to protect conscience exemptions.”
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTSenator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado, attacked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his history of “peddling half truths, peddling in false statements” on vaccines, disease and other global health crises during Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation hearing on Wednesday. He was one of several Democrats to voice concerns over Mr. Kennedy’s spread of health misinformation.
Senator Bennet pressed Mr. Kennedy on his conspiracy theories, including his assertions that Covid-19 was a genetically engineered bioweapon that targeted Black people and spared Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews. Kennedy tried to push back on the Covid-19 assertion, telling Bennet he didn’t say the virus was “deliberately targeted.” He insisted he was quoting an N.I.H. study.
In the past, he’s pointed to a 2020 study published early in the pandemic that did not refer to Chinese populations, but did note that one receptor for the virus did not appear to be present in Amish and Ashkenazi Jews. The study did not say the virus targets racial or ethnic groups, and his conclusions have been dismissed by scientists.
When asked about his belief that Lyme Disease was also an engineered bioweapon, he responded, “I probably did say that.”
Mr. Bennet, largely unsatisfied with Mr. Kennedy’s responses, raised his voice, saying “this is a job where it is life and death” to deliver medical and mental health care to families. “It’s too important for the games that you’re playing,” he said.
He also raised questions about Mr. Kennedy’s previous support for abortion rights, saying that Kennedy said on a podcast: “I wouldn’t leave abortion to the states. My belief is we should leave it to the woman. We shouldn’t have the government involved, even if it’s full term.”
Kennedy, who as a Trump nominee has tried to temper his previous statements supporting abortion rights, said that “I believe every abortion is a tragedy,” adding that he would follow President Trump’s policy positions.
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