Alsobrooks, Wyden Continue to Build the Case Against RFK Jr.

May 19, 2026

After releasing a 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.

WASHINGTON, DC - RFK Jr. continues to harm the American people. On September 4, 2025, Senator Angela Alsobrooks and Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden released a report chronicling the 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). On February 18, 2026, they released an updated report covering his first full year as Secretary. Senators Wyden and Alsobrooks continue to track the pervasive and ongoing human harms caused by his leadership.

Below are Kennedy's latest harmful actions (February 18 - May 15):

February 2026

1. Kennedy continued to cause chaos at the Department with yet another leadership shakeup, firing two Senate-confirmed nominees: Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill - who was also the acting CDC Director - and General Counsel Mike Stuart. O'Neill's departure again left a vacancy at the CDC, which has been crippled by Kennedy's efforts to fire scientists and to defund public health programs that do not fall in line with his dangerous agenda.
2. Days later, CDC Principal Deputy Director Ralph Abraham resigned; Abraham had called COVID-19 vaccines dangerous while serving as the Surgeon General of Louisiana and his resignation is seen to be part of the Trump Administration's larger attempt to pivot away from Kennedy's anti-vaccine agenda. Abraham had previously drawn scrutiny after responding to a question about the potential loss of the United States' measles-elimination status by saying it was "just the cost of doing business."
3. The New York Times reported that Kennedy's anti-vaccine policies have caused vaccine manufacturers to curtail research and eliminate jobs, as manufacturers report declining vaccine sales. This is the latest example of how Kennedy's policies are not only making Americans sicker - they are harming our economy and making America less competitive in research and development.
4. Kennedy continued to play a game of musical chairs at the CDC, naming NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya as the Acting Director after removing Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill from the role. Charging one agency head with running two agencies is a recipe for disaster - and a demonstration of Kennedy's willingness to let the CDC continue to operate without adequate staffing and leadership.
5. Kennedy's cronies continue to undermine trust in vaccines, with FDA Commissioner Marty Makary defending the Administration's recent decision to reduce the childhood vaccine schedule as "pro-vaccine." Makary said that he would rather see children receive only the "core, central vaccines" than none at all, implying that some longstanding childhood vaccine recommendations are now optional.
6. Under Kennedy's leadership, the FDA continues its "whiplash" approval process, reversing its prior decision and agreeing to review Moderna's flu vaccine. Kennedy's vaccine policies have created instability for the entire industry and have upended the evidence-based approval system for critical vaccines and therapeutics.
7. Drawing criticism from nutritional experts, Kennedy claimed that a ketogenic diet could cure schizophrenia. The author of the Harvard study Kennedy cited corrected the record for the press: "While I appreciate the secretary's [apparent] enthusiasm for my research, I have never claimed to cure schizophrenia, and I have never used the word cure in any of my talks or my research."
8. Under Kennedy's leadership, the Trump Administration's rural health fund is failing to make up for the deep Medicaid cuts Trump signed into law last year. Despite Kennedy's recent Congressional testimony that there were "no cuts to Medicaid" in H.R.1, Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff testified that Ohio will receive roughly $202 million from the fund while Medicaid cuts mean $33 billion fewer federal dollars over ten years, and he affirmed that the funds are insufficient to ensure a sustainable long-term future for rural hospitals in Ohio.
9. 15 states formed a coalition to sue Kennedy for his unlawful ransacking of the independent Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Kennedy fired the ACIP's 17 members in June 2025 and replaced this expert panel with Kennedy loyalists, curtailing Americans' access to essential vaccines. The states requested a judge overturn the CDC's adjusted vaccine schedule for children.
10. As ACIP grinds to a halt under Kennedy's feckless leadership, Kennedy hastily assembled a brand new health care panel. Kennedy and Oz made a video announcement launching The Healthcare Advisory Committee (HAC): a group of hand-selected, ideologically compliant individuals, many of whom are ethically conflicted. Elizabeth Fago, for example, is the mother of Paul Walczak II, who was convicted of failing to pay more than $10 million in income and employment taxes from his health care companies. Walczak was pardoned by Trump after Fago donated $1 million to MAGA, Inc. Another, Sebastian Caliri, has financial ties to Kennedy's son Finn through 8vc.
11. Kennedy ally Casey Means appeared for her confirmation hearing before the Senate HELP Committee, where her lack of qualifications for the position, her clear conflicts of interest, and her penchant for hawking products with dubious health benefits were laid bare. The Associated Press previously found multiple instances of Dr. Means recommending products and failing to disclose her personal financial interests in them. She has publicly criticized vaccine recommendations, calling the recommendation of a universal hepatitis B birth dose "absolute insanity." At the hearing, Means struggled to answer questions about vaccine policy and her aforementioned conflicts of interest; she was unable to answer a question from Senator Kaine about whether she believes the flu vaccine reduces hospitalizations.
12. Under Kennedy's leadership, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced it would suspend $259 million in Medicaid funding to the state of Minnesota. This is yet another political attack by Kennedy on low-income families, children, and seniors, using "fraud" as a false pretense as Trump actively pardons actual fraudsters. After hamstringing federal oversight by firing 15 independent Inspectors General, Republicans are attempting to cover up almost $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts using "fraud" as a smokescreen.
    
