Washington D.C. – As Trump Health Secretary RFK Jr. resumes testimony before four additional Congressional committees this week after three combative and lie-packed performances at the hearings last week, Protect Our Care presents the top 5 unanswered questions lawmakers should raise:
- Since day one of his tenure at HHS, RFK Jr. has mounted a full-scale war on life-saving vaccines. He has fired and restacked key advisory committees with anti-vaccine activists, slashed the childhood vaccine schedule, deleted the CDC’s clear statement that vaccines do not cause autism, and sabotaged access to resources. This assault on long-proven safe and effective vaccines has caused mass confusion for Americans, particularly parents of young children who are already overwhelmed. According to recent reporting, an internal White House memo is the reason RFK Jr. has suddenly stopped talking about vaccines in public ahead of the midterm elections, yet in practice, nothing has changed. Secretary Kennedy, given your dubious claims to now be pro-vaccine, how do you intend to undo the damage you have already done through actions and rhetoric that have sowed confusion, undermined public confidence in vaccine safety, lowered vaccination rates, and created conditions for the resurgence of preventable diseases like measles?
- In recent days and weeks, there have been promising developments reported on a Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine and a Lyme disease vaccine. Secretary Kennedy, do you intend to arbitrarily obstruct the approval process over your general vaccine skepticism guided by no evidence – as your FDA did with Moderna’s latest flu vaccine – or will you allow these potential game-changing vaccines run through the standard approval process without undue interference?
- Many of RFK Jr.’s unfounded health claims have been thoroughly debunked by highly credible, peer-reviewed studies. For example, earlier this year, Secretary Kennedy and Donald Trump announced that FDA would revise acetaminophen labels to warn that Tylenol use in pregnancy “may be linked to a significantly heightened risk of autism,” and told expectant mothers to avoid the drug unless they “absolutely” could not “tough it out,” Now a 25-year-long study of 1.5 million kids in Denmark released last week found zero link between mothers taking Tylenol during pregnancy and children developing autism, echoing multiple studies published in the Lancet. Kennedy has refused to acknowledge these studies and instead called them “garbage. Another long-term study published last week eviscerated Kennedy’s unsubstantiated claim that fluoride in drinking water makes people “stupider.” These are just the latest in a long line of examples of Kennedy throwing out baseless medical claims that crumble under even basic scientific scrutiny. Secretary Kennedy, how can we trust you are capable or willing to protect the health and well-being of the American public when you cannot even acknowledge scientific evidence that doesn’t conform to your conspiratorial viewpoints? Given your poor track record of confidently making unsubstantiated medical claims that wind up thoroughly debunked and discredited by legitimate science and data, have you done any self-reflection about the dangers of using your celebrity and influence to needlessly scare Americans, including scaring many families out of receiving proven safe and effective vaccines based on unfounded claims and pseudoscience? Do you have any regrets spreading this misinformation? Will you ever take the bare minimum of responsibility by owning up to your false claims and work to correct the record when you’re proven wrong?
- RFK Jr. has spent the past year undermining the NIH, with the agency terminating 1,389 medical research grants, delaying funding for more than 1,000 additional projects, and canceling or freezing over 2,000 NIH grants in 2025, with only about half later reinstated, often after legal or political pressure. The consequences of these cuts have been devastating, disrupting labs, upending lives, delaying the discovery of new treatments, and gutting the pipeline of young scientists who have made U.S. science preeminent for more than 50 years. Most recently, the President’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposes cutting another $5 billion from NIH while also eliminating three entire institutes, including the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, which the budget document declares “replete with DEI expenditures.” Secretary Kennedy, how do you justify these devastating cuts in the context of protecting long-term public health, even as they set the United States’ progress in medical research back significantly?
- RFK Jr. has touted the revised food pyramid as one of the biggest accomplishments of his tenure. However, data compiled by the market analysis firm Numerator recently found that under Kennedy’s revised food pyramid, a typical American household can expect to pay $1,012 more annually for groceries than under the previous version. And while Kennedy claims to have “ended the war on protein,” Axios notes, “U.S. beef supplies are shrinking, imports are rising and prices are stuck near record highs — with little relief in sight.” Secretary Kennedy, do you believe pushing struggling Americans to pay nearly one-third more at the grocery store is realistic or tenable guidance? You’ve also recommended that Americans choose cheaper cuts of meat, like liver, but shouldn’t this administration be focused on making healthy groceries more affordable and not pushing less-desirable sources of food to families?
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