Two weeks into Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s tenure as health secretary, some of the Republican senators who voted for him already have questions about how he’s handling the nation’s health policy.
“I just want to know what the rationale is,” Sen. Bill Cassidy told NOTUS when asked about the recent cancellation of a Food and Drug Administration committee meeting intended to pick which flu strains to use in next year’s flu shot. He said he plans to ask Kennedy during a scheduled call on Friday about the canceled meeting.
During his hearings, Kennedy downplayed his history as an anti-vaccine advocate and said he would not interfere with the country’s vaccine infrastructure. Those commitments helped him win over Cassidy and other Republicans with reservations about his record. But his promises already seem to be wearing thin.
Since Kennedy’s confirmation, Health and Human Services indefinitely postponed a scheduled meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee, halted trials of a new COVID-19 vaccine and pulled ads promoting the flu vaccine.
Cassidy, a medical doctor, said before voting to confirm Kennedy that he would use his “authority as chairman of the Senate committee with oversight of HHS to rebuff any attempts to remove the public’s access to lifesaving vaccines without ironclad, causational scientific evidence.”
He previously said Kennedy had told him he would not make changes to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. But Kennedy is now reportedly planning on removing members of that committee who he says are working too closely with the pharmaceutical industry to be able to effectively regulate it. Health experts fear that Kennedy could use the opportunity to stack the committee with vaccine skeptics.
Sen. Susan Collins, another lawmaker who voiced concerns about Kennedy but ultimately voted to confirm him, said she was aware that Kennedy was considering restructuring the vaccine advisory committee, but she felt it was too soon to say what the effect of that decision could be.
“I think it is premature to judge because we don’t know who he’s going to be appointing to it,” Collins told NOTUS.
But the senator said she has other concerns. Collins said she’s pressing the secretary over the administration’s proposed changes at the National Institutes of Health, including a cap on scientific research infrastructure funding that Collins said would have “devastating effects.”
When asked about Kennedy by NOTUS, Sen. Ted Cruz first responded with a strong message of support: “I’m a big fan of Bobby Kennedy. I think he’s going to do a terrific job.”
But he added that he’d been in recent contact with Kennedy about his department’s infectious disease response, saying that he spoke to Kennedy on Thursday morning about further assistance HHS would be providing to the states affected by the ongoing measles outbreak.
The outbreak has so far sickened more than 130 people in Texas and New Mexico, many of whom are unvaccinated against measles. One child has died. While the CDC has been communicating with states, it hasn’t issued nationwide guidance or information yet, as it typically would during an outbreak of this kind.
Cassidy said he thought the CDC was putting plenty of resources into the outbreak, but that Texas and New Mexico “probably feel like they have the situation in hand.”
“[The federal health agencies] are throwing lots of resources, as many as the states desire them to have, to address the measles outbreak,” Cassidy said. “I don’t think you’d be asking CDC or HHS to be doing anything more than they’re doing right now.”
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Margaret Manto and Helen Huiskes are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows.