EXCLUSIVE: Senate Democrats bring anti-Trump witnesses with ties to controversial Arnold Ventures
Sen. Sanders's witnesses are causing controversy before they even testify at the Sen. Cassidy-led committee.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.), the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chair, is holding a hearing titled “The Future of Biotech: Maintaining U.S. Competitiveness and Delivering Lifesaving Cures to Patients.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), fresh off campaigning with New York City mayoral candidate and Zohran Mamdani at a high-stakes rally, is bringing two witnesses with vocal anti-Trump records and funding from the controversial billionaire-backed Arnold Ventures to testify.
The witnesses are Doctor Aaron Seth Kesselheim, a Harvard Medical School professor, and Doctor Reshma Ramachandran, a Yale assistant professor of internal medicine. Both have ties to Arnold Ventures, the corporation funded by Enron billionaire John Arnold, which uses dark money to push liberal policies like getting violent criminals out of prison and back on the streets, and ranked-choice voting.
Kesselheim received funding from Arnold Ventures for drug pricing and regulatory research. His bio notes his ties to AV. “Dr. Kesselheim’s work is also currently funded by Arnold Ventures, the Harvard-MIT Center for Regulatory Science, and the Engelberg Foundation,” it notes.
Ramachandran’s FDA work has been amplified by Arnold Ventures. She was featured on Arnold Ventures’ website: “She had taken the train from New Haven, Connecticut, to the nation’s capital in her role as FDA task force chair with AV grantee Doctors for America, an independent advocacy organization of over 27,000 physicians and trainees across the country. She and fellow physician-advocates wanted to make sure the bill’s reauthorization, due by September, strikes an appropriate balance between ensuring timely access to promising treatments and certainty that these treatments truly work in patients prescribed them.”
Senate Republicans are likely to ask the witnesses about their ties to Arnold Ventures, an organization that has received substantial pushback for pushing liberal causes with dark money. The New York Post wrote about John Arnold joining Facebook’s board. Then-Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.) said that “John Arnold is a far left radical who funded pro-criminal projects in Indiana and pro-censorship organizations nationwide. His board appointment should make every patriotic American nervous about Big Tech interfering in the 2024 presidential election, just like they did last cycle.”
Then-Rep. Dan Bishop (R., N.C.) also pushed back on Arnold, saying that “it defies credulity when John Arnold, funder of millions to pro-censorship groups, sits on Meta’s board. Americans deserve to speak freely without the leftist dark money network feeding the censorship industrial complex and working against their right of free expression.”
Rep. Greg Steube (R., Fla.) agreed, saying that it “seems like John Arnold, who has spent millions upon millions involved in censorship efforts, should be the last person on Meta’s board if Zuckerberg had a bit of seriousness in his pledge.”
Arnold Ventures was recently in the news for attacking Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), and the Senate Republican Conference office with a heated and personal attack. An Arnold Ventures’ associate posted, then deleted, a tweet that read: “In which Tom Cotton’s Senate GOP conference account switches back to using a current law baseline after spending months viciously attacking as dishonest anyone using a current law baseline.”
The Senate Republican Conference responded by saying that “it’s no surprise the far-left Arnold Ventures supported Dems’ failed attempt to raise taxes by $4.3T and keep illegal aliens on Medicaid. They also support jailbreak policies & the ‘ranked-choice’ voting scheme. Most Americans are glad we cut taxes and secured the border.”
The witnesses also have backgrounds attacking President Trump.
Ramachandran, via Doctors for America, backed a February 2025 lawsuit against Trump agencies for removing CDC/FDA data on HIV and contraception, deeming it a “threat to patient care” In September 2025, she criticized FDA Commissioner Marty Makary’s bypassing committees.
Kesselheim, too, has attacked President Trump, slamming the President, writing “Trump’s multiple attacks on the FDA, and other triggers of policy uncertainty, including a discussion regarding the trustworthiness of the vaccines in the vice presidential debates, coincided with spikes in vaccine hesitancy.” in Stat.
A senior Senate advisor told the Washington Reporter that “it’s a bold move for Senator Sanders to bring two anti-Trump witnesses to a hearing. These witnesses should expect to be held accountable by the Republicans on HELP for their ties to Arnold Ventures and their controversial statements about President Trump.”