Welcome to the NewsHour. Health Secretary Rod F. Kennedy Jr. was grilled during a contentious three-hour hearing before the Senate Finance Committee today.

Senators pressed Kennedy on his stance toward vaccines, questioning whether his actions have restricted access and undermine trust in longstanding public health data and institutions.

The hearing turned combative at times with Kennedy clashing directly with several lawmakers.

The confrontation came just a week after his controversial decision to fire the director of the CDC.

Lisa Desjardin leads our coverage now from Capitol Hill.

In a small Senate hearing room. You are a hazard to the health of the American people.

High stakes fireworks.

I never said that you're making it up.

You're twisting. Yeah, you are.

You are being dishonest right now.

As Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy,

Jr. faced his first hearing since being in the job.

And since Kennedy upended the Centers for Disease Control, firing his own choice as director and triggering senior resignations.

What we're going to do is reorganize CDC, but also we've already righted the ship at NIH, at FDA, at CMS.

And we are going to end the chronic disease epidemic.

It was perhaps the most combative hearing of Trump's second term so far.

You are sitting as Secretary of Health and Human Services?

How can you be that ignorant?

You're so wrong on your facts.

You're interrupting me.

And, sir, you're a charlatan.

That's what you are. Kennedy argued he's remaking a broken agency, particularly lashing out at pandemic recommendations. The people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our

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