Lawmakers repeatedly pressed Robert F. Kennedy, secretary of U.S. health and welfare, on cancelled medical research and massive layoffs, during a hearing Wednesday about a Trump administration proposal that could lead to even wider cuts.

The House Budget Democrats, Health and Human Resources, Education and Related Institutions subcommittee has repeatedly asked the Secretary to explain this year’s cut in health programs, medical research and staffing before discussing the 2026 budget, which further reduces health agencies. Kennedy also testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Wednesday afternoon.

Kennedy argued that he would use the funds allocated by Congress in the 2026 budget in accordance with the law. But Democrats on the House Budget Committee, including ranking member Steny Hoyer and Health Subcommittee ranking member Rosa Delaulo, have focused on agency spending this year because of the already-allowed budget.

“Here we need to maintain a clear line between the questionable ’26 proposal and what’s going on now against the law we passed and signed into law,” Delauro said.

The cancellation of the National Institutes of Health grant reached $2.7 billion in a study that is much higher than previous estimates, according to a Democrat’s report on the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Tuesday.

In a post on X on Tuesday, HHS called the report “clearly false” and said it was politically motivated.

The secretary defended HHS funding and employment cuts in the House Subcomtee Hearing, saying the slashes would reduce redundancy and the proposed 2026 budget would streamline the programme further.

However, he also said it seemed to distance itself from the exclusion led by the efficiency of the US government, protecting certain programs, including Head Start.

“There have been a lot of examples of me saying, ‘It’s going to hurt us,” he told the House committee.

Kennedy also told Congresswomen Wednesday that Americans should not get advice from him about vaccinations.

“My opinion on vaccines is irrelevant,” he said. “Everyone should make that decision. I seem evasive, but I don’t think people should give me advice, medical advice from me.”

The comments came after Rep. Mark Pocan of D-Wisconsin asked Kennedy today if he would offset his children with measles. “Perhaps in the case of measles,” the secretary replied before adding that vaccination is a personal choice.

Pokan followed up with questions about whether Kennedy would vaccinate children against Chicken Pox and polio today. Kennedy pointed out that the Chicken Pox shots are not necessary in Europe and once again said he didn’t want them to be seen as advice to his family.

“What we’re trying to do is to accurately lay out the pros and cons,” he said.

Kennedy previously revealed that his children received a recommended childhood vaccine schedule when they were younger. As the founder of the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense, he criticised its schedule, claiming that the side effects of certain vaccines, including unproven links with autism, outweigh their benefits.

The secretary announced in April that the health agency would launch a large-scale research and testing effort to distill the causes of autism, citing “environmental toxins” and other exposures.

In an opening statement at the House Subcommittee hearing, Kennedy said one of the agency’s top budget priorities is “eliminating Dei’s funds and redirecting resources towards real poverty reduction.”

New Jersey Democrat Bonnie Watson Coleman pushed him onto the topic, highlighting the enormous racial disparities in maternal mortality rates in the US and other health issues.

“There’s very little that makes me angry than a racist attack. I see this administration by embarking on an ignorant crusade to drive the government out of programs that work to improve the lives of black Americans,” Watson Coleman said. “The administration moved to ban the words black, race, prejudice, minority, oppression, prejudice, discrimination, disparity and racism. Grant applications for federal programs that contain these words were quickly stripped of.”

These actions are attempts to “justify racism,” she said, and low-income minorities will suffer the most from consequences.

“It’s uncontroversial to get a healthcare system that’s not built to help people like me right, to make my concerns, my pain, my health very serious in this country,” Watson Coleman said. “How accurately does HHS prohibit the words that they use to describe themselves?”

Kennedy said President Donald Trump has a vision for a “color brand administration” that resembles the ideals of Pastor Martin Luther King Jr.

“The commitment is there. We’re just reorganizing,” he said.

But he allegedly put him in the rationale for Watson Coleman to eliminate programs for low-income households to support the Energy Bill, in order to have a fever in the winter and stay cooler in the summer: the Energy Assistance Program for Low-income Homes, or Liheap.

