by WorldTribune Staff, May 15, 2025 Real World News
In his first major hearings as Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. silenced Democrat critics while laying out his and President Donald Trump's agenda to Make America Healthy Again.
One of many notable moments came when Kennedy pointed to corruption inside the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as the reason America does not have a cure for Alzheimer’s.
“For 20 years, because of utter corruption and fraud, we were directing Alzheimer’s research to one hypothesis, and any other hypothesis was shut down,” he said. “We should have the cure for Alzheimer’s today. We don’t have it purely because of corruption at NIH. And we are going to have it quickly.”
Appearing before the House Appropriations Committee Wednesday morning and the Senate Health, Labor, Education and Pensions Committee later on Wednesday, Kennedy laid out a sweeping plan to reshape HHS, which includes:
• Ending “gain-of-function experiments and research based upon radical gender ideology.”
• A full-scale crackdown on fentanyl and drug addiction.
• $94 billion toward better food, fitness, and childcare.
• FDA action to remove toxic chemicals from the food supply.
• Slashing wasteful NIH projects.
• Merging mental health and addiction programs for faster, better care.
• Giving local leaders more power to fix problems in their own communities.
• A major upgrade to Head Start, the early education program for low-income children.
“We intend to make the Trump HHS not just the most effective, but also the most compassionate in U.S. history,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy took on several of his congressional critics during Wednesday's hearings.
The HHS chief flipped the narrative on Connecticut Democrat Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who tried to pin him down on tobacco funding.
DeLauro asked: “Do you commit to following the law, again, fully obligating those funds so that we can help adults who want to quit using tobacco and prevent teens from becoming addicted?”
Kennedy fired back: “Allow me to answer that by pointing out the absolute cataclysmic disorganization of this agency. Under your oversight, for 40 years, we had nine separate offices of Women’s Health.”
Kennedy continued: “When we consolidate them, the Democrats say we’re eliminating them. We’re not. We’re still appropriating the 3.7 billion, but we’re not keeping all nine. We had eight separate offices for minority health. We eliminated one. We had 27 HIV offices.”
DeLauro tried to interrupt: “Okay, let me just. I’m going to—”
But Kennedy kept rolling: “We had 59 behavioral health programs.”
DeLauro backed off: “I’m well over time.”
Kennedy clashed with DeLauro later in the hearing and did not hold back, saying: “Look at our children, they’re the sickest children in the world. Congresswoman DeLauro, you say that you’ve worked for 20 years on getting food dye out. Then give me credit!. I got it out in 100 days.”
Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson, a dentist, tried to challenge Kennedy on fluoride.
“We better put a lot more money into dental education because we’re going to need a whole lot more dentists [if we ban fluoride],” Simpson said.
Kennedy responded: “We now know that virtually all the benefit [from fluoride] is from topical, and we can get that through mouthwashes. We can get through fluoridated toothpastes.
“The National Toxicity Program issued a report in August, a meta review of all the science that now exists on fluoride, and showed a direct inverse correlation between fluoride exposure dose and lower IQ.”
“Which is an issue that we all have to be concerned with. We want high IQ kids right now.”
New York Democrat Rep. Steny Hoyer demanded answers on HHS budget cuts.
Kennedy responded: “We’re spending $2 trillion a year that we don’t have! When you’re spending $2 trillion more than you have, you have to make cuts.”
Hoyer pressed again, but Kennedy stayed firm, saying: “The cuts that were done were cuts that were to duplication, to redundancy, to streamlining. We increased our workforce 70% in four years. So we were going back to the 2019 levels.”
As expected, a Democrat repeatedly called on Kennedy to endorse vaccines.
Wisconsin Democrat Rep. Mark Pocan asked: “If you had a child today, would you vaccinate that child for measles?”
Kennedy didn’t bite, saying: “What I would say is my opinions about vaccines are irrelevant,” he said. “I think what we’re going to try to do is to lay out the pros and cons, the risks and benefits accurately as we understand them.”
Pocan pressed again: “Can you talk about chickenpox?”
Kennedy exposed a reality Pocan didn’t want to hear: “Again, I don’t want to give advice. I can tell you in Europe, they don’t use the chickenpox vaccine specifically because the preclinical trial shows that when you inoculate the population for chickenpox, you get shingles in older people, which is more dangerous.”
Pocan continued, “Polio?”
“Again, I don’t want to be giving advice,” Kennedy replied.
Pocan backed off: “That’s fair. No, that’s fair. Like I said, I was not doing it as a gotcha.”
As was also expected, a Democrat brought up Elon Musk.
Florida Democrat Rep. Lois Frankel attacked Kennedy’s use of HHS funds, characterizing it as Elon Musk randomly plugging numbers into a computer to make decisions.
Kennedy fired back: “Everything that you said was essentially dishonest.”
Kennedy closed the House hearings with a call to unity: “So, let’s work together and do something that we all believe in, which is have healthy kids in our country for God’s sake. There’s no such thing as Republican children or Democratic children. There’s just kids, and we should all be concerned with them.”
The Vigilant Fox noted in a Substack.com analysis: "This was a masterclass. If you watch one thing today, make it this. Kennedy just took the MAHA agenda to the next level."
(View the House hearing here)
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