California — Sen. Joni Ernst, a pivotal swing vote on Pete Hegseth’s embattled nomination for defense secretary, said she’s not ready to support him, speaking out publicly as a sexual assault survivor and advocate for others.
Amid mounting questions over Hegseth’s chances of being confirmed in the Senate, the comments were the Iowa Republican’s most public and detailed expression yet of her reservations about supporting him, amid allegations of misconduct and excessive drinking. Hegseth has also questioned the role of women in combat.
In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a Republican from Oklahoma, misleadingly suggested that vaccines might cause autism because “there’s not been a direct study on each individual vaccine.”
While he’s technically right about the studies, multiple vaccines and ingredients have been extensively tested, turning up no credible links. Moreover, research shows autism begins to develop well before any childhood vaccines are given.
Mullin’s comment came in a Nov. 17 exchange with host Kristen Welker, who asked if Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s views on vaccines were a “deal breaker” in confirming Kennedy as President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy, as we have written, is a vocal advocate against vaccination and co-founder of the anti-vaccination group Children’s Health Defense.
“No, I absolutely appreciate Bobby Kennedy taking a hard look at the vaccines,” Mullin replied, adding that he found Kennedy, a lawyer, “extremely intelligent when it comes to this stuff” and that “some of the stuff does raise a lot of questions.”
Noting that Mullin had previously said vaccines are safe and effective, Welker again asked Mullin whether he was concerned about Kennedy as HHS secretary. (On multiple occasions, Mullin has called the COVID-19 vaccines safe and effective, although he has opposed workplace and military vaccine requirements.)
We contacted Mullin’s office, asking which vaccines should be tested, what was “vague” about the studies and what might have been said — or not — in Congress, but did not receive a reply.
No Link Between Vaccines and Autism, Lack of Biological Plausibility
Contrary to Mullin’s suggestion that scientists haven’t taken “a hard look” at vaccines as a possible cause of autism, there is an extensive body of research refuting any link.
Much of this work has focused on the MMR, or measles, mumps and rubella, vaccine, as this vaccine was the first proposed — fraudulently, as it turned out — to be possibly connected to autism.
But other work has centered on ingredients such as thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative that was once in several childhood vaccines. Yet other work has examined whether childhood vaccines collectively are associated with autism or similar conditions. Time and time again, scientists have not found any credible links between vaccines and autism.
Ernst spoke during a panel at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, citing her advocacy on the Senate Armed Services Committee for survivors of military sexual trauma — and, frankly, her personal experience. Ernst, a retired Iowa National Guard lieutenant colonel, is the Senate’s first female combat veteran.
“I am a survivor of sexual assault so I have worked very heavily on sexual assault measures within the military, so I’d like to hear a little more about that, and I’d like to hear about the role of women in our great United States military,” Ernst said on stage.
Ernst said she wanted Hegseth to have a fair and thorough vetting process with a public hearing, calling that “incredibly important.”
“I am excited to sit down with him again, but there will be a very thorough vetting before he moves forward. So [I] look forward to seeing him in front of the committee as well — and I know that he’ll be there and have to answer some very tough questions.”
Hegseth was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2017 and later reached a legal settlement with her — an incident in which he denies wrongdoing and was never charged. Hegseth is a former Army National Guard officer and veterans advocate known for co-hosting “Fox & Friends Weekend” and serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.
Asked if Hegseth’s accuser needs to come forward, Ernst said, “I think there are ways that the FBI will vet this and present it to the committee. So I trust in that process and I look forward to that opportunity.”
At the Saturday panel discussion of Middle East security, Rep. Patrick Ryan (D-N.Y.) argued that Hegseth’s controversial views on Islam would make him an ineffective defense secretary. Hegseth reportedly chanted anti-Muslim slurs during a 2015 bar incident, has promoted militant Christianity and has tattoos with Crusades-era symbolism.
“In a non-partisan way I’ve tried to talk about the seriousness of this moment that we are in and the unseriousness of Mr. Hegseth for this job,” Ryan said.
“We’re now going to sit with the Saudis … and the [future] secretary of defense has insulted their whole way of life and their faith? That would be devastating,” he added.
Hegseth plans to spend next week blitzing Capitol Hill, trying to win the support of Republican senators, according to a Hegseth aide granted anonymity to share future plans.
Hegseth’s 21 meetings planned this week include two senators who are considered potential swing votes against him — Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) — as well as Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho).
Trump reaffirmed his support for Hegseth this week, calling him a “WINNER” with “strong and deep” backing. Hegseth has been meeting with GOP senators to solidify support while Trump weighs alternative candidates, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Asked whether all Republican women might vote against Hegseth amid the sexual assault allegation, Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Senate GOP leadership, said no.
“We’re non-monolithic on a variety of issues,” she said.
Fischer said she did not anticipate Hegseth would drop out or that Trump would ask him to.
