Democrats to RFK Jr.: Resign Now or Be Prepared to Testify Before Congress

During the 2024 election, when backlash to pandemic-era safety protocols was still percolating on right-wing and alternative health blogs, the notorious anti-vaccine celebrity Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement were critical to President Donald Trump’s winning coalition.

Now, speculation is swirling about Kennedy’s future as Trump’s health secretary as Democrats prepare to take control of the next Congress and the president and GOP search for scapegoats following heavy losses in this week’s midterm contests. Voters elected multiple doctors and medical professionals who ran both as Democrats and opponents of the Trump-Kennedy approach to public health.

Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive who won a Senate seat in Michigan, is an epidemiologist and served as public health director in both Detroit and Wayne County before running for office on a campaign promoting Medicare for All. In North Carolina, pediatrician Annie Andrews won an upset over Republican scion Darline Graham while campaigning on expanding access to health care, including reproductive care.

In Ohio, Amy Acton infamously overcame a vicious attack ad produced by her opponent’s campaign to become the next governor of Ohio. But before that, the state’s residents got to know Acton from her regular briefings while leading Ohio’s Covid-19 pandemic response. All three have regularly publicly condemned Kennedy’s leadership of U.S. public health infrastructure.

Meanwhile, MAHA is increasingly fractured, and Trump’s alliance with Kennedy is reportedly on the rocks after both men angered the movement’s fans by failing to deliver on key issues such as the regulation of toxic pesticides. As health care costs soar and the public contends with outbreaks of easily preventable diseases including measles and food-borne cyclospora, Democrats are calling on Kennedy to resign from his post or face lawmakers in hearings next year as voters hand them control of Congress.

“The time is now. RFK Jr. must resign or be fired. End of discussion,” said Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Maryland) in a social media post on Monday.

The time is now. RFK Jr. must resign or be fired. End of discussion.

— Senator Angela Alsobrooks (@Sen_Alsobrooks) November 4, 2026

Along with Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Alsobrooks has tracked Kennedy’s performance as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The lawmakers released a report in February titled “Costs, Chaos, and Corruption: 365 Days of Secretary Kennedy’s Disastrous Leadership” that documented Secretary Kennedy’s actions at HHS in 2025, including making historic cuts to medical research, restricting access to vaccines, and amplifying bunk science and misinformation that undermine trust in the public health system.

As election results were tallied on the evening of November 3, Wyden posted a single word to social media: “Subpoenas.”

Subpoenas.

— Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) November 4, 2026

Kennedy “does not like to testify in front of Congress, and he will be dragged in there quite a bit, and that will not be enjoyable for him,” said Amanda Seitz, the Washington policy reporter for KFF News, during a post-election briefing on November 5.

At least a dozen Democrats called on Kennedy to resign when he appeared before the Senate Finance Committee in September 2025.

Seitz said Democrats now have a long list of Trump allies to investigate, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the officials responsible for a deadly mass deportation campaign in which dozens of people have been killed by federal immigration agents or in custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The long list for accountability could provide Kennedy with some breathing room, but the health secretary remains one of the most controversial members of Trump’s cabinet and will eventually be forced to testify before committees controlled by Democrats, should he stay in office.

“For a while the White House was basically telling him to back off of his vaccine work, but they have let him focus on that again; it’s very important to him, he has studies he wants to complete,” Seitz said. “I think he wants to stay on and see that work be completed, but does [appearing before Congress] become so untenable for him that he doesn’t want to stay?”

In March, STAT reported that Kennedy had tapped anti-vaxxer David Geier to conduct a study on potential links between vaccines and autism in children, a conspiracy theory that animates the anti-vax movement but was debunked by researchers years ago. Geier does not have a medical degree and was disciplined by the State of Maryland’s Board of Physicians for practicing medicine without a license.

The unfounded claims about a link between vaccines and autism traces back to a study from the 1990s that was retracted in 2010, and a preservative that had come under scrutiny was removed as a precautionary measure from children’s vaccines in 2001. However, Kennedy regularly promotes flawed research to keep the theory alive.

Throughout Kennedy’s tenure, experts have warned that he is unethically unraveling a vaccine system painstakingly built over decades to stop disease and keep millions of children safe. Even the right-wing New York Post said Kennedy’s sharing of vaccine misinformation “isn’t just mind-bogglingly irresponsible, it’s downright cruel.”

A big question is whether or not Trump believes that Kennedy is still serving his political interests, Seitz said. Ahead of the midterms, Kennedy campaigned heavily for GOP candidates in Iowa, where Republicans hoped his message about eating healthy and recovering from addiction would resonate with voters in the agriculture-heavy state. However, the midterm results are in, and conservatives are complaining that Iowa voters swung further left than voters in any other state.

Upcoming confirmation hearings for key positions within HHS could provide a preview of the pressure Kennedy will face when Democrats are in the majority.

“If you are Heidi Overton, you are pretty nervous right now,” Seitz said, referring to Trump’s nominee to run the FDA.

Polls show that the economy and cost of living were top of mind for midterm voters, along with rising insurance premiums and health care costs exacerbated by deep spending cuts made by Trump and Republicans and administered by HHS. Bruce Mirken, the executive director of Defend Public Health, said the controversy surrounding Kennedy likely played a role in the GOP losing control of Congress.

“I think polls have generally shown that Kennedy’s policies are not popular, that trust in federal health agencies has declined since he has been in charge, and I think that had an effect,” Mirken told Truthout in an interview. “He also propelled a whole lot of doctors and nurses to run for office on the Democratic side, and a number of them won.”

At a time of declining trust in government, polls show that the public puts far more trust in individual doctors and nurses than agencies such as the FDA and CDC, which could provide El-Sayed, Andrews, and other Democrats in Congress with the credibility and leverage needed to push Kennedy out. At the same time, polls show that voters are frustrated with the Trump administration’s health care policies — including policies around vaccine access for children, an issue Kennedy exploited to become famous in the anti-vax movement.

“As long as Kennedy remains in office, it’s going to remain a problem, but Congress can damn well hold hearings and shine a spotlight on this,” Mirken said. “That can and should lead up to impeaching and removing Robert F. Kennedy Jr; that’s a heavy lift, but it’s time to try it.”