RFK Jr. to testify before Senate Finance Committee amid CDC turmoil, vaccine changes

After a week of fast-moving shakeups at the nation's health agency, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will come before the powerful Senate Finance Committee, which has oversight over his department, on Thursday for hours of questioning that is sure to center on his vaccine policy.

It comes a week after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) significantly narrowed access to the COVID-19 vaccine, a move that precipitated a public fallout and ousting of the newly installed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Susan Monarez. Four top CDC officials also resigned in protest.

The new FDA approval for COVID shots allows for people who are aged 65 and older to get the vaccine, or younger Americans who have an underlying condition that puts them at a higher risk of severe illness from the virus.

Public health officials and pharmacist groups have said the change will make it harder for young and healthy people to get the vaccine -- should they still choose to -- and raises questions about where they can get it or whether insurance will cover it.

Thursday will be the first time Kennedy has faced questions from senators since May, when he testified before a Senate committee and a House committee, defending the massive cuts to the department's workforce carried out in April.

Kennedy is expected to tout the overhauls at HHS so far, which he has said are aimed at eliminating bloated bureaucracy and conflicts of interest at public health agencies that get in the way of "gold-standard science."

In a statement, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said Kennedy will use the hearing to "reaffirm his commitment to Make America Healthy Again: restoring gold-standard science at HHS, empowering patients with more transparency, choices and access to care, and reestablishing trust in public health."

While Republicans like Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo will attempt to keep the focus on chronic disease and Kennedy's "Make America Healthy Again" agenda, Democrats and even some Republicans are expected to push Kennedy for answers on the FDA's latest change as well as an upcoming CDC meeting on vaccines, which could lead to more changes to the nation's vaccine policy.

The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which discusses vaccine data and makes recommendations for which vaccines Americans should get and when, is going to weigh in on the FDA's latest change, further informing insurance companies and pharmacies of how to carry out the policy.

But ACIP is also going to discuss a slate of different vaccines, including the COVID vaccine; hepatitis B vaccines; the measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (MMRV) vaccine; and the Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccine.

In June, Kennedy replaced all 17 sitting members of the committee with his own hand-selected members, including some who have expressed vaccine-skeptic views fervently sought to discredit the safety and efficacy of mRNA COVID vaccines.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, said he had spoken to other members of his caucus who agreed that they needed to investigate what potential changes Kennedy and the CDC committee were weighing to the childhood vaccine recommendations.

"The issue is about children's health, and there are rumors, allegations, that children's health, which is at issue here, might be endangered by some of the decisions that are purported to be made. I don't know what's true," Cassidy said. "I know that we need to get there. And I've talked to members of my Republican Caucus, several of them. They've agreed with me that we need to get at it."

Cassidy, who pushed Kennedy during his confirmation hearings to issue support for vaccines and publicly struggled over his vote for him, has tasked the committee he chairs, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), to do "oversight" of Monarez' ousting, he wrote on X last week.

Cassidy maintained that he isn't "presupposing someone is right or wrong." "I just know we've got to figure it out," Cassidy said.

Cassidy has also called for the CDC meeting to be postponed until "significant oversight has been conducted," citing "serious allegations" about the "meeting agenda, membership and lack of scientific process."

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who is on the HELP committee with Cassidy, told reporters on Wednesday that she is "concerned" and "alarmed" by Monarez's firing.

"I know that the president has the right to fire whomever he wishes when it comes to that kind of appointment, but I don't see any justification for it," Collins said.

Monarez, who was in the job for only a month, was pushed out after she declined to fire top officials and support Kennedy's vaccine policy changes in a meeting with the secretary early last week, a source familiar with her conversations with the secretary told ABC News.

"When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted," Monarez's attorneys Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell said in a statement late last week.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters President Donald Trump had fired Monarez because she "was not aligned with the president's mission to make America healthy again."

"It was President Trump who was overwhelmingly reelected on November 5," Leavitt said. "This woman has never received a vote in her life, and the president has the authority to fire those who are not aligned with his mission."

Other CDC officials who followed Monarez out the door included:

• Deb Houry, Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director for Program and Science
• Dr. Dan Jernigan, Director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases
• Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases
• Dr. Jennifer Layden, Director for the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology.

The officials cited the political climate and a refusal to accept science that didn't align with Kennedy's beliefs.

Daskalakis, in an interview on ABC News' "This Week", said he thought the changes Kennedy has so far made are "the tip of the iceberg."

In addition to the recent FDA changes for the COVID vaccine, Kennedy has also canceled up to $500 million in research and development for mRNA vaccines and changed the COVID vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant women.

"I mean, from my vantage point as a doctor who's taken the Hippocratic oath, I only see harm coming. I may be wrong. But based on what I'm seeing, based on what I've heard with the new members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, or ACIP, they're really moving in an ideological direction where they want to see the undoing of vaccination," Daskalakis said.

Kennedy, when he testified in his confirmation hearings to be health secretary in January, denied that he was anti-vaccine and said he supports "the childhood schedule" for vaccinations.

"I am pro-vaccine. I am going to support the vaccine program. I want kids to be healthy, and I'm coming in here to get rid of the conflicts of interest within the agency, make sure that we have gold standard, evidence-based science," Kennedy said.

When pressed by Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, Kennedy committed to supporting the measles and polio vaccines.

"Senator, I support the measles vaccine, I support the polio vaccine. I will do nothing as HHS secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking either of those vaccines," Kennedy said.