Undermining vaccines, failing pregnant black women, threatening to remove black children with ADHD from their parents – these were some of the barrage of questions put to United States Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr when he appeared before the House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday.

Kennedy was testifying about the Trump administration’s 2027 budget, which proposes to cut the HHS budget by 12,5% – including deep cuts for HIV programmes ($923 million less), maternal and child health ($561m), and mental health ($576m).

The Trump 2027 budget also proposes to eliminate $4.3 billion from the US government’s global health budget, which falls under the US State Department.

Massive measles increase

There has been a 675% increase in measles cases since Kennedy was appointed in February last year, according to US Representative Linda Sanchez.

“In 2024, under the Biden administration, there were 258 cases of measles. And in 2025, under your leadership at HHS, this ballooned to over 2,000 [cases]. That’s a 675% increase, and we are now on track to suppress to surpass that this year, with over 1,600 confirmed cases in just three and a half months,” said Sanchez.

Pointing to the death last year of a six-year-old unvaccinated girl from measles, the first death of a US child from measles in a decade, Sanchez asked Kennedy whether a measles vaccine could have saved her life.

“It’s possible,” Kennedy answered.

Sanchez tore into Kennedy for orchestrating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) decision to remove its “universal vaccine recommendations for children covering seven immunizations, including things like flu, covid, hepatitis A, hepatitis B and rotavirus.”

She also quoted Kennedy’s claim on Fox News last year that the adverse effects from the measles vaccine “cause deaths every year… and causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes.”

Sanchez said that “CDC data shows that about 80% of children who died from flu this season were not vaccinated, [and] the anti-vaccine rhetoric you ran on and the anti-vaccine actions you have taken over the last year clearly correlates with the dramatic increases in preventable diseases.” 

She asked Kennedy repeatedly whether Trump agreed with the CDC decision to “suspend public health messaging on vaccines last February” – but Kennedy dodged the question, claiming Sanchez has “a lot of misinformation”.

Representative Mike Thompson said that Kennedy is “helping make diseases deadly again.”

“Kids have died because measles is running rampant under your watch, in large part because President Trump allowed your conspiracy theories to run our public health,” said Thompson.

Undermining health of black women

“Black women are nearly three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, yet the Trump administration is undermining black maternal health from all sides,” said Representative Danny Davis, a leader of the Congressional Black Caucus.

He cited the Trump administration’s decision to cut $1 trillion from Medicaid, “which pays for 40% of births”, the proposed cuts to maternal and child care for 2027, and cuts to research.

“DOGE [Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency] cancelled funds for several research projects that could save countless black mothers, like the Morehouse School of Medicine research on improving the health of black pregnant and postpartum women,” said Davis.

“How can we lower black maternal health experiences if we’re cutting funds for these critical programmes, and the administration is saying that you can’t consider race or ethnicity in healthcare?”

In response, Kennedy claimed that there had been “tremendous duplication” in programmes and “we are investing huge amounts of money in maternal health.”

The US has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world.

‘Reparenting’ black children?

Describing various comments made by Kennedy as “outlandish and frankly disturbing”, Representative Terri Sewell took issue with his stating during a podcast interview that black children on ADHD medication should be “reparented”. 

“You said every black kid is now just standardly put on Adderall, SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence, and that those children are going to have to go somewhere to get reparented,” said Sewell, reminding Kennedy that there was a long history of black children being removed from their parents, dating back to slavery.

Despite Kennedy’s comments being recorded, he denied making them and said he “doesn’t even know what reparenting means”.

Budget chief under pressure

Meanwhile, health activists interrupted the testimony of Russell Vought, head of the US Office of Management and Budget (OMB), before the House Budget Committee on Wednesday.

Minutes after Vought began his opening statement on the 2027 budget proposal, protesters tood up, holding up posters and shouting slogans accusing the Trump administration of killing people with HIV, and urging the administration to spend the funds Congress has allocated to the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR).

”Russell Vought is directly responsible for illegally withholding Congressionally appropriated funds for PEPFAR and related global health initiatives. These funding disruptions have already contributed to preventable deaths and threaten to reverse decades of progress in the fight against HIV worldwide,” said Charles King, CEO of Housing Works, in a statement from the protestors issued by Health Gap.

They accuse Vought of “blatant defiance of the will of Congress, which has fully funded PEPFAR programs for FY25 and FY26 over Vought’s objections, including by rejecting $400 million in rescission of PEPFAR funding in 2025.”

“The FY27 President’s budget request for HIV and global health would eliminate HIV-specific and all disease-specific programming, while slashing overall global health funding by 46% compared with FY26 levels ($9.4 billion in FY26; $5.4 billion proposed in FY27 the President’s budget request),” according to the statement.

“In addition to proposing deadly funding cuts, the FY27 budget request also disparages scientific evidence in global health, particularly regarding highly effective methods of HIV prevention, suggesting elimination of funding for condoms and programs for LGBTQ+ people, who face disproportionately high HIV risk of HIV infection due to criminalization and stigma,” according to the statement.

Vought also recently diverted $15 million in USAID funding aimed at lifesaving humanitarian assistance to pay for his personal security, according to Reuters.

Vought, former vice-president of the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation, co-authored Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for governance being followed by the Trump administration.