“My time has expired,” Kennedy said.

“Then so is your legitimacy,” Watson Coleman said.

Only when prompted to follow up would Kennedy provide a brief explanation, saying the administration’s broader energy policy generally aims to reduce energy costs.

“If that doesn’t happen, Congress will be welcome — and they should make the money appropriate for liheap, and I will spend it,” Kennedy said. “I have already allocated $400 million from Liheap over the last 100 days. If fuel costs don’t cut, I will continue to provide that fund to those who need it in this country.”

Kennedy proposed in the Senate that an expert from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was mistakenly fired during the agency’s cleaning cuts in April.

During a questioning by Senator D-Wisconsin, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Kennedy agreed that childhood lead poisoning is a “very important concern” about the impact of lead program cuts on the lead pollution crisis in Milwaukee public schools.

Baldwin then asked, “Are you going to eliminate this branch in the CDC? Yes, no?”

“No, I won’t,” Kennedy said.

This is the second time Kennedy has suggested that the CDC’s chief expert has been mistakenly reduced. When asked about the program cuts during his April appearance, he replied, “There are a few programs that are being cut that are revived, and I think that’s one of them.”

A spokesperson for HHS later said that the CDC lead program would not be revived, but work will continue through another CDC office for toxic and disease registries.

However, Dr. Eric Svenden, director of the CDC’s Environmental Health Sciences and Practice Department, including Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, said that CDC’s Lead Program experts have not been rehired.

The entire department and all of its programs were cut during the layoffs on April 1. “We’re all still rifd,” Svenden confirmed Wednesday.

Asked for clarification on Wednesday, an agency official told CNN: “Once HHS completes the detailed reorganization plan, the department will consider the secretary and all the strategic programs and priorities of the country. The programme will continue.”

Kennedy revives other workers at the CDC. Kennedy said he has revived 328 workers at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health in Morgantown, West Virginia, and another site in exchange for a Democrat Senator from Washington and Senator Patty Murray of Washington. The offices addressed the safety and health issues of the first responders’ mines after responding to the September 11 attack, he said.

“Mine safety work will continue,” Kennedy said. “We understand that it’s a very important feature, and I didn’t want to see it end.”

Murray said other Niosh workers in his Spokane, Washington office have not been revived.

“I’ll just say you can’t fire 90% of people and assume the job is done,” she said.

“Among NIOSH employees, many of the important functions of NIOSH remained negatively affected by the reduction in power for those working in this country,” said Micah Nimier Walsh, vice president of the U.S. Government Employee Federation Local 3840, representing NIOSH employees in Cincinnati, in a statement Wednesday.

Some U.S. Food and Drug Administration workers are turning back fires, including staff who handle Freedom of Information Act requests, people who negotiate user fees, and some laboratory staff.

Additionally, more than 12 scientists from the FDA’s Moffett Lab in Illinois, focusing on food safety, overturned the RIF notification.

A few minutes after the Senate hearing Wednesday afternoon, protesters cried out before security guards forced them out of the room, “RFK will kill people with AIDS” and “Congress will kill them.” Other attendees sat through the hearing with big stickers on their clothes, saying “anti-vax, anti-science, anti-American” next to Kennedy’s image.

Kennedy resumed his prepared remarks after protesters came out.

“Let me be clear,” he said.

CNN’s Deidre McPhillips, Brenda Goodman and Meg Tirrell contributed to this report.

Providence, Rhode Island
AP
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President Donald Trump’s new pick for surgeon general wrote in a recent book that people should consider using unproven psychedelic drugs as treatment, and the newsletter suggested that mushroom use can help you find a romantic partner.

Dr. Casey said that psilocybin is illegal under federal law, so recommendations for considering induced psilocybin-assisted therapy are prominent. It is listed as a Schedule 1 drug defined as a substance that has no currently recognized medical use and is highly likely to be abused. Oregon and Colorado have legalized psychedelic therapy, but some Oregon cities have banned it.

