RFK Jr. to face questions about chaos at the CDC

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is testifying before the Senate finance committee Thursday.

The hearing comes a week after Kennedy pressured the brand-new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director, Susan Monarez, to resign, and when she refused, the White House fired her. Three top CDC officials then resigned in protest.

The hearing’s stated focus is the president’s 2026 health care agenda and Kennedy’s goal to Make America Healthy Again. But expect a lot of questions for Secretary Kennedy about CDC leadership in disarray, his moves to overhaul federal vaccine policy, and growing calls for his resignation, including from more than a thousand current and former HHS staff.

Here are three things to know going into the hearing.

Watch RFK Jr. testify on Thursday at 10 a.m. EST:

1. Kennedy’s anti-vaccine activism is alive and well

Kennedy built his reputation on anti-vaccine advocacy. That made some senators wary of confirming him, so he spent time leading up to his confirmation vote in February reassuring them:

“If confirmed, I will do nothing as HHS secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking vaccines,” he wrote repeatedly in answer to written questions from members of the Senate finance committee.

He also said that he would accept “unprecedented” input from Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician and vaccine supporter who chairs the Senate committee that oversees HHS and is a member of the finance committee.

Kennedy has broken many of the specific promises he made to Cassidy. He moved to dramatically transform the federal government’s approach to vaccines, from investment in biomedical research to the FDA approval process, to access. Already, some who want the new COVID-19 booster are finding they can’t get it.

Access to other vaccines could be limited next. Kennedy fired all the members of a key vaccine advisory panel in June and replaced them with his own roster of people who have a history of anti-vaccine activism. Later this month, they’re set to consider recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines as well as more routine vaccines, including the respiratory virus RSV and measles.

Changes to those recommendations would have huge implications for public health, insurance coverage, and availability across the country.

2. He doesn’t seem bothered by departures from CDC

Kennedy wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal defending his handling of CDC over the weekend.

“Over the decades, bureaucratic inertia, politicized science and mission creep have corroded [CDC’s] purpose and squandered public trust,” he wrote. “The path forward is clear: Restore the CDC’s focus on infectious disease, invest in innovation, and rebuild trust through integrity and transparency.”

In an interview on Fox News last week, Kennedy said he wasn’t surprised by the three top CDC scientists resigning. “The agency is in trouble and we need to fix it and we are fixing it, and it may be that some people should not be working there anymore,” he said.

It’s not just high-profile leaders who have left HHS in recent days. Approximately 20,000 HHS staff – roughly one-quarter of the agency’s workforce – have been fired or taken offers to leave voluntarily since Kennedy took over as secretary. The exodus was partly driven by the Elon Musk-led effort to shrink the federal workforce, but Kennedy has also said in April that cutting so many staff was necessary to streamline the agency and to capitalize on the “political momentum.”

HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon echoed that idea in response to the letter from HHS staff calling for Kennedy to resign:

“Secretary Kennedy has been clear: the CDC has been broken for a long time. Restoring it as the world’s most trusted guardian of public health will take sustained reform and more personnel changes,” Nixon wrote in a statement shared with NPR.

3. Kennedy and his allies want to talk about healthy food

As public health groups have grown increasingly alarmed by what’s happening at HHS, Kennedy has been traveling around the country promoting state efforts to cut out certain dyes and limit ultraprocessed products in the food supply.

Kennedy held a press conference with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last week as he signed several bills, including one that limits additives in school lunches and another that prevents people from using food benefits for sugary drinks and candy.

These efforts in Texas and similar bills in other states will help right the health of the American people, Kennedy said. “We have more chronic disease than we can treat and we know what it is and we know it is the food we are eating,” he said.