“I think if that’s the case, I think it’s important to have a public hearing,” she said. “I think it’s important for the American people to watch us on the committee and see how we ask questions and what we focus on, and then to watch him and see how he answers them, and then take a public vote in the committee. And then we’ll see.”
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Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) and a senior Senate Armed Services member, said he is worried about the political pressure on his Republican colleagues who care deeply about national defense.
“They’re in a very tough place,” King said. “Here’s what concerns me: I saw a story where someone in the president-elect’s circle said, essentially, any Republican who bucks us is going to be primaried and Elon Musk will fund the primary.”
Hegseth’s political stock with fellow Republicans appears to rise and fall from day to day. More allegations could surface over the four and a half weeks until Trump takes office, but the FBI’s investigation into Hegseth, especially if it substantiates or expands upon the allegations against him is expected to be definitive.
“It seems like there’s something new every two or three days,” King said. “I’m very concerned about what I’ve seen, and I don’t want somebody who could be compromised in terms of his ability to do the job, or could be compromised by actions that he’d taken in the past that would lead to somebody having a hold over him.”
He called Mullin’s premise “false.” People opposed to vaccination, Offit said, often default to such claims since it’s always true that there’s some variable that hasn’t been tested. “It’s their whack-a-mole strategy,” he said.
Notably, when U.K. gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield proposed in a 1998 study that the MMR vaccine might be causing autism via intestinal inflammation, it seemed plausible enough for scientists to investigate. Autism symptoms frequently became apparent around the time an MMR dose was given, which led some to wonder if it could be the cause.
Wakefield’s study, however, which included just 12 patients and no control children who hadn’t been vaccinated, didn’t prove anything and was flawed (and later retracted). Scientists also learned that even though autism cannot always be diagnosed until later, subtle indications of the condition occur prior to the first MMR dose at 1 year.
In any case, researchers went on to rigorously evaluate whether there was any relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism. In many cohort and case control studies, including several very large studies in different parts of the world, scientists found no associations between the receipt of the measles or MMR vaccine and an increased risk of autism, even in children at increased risk of the condition. Wakefield was later exposed as having faked the original data that had given rise to the initial concern and stripped of his medical license.
Attention then moved to the possibility that the small amounts of mercury in thimerosal — which was never present in the MMR vaccine, but was in numerous other childhood vaccines — could be related to autism. That’s despite the fact that the preservative had been used for decades and the type of mercury it contains is different from the kind that can be toxic when it accumulates in fish and the environment. Numerous studies, covering vaccines that protect against hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib), influenza, and diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis — in children and in pregnant people — proceeded to show no association between thimerosal versus non-thimerosal vaccines and autism or higher or cumulative doses of mercury or thimerosal and autism.
Unrelated to concerns about autism, the U.S. began removing thimerosal from childhood vaccines in 1999 as a precautionary measure. Despite this, autism rates have continued to soar. This is yet more evidence that the preservative has nothing to do with autism.
Arguments that vaccines in some other way could cause autism then morphed to the idea that too many vaccines might overwhelm the immune system and trigger autism in at-risk children. Although there isn’t a good scientific basis for this notion, scientists once again conducted studies to address these concerns, finding no link between vaccination and autism. A 2013 study, for example, found that increasing exposure to immune-stimulating substances in vaccines during the first two years of life was not associated with an increased risk of autism. A 2010 study similarly found no neuropsychological benefits to 7- to 10-year-old children who delayed or skipped their recommended vaccines in their first year, compared with kids who received them on time.
After so much testing of vaccines under a variety of potential hypotheses, it’s unclear what more testing would reveal.
Dr. Peter Hotez, a professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine who develops low-cost vaccines for developing countries and has a daughter with autism, told us in an email that “the studies showing no links between vaccines and autism can be expensive and take years to demonstrate the absence of a link. … As a result these studies tend to only be done in response to a specific assertion.”
Testing each vaccine, he added, “would likely cost American taxpayers tens of millions of dollars to show a negative result, when the money is better spent on the neurodevelopmental biology of autism or what parents really need, which is support for their families.”
Beyond the many studies that have evaluated vaccines, scientists’ understanding of autism has also grown in the intervening years, making it implausible that childhood vaccines could cause the condition.
“We now know that the neurodevelopmental processes leading to autism begi[n] in early fetal development, well before a child ever receives a vaccine,” Hotez said, noting that autism is primarily genetic in origin. He is the author of a book that relates his experience with his daughter and explains why vaccines do not cause autism.
Offit noted, too, that even if individual autism-focused studies have not been done for each vaccine, all vaccines are monitored for possible side effects through various vaccine safety surveillance systems. This has successfully identified several serious side effects, he said, which invariably occur soon after vaccination, “at the time when your immune response to the pathogen with the vaccine is at its greatest.”