    March 2026
13. Kennedy's CMS is forcing states to make unthinkable choices after slashing nearly a trillion dollars of federal Medicaid funding as part of Trump's and Republicans' Big Ugly Bill. Idaho is cutting $22 million in services for people with disabilities in order to close its budget gap created by Republicans.
14. Under Kennedy's leadership, HHS has announced an "investigation" into 13 states, exclusively Democratic, for upholding Americans' rights to abortion access. Since Trump fired the experienced and qualified HHS Inspector General at the beginning of his term, the Department's investigations have reeked of partisan vengeance.
15. Kennedy and the Trump Administration are running out of time to nominate a permanent CDC director, leaving Jay Bhattacharya to continue doing double duty as both NIH Director and acting CDC Director. The 210-day clock following Susan Monarez's firing runs out on March 26, and if no nominee is named, Bhattacharya may be unable to perform key "exclusive" CDC duties-including adopting or rejecting changes to vaccine recommendations-leaving even more authority over vaccine policy directly in Kennedy's hands.
16. Under Kennedy's leadership, a majority of the NIH's 25 advisory councils are now operating with 50% of council seats vacant. Kennedy continues to leave key NIH advisory councils understaffed as members depart due to resignations and term expirations; since January 2025, only one new council member has been added. These councils convene several times a year to review grant applications and make key funding decisions. A bipartisan group of lawmakers wrote to Kennedy and warned that leaving these councils understaffed will "severely disrupt medical research." Several institutes are slated to lose all advisory council members by the end of the year due to expiring terms: the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the National Institute on Aging.
17. Kennedy and the Trump Administration are reportedly sending all pregnant unaccompanied minors apprehended by immigration enforcement to a single group shelter in Texas in order to prevent these children from receiving reproductive health care, over strong objections from HHS child welfare officials "who say both the facility and the region lack the specialized care the girls need."
18. A year has passed since the last meeting of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPTF) - a critical independent panel of medical experts that shape preventive care policy for Americans, including recommendations around cancer screenings and STI testing. The task force usually meets three times a year but has been delayed by Kennedy - undermining USPTF is the latest example of his effort to silence public health experts.
19. Reporting by Rolling Stone found that Kennedy's pick for Surgeon General, Casey Means, cashed in by promoting companies on her newsletter with a history of unsafe products. At least five of Casey Means' newsletter sponsors were accused of selling products with either hazardous ingredients, unsafe levels of lead and cadmium, or even traces of a forever chemical - proving that Kennedy and his cronies are quick to discard their MAHA values when they stand to benefit.
20. Kennedy and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary were forced to backtrack on their public promise to fast-track leucovorin as a treatment for autism, after the FDA concluded it does not have sufficient evidence to do so. The reversal comes after Kennedy, Makary, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, and CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz previously promoted the drug as a promising therapy that could help some children with autism-with Makary claiming it could help "hundreds of thousands" of children-despite scientists warning that the evidence was limited and more research was needed.
21. Under Kennedy's leadership, CMS is proposing to make ACA coverage worse by making it easier for insurers to raise out-of-pocket costs, to market and sell new kinds of junk insurance coverage, to increase working families' deductibles, to cover fewer services, and to kick more providers out of networks that working people rely on when they buy their own coverage. The proposed rule would also push many states to drop coverage requirements for many essential health benefits. Kennedy has drawn fire from patient advocacy groups and state governments across the nation for these proposals.
