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# RFK Jr. Grilled by Dems at Confirmation Hearing
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/rfk-jr-grilled-by-dems-at-confirmation-hearing/
- Published: 2025-01-29T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T14:51:55.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: FDA Policy/General, #legacy-id-D5158570

**Robert F. Kennedy Jr.** faced heated criticism and questioning from Democrat senators for his stances on vaccines, abortion rights, and conflicts of interest during a 1/29 Finance Committee confirmation hearing for HHS secretary. However, Republican resistance was all but absent at the hearing, which may foretell Senate passage if the nomination makes it to a floor vote.

In his opening remarks intended to reverse many years’ worth of vaccine-skeptical statements, Kennedy attempted to paint himself as not anti-vaccine, but rather “pro-safety.” If confirmed, he said he would lead HHS to “scrutinize the chemical additives in our food supply. We will remove the financial conflicts of interest in our agencies. We will create an honest, unbiased, science-driven HHS, accountable to the president, to Congress, and to the American people. We will reverse the chronic disease epidemic and put the nation back on the road to health.”

Ranking member Senator **Ron Wyden** (D-OR) set the Democratic tone in his opening statement by questioning whether RFK Jr. can be trusted with Americans’ health based on his questionable history. Wyden said Kennedy had “embraced conspiracy theories, quacks, and charlatans, especially when it comes to the safety and efficacy of vaccines. He’s made it his life’s work to sow doubt and discourage parents from getting their kids life-saving vaccines. It’s been lucrative for him and put him on the verge of real power. This is the profile of somebody who chases money and influence wherever they lead, even if that means the deaths of children and other vulnerable people.”

Senator **Michael Bennet** (D-CO) also sowed doubt on Kennedy’s fitness to lead as HHS secretary, calling out his “peddling in half-truths, peddling in false statements, peddling in theories that you know create doubt about whether or not things that we know are safe are unsafe.” Kennedy had trouble defending his past statements when Bennet asked him if he had said that Covid 19 was a genetically engineered bioweapon that targets black and white people but spared Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. He was defenseless when asked if he said that Lyme disease is a militarily engineered bioweapon, or if he wrote in his book that African AIDS is an entirely different disease from Western AIDS.

Senator **Elizabeth Warren** attempted to get Kennedy to abandon the appearance of a conflict of interest and agree not to accept any compensation as part of his legal work for the law firm Wisner Baum and related lawsuits against Merck and its Gardasil vaccine. Kennedy reportedly has served as a consultant for the law firm representing clients who claim to have been harmed by the vaccine. Kennedy recently resigned from his consulting role, but he would still be entitled to 10% of any fees the suit wins ([see earlier story](https://www.fdaweb.com/rfk-jr-s-cousin-trashes-him-on-eve-of-hearing/)). When asked by Warren if he would forgo any compensation from these lawsuits, Kennedy would not directly answer her question.

Regarding his previous pro-choice stance on abortion rights, Senator **Maggie Hassan** (D-NH) questioned when and why he changed this position. She reminded him that in 2023 he came to New Hampshire and said he was pro-choice, and that the government had no business telling people what they can or cannot do with their body. “When was it that you decided to sell out the values you’ve had your whole life in order to be given power by President Trump,?” Hassan asked. His response to her and other related questions by others was: “I agree with President Trump that every abortion is a tragedy, and that we can’t be the moral authority of this country.”

In the only FDA issue raised during the hearing, Senator **Ben Ray Luján** (D-NM) won a commitment from Kennedy to finalize the congressionally mandated FDA guidance to increase clinical trial diversity. The high-profile Diversity Action Plan draft guidance has been caught up in the Trump Administration’s rollback of government-wide diversity, equity and inclusion activities and removed from the agency’s Web site. The draft was issued in June and it was intended to increase the enrollment of participants who are members of historically under-represented populations in clinical studies to help improve the strength and generalizability of the evidence for the intended use population. It described the format and content of the plans, including the timing and process for submitting such plans by application or notification type.