Senate Dems launch investigation into RFK Jr. vaccine panel changes

Senate Democrats are launching an investigation into Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s changes to vaccine policy, including the remaking of a federal vaccine advisory panel.

In a letter to Kennedy, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) demand that he produce communications and other records to show who in the Trump administration determined the legal and public health consequences of the actions related to revamping the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), as well as any vetting process for new members.

Last year, Kennedy fired all 17 sitting members of ACIP and packed the panel with vaccine-skeptical allies.

“The American people deserve to know the reasons that the administration decided to gut ACIP and whether that decision was based on the political and personal agendas of a small group of vaccine cynics who you and President Trump sought to appease,” Wyden and Hassan wrote in the letter.

The lawmakers zeroed in on answers Kennedy gave during a Senate Finance Committee hearing in April, when he told lawmakers that President Trump and senior White House officials personally signed off on his decision to terminate the ACIP members, contradicting his previous claims that he made the decision unilaterally.

“This was not a routine personnel action. It was the deliberate dismantling of the nation’s vaccine advisory body, replaced with your handpicked allies, several of whom have built careers, and earned profits, undermining the very vaccines they are now charged with evaluating,” the senators wrote.

The lawmakers set a July 17 deadline for the records.

The letter is a preview of the type of oversight Democrats are likely to conduct on the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should they win control of either chamber of Congress after the midterm elections, and shows Democrats are still focused on Kennedy’s vaccine policy.

The letter blamed Kennedy for the growing spread of measles amid declining vaccination coverage and an overall drop in vaccine confidence in the country.

Polls have repeatedly shown the public doesn’t support limiting the number of vaccines or other changes Kennedy has tried to make. Ahead of the November elections, the White House has worked to keep his vaccine efforts behind the scenes

Kennedy’s changes to ACIP have been blocked by a federal court because a judge said the administration acted unlawfully in overhauling the panel, meaning all the panel’s vaccine work has been frozen. HHS has appealed the decision.