‘he’s Got A Lot Of Stamina:’ What To Watch As The Rfk Jr. Hearing Blitz Kicks Off

Lawmakers are about to get their shot to weigh in on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s first year at the Health Department and his plans for the next.

In seven hearings over less than a week, beginning Thursday, Kennedy will show whether all those workouts with Kid Rock and his red meat-heavy diet have him in shape for a Capitol Hill marathon like none in recent memory.

Democrats will call out Kennedy’s efforts to downsize his agencies — and the vaccine schedule. Republicans who’ve given their Health secretary a hard time in the past about his vaccine moves, like Senate Health Chair Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, must decide whether to stand down now that it’s an election year.

The hearings, Kennedy’s first appearances on Capitol Hill in seven months, are the first high-profile public forum of 2026 to test the White House’s theory that Kennedy will help Republicans in the midterms. Kennedy and his GOP allies in Congress will not only make the case before the principal oversight committees for the Department of Health and Human Services, but also before panels where he’s never appeared before, such as Ways and Means, which will kick everything off Thursday morning.

The hearings are officially about the Trump administration’s 2027 budget request for HHS, which includes a more-than-12-percent cut to federal health agencies, calling for the elimination of “bloated, woke and inefficient programs that do not advance” Kennedy’s goal to "make America healthy again." But members of Congress from both parties are expected to question him on his tumultuous year heading the department and make the case to voters that he’s a reason to vote for or against President Donald Trump’s party.

MAHA on the line

The hearings will test Kennedy’s political acumen, as some voters who embraced the GOP because of Trump’s alliance with him in 2024 say they plan to vote for Democrats, dissatisfied with the administration’s pace on improving Americans’ health.

Worried about a potential rupture with Kennedy’s MAHA movement over a Trump order in February calling for more glyphosate production — a pesticide vital to U.S. agriculture that a World Health Organization agency has said there’s evidence causes cancer — the White House last week sought to woo supporters back to Trump’s tent at a meeting with the president and top administration officials.

At the hearings, the Republicans who are supportive of Kennedy are expected to showcase what he’s done to make America healthy again, such as his campaign to get people to “eat real food” and exercise.

“We’re going to talk about all aspects of MAHA and where he thinks things have been successful; transparency in the budget, like some areas of CDC; there are some concerns about some awards that haven’t gone out,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, the West Virginia Republican who chairs the Appropriations subcommittee overseeing the Health Department, told POLITICO.

Kennedy is scheduled to testify before her panel on Tuesday.

“I think he’s got a lot of stamina,” Capito said when asked about the Health secretary’s plans. Each hearing could last hours, requiring Kennedy to spar with representatives and senators and think on his feet.

Democrats on the attack

Also with an eye on the midterms, Democrats will likely attack him for paring back vaccine recommendations — which they see as dangerous for the health of American kids.

“That’s front and center” for the Senate Finance Committee hearing set for April 22, Oregon’s Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on that panel, said in an interview.

Kennedy, a member of a storied Democratic family, is ready to go on the offensive against the representatives of his former party and any potential Republican critics. During the six hearings where Kennedy testified last year, he responded to tough questions about his views on vaccines — Kennedy believes some cause autism — by accusing Democrats of shilling for pharmaceutical companies.

“He represents change and upsets that status quo, and he's going to remind these members that when they're defending the status quo, the status quo sucks,” said an HHS official familiar with preparations for the hearings granted anonymity to discuss their strategy.

Kennedy will look for opportunities to show the receipts demonstrating the successes of his reforms and push back against Democrats, who he says allowed U.S. public health to lag, “whether you look at health care spending, chronic disease epidemic, cancer rate, obesity rate,” the HHS official said.

Kennedy’s game plan

The Health secretary will highlight MAHA wins Thursday before the House Appropriations subcommittee overseeing his department, according to his prepared testimony. Those successes include changing the nation’s dietary guidelines to “emphasize real, whole, nutrient-dense foods,” working with the food industry to phase out artificial dyes and initiating a review of food additives that have been “generally recognized as safe,” according to government parlance.

The prepared testimony also signals a plan for Kennedy to stick to a script he’s been following since the beginning of the year. He’s focused on improving nutrition in America and lowering drug costs instead of highlighting his changes to vaccine policy, such as reducing the number of vaccines the government recommends children receive. A poll of voters in competitive districts showed that those were unpopular.

Kennedy is expected to double up on Trump’s February State of the Union Address, calling for codifying voluntary pricing deals the president has reached with a number of drug companies. The Health secretary also plans to ask Congress to lower insurance costs by sending money directly to eligible Americans instead of to insurance companies, as Trump proposed last year, and to maximize price transparency from providers and health insurers.

But some Democrats plan to press Kennedy on the Trump administration’s cuts to Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for low-income people, which is expected to lead to millions losing health insurance. The Trump administration has argued that many people who will lose coverage shouldn’t have received it in the first place since they could work or were “illegal immigrants,” a claim Democrats dispute.

“If 15 million people don’t have insurance, they still get sick and go to the hospital, who pays?” said Bobby Scott of Virginia, the top Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee, who will question Kennedy on Friday for the first time.

The GOP wild cards

Republican senators who have been critical of Kennedy in the past say they plan to ask him about some of the budget cuts the administration requested for HHS.

“One, which is pretty obvious, which I will preview is the 12 percent cut in the NIH budget, which I very much oppose,” said Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins of Maine, who has also questioned the secretary on vaccines and shakeups at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The White House earlier this month requested a 10 percent cut to the National Institutes of Health, which funds health research at universities, for the 2027 fiscal year after it demanded a 40 percent cut to the agency for this year.

Congress slightly increased the institute’s budget for fiscal 2026 when it passed a spending bill in February. Collins, who has emerged as a lead defender of the NIH, is unlikely to budge.

Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who sits on the Appropriations and Health committees, said funding for the Indian Health Service was top of mind going into the hearings. The administration’s budget proposal requests an additional $1 billion for 2027 on top of the $8 billion appropriated for 2026.

Cassidy in the spotlight

But the most-watched Republican in the upcoming hearings is Cassidy, who chairs the Senate health panel and also sits on the Finance Committee. The two panels will both question Kennedy on April 22.

Cassidy is locked in a three-way primary contest with Trump-backed Rep. Julia Letlow and Louisiana State Treasurer John Fleming, who worked in the White House during Trump’s first term. Cassidy, a doctor and proponent of vaccination, cast the deciding vote to confirm Kennedy last year after obtaining promises that Kennedy would preserve government vaccine recommendation processes and appear regularly before the Health Committee. Kennedy has mostly ignored those commitments since.

Cassidy ran afoul of Trump in 2021 when the senator voted to convict Trump of inciting an insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 of that year. The Senate ultimately acquitted Trump of the charge.

Cassidy declined to comment Wednesday on his plans for the hearings.

His primary is less than one month away, on May 16.

Letlow also has the endorsement of MAHA Action, a Kennedy-aligned political advocacy group. She will get her chance to question the secretary on Friday when the House Education and Workforce Committee meets.