Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced intense questioning from the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday as he defended the deep cuts to his department the Trump administration is requesting in its fiscal year 2026 budget proposal.

The secretary sat for his third congressional budget hearing in the past week, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle bringing up concerns over how the cuts and pauses in funding grants will impact their states.

The full committee was in attendance, and while some Republicans on the panel sought to reframe the budget request as rooting out waste, fraud and abuse, others echoed concerns raised by Democrats about funding cuts to biomedical research and low-income programs.

Here are three takeaways from Kennedy's Senate hearing:

Research funding concerns

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), acting as chair of the hearing, voiced concerns on maintaining funding for U.S. biomedical research in her opening statement.

"This committee wants to work with you on improving HHS so that the agency can move more efficiently and fund the basic science," Capito said. "I'm concerned that our science, our country, is falling behind in biomedical research, and this should be a concern for all — for those all of us who want to make investments in biomedical research. Investing in that has proven to save lives while exponentially strengthening our economy."

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) said the cuts to National Institutes of Health (NIH) research that have been requested would "cede our leadership in biomedical research to China."

President Trump's budget request asks for an $18 billion cut to NIH's funding, arguing the agency has "grown too big and unfocused" as well as citing its involvement in gain-of-function research and studies on transgender youth.

In his opening remarks to the........

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