Lawmakers on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions panel are likely to revive a bipartisan line of questioning that highlighted a wedge between Trump and Kennedy during the HHS secretary’s recent appearance before the Senate Finance Committee earlier this month. Throughout that hearing, several senators took time to praise the president’s Operation Warp Speed, the government-led effort that rapidly developed vaccines for the COVID pandemic during Trump’s first term. One of the critical questioners from that earlier hearing, Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, will chair the hearing Wednesday with Monarez and Houry.
Back then, Cassidy prefaced his questions to Kennedy by saying Trump deserves a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed, to which Kennedy agreed. Cassidy then said his answer was surprising because Kennedy had canceled $500 million in funding for research on mRNA vaccines similar to the ones that came out of Operation Warp Speed.
“To cancel it seems like an incredible waste of money, but it also seems like a commentary upon … what the president did in Operation Warp Speed,” Cassidy said. “So this just seems inconsistent.”
An uncomfortable Kennedy said the vaccine at first was a success because it “was perfectly matched to the virus at that time when it was badly needed,” but that “right now, we’re dealing with completely different circumstances.”
Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey also invoked Operation Warp Speed when he said in an interview that he plans to ask Monarez about what transpired between her and Kennedy.
“The Trump administration can’t have it both ways,” Markey said. “They can’t say that Operation Warp Speed was a huge success while simultaneously allowing a secretary of Health and Human Services to cast a shadow of doubt over the efficacy of vaccines in general. It is absolutely a mixed message, which we’re seeing is leading to higher percentages of children not being vaccinated in America.”
The efforts by the senators to cast the COVID vaccine as a Trump accomplishment speak to their difficulty countering Kennedy. With Trump’s backing, he has made several moves that have limited or imperiled vaccine access, including Food and Drug Administration guidance that effectively limits who can get COVID boosters, canceling the mRNA research, and replacing the members of an independent vaccine board.
Lawmakers’ focus on Operation Warp Speed, and its continued relevance to what happened at the CDC, has highlighted the complicated relationships Trump and Kennedy each have with the legacy of the pandemic.
Trump initially claimed the development of COVID vaccines as a key success, but then was booed at rallies when he would mention it, as a backlash to public health measures rose among conservatives. In 2023, he told Fox News’ Bret Baier that a Democratic friend told him to talk more about developing the vaccine, but he decided against it.
“I said, ‘I really don’t want to talk about it,’” Trump said. “Because as a Republican, it’s not a great thing to talk about because, for some reason, it’s just not.”
Trump still displays ambivalence on the issue, largely backing Kennedy and his actions but touting his own record. He called Operation Warp Speed “one of the greatest achievements ever in politics” at a Cabinet meeting in August while sitting near Kennedy.
In a post on his social media platform Truth Social earlier this month, the president called for wider publicizing of data on COVID vaccines to show how successful they were..
“Many people think they are a miracle that saved Millions of lives,” Trump wrote. “Others disagree! With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW. I have been shown information from Pfizer, and others, that is extraordinary, but they never seem to show those results to the public.”
Kennedy, meanwhile, was a prominent critic of pandemic-era public health measures, and his supporters and fellow vaccine skeptics still attack Trump for Operation Warp Speed. As Health Secretary, Kennedy is trying to thread a needle: credit the president who hired him while dismantling much of what built Operation Warp Speed.
Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health who served as COVID-19 response coordinator under President Biden, said he thinks Kennedy’s position is untenable.
“I think Donald Trump deserves a tremendous amount of credit for Warp Speed,” Jha said. “You see [Kennedy] dancing around, on the one hand gutting mRNA funding and on the other praising Trump’s success. I think this is going to be a very hard line for him to walk for an extended period of time.”
Jha said he even suggested to the Biden administration during the pandemic to brand it the “Trump vaccine” to try to reach skeptics, though his suggestion was not adopted.
Another Republican senator, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, said he questioned Kennedy at the previous hearing about his views on Warp Speed because mRNA advances were a key success, and he wonders whether Kennedy is “discrediting the whole basis for those vaccines.”
But Tillis, who grew up in a working-class family, said his primary concern is that average Americans may take cues from Kennedy. He wants to reset that narrative.
“Having people wonder about the safety of these vaccines is a very dangerous thing for people who grew up like I did,” Tillis said. “Mr. Kennedy’s well-resourced. I’m sure he’s never wanted for any health care that he needed. People like the way I grew up have, and that’s why we got to be careful.”
Not all Republicans take issue with Kennedy’s approach.
Representative Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee, a pharmacist, said she got the initial COVID vaccine but said “hell no” to booster shots. She supports Kennedy’s recent actions and questions why COVID shots are still necessary.
“Hindsight’s 2020,” Harshbarger said. “We did what was right at the time. … You can do your phase one, two, and three clinical trials, but the real test starts when it hits the general public.”
Studies have found the vaccines to be safe and effective.
Meanwhile, some Democrats remain unconvinced that the pushback from some Republicans matters all that much since they’ve already put him in office and now have little other recourse.
“I think it’s all washed out by what Kennedy is doing,” said Hawaii Democratic Senator Brian Schatz. “I mean, I understand what they want to do, which is to stroke Trump’s ego and try to redirect him towards a pro-public health stance. But just count me as a skeptic about whether or not that’s going to work.”