Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was shortly into his opening statement before a Senate committee Wednesday when protesters disrupted the hearing, screaming he was killing people.
The scene would startle anyone, and certainly someone who was a 9-year-old boy when his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963 and 14 when his father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, was murdered in 1968 while running for president.
RFK Jr. has reportedly received death threats while he was a candidate for president during the 2024 election cycle, and probably has since becoming HHS secretary.
Seated immediately behind Kennedy in the hearing room on Wednesday appeared to be two Secret Service agents.
RFK Jr. began his opening statement before the Senate’s Health and Education Committee by discussing President Donald Trump’s executive order issued Monday to lower prescription drug prices.
He then started giving a broad overview of HHS’s fiscal year 2026 budget.
His team aims “to make America healthy again, with a special focus on the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said, and to deliver “more efficient, responsive and effective service to over 100 million Americans who rely on Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs,” as well as to cut costs for taxpayers.
He continued, “We intend to do a lot more with less. The budget I’m presenting today supports these goals and …”
At this point, protesters stood and began yelling, which startled the secretary, who flinched as he looked their direction.
Absolutely psychotic. Leftist protesters disrupt the Congressional hearing with RFK Jr. pic.twitter.com/DR4FzgcBlG
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) May 14, 2025
One of the two Secret Service agents immediately shot to his feet and moved in the direction of a protester before realizing a Capitol Police officer was already moving that way.
Some protesters could be heard calling out, “RFK kills people with AIDS.”
USA Today reported that some cuts made at HHS “have impacted the United States Agency for International Development, and experts have said the harms trickled down to global humanitarian organizations working on lifesaving programs, including ones that offered HIV health care.”
Ben & Jerry’s ice cream co-founder Ben Cohen also shouted, “Congress sends the bombs that kill children in Gaza and pays for it with cuts to Medicaid.”
He, too, was removed by Capitol Police.
Ben and Jerry’s co-founder arrested for screaming about Gaza at RFK Jr during a hearing.
“Congress sends the bombs that kill children in Gaza and pays it with cuts to Medicaid.” pic.twitter.com/pKeznDmnbB
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) May 14, 2025
Former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, RFK Jr.’s father, was killed by Sirhan Sirhan, a Jerusalem-born Arab (or Palestinian, some would say today), whose family moved to the U.S. when he was a child in the 1950s.
He was strongly anti-Israel, especially after Jewish soldiers took control of Jerusalem from Jordan during the Six-Day War in June 1967.
Sirhan reportedly targeted RFK Sr. because of his support for Israel, and assassinated him in June 1968 at the one-year anniversary of the war.
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