22. A federal court ruled that Kennedy lacked the legal authority to threaten providers with exclusion from Medicare and Medicaid if they continued to provide gender affirming care; Kennedy had made this threat in a declaration released in December 2025. The court found that Kennedy and HHS violated the Administrative Procedure Act by issuing this declaration.
23. A federal court temporarily blocked implementation of changes to the childhood vaccine schedule as it hears further arguments that Kennedy violated the Administrative Procedure Act when he replaced all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and hastily installed several unqualified vaccine skeptics.
24. Kennedy's anti-vaccine agenda is trickling down to the state level, with Florida's Department of Health moving to remove four vaccines from the state's school immunization requirements-chickenpox, hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type b, and pneumococcal conjugate vaccines-even after legislative efforts to weaken vaccine laws failed. The push, led by Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, a Kennedy-aligned vaccine skeptic, shows how Kennedy's movement continues to embolden efforts to endanger the nation's children.
25. In the face of public accountability, Kennedy's hand-picked cadre of lackeys is splintering. Following an injunction against vaccine schedule changes, ACIP member Robert Malone announced that the panel wouldn't appeal the decision. After being directly contradicted by the ACIP spokesperson, Malone resigned from the panel saying, "Suffice to say I do not like drama, and have better things to do."
26. A new study shows that when Kennedy and the Trump Administration abruptly terminated more than 2,000 NIH research grants in early 2025, the cuts and terminations disproportionately impacted women and people of color in the biomedical workforce.
27. Under Kennedy's leadership, according to multiple watchdog reports, CMS is negligently allowing nursing homes to use antipsychotic drugs as chemical restraints to cut down on workload as well as inflate their ratings by overdiagnosing patients with schizophrenia. The Washington Post reports that, amid lobbying from the pharmaceutical industry, Kennedy's HHS is considering easing rules that discourage the inappropriate use of antipsychotics.
28. While Kennedy continues to sow doubt, confusion, and mistrust about vaccines, there are now 1,566 documented cases of measles in 30 states-one of the highest levels on record since the United States eliminated measles in 2000. 92% of current measles cases are present in patients who have not been vaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown.
29. Under Kennedy's leadership, one in three Americans are making drastic tradeoffs to afford their health care costs: 15% report stretching the supply of their prescription drugs, 11% report skipping meals, and 9% report cutting back on utilities.
30. When Republicans ended the enhanced premium tax credits for Marketplace plans in 2026, they did so with Kennedy's support, and the impacts were felt immediately. Over one million Americans are no longer able to afford to pay their health insurance premiums, and millions more have been forced to pay more for less, opting for plans that cover less with higher premiums and deductibles.
31. Under Kennedy's leadership, the FDA has abandoned a proposed rule banning the use of tanning beds for children under 18. The medical community has expressed alarm at this reversal, and the president of the American Academy of Dermatology said that the proposed rule would have been a "huge" step forward. Using tanning beds before age 20 increases the lifetime risk of melanoma by 50%.
32. After Kennedy undermined public trust in yet another federal committee - the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) - by firing its members and replacing them with his handpicked choices, a number of autism experts created their own committee to rebut Kennedy's new IACC federal counterpart. Kennedy's dismantling of the IACC, and his replacement of experts with allies who advance the discredited claim that vaccines cause autism, is just the latest way he is attempting to promote his dangerous conspiracy theories.
33. Kennedy announced on the Joe Rogan podcast that the FDA will meet to consider removing restrictions on peptide injections, even though most peptides have not been reviewed for safety by the FDA. While Kennedy's peptide review panel will not be convened until July, the FDA will remove seven peptides from a restrictive list of unapproved peptides in the interim. A former FDA official has said that allowing peptides on the market without clinical testing poses a "profound threat" to FDA's drug vetting processes.
    
