This week, Democrats in the US Senate challenged President Trump's nominee for the US Department of Health and Human Services, pressing Robert F Kennedy Jr on his shifting position when it comes to policies on vaccines, abortion rights and food regulations.

If confirmed, Kennedy would be in charge of overseeing a massive federal agency that manages the health care of roughly 170 million Americans, along with regulating access to drugs and tracking urgent outbreaks of diseases and food borne illnesses.

But exactly what powers would Kennedy have to carry out his agenda if the Senate confirms him?

To help explain, I'm joined by health care writer Lilo Stainton.

Lilo.

Good to talk to you.

First question is, what are the major programs that fall under HHS?

Essentially, what is the department?

What does the secretary do?

Right?

It is huge.

It's one of the biggest departments in the federal government.

It includes, of course, Medicaid and Medicare and agencies to sort of build around those.

It includes disaster response.

It includes Head Start.

It includes Indian Health services.

It includes programs to help disabled folks living in the community and on and on and on.

A disease, medication monitoring.

Food and drug safety.

I mean, there are a lot of different elements to HHS.

It's a big agency and just Medicaid alone, Medicaid and Medicare alone in New Jersey is, you know, close to 3 million people.

So safe to say safe to say that if right, it would touch it touches everyone's life in some way, shape or form.

I mean, a lot of talk has been about this Make America Healthy Again agenda that RFK has promoted.

What power, if any, does he have to carry out the nuts and bolts of that agenda?

Well, that is a great question.

One of the things that people have raised is, is he it's not clear that Kennedy has a firm grasp on what is in this department.

He seems confused at times, multiple times about the difference between Medicare and Medicaid elements.

It doesn't always seem clear that he understands what he does have control over, for example, his Make America Healthy pledge, which is sounds great.

Who cannot get behind that?

It based a lot on addressing chronic disease.

And he talks about chronic disease being based in pesticides and food additives.

Pesticides are not something that he really would have purview to control at HHS.

So there are some questions about what he could achieve.

And then, you know, really smart doctor told me this morning, even if he could move the needle, it would be really hard to do it in four years and the data would be lagging for years more.

So saying he will fix this is is an overstatement at best.

I mean, but what a lot of folks have gotten behind is the fact that he's pledged to be committed to science and backing these ideas in science.

What do we know about how much science actually would be implemented and if it is?

And that's a great question to and that's another thing that sounds really good, right?

Republicans have turned to Democrats and say, how could you not get behind science?

Right.

I think the question is it's very it's selective science, Right?

Someone told me this morning all science is not created equal.

He is picking and choosing and mixing and matching data points.

Right.

So he will take an incidence of autism and conflate that with vaccine incidents.

Those are two very different things.

He also has conceded that autism is not caused by vaccines.

We don't know that.

Plenty of people want to believe that.

We don't know enough about what does cause autism.

So there are these questions.

But he's he's using data in a way.

You know, one of the senators who's a swing vote said, you know, it's not the preponderance of evidence, it's select evidence.

And I think it's really picking and choosing things that support your argument.

As we know from watching, you know, our folks in the legislature.

Data can be used to support a lot of different arguments creatively.

Right.

But it doesn't mean it's always the data is always sacrosanct or that argument is always right.

I mean, you need to put it in context.

You need to look at the big picture.

And it's not clear that that is something he's he's sort of willing to do.

It's a fair point there.

You can read Lalo's full report on the confirmation hearing for RFK Jr.

It's on our website.

NJSpotlightNews.org.

Lilo, good to talk to you.

Thanks, Bri