After releasing a 54-page report chronicling every day of RFK Jr.’s costly, chaotic, and corrupt reign as Secretary, Senators Alsobrooks and Wyden continue to build their case for why RFK Jr. must resign or be fired. 

December 8, 2025 

WASHINGTON, DC – RFK Jr. continues to harm the American people. On September 4, 2025, Ranking Member Ron Wyden and Senator Angela Alsobrooks released a report chronicling the daily actions that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has taken to undermine the health and safety of the American people since becoming Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Over the last month, Kennedy’s actions continued to endanger the American people’s health, culminating in the (ACIP)’s vote to limit availability of the Hepatitis B vaccine late last week.  

Below are Kennedy’s latest harmful actions (November 4 – December 8): 

  1. The Trump health care shutdown set a record for the longest government shutdown in American history. Trump, Kennedy, and Congressional Republicans refused to work with Democrats to lower skyrocketing health care premiums barreling towards Americans who buy their own insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) starting January 1, 2026.  
  1. Trump and Kennedy are responsible for the second largest dollar increase in Medicare Part B premiums in the program’s history. In 2026, for the first time ever, monthly Medicare premiums deducted from seniors’ Social Security checks will exceed $200. Next year, people with Medicare will pay $202.90 in 2026– $17.90 more than in 2025.  
  1. Kennedy joined Trump and Big Pharma CEOs from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly in the Oval Office to announce ill-defined half-measures to lower the price of prescription drugs. Trump and Kennedy, however, refuse to admit that: (1) they killed a Biden-era proposed rule to provide even broader coverage of these drugs in Medicare and Medicaid; and (2) Medicare drug price negotiations–passed into law by Democrats without a single Republican vote–played a significant role in achieving lower prices on anti-obesity medications. 
  1. Every state in the U.S. applied for help through Republicans’ rural health slush fund, a meager, politically-motivated $50 billion piggy-bank Republicans handed to Administrator Oz of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to cover up for Republicans’ more than $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) signed into law as part of Trump’s Big Ugly Bill. As tracked monthly by Ranking Member Wyden, across the country, hospitals are shutting down services, clinics are closing, workers are being laid off, and health care costs are rising because of Republicans’ largest health care cuts in history.  
  1. Dr. Robert Malone was announced as a participant on the November 5th MAHA Action Media Hub, where he was described as an “HHS special advisor and prolific MAHA advocate. Malone was one of Kennedy’s hand-picked replacements for the independent Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), after Kennedy fired the entire panel without cause earlier this year. Malone’s appearance at the MAHA event, a movement inherently tied to Kennedy, undermines his credibility as an independent expert.  
  1. Following Kennedy’s unfounded remarks on Tylenol’s connection to autism, the maker of Tylenol was bought out by Kimberly-Clark for $48.7 billion in one of the largest corporate takeovers of the year. Kennedy continues to use his role as the United States’ top health official to interfere in the free market and engage in self-dealing rather than improve Americans’ health care access. Weaponizing Kennedy’s misinformation on Tylenol, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the manufacturer of Tylenol claiming there is a potential link between use of the drug during pregnancy and risk of autism.
  1. Under Kennedy’s leadership, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation released the sketch of an ambiguous new program that purports to stand up an international drug pricing mechanism to lower Medicaid drug prices for states. This sketch lacks the foundational details required to assess its actual impact on states, including what prescription drugs are included and specifics on how prices will be set. 
  1. Americans’ access to health care under Kennedy continues to deteriorate. States are scrambling to absorb Republicans’ more than $1 trillion cut to Medicaid and the ACA. In Colorado, adults with Medicaid coverage are now at risk of losing critical dental benefits next year, and the governor’s other cost-saving proposals include limiting home-caregiver hours and cutting payments for those who support individuals with autism — all signs of how these cuts are cascading into real losses in access to care.  
  1. In an undeniable display of true colors, Kennedy’s former communications director, Del Bigtree, embraced the anti-vax label, saying, “God is an anti-vaxxer, and he needs you to speak up,” at a MAHA conference in Austin, Texas. This conference preceded the MAHA conference in Washington, DC, which continued the anti-vaccine rhetoric with panel names such as “The Enduring Nightmare of COVID mRNA Technology” and “Understanding the Enormity of Vaccine Injury.” 
  1. Kennedy is continuing to spread the dangerous claim that psychiatric drugs are a key cause of mass shootings at the nation’s schools and beyond, making statements at a recent Turning Point USA event that antidepressants may turn people into killers. This claim was one of many in a performance rife with unhinged rants and deceptive statements with little connection to the truth.  
  1. Kennedy reversed policies that created incentives for doctors to formulate anti-racism policies. This decision is a further step in the Trump administration’s assault on communities of color.  
  1. Under Kennedy’s leadership, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued preliminary guidance to state Medicaid programs on over $200 billion in cuts to Medicaid payments for health care providers enacted in Trump’s Big Ugly Bill.  
  1. In a shameless departure from the scientific standards of his station, Kennedy instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to retract the well-founded CDC position that vaccines do not cause autism. 
  1. Kennedy reportedly plans to make dramatic changes to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, including expanding the conditions that the program considers vaccine injuries to include autism and other unrelated conditions, continuing to peddle the false and dangerous narrative that vaccines cause autism.  
