Vice President J.D. Vance rushed to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s defense after the HHS secretary faced relentless bipartisan criticism in a Senate hearing over his tenure in the Trump administration.
Vance lashed out at the senators on X, saying they were trying to “‘gotcha’ Bobby Kennedy.” He went on to say that senators who supported health care for transgender minors didn’t have a leg to stand on.
“You all support off-label, untested, and irreversible hormonal ‘therapies’ for children,” he wrote. You’re full of s**t and everyone knows it.”
Kennedy’s hearing inspired multiple tense exchanges between the secretary and senators, including several members of the GOP who have been vocal critics of transgender health care.
Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden declared America is in a “healthcare calamity” thanks to Kennedy’s tenure. He called the secretary’s term a “disaster” that “endangers the health and wellness of American families” every day.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a physician who had cast the deciding vote in Kennedy’s confirmation, pressed him on why he suggested that vaccines were more deadly than COVID itself and highlighted Kennedy’s contradiction in praising Trump’s Operation Warp Speed while arguing for limiting access to the shots it produced.
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The confrontation came just a day after more than 1,000 CDC and HHS employees signed an open letter calling for Kennedy’s resignation. The protest followed his firing of Senate-confirmed CDC Director Susan Monarez, which triggered a wave of resignations from senior scientists and doctors. The letter accused Kennedy of stacking the agency with “political ideologues” and manipulating data on vaccine effectiveness.
“Should he decline to resign, we call upon the President and U.S. Congress to appoint a new Secretary of Health and Human Services, one whose qualifications and experience ensure that health policy is informed by independent and unbiased peer-reviewed science,” the letter read.
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