The job of a surgeon is to provide Americans with the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce the risk of illness and injury. Past surgeon generals have used their position to educate Americans on health issues such as AIDS and suicide prevention. The surgeon general’s warning about the risks of smoking in 1964 helped change the course of American health.

Like Dr. C. Everett Coupe, a surgeon to President Ronald Reagan, he had a major influence on policy and became widely known, and others easily slipped from memory.

‘The nomination follows a pattern from Trump that selects people known for public personas over policy positions. In the case of measures, the Republican president said he chose her solely on the recommendations of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “Bobby thought she was great,” Trump said.

A method of earning an undergraduate and medical degree from Stanford University started a medical settlement in Oregon, but did not complete it. Her medical license is listed as inactive. The method of contacting us by telephone declined to comment on the records.

She recommended psychedelics in her 2024 book, Good Energy. She wrote alongside her brother Calley Means, who now works as a health advisor in the Trump administration and says she invested in a biopharmaceutical company specializing in psychedelics.

Many of the books focus on metabolic health, and what Casey means is “good energy.” She suggests many strategies to help people manage and heal stressors, trauma and thought patterns that limit us and contribute to our poor metabolic health and prosperity.

One such strategy is to “consider psilocybin-assisted therapy,” which refers to compounds found in psychedelic mushrooms. She details her thoughts on the subject in a 750-word sentence.

“If you feel you’re being called, I recommend you explore intentional and induced psilocybin therapy,” she writes. “Strong scientific evidence suggests that this psychedelic therapy could, as it was for me, be one of the most meaningful life experiences for some people.”

Although there are several studies that suggest the benefits of psychedelics, the benefits have not been shown to outweigh the risks. Psilocybin can cause hours of hallucinations, but it’s comfortable and frightening. When combined with talk therapy, it has been studied as a treatment for mental illness and alcoholism, but rarely studied in healthy people. Side effects include increased heart rate, nausea and headaches. Taking it without supervision is dangerous. Hallucinations can cause users to step into traffic or take other risks.

The measure writes that psilocybin and other psychedelics are being blamed. She touted the benefits of MDMA, also known as ecstasy or molly, to help people with post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. Last year, the Food and Drug Administration refused to approve the use of MDMA as a treatment for PTSD after a panel of advisors found to be flawed in the study and to be a serious risk in using it.

Means refers to the psychedelics in her book “plant medicine.” She explains how she first took mushrooms around January 1, 2021.

“I felt myself as part of an infinite, unbroken series of millions of mothers and babies’ universe nest dolls from the beginning of my life,” she wrote, adding that in her experience, “Psilocybin could be a gateway to another reality free of my ego, emotions, and the restrictive beliefs of personal history.”

In a newsletter she published in October, she also said she used psychedelics to help create “spaces to find love at 35.” She wrote that she was ready for the partnership and “had a reliable guide and experience in plant medicine” ready to cut off the line with a mushroom emoji. She noted that she doesn’t necessarily make recommendations that others do the same.

In a post about the White House Health Policy Wishlist this month, she said she wanted to provide more nutritious foods at schools, suggesting that ultra-highly processed foods be labeled with warning labels, asked to investigate vaccine safety and wanted to remove conflicts of interest. She didn’t specifically mention psychedelics, but the researchers said there was little incentive to study “generic, natural, and non-patentable treatments,” and that part of the research budget should be dedicated to alternative approaches to health.

Calley Means also advocates the use of psychedelic drugs, and in a 2021 blog post he tried out Psilocybin at a challenging time in his life and said, “It was the most meaningful experience of my life. He said in 2022 he “sold everything about my 401K” and bought shares at two companies developing and researching psychedelics. He did not respond to messages seeking comment.

“It means there is no confirmation hearing scheduled. Trump chose the measure after questions were raised about the first pick resume of former Fox News medical contributor Janet Neshwatt, a surgeon general, and he retracted her appointment.

Associated Press medical writers Carla K. Johnson of Washington and Associated Press author Ali Swenson of New York contributed to the report.