  1. Kennedy personally instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to rewrite its webpage that once stated unequivocally that vaccines do not cause autism, to now suggest without evidence that health authorities “ignored” possible links between the shots and autism, and that the assertion that ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidenced based claim. The move was widely panned by pediatricians, vaccine experts, and researchers, as well as the American Medical Association, National Medical Association, American Public Health Association, Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The move was further panned by Senator Cassidy, who wrote that any statement that undermines trust in vaccines is wrong, irresponsible, and actively makes Americans sicker.” Further, The CDC webpage now includes an asterisked header that includes the line “the header “Vaccines do not cause autism” has not been removed due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website, referencing the agreement Kennedy made with Senator Cassidy during his nomination confirmation process. Both the change and the qualifying explanation lay bare Kennedy’s brazen attempts to disregard science and promote dangerous conspiracy theories, while still doing the bare minimum to pander to Republicans on Capitol Hill.  
  1. Kennedy installed a vocal COVID-19 vaccine skeptic, Ralph Abraham to serve as the agency’s second in command, continuing the pattern of filling leadership positions at the agency with anti-vaccine sycophants to rubber stamp his dangerous public health policies.   
  1. Under Kennedy’s watch, a third unvaccinated child died in Kentucky from whooping cough, as pertussis cases climbed across the country due to declining vaccination rates. Kennedy has exacerbated this decline and is responsible for promoting rhetoric that has led to the needless deaths of American children from vaccine preventable diseases – like measles and whooping cough.  
  1. In a direct attack on frail seniors, people with disabilities, and direct care workers, Kennedy rescinded minimum staffing standards for nursing homes, no longer requiring a registered nurse to be available 24/7 and putting residents’ health and safety at increased risk. 
  1. Kennedy brought back senior advisor Calley Means, who has come under scrutiny for his conflicts of interest surrounding the wellness company he co-founded. Means and the company, Truemed, have profited considerably from Kennedy’s policies, including from Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again report, which encourages the expansion of tax-advantaged health savings accounts and flexible savings accounts to purchase alternative health and wellness products, including products that TrueMed markets. 
  1. Kennedy appointed Martin Kulldorff, the COVID-19 vaccine skeptic and author of the Great Barrington Declaration, who he had previously appointed to lead the CDC’s ACIP, to serve as chief science officer for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. This is the latest personnel change by Kennedy to destabilize ACIP right before it meets to deliberate critical vaccine policy.  
  1. Amid the massive shakeup, HHS employees are being left behind. HHS faces a months-long backlog of nearly 3,330 reasonable accommodation requests from its employees, which the agency claims will take several additional months to clear.  
  1. Continuing to de-prioritize its own employees, HHS has added new barriers to telework for workers with disabilities. 
  1. Under Kennedy’s leadership, the head of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA)  Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which oversees vaccines, sent a memo to the entire staff of his center the day after Thanksgiving, claiming that agency scientists had identified 10 cases in which the deaths of children were tied to the Covid vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna. Despite citing no evidence, the FDA is citing this conclusion to justify a more arduous approval process for vaccines. 
  1. A dozen former FDA Commissioners from both Republican and Democratic administrations wrote an article in the New England Journal of Medicine panning the memo from FDA, and reaffirming that the FDA had carefully reviewed all the adverse events cases cited by Prasad and reached different conclusions, and that his policies would “disadvantage the people the FDA exists to protect.” 
  1. According to leaked internal communications, employees of the FDA are expressing increasing dissatisfaction with the working conditions under Kennedy’s leadership, leading to staff exodus. Outside experts noted in mid-October that the agency’s 32 drug approvals so far this year are “a bit behind” previous years, adding that staffing shortfalls could soon force the FDA to either slow approvals or lower review standards—“which could endanger the public.” 
  1. Meanwhile, top drug regulator Richard Pazdur, and the fourth person to lead the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research this year, announced his retirement from the FDA. Pazdur’s departure only adds to what has been a deeply disturbing pattern at the FDA over the past year, nearly 90% of senior leaders – including many career staff – who were at the agency a year ago are no longer there. Many have been pushed out either directly or indirectly by Kennedy and Commissioner Makary’s reign of terror.  
  1. Continuing Kennedy’s war on vaccine safety, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted to roll back the recommendation that newborns be vaccinated against hepatitis B. 
  1. Kennedy enabled anti-vaccine lawyer Aaron Siri to brief the CDC ACIP meeting on December 4, despite having no medical or scientific background. Aaron Siri previously advised Kennedy on personnel issues, and is not a subject matter expert on vaccine policy. During her testimony in September to the Senate HELP Committee, former CDC Director Susan Monarez testified that Kennedy pushed her to meet with Siri before she was ousted. Siri’s firm also petitioned the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to update the label for Tylenol with warnings about increased risks for developing autism. Previously, Siri called for the FDA to revoke approval for the polio vaccine. Kennedy paving the way for Siri to participate in the vaccine scheduling meeting in December is just the latest example of him platforming dangerous ideology over science.  
  1. Kennedy’s kangaroo court of hand-picked vaccine skeptics on ACIP voted to change the nation’s immunization schedule, recommending that America’s children wait to get their hepatitis B vaccine — which prevents chronic HepB infection, a leading cause of liver cancer. Universal hepatitis B vaccinations at birth have been extremely effective in reducing infections, and experts agree that it is the best strategy to minimize the risk of transmission to all infants – when they are also most susceptible to develop chronic infection or life-threatening complications from hepatitis B. Kennedy will have blood on his hands for every child that dies unnecessarily from Hepatitis B or any other once-eradicated disease.  

###