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 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 Susan Monarez. Four top CDC officials also resigned in protest.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, August 26, 2025.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
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.”
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.