    April 2026
34. The Trump Administration released its annual budget, requesting a $5 billion cut to the NIH from 2026 spending levels. This amount would cut the budget for the world's largest funder of health research by 10 percent and it would eliminate several NIH institutes.
35. Under Kennedy's leadership, the NIH has fallen approximately $1 billion behind the pace it kept for medical research in years past. Thousands of projects have been delayed, thousands of workers have been laid off, and bottlenecks have prevented the agency from paying out previously appropriated funds to grantees. Kennedy's office has slowed the pace of research even further by stepping in to flag, delay, and withhold certain grants and funding streams.
36. Kennedy brazenly lied to Congress in his testimony before several committees. When pressed about the nearly trillion-dollar cut to Medicaid that Republicans enacted last year, he repeatedly claimed "there are no cuts to Medicaid." Associated Press fact checkers and Medicaid and federal budget experts confirm that Kennedy's claim is false-in order to offset lost revenue from tax cuts, Republicans enacted changes to Medicaid that will reduce its spending by close to $1 trillion over 10 years. These cuts are already forcing providers to make impossible budget decisions, resulting in 216 hospital and clinic closures or service line reductions and almost 8,500 layoffs across the country since their bill passed alone.
37. Under Kennedy's leadership, the CDC announced it would suspend testing for the rabies, smallpox, and mpox viruses due to layoffs, resignations, and hiring freezes. Rabies has a nearly 100 percent fatality rate once symptoms are detected.
38. The acting CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya delayed a report showing the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine, concerning officials that the delay was meant to hide information that supported the vaccine's safety and to appease Kennedy's anti-vaccine supporters.
39. Under Kennedy's leadership, the Trump Administration is delivering on a long-held goal of the anti-choice movement-restricting women's access to birth control. The Administration's FY 2027 budget proposes to eliminate the Title X Family Planning Services Program entirely. HHS simultaneously proposed guidance for Title X grantee clinics effective in January 2027 that undermines access to contraception.
40. Kennedy announced he is launching "The Secretary Kennedy Podcast" to confront "spiritual malaise" and "embrace the truth." Promoting his new podcast on official HHS social media channels, Kennedy says that "many of us have come to the conclusion that [the] government actually lies to us." Kennedy continues to be more interested in promoting himself than he is in working to improve public health.
41. Kennedy signed an updated charter document for the CDC's ACIP, which attempts to repurpose ACIP and force it to focus on vaccine risks and side effects. The revised charter is an attempt to circumvent the March ruling by a federal court that halted Kennedy's actions to replace the entire slate of ACIP members with vaccine skeptics and fundamentally alter the childhood vaccine schedule.
42. The Trump Administration was forced to concede that under Kennedy's leadership, it relied upon incorrect data to justify launching an investigation into New York's Medicaid program. CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz misstated the share of New York Medicaid enrollees who receive personal care services; the numbers CMS cited were ten times higher than the correct numbers, as admitted by Oz to the Associated Press. This illustrates just how sloppy and careless Kennedy and the Administration are in their haste to launch sham investigations into "fraud" in blue states.
43. Under Kennedy's leadership, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is defunding harm reduction strategies that reduce overdoses and drug related deaths. SAMHSA issued guidance that agency funds can no longer be used to purchase the $1 test strips that check for the presence of fentanyl and other deadly drugs. Overdose deaths in the United States have fallen sharply since 2023, due in large part to harm reduction measures like test strips.
44. Trump withdrew the Kennedy-backed nomination of Casey Means for surgeon general after bipartisan opposition made clear that she would not be confirmed by the Senate.
45. The Trump administration signed yet another secret drug pricing deal with Regeneron, who told its investors that the deals would have an "incremental revenue impact at most." Kennedy lauded these deals across multiple hearings in the House and the Senate, yet a report by Finance Committee Democrats laid out what little was known about the deals. As a result, 18 Senate Democrats introduced the Drug Deal Disclosure Act to compel Kennedy to release the details of the deals.
46. Multiple Senators grilled Kennedy for his lack of accountability on drug pricing claims during a Finance Committee Hearing. Senator Welch pointed out that pharma companies were getting richer from these deals while Americans were saving little. In an exchange with Senator Warren, Kennedy claimed that Trump had "a different way of calculating" drug price savings, and "if you have a $600 drug, and you reduce it to $10, that's a 600 percent reduction," which is mathematically incorrect.
    
