WASHINGTON--Democrats and Republicans pushed U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy's Jr. on his recent vaccine policies and their stark contrast to President Donald Trump's successful first-term pandemic initiative to speed vaccine development during a combative three-hour Senate hearing on Thursday.
Half a dozen heated exchanges focused on the details of his decision to fire Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez, who had started the job with Kennedy's support only a month earlier.
Republican U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana praised Trump for having accelerated the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines in 2020.His line of questioning - mirrored by two other members of his and Trump's party - underscored the tightrope Republicans critical of Kennedy needed to walk in order to push back against his vaccine policies without criticizing the president.
Cassidy, a former physician, asked Kennedy during the Senate Finance Committee hearing if he agreed with him that Trump deserved a Nobel Peace Prize for the COVID vaccine initiative, known as Operation Warp Speed. Kennedy said he did.
Why then had Kennedy said the vaccines killed more people than COVID? Cassidy asked. Kennedy denied making the statement, would not agree that the vaccines saved lives, and in a later exchange acknowledged the shots prevented deaths but not how many.COVID vaccines in the first year of their use saved some 14.4 million lives globally, according to a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal.
Kennedy has also cancelled $500 million in funding for research on the mRNA technology that yielded the most widely used COVID vaccines under Trump, which Cassidy characterized as denying people vaccines.
Republicans Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Barrasso of Wyoming, who like Cassidy is a physician, adopted Cassidy's tactic, as did Senate Democrats Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, where the CDC is headquartered, and Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats.
The White House backed Kennedy, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Vice President JD Vance both defending him and Leavitt attacking Democrats in posts on X. Neither mentioned his Republican critics.
"Secretary Kennedy, in your confirmation hearings you promised to uphold the highest standards for vaccines. Since then, I've grown deeply concerned," said Barrasso.
"The public has seen measles outbreaks, leadership in the National Institutes of Health questioning the use of mRNA vaccines, the recently confirmed Director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fired," the senator added.
Under fiery questioning from most Democrats and some Republicans, Kennedy defended the ousting of Monarez, adding that he might need to fire even more people at the agency. Trump fired Monarez after she resisted changes to vaccine policy advanced by Kennedy that she believed contradicted scientific evidence, further destabilizing the already embattled agency.
In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Monarez said she had been directed to preapprove vaccine recommendations and fire career CDC officials, describing her ouster as part of a broader push to weaken U.S. vaccine standards. Kennedy said she lied and that he had never told Monarez she needed to preapprove decisions, but that he did order her to fire officials, which she refused to do.
"Secretary Kennedy's claims are false, and at times, patently ridiculous. Dr. Monarez stands by what she said in her Wall Street Journal op-ed," her lawyers said in a statement, adding that she was willing to repeat it under oath.
Kennedy said the CDC during the COVID-19 pandemic had lied to Americans about mask wearing, social distancing, school closures and the ability of the vaccine to stop transmission. "I need to fire some of those people and make sure this doesn't happen again," Kennedy said.
The CDC's pandemic recommendations were based on past experience with virus transmission and what was known about the novel coronavirus at the time. By late 2021, with more real-world data, the CDC acknowledged the shots could not stop COVID infection and transmission, but were highly effective in preventing severe cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
