A vaccine standoff and other key moments from RFK Jr.'s first
congressional hearing in months
[April 17, 2026]
By ALI SWENSON
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday faced federal
lawmakers for the first time since September as he sought to defend a
more than 12% proposed cut to his department's budget and dodge arrows
from angry Democrats along the way.
In his testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, kicking off
an expected sprint of seven budget hearings he'll attend across
congressional committees and subcommittees over the next week, Kennedy
emphasized the administration's work to reform dietary guidelines and
crack down on waste, fraud and abuse.
Republicans on the committee praised Kennedy as a “breath of fresh air”
and asked him to promote his department's recent actions. Democrats, who
have been furious over Kennedy's sweeping overhaul of the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, largely had a different agenda.
They needled Kennedy on what they viewed as the Trump administration’s
hypocrisy on fraud, demanded to know why he was cutting budgets for
various programs and slammed his efforts to pull back vaccine
recommendations and messaging, which they said have caused unnecessary
deaths.
Kennedy fired back, often raising his voice as he accused the Democrats
of misrepresenting his work and past statements.
Here are three standout moments from Thursday's hearing:
A standoff over measles
One heated exchange early in the hearing came between Kennedy and Rep.
Linda Sanchez. The California Democrat decried recent measles outbreaks
across the U.S. and asked Kennedy to answer for the fact that under his
leadership, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pulled back
public health messaging supporting vaccination.
“As a mother, this horrifies me,” Sanchez said. “Did President Trump
approve your decision to end CDC’s pro-vaccine public messaging
campaign?”
Kennedy repeatedly refused to answer, saying first he wanted to respond
to the “misstatements that you've made” and later praising the Trump
administration's record on preventing measles, although protections
against the disease have eroded in some parts of the country as
vaccination rates have dropped.
“That's not answering my question,” Sanchez said as the two talked over
each other.
But Sanchez also got Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist before he
entered politics, to acknowledge that a 6-year-old who died of measles
last year in West Texas could have potentially been saved with
vaccination.
“Do you agree with the majority of doctors that the measles vaccine
could have saved that child’s life in Texas?” she asked.
“It's possible, certainly,” Kennedy said.
RFK Jr. denies talking about Black children being ‘re-parented’
A fight erupted between Kennedy and Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat from
Alabama, when Kennedy vehemently denied making remarks he'd said in
2024.
The comments dated back to when Kennedy was a presidential candidate. On
the “High Level Conversations” podcast in 2024, he said, “Psychiatric
drugs — which every Black kid is now just standard put on Adderall,
SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence, and those kids are
going to have a chance to go somewhere and get re-parented to live in a
community where there'll be no cellphones, no screens, you'll actually
have to talk to people."
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Health and Human Services
Department, arrives to testify before the House Ways and Means
Committee about his agency's goals and budget, at the Capitol in
Washington, Thursday, April 16, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
 “Have you ever re-parented, or
parented, I should say, a Black child?” Sewell asked, as her staff
held up a poster featuring an abbreviated version of the quote.
“I don't even know what that phrase means,” Kennedy said. “I'm not
going to answer something I didn't say.”
“You're making stuff up,” he later claimed.
A recording of the podcast shows he made the comments during a
conversation about free rehabilitation facilities he was proposing
opening at the time in rural areas around the country.
HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said Kennedy before joining the
administration was referring to spaces where young people facing
alienation, mental health challenges and despair could get
re-parented, which she said was a psychotherapy term for “developing
the emotional regulation, discipline, boundaries, and self-worth
that may not have been established in childhood.”
For Kennedy and his former party, civility is the exception
Kennedy spent most of his life as a Democrat, the scion of one of
the nation's most famous political families. Both Republicans and
Democrats during the hearing began their remarks by expressing their
admiration of Kennedy's relatives, among them former President John
F. Kennedy.
But again and again throughout Thursday's hearing, the fraying of
bonds between Kennedy and his former party was on full display as
spiteful comments were passed back and forth.
The health secretary grew defensive and visibly agitated. He
repeatedly criticized Democratic lawmakers for not giving him a word
in edgewise.
“They've all shut me up,” Kennedy said at one point. “They give a
little speech that they can go and market, you know, for
fundraising, and they don't allow me to answer the question.”
On a few rare occasions, the exchanges were civil. One
representative, Gwen Moore of Wisconsin, used humor to make that
happen.
“I promise to give you easy, comfortable questions if you don't yell
at me and hurt my feelings,” she told Kennedy. He promised he
wouldn't.
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An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that Kennedy's
remarks about Black children were made last year. He made the
remarks in 2024.
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