Will RFK Jr. Face Impeachment Under New Congress?

On Friday, as some public health groups continued to call for the impeachment of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kennedy’s fate remained up in the air following the Democrats’ overwhelming sweep in the congressional midterms.
“The more measles cases are reported, the further the administration digs in their heels against the solution: a full-scale federal effort to vaccinate Americans against the disease,” Kayla Hancock, director of the Public Health Project at Protect Our Care, a public health group, said in a statement. “Trump and would rather scare parents than protect children … Kennedy should have resigned in disgrace long ago, but his ego is immune to shame and accepting responsibility. With the incoming Democratic Congress that actually trusts science and wants to eliminate measles once and for all, Kennedy’s impeachment may be the only way out of this mess.”
Kennedy’s perceived lack of action on the measles epidemic, along with his questioning the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, has angered many public health advocates. His running of HHS itself, including closing down several offices and redirecting the way appropriated funds were spent — for example, keeping the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality open but taking away most of its funding and rendering it inoperable — also has drawn controversy.
If Kennedy doesn’t decide to leave of his own accord, as Cabinet secretaries sometimes do halfway through an administration, “he’s going to be on the hot seat a lot,” Georges Benjamin, MD, CEO of the American Public Health Association, said in a phone interview. “Every time he does one of these illegal or immoral acts that he’s continued to do over time, or says something that is ill-tempered or inappropriate … I expect that in addition to groups like mine calling him out, he’ll be called out more and more by Congress. So I think he’s going to be miserable in terms of the oversight that he’s going to see.”
Indeed, future members of Congress have already begun talking about investigating Kennedy. Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, MD, the senator-elect from Michigan, told CNN that he was going to look into Kennedy’s cuts to the FDA and CDC and how they affected the explosive diarrhea outbreak this summer that was traced to tainted lettuce.
“This is not about retribution for something past,” El-Sayed told CNN. “This is about understanding what happened, holding people accountable for what they did, and then solving the problem moving forward.”

The question becomes how long Kennedy will be willing to put up with the increased scrutiny, Georges said. “Obviously my dream is he’s fired or quits. Is it possible they might try to impeach him? It’s possible, but you’ve got to get a two-thirds vote to do that, and whether you can get enough Republicans to come on board, I don’t know.”
Kennedy appears to have some administration support, at least for now. A story in Politico Thursday noted that “Emily Hilliard, senior press secretary at Kennedy’s Health Department, said Kennedy ‘will continue delivering President Trump’s Make America Healthy Again agenda and advancing historic policies that put the health of the American people first.'” In an emailed statement, she said the administration “has transformed federal food and nutrition policy … and reshaped the federal approach to scientific research and environmental health.”
And Tony Lyons, who works for a number of organizations in the MAHA movement that Kennedy is aligned with, said he’d work with congressional Democrats who were open to Kennedy’s plans related to things MAHA cares about.
To move forward, “we partner with absolutely everyone who’s willing to partner with us — companies who will listen, politicians who will work with us from any party, activists, influencers, MAHA moms in every corner of the country,” Lyons said during a virtual call with supporters, according to The Hill.
Policy analyst Steven Grossman, JD, a former HHS official, said in a MedPage Today opinion piece Friday that although he had been thinking Kennedy would stay for the whole administration, that’s no longer as likely. “Post-election, the job will quickly become a nightmare for Kennedy, as he will have to respond to hostile investigative hearings led by Democrats on the health committees. And Kennedy is unlikely to get White House help: Trump will have bigger fights to address and less political capital to spend.”
“Also, if impeachment hearings were to start, Kennedy would be behind only Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as the object of Congressional attention,” he added. “This situation will evolve, but I suspect Kennedy will leave (resign) rather than face congressional challenges to his own hubris.”
Michael Baker, director of healthcare policy at the American Action Forum, said in an email that although Kennedy’s fate at the moment is unclear, “there are both new and returning members that want to focus on various parts of the healthcare ecosystem. And I expect oversight of the Department of Health and Human Services and its leadership to be a top priority in that focus.”

“From the most-favored-nation drug price agreements to the changes in the ACIP and pediatric vaccine schedule to the Medicaid cuts, there is no shortage of policies that congressional committees will investigate, and I think that oversight effort happens no matter who is sitting in the secretary’s (or any other official’s) chair,” he said.