RFK Jr. to face HELP panel in HHS bid

Politico

30-01-2025

Presented by The Pharmaceutical Reform Alliance
Driving the Day
KENNEDY'S NEXT TEST — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump's choice to lead HHS, appears before a key Senate health committee stacked with lawmakers who could cast the deciding vote for or against him, I report with my colleagues Lauren Gardner and Daniel Payne.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is holding a courtesy confirmation hearing for Kennedy one day after he appeared before the Senate Finance Committee, which will decide whether to recommend his confirmation to the Senate.
During his testimony before the Finance Committee on Wednesday, Kennedy tried to shed his history of anti-vaccine activism or speak broadly about the need for the U.S. government to address the rise of chronic disease. During questioning by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who chairs the HELP Committee, Kennedy appeared to confuse Medicare and Medicaid.
What to expect today: More questioning on Kennedy's anti-vaccine rhetoric and public health views is likely today, given the HELP Committee's jurisdiction over public health agencies like the CDC and the FDA, which play key roles in monitoring and regulating vaccines.
He could also field questions from lawmakers who want commitments on their policy priorities, as they did at the Finance hearing. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) issued a statement Wednesday touting Kennedy's support for focusing on rural health care improvements and reining in pharmacy middlemen.
Why it matters: Though the HELP Committee won't vote to advance Kennedy's confirmation to the Senate floor, his answers could make the difference in whether he ultimately helms the federal government's health agencies. The exchanges with key senators Wednesday might suggest whether Kennedy's plans for sweeping reforms and reframing the government's role in U.S. health care will come to fruition.
The senators to watch include:
— Cassidy, who's maintained a poker face about how he's leaning. He might continue his questioning on Kennedy's policy priorities when it comes to federal health programs.
— Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who said earlier this week she wants to 'drill down on and try to get some commitments' from Kennedy, and Susan Collins (R-Maine). On Saturday, both lawmakers voted against Pete Hegseth, Trump's pick to lead the Pentagon.
— Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said he liked Kennedy's adopted slogan, Make America Healthy Again, but sparred with him over whether health care should be a human right and his decision to put aside his past support for abortion rights to serve Trump, Sanders could also pick up on a line of questioning started by his colleague Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Kennedy's potential financial gain from lawsuits against drug companies.
WELCOME TO THURSDAY PULSE. Opponents wearing Make Polio Great Again T-shirts and supporters wearing Make America Healthy Again hats came face to face Wednesday at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s confirmation hearing. According to Capitol Police, six people were arrested for interrupting the hearing. What will we see today at the Senate HELP hearing? Send your tips, scoops and feedback to [e-mail] and follow along @ChelseaCirruzzo.
In Congress
HEALTH POLICY? NOT NOW — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared shaky on some finer health policy points during his Senate Finance confirmation hearing Wednesday — but his supporters aren't worried.
Kennedy seemed to confuse Medicaid with the federal insurer for older Americans, Medicare, and struggled to answer a question about HHS' role in ensuring hospitals follow a longtime law requiring emergency rooms to treat patients regardless of their ability to pay.
Calley Means, a former food industry lobbyist-turned-adviser to Kennedy, suggested on social media that some senators focused their questioning on arcane policy issues.
'While he is being questioned about minutiae, he continually raises the conversation to the existential stakes of our chronic disease crisis,' Means posted on Instagram as Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) grilled Kennedy about Medicaid.
Later, at a Heritage Foundation reception for Kennedy supporters and the Make America Healthy Again PAC, Means told reporters that Kennedy's agenda on reducing chronic illness would eventually lead to federal health insurance policy change, saying 'standards of care' must be reworked.
'I think inevitably you'd have public policy decisions and administrative decisions around, potentially codes for Medicare, Medicaid, that come out of that science,' he said.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), co-founder of the Senate Make America Healthy Again caucus, devoted to advancing Kennedy's agenda, also criticized his colleagues' line of questioning.
'This is not a hearing to get into the details of a particular program that is mind-numbingly complex to begin with,' he told reporters outside the hearing room. 'These hearings are about 'What is your intention, what are your goals?''
Abortion
ANTI-ABORTION GROUP'S ENVIRONMENTAL PUSH — A cadre of red and purple states is introducing bills this week to impose restrictions on abortion pills over claims that the drugs could be contaminating drinking water, POLITICO's Alice Miranda Ollstein and Ariel Wittenberg report.
The new legislation in Arizona, Idaho, Maine, West Virginia and Wyoming — which would require doctors who prescribe abortion pills to make their patients collect and return their expelled fetuses in medical waste bags for disposal — is the latest development in anti-abortion groups' yearslong campaign to wield environmental laws to cut off access to the drugs.
The group leading the push, Students for Life of America, is also preparing lawsuits, federal bills and a pressure campaign aimed squarely at the environmental inclinations of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who could soon lead the health agencies that regulate access to the pills.
Students for Life and its lawmaker allies claim that as women increasingly use the pills at home to end pregnancies and flush the expelled tissue, trace amounts of the drug make their way into rivers and streams where they can harm endangered species and livestock.
The group, which recently conducted its own testing in three U.S. cities and hopes to publish the results in a peer-reviewed medical journal later this year, has also claimed that the drug contaminates tap water and could threaten human fertility.
Multiple environmental health experts told POLITICO that no evidence supports those claims. But they could be convincing to Kennedy, an environmental attorney who said during his confirmation hearing Wednesday that he plans to investigate the safety of abortion pills.
Global Health
U.S. TIME IN WHO TICKS DOWN — The U.S. has begun its one-year countdown to withdraw from the World Health Organization, POLITICO's Carmen Paun reports.
The U.S. officially ends its membership on Jan. 22, 2026, according to a letter to the U.N. secretary-general and viewed by POLITICO.
The letter doesn't provide a reason for the withdrawal. In an Inauguration Day executive order, President Donald Trump cited 'unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries' assessed payments.'
In 2020, during his first term, Trump threatened to withdraw, accusing the WHO of covering up Chinese negligence at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic. He couldn't complete the withdrawal because he lost that year's election. President Joe Biden reversed the withdrawal plan.
Why it matters: The notification squashes doubts about the current U.S. intention to withdraw and sets a clear deadline.
The WHO will lose hundreds of millions of dollars in mandatory and voluntary contributions from the U.S., which will be excluded from a global network that decides the yearly makeup of the flu vaccine based on circulating strains.
Trump has touted the planned withdrawal in several speeches over the last few days and noted in one that he didn't expect the withdrawal to be so popular.
The WHO said it hoped the U.S. would reconsider withdrawing in a statement last week.
WHAT WE'RE READING
POLITICO's Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein report on a second judge preparing to block the White House's federal funding freeze.
POLITICO's Adam Cancryn reports on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s anti-vaccine group's response to his confirmation hearing.
The Associated Press reports on a tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas.
STAT reports on faltering mental health services despite the launch of a crisis hotline.