    May 2026
47. Kennedy is leading a secretive interagency effort to highlight any research he can find that will reinforce doubts about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Investigative reporting reveals that this covert inquiry is one of Kennedy's top priorities and he wants to "build" a body of evidence to support his view that vaccines have caused epidemics of autism and chronic disease.
48. Kennedy has personally held up $600 million in funding that Congress already appropriated for Gavi, an international alliance that helps vaccinate children in poor countries. Over the objection of bipartisan Senators, Kennedy has previously told Congress that he is pressuring the State Department to withhold the funding because he believes Gavi uses vaccines that are outdated and dangerous.
49. Physicians nationwide are reporting a tragic uptick in the number of newborn deaths due to vitamin K deficiency bleeding as parents increasingly refuse the newborn dose of the Vitamin K shot. This birth dose has been recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics since 1961, but Kennedy has long refused to affirm that it is safe and effective. When asked about Vitamin K shots in last month's Congressional hearings, Kennedy again refused to make a supportive statement and instead testified, "I've never said, literally never said, anything about it."
50. At a MAHA Institute event on "mental health and overmedicalization," Kennedy announced that HHS would begin to limit the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a category of antidepressants and psychiatric medications taken by one in six American adults. Previously, in 2024, Kennedy told a podcast host that black children who take SSRIs should be "re-parented." Kennedy was pressed on this matter by multiple members of Congress during hearings; he both denied and downplayed his racist, uninformed, and dangerous commentary.
51. Meanwhile, Kennedy's FDA is fast-tracking a review of psychedelic drugs after a White House executive order directed the agency to prioritize them for mental health treatment - while on the other hand the administration actively works to dismantle SAMHSA. Experts warn that the order does not resolve the core scientific and regulatory challenges; these are currently listed as Schedule 1 drugs with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. The fast-tracking push has already boosted psychedelic company stocks and raised concerns that Kennedy's FDA is letting political pressure from Joe Rogan shape drug approvals.
52. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned, citing his opposition to the Administration's approval of fruit-flavored e-cigarettes that would appeal to children. Rumors had swirled for weeks that Trump had planned to fire him. HHS is now left paralyzed by three key vacancies; it has no Senate-confirmed FDA Commissioner, Surgeon General, or CDC Director.
53. Kennedy's chief spokesperson resigned in protest over the Administration's efforts to greenlight the sale of flavored vaping products that would appeal to children. Rich Danker, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, sent a resignation letter to the White House on May 13 and wrote that allowing tobacco companies to market these products would draw more children into vaping and "expose them to nicotine addiction, lung damage, and higher risk of cancer." Danker's concerns echoed those of Dr. Marty Makary, who had resigned as FDA Commissioner the day before.
54. After suspending $259 million of Medicaid funding to the state of Minnesota in February, CMS announced the deferral of an additional $91 million to Minnesota and $1.3 billion to California. Kennedy and Republicans continue trying to cover up their $1 trillion Medicaid cuts by using "fraud" as a smokescreen and a sham justification.
55. Under Kennedy's leadership, Americans continue to lose health insurance coverage as monthly premiums become unaffordable. Reporting now indicates that at least 3 million Americans can no longer afford to pay their health insurance premiums and have lost coverage in 2026. Twenty percent of enrollees who rely on the federal marketplace to buy coverage lost coverage this year after being unable to pay their premiums in 2026.

###