WASHINGTON — In a series of aggressive, rapid-fire questions to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about his plans to replace career scientists at the Maryland-based National Institutes for Health and reform the country’s biggest health agency at large, U.S. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks leaned forward, took off her glasses and smiled as she launched into her ultimate question.

She referred to a 2021 interview in which Kennedy indicated Black people should be delivered vaccines on a different schedule than white people “because their immune system is better than ours.”

“So what different vaccine schedule would you say I should have received?” Alsobrooks asked while smiling at Kennedy toward the end of a three-hour nomination hearing Wednesday.

President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services said those comments followed his reading of Poland-based studies that claimed, he said, “Blacks need fewer antigens.”

“Mr. Kennedy, with all due respect, that is so dangerous. Your voice would be a voice that parents would listen to. That is so dangerous. I will be voting against your nomination because your views are dangerous to our state and to our country,” Alsobrooks, a former prosecutor who became Maryland’s first Black U.S. Senator earlier this month, said as a few people in the room applauded.

Pushing back after Alsobrooks had already forfeited the rest of her time, Kennedy responded, “Do you think science is dangerous, senator? This is published, peer-reviewed studies.”

The hearing was the second grilling in back-to-back days for Kennedy, whose history of questioning vaccines and pushing other controversial ideas have raised concerns among Democrats and some Republicans.

U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician and the Republican chair of the committee Kennedy appeared in Thursday, opened the hearing by saying he had reservations about the nominee’s lack of confidence in vaccines and other issues.

Cassidy said he spent years administering vaccines like those for Hepatitis B, which Kennedy has previously said could cause autism. He also questioned Kennedy’s commitment to the measles vaccine, whether he had previously said Lyme disease was “created as a military bio-weapon,” and if he would promise that the FDA would not delay or deprioritize the development of new vaccines.

“My concern is that if you’re making those claims and being so influential — I mean, your bully pulpit’s incredible — with that responsibility, that you never acquainted yourself with anything that might contradict that which you were previously saying,” Cassidy said.

Kennedy repeatedly said he supported vaccines and will support the country’s vaccine programs.

“If you show me data, I will be the first person to assure the American people that they need to take those vaccines,” Kennedy said.

Alsobrooks and other senators who questioned him on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee won’t ultimately vote on Kennedy’s nomination before he appears before the full Senate. His initial confirmation vote will come in the Senate Finance Committee that pressed him the day before.

The Maryland senator said in both the hearing and in an interview afterward that she was decided in her vote against him.

His answer to the questions about the different vaccine schedules for Black people was dangerous disinformation reflective of his “uneducated views” that could lead to illness if people follow his lead, Alsobrooks told The Baltimore Sun.

Alsobrooks said she met with Kennedy last week. She said she questioned him about federal HHS workers in Maryland — whom Trump has targeted along with other segments of the federal workforce through a series of executive actions — and that she was not satisfied with his answers.

“He intends to be complicit in this agenda to gut the federal workforce even if it means that we disrupt important medical research,” Alsobrooks said.

Responding to her public questions on the topic, Kennedy said he was not aware of any lists of HHS employees identified by Trump’s administration or its allies who could be subject to firing. He said he supported scientists devoted to evidence-based research, empirical methodology, and transparency around publishing federal data and reports.

“I’m not going to substitute my judgement for science, of course I’m not going to do that,” he said after blaming NIH for overseeing “the precipitous decline in American health.”

The scion of the Kennedy political family has longtime ties to Maryland, where his sister, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, served as lieutenant governor and was the Democratic nominee who lost the 2002 governor’s race against Republican Bob Ehrlich. Kennedy Townsend and some of their siblings have denounced Kennedy’s political career and statements on public health.

“Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment,” Kennedy Townsend and three others wrote in a statement when he left the Democratic Party during his presidential bid in 2023.

Kennedy launched his nationwide ballot campaign as an independent candidate outside Annapolis that year — going on to gain access in many states, including in Maryland with tens of thousands of signed petitions, before dropping out and supporting Trump. He collected nearly 29,000 votes, or about 1% of the entire vote, in the election in Maryland despite already ending his bid.

Aside from Cassidy, other Republican senators mostly indicated they will back Kennedy’s nomination. In both hearings this week, they expressed hope he would reform national health agencies, support programs that aim to keep Americans healthy and that his questioning of certain practices would be an asset rather than a harm.

Democrats disagreed, saying Kennedy’s calls for more research and studies in areas like vaccines and the abortion medication mifepristone were unwarranted because data and evidence have existed for decades.

“You’re not questioning science. You’ve made up your mind,” said U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat. “You’ve spent your entire career undermining America’s vaccine program.”

_____

©2025 Baltimore Sun. Visit baltimoresun.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.