CDC Turmoil Escalates: Kennedy To Testify In Senate After Director Fired, Senior Officials Quit

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will appear before the Senate Finance Committee on Sept. 4 to discuss U.S. President Donald Trump's healthcare agenda.

Chairman Mike Crapo said the hearing will focus on“the Department of Health and Human Services' Make America Healthy Again actions to date and plans moving forward,” Reuters reported.

The session comes after the White House dismissed CDC Director Susan Monarez on Wednesday, less than a month into her tenure. An associate said Monarez was fired after resisting vaccine policy changes advanced by Kennedy that she believed contradicted scientific evidence. 

Hours later, three senior officials - Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Demetre Daskalakis, and National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Director Daniel Jernigan - resigned and were reportedly escorted from the Atlanta campus. 

CDC staff, many wearing green shirts and ribbons as a sign of support, applauded them as they departed.

Richard Besser, former acting CDC director, said Monarez told him she would not take any action that was illegal or“flew in the face of science,” and she refused to dismiss her leadership team without cause. 

The three departing officials said they resigned over anti-vaccine policies and misinformation promoted by Kennedy and his team. Daskalakis said,“I'm a doctor. I took the Hippocratic oath that said, 'First, do no harm.' I believe harm is going to happen, and so I can't be a part of it.”

Since taking office this year, Kennedy has fired the CDC's vaccine advisory panel and replaced it with anti-vaccine activists and other advisers. 

He has made false claims about vaccines and launched an investigation into autism rates that he has linked, without evidence, to“environmental toxins.” 

The CDC has since dropped its recommendation that pregnant women be vaccinated against COVID and narrowed its guidance for children with health complications.

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Monarez was dismissed because she did not align with the president's mission.“She said she would [resign], and then she said she wouldn't, so the president fired her,” Leavitt said. 

Kennedy declined to comment on the specifics of the departures but told Fox News,“The agency is in trouble, and we need to fix it and we are fixing it. And it may be that some people should not be working there anymore.” 

Deputy HHS Secretary Jim O'Neill was named interim director of the CDC.

Monarez's dismissal is one of several recent moves by Trump to remove Senate-confirmed officials, including Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and Surface Transportation Board member Robert Primus.

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