Kennedy shifts to nutrition and food safety ahead of midterm hearings

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is sounding more restrained in public, but the policy machinery around him still points in a different direction. In 12 pages of prepared testimony before two House panels, Kennedy left out his usual push to overhaul the vaccination schedule and his repeated focus on autism causes, and instead leaned on nutrition, food safety, drug prices, fraud prevention and limits on children’s access to gender-affirming care.

That tonal shift comes as the White House has urged health officials to steer toward more popular topics ahead of the November 2026 midterms. It also comes after a setback last month, when a court ruling derailed key parts of Kennedy’s vaccine-policy rewrite. He was scheduled to face the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Appropriations Committee on April 16, followed by four more hearings the next week, putting him at the center of a broader fight over health spending, public confidence and the future of federal vaccine policy.

The political stakes are sharpened by the Trump administration’s $111 billion budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services, a 12.5% cut from current levels that includes a $5 billion reduction at the National Institutes of Health and the elimination of a low-income energy assistance program. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins was among Republicans who called the cuts unnecessary. Democrats were expected to press Kennedy on rising health-care costs, NIH grant cancellations, the country’s largest measles outbreak in decades and his role in weakening trust in vaccines.

The outbreak numbers make the stakes hard to ignore. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there were 1,714 confirmed measles cases in the United States as of April 9, with 17 outbreaks in 2026 and 94% of cases linked to outbreaks. By comparison, the CDC recorded 2,287 cases for all of 2025, with 48 outbreaks and 90% outbreak-associated. Cases have been reported across 33 U.S. jurisdictions, including 10 among international visitors.

Public opinion gives Kennedy room to change his tone, but not necessarily to reverse course. Pew Research Center said nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults had high confidence in childhood vaccine effectiveness in November 2025, while about half trusted vaccine safety testing and the childhood schedule. Yet a March 2026 POLITICO/Public First poll of 3,851 adults found a plurality questioning vaccine safety and favoring fewer vaccines, with six in 10 Republicans backing fewer shots compared with three in 10 Democrats. In early April, the administration also changed rules for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, after Kennedy had removed all 17 members and replaced them with his own picks. The public language may be softening, but the administrative fight is still in motion.