Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. torched his former CDC director on Capitol Hill, saying Susan Monarez “lied” when she claimed she was fired for refusing to rubber-stamp vaccine guidance she believed wasn’t backed by science.
Kennedy’s broadside came under questioning from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) at a Senate Finance Committee hearing — his first since he pushed Monarez out, a move that triggered resignations by senior CDC officials and a staff walkout.
“We are the sickest country in the world,” Kennedy said, arguing the CDC failed during the pandemic and on chronic disease. “That’s why we have to fire people.”
Monarez, who lasted 29 days in the job, fired back earlier in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, saying Kennedy told her to preapprove recommendations from a newly reconstituted vaccine panel stocked with figures who’ve echoed anti-vaccine rhetoric. “Once trusted experts are removed and advisory bodies are stacked, the results are predetermined,” she wrote. “That isn’t reform. It is sabotage.”
HHS disputed her account, saying Monarez “was never told to preapprove anything” and was asked to rely on in-house experts already running evidence reviews. Kennedy flatly denied her claim at the hearing: pressed by Wyden on whether Monarez was telling the truth, he replied, “Yes, sir,” she was lying.
The clash capped a combustible few weeks at HHS. Kennedy has tightened access to COVID boosters, even as cases climb, and yanked nearly $500 million in contracts for next-gen mRNA vaccines — steps that have infuriated Democrats and unsettled some Republicans. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) warned Kennedy’s actions don’t match his confirmation pledges. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician, accused him of making it harder for patients to get shots, even as Kennedy praised Trump’s Operation Warp Speed.
Democrats went scorched-earth. Wyden accused the secretary of putting kids “in harm’s way.” Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) blasted Kennedy for purging the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee and elevating panelists who have spread debunked claims. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told Kennedy he should resign. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) was stunned when Kennedy said he didn’t know how many Americans died of COVID, then later conceded vaccines “saved quite a few” lives.
Monarez’s ouster followed a deadly shooting outside CDC headquarters; in an all-hands afterward she urged fighting misinformation and rebuilding trust. In her op-ed, she said she was fired “for holding that line.” Senior CDC leader Demetre Daskalakis resigned in protest, writing he couldn’t serve in an agency used to produce “policies… designed to hurt rather than improve the public’s health.”
Kennedy isn’t backing down. He says he’s clearing out CDC officials with “conflicts of interest, catastrophically bad judgment and political agendas,” and promises “unbiased” science — while pursuing a broader agenda that includes reviewing vaccine schedules, attacking prior-authorization red tape, and even removing fluoride from drinking water.
Kennedy’s denial turns a CDC meltdown into a full-blown credibility crisis — for Monarez, for the department, and for a vaccine policy that now sits at the center of a political knife fight.
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