RFK Jr. faces grilling on ‘anti-vaccine’ comments and animal ‘mutilation’ at confirmation hearing: Trump live updates

Sarah Ewall-Wice, Senior U.S. Political Reporter on Capitol Hill:

Robert Kennedy Jr. received a standing ovation from his supporters as he entered his confirmation hearing.

Some shouted ‘we love you Bobby.’

He briefly waved to the crowd before going to greet senators on both sides of the aisle.

Sarah Ewall-Wice, Senior U.S. Political Reporter:

Spotted in the room ahead of RFK Jr.’s confirmation hearing have been a mix doctors in white lab coats, people wearing Kennedy 2024 pins and stickers and a few folks wearing ‘confirm RFK Jr.’ hats.

The doctors in coats appear to be from the National Physicians Alliance. They are wearing pins to reject Kennedy.

Also in the room is media personality Megyn Kelly, who has a seat just two rows behind where Kennedy will be seated.

Sarah Ewall-Wice, Senior U.S. Political Reporter on Capitol Hill:

The Senate took a step forward with the confirmation of Pam Bondi to be the next attorney general.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance her nomination this morning.

Her confirmation heads to the Senate floor next.

President Donald Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday defended the president’s offer of a buyout to federal workers if they did not want to return to the office.

‘This administration is very generously offering to pay them for eight months,’ she said to reporters in the driveway of the White House.

She noted that only six percent of federal workforce in Washington, DC shows up for work in the office in the city.

‘That’s unacceptable,’ she said.

She described Trump’s insistence ‘overwhelmingly popular.’

‘This government has been wasting millions of dollars of empy office space that is beautiful, I mean look at the beautiful buildings in this city,’ she said.

There are widespread concerns RFK Jr may sow distrust in vaccines by using his platform to promote baseless conspiracy theories.

In 2019, he flew to Samoa during the nation’s measles outbreak to campaign for people not to get the vaccine — saying it would cause autism, a theory from a study that was withdrawn after serious flaws were found in its methodology.

Eighty-three people died in the outbreak and 5,700 were sickened before the island nation’s government was forced to mandate the shots.

In 2021, the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, which Mr Kennedy is the chair of, campaigned vigorously against the Covid vaccines, targeting young parents with advertisements advising them not to get the shots.

Dr Paul Offit, a pediatrician in Philadelphia who previously slammed Mr Kennedy as ‘remarkably dishonest,’ told DailyMail.com it was likely the administration would not be able to ban vaccines.

‘I am confident that the guardrails in place at the FDA and CDC are long-standing and have served us well,’ he said.

‘I am not sure how much RFK Jnr can do to destroy that.’

But experts are still expressing their concerns.

Dr Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert and bird flu tracker at the University of Minnesota, told CNN: ‘I can’t imagine anyone who would be more damaging to vaccines and the use of vaccines than RFK.’

Sarah Ewall-Wice, Senior U.S. Political Reporter on Capitol Hill:

RFK Jr. is one of several Trump nominees to appear before Senate committees today.

Also appearing at 10am ET, the president’s pick to run the Commerce Department Howard Lutnick will appear before the Senate Commerce Committee.

The CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and close Trump ally who co-lead the president’s transition team is expected to make it through the confirmation process without the same hurdles that RFK Jr. faces, but he could face tough questions for his past business practices.

Another nominee to appear on Capitol Hill later on Wednesday is Kelly Loeffler, the former Georgia senator who is tapped to lead the Small Business Administration.

She worked alongside some of the senators who will be grilling her having been appointed to serve in the Senate from 2020 to 2021. She lost 2020 election to Senator Raphael Warnock.

Consumers have repeatedly raised concerns over the number of potentially harmful additives and pesticides added to their foods, substances that are often outlawed in Europe.

Health officials have also sounded the alarm over ultra-processed foods and America’s escalating obesity crisis, with 73 percent of adults now overweight or obese.

Mr Kennedy proposes to change all that with his radical policies aiming to ban pesticides, food additives, seed oils and some ultra-processed foods.

Details on which could be banned are not clear, although the idea formed a key plank of his ‘Make America Healthy Again’ plan, which he said aimed to provide families ‘with safe food and end the chronic disease epidemic plaguing our children’.

He has only explicitly mentioned Yellow 5, but similar ingredients that could be under the microscope are Red 40, Blue 1, titanium dioxide, propylparaben and potassium bromate, which are often added to sweets and baked goods.

The ingredients, which are either banned or heavily regulated in Europe, have been the focus of new laws trying to make food safer.

Democratic states like California, New York and Illinois have been spearheading efforts to ban these substances in the US at present.

California has a ban on four additives — brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben and red dye No 3 — which is set to come into force in January 2027.

It is also possible he will look to tighten regulations around contaminants in food, such as lead and cadmium that can be detected in spices and dark chocolate and has been linked to neurodevelopmental problems.

Robert F Kennedy Jr. has been praised for calling out medical and pharmaceutical companies who profit from people’s chronic illnesses, like obesity and diabetes.

In an unearthed interview with Dr Phil, he slammed pharma giants for ‘making money from keeping us sick’ and promoting dependency on weight-loss drugs at a huge cost to the taxpayer – instead of encouraging people to make healthy lifestyle choices.

He linked his complaint to proposed legislation to make weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy available to around a million obese Americans.

Under the Biden-era policy, seniors enrolled in Medicare and low-income people enrolled in Medicaid would gain access to weight-control drugs for free.

RFK Jr. said he would rather provide people with organic food three times a day than hemorrhage trillions of dollars giving every obese American the expensive shots.

The Republican, who Donald Trump has nominated as his secretary for the Department of Health, instead said that ‘diabetes is treatable with food, with exercise.’

Caroline Kennedy has released an extraordinary video of comments to senators where she calls her cousin RFK Jr. a ‘predator’ who set family members on a path to drug addiction and mistreated small animals.

The daughter of president John F. Kennedy said she held back on criticism of her cousin during his failed presidential campaign due to her role as U.S. ambassador to Australia.

But she unloaded on her famous cousin in her statement on the eve of his Senate confirmation hearing, as he faces an uncertain future in the Senate as Donald Trump‘s pick to lead the Health and Human Services Department.