By Ahmed Aboulenein and Leah Douglas
WASHINGTON, April 16 (Reuters) – U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. highlighted nutrition and food safety in remarks before lawmakers on Thursday but largely avoided questions about his efforts to overhaul the nationwide vaccination policy.
Kennedy also largely omitted mention of his work to identify the causes of autism during two Congressional hearings, the latest sign that the nation’s top health official is sidestepping some of his most controversial positions ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters the White House recently urged health officials to redirect policy discussions toward more popular topics, as President Donald Trump and his Republican Party seek to shore up support for their slim majorities in Congress.
Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, faced a setback last month after a court ruling derailed key elements of his efforts to rewrite U.S. vaccine policy and revamp a CDC advisory panel on immunizations.
He appeared on Thursday before the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee and the House Appropriations Committee’s health subcommittee to discuss the health component of the Trump administration’s 2027 budget proposal. Next week he faces five more hearings before House and Senate panels.
BUDGET AND VACCINE POLICY PUSHBACK
The budget requests $111 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services run by Kennedy, a 12.5% cut from current levels, including a $5 billion cut to the National Institutes of Health and elimination of a low-income energy assistance program. Several key Republicans, including Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins of Maine, have criticized the cuts as unnecessary.
“We are not going to do that, I just will tell you that right now,” said Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the appropriations health subcommittee, of the proposed cuts. Congress did not pass many cuts to health agencies requested by Trump in the fiscal year 2026 budget.
Ahead of Kennedy’s Thursday hearings, Democratic lawmakers rallied at the U.S. Capitol against the proposed budget cuts.
Democrats on the Ways and Means panel pressed Kennedy on rising healthcare costs, his undermining of confidence in vaccines, management of fraud and his stewardship of the nation’s largest measles outbreak in decades.
Mike Thompson of California asked Kennedy if he has a medical or public health degree, to which Kennedy responded he does not.
“Yet you are overruling doctors, scientists and public health experts across our country. Your dangerous conspiracy theories are undermining safe and effective vaccines,” Thompson said. “Mr. Secretary, you shouldn’t be in this office,” he added.
Kennedy got into a heated exchange with California’s Linda Sánchez over the spread of measles, during which he acknowledged that the measles vaccine could have saved the life of an unvaccinated child who died from the disease in Texas last year. He did not answer questions from Sánchez about ending a CDC campaign encouraging vaccination.
CHILDREN’S HEALTH EMPHASIS
In his opening remarks before the Ways and Means committee, Kennedy emphasized achievements under his “Make America Healthy Again” initiative and other administration priorities, including efforts on nutrition, food safety, drug prices, fraud prevention, and cutting children’s access to gender-affirming care.
“We stand at a generational turning point, our children of the sickest generation in modern history, and decades of failed policy-captured agencies and profit-driven systems have caused it. Parents across the country demanded change, and we are delivering it,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy told the appropriations health subcommittee that his agency currently has 72,000 employees and is looking to hire 12,000 more to make up for cuts last year led by the Department of Government Efficiency. The hiring plan would swell the department beyond the 82,000 it had before the cuts.
DOGE cuts reduced the health agency’s workforce to 62,000 employees last year, Kennedy said.
NAVIGATING COMPETING CONSTITUENCIES
The Trump administration faces a delicate balancing act, standing by millions of MAHA supporters who helped reelect the president in 2024 but are now upset by Trump’s order to boost pesticide production, while managing low support among the wider public for Kennedy’s anti-vaccine platform.
Kennedy, who co-founded the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, has during his tenure pushed to reduce the number of recommended childhood vaccines, replaced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel of independent vaccine experts with several members who share his controversial views, and pledged to identify the cause of autism.
Kennedy and his supporters have repeatedly linked autism to vaccines, a theory long debunked by science, at times with Trump’s explicit backing.
Pollsters and strategists expect healthcare costs to be a primary issue for voters, who will decide control of Congress in November.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein and Leah Douglas in Washington; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, Hugh Lawson and Bill Berkrot)
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