Democrats grill Trump's controversial health secretary

President Donald Trump's wellness caput gave mixed messages Wednesday connected whether children should beryllium vaccinated and defended a brutal bid of fund cuts successful a grilling by legislature Democrats.

The proceeding -- ostensibly astir Trump's 2026 fund connection -- offered Democrats a accidental to unit Robert F. Kennedy Jr. connected layoffs, fund cuts and a measles outbreak that has killed 3 children and sickened much than a thousand.

Asked successful the House of Representatives if helium would vaccinate his ain kid for measles, the long-time vaccine skeptic initially declined to respond.

"If I reply that question directly, it volition look similar I'm giving proposal to different radical and I don't privation to beryllium doing that," Kennedy told Democratic Representative Mark Pocan during the session, which was interrupted by protesters.

Pocan responded that Kennedy oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a premier US authorities nationalist wellness service, and truthful advising connected vaccines is "kind of your jurisdiction."

Later, Kennedy said helium was "recommending" vaccination arsenic "the champion mode to halt the spread."

But asked the aforesaid question astir chickenhearted pox and Polio, Kennedy said "I don't privation to springiness advice."

The globally renowned US wellness agencies and centers for technological probe are facing heavy workforce and fund cuts nether a program to slash the national authorities led by Trump's mega-billionaire backer Elon Musk.

Kennedy defended the elimination of 20,000 positions from the Department of Health and Human Services -- astir a 4th of the workforce -- and denied reports that cardinal programs and funding, specified arsenic crab research, person been cut.

"We mean to bash more, a batch more, with less," helium said, claiming to beryllium staunching an "unsustainable hemorrhage" of spending that would person "disastrous wellness consequences."

Democrat Rosa DeLauro suggested that Kennedy was illegally reducing the section without legislature approval.

"I judge you are promoting quackery," DeLauro said.

"The United States remains the sickest developed nation," Kennedy said. "Clearly, thing is structurally and systematically incorrect with our approach."

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