By Ahmed Aboulenein
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Former U.S. CDC Director Susan Monarez will tell a Senate panel on Wednesday that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. required her to seek her own political staff’s approval for her policy and personnel decisions before ultimately firing her.
Monarez, who helmed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 29 days, was fired on August 27 after clashing with Kennedy over vaccine policy. She will tell the Senators that Kennedy told her he had spoken with the White House several times about having her removed, according to her prepared written testimony seen by Reuters.
A microbiologist and immunologist who has worked at various government agencies since 2006, Monarez was confirmed as CDC director on July 30, the first required to have Senate approval.
She is now at the nexus of a debate over the future of U.S. vaccination policy, in which Kennedy has pushed to scale back the use of vaccines and U.S. public health experts and medical doctors have called for him to resign, saying his policies will hurt Americans.
Some Republicans have also expressed concern over Kennedy’s proposed policies to decrease vaccine access, including Senator Bill Cassidy, chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, who invited Monarez, as well as former Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry to the hearing.
Monarez was the first non-physician appointed to the position in 50 years, brought in as acting director after Trump took office. She was most recently the deputy director of a federal health research agency and previously worked in the Department of Homeland Security and the White House.
She will provide details of the exchange she had with Kennedy before she was fired, saying she was directed to commit in advance to approve every recommendation by Kennedy’s handpicked committee members regardless of the scientific evidence and to fire officials responsible for vaccine policy, the written testimony shows. Monarez previously detailed the reason behind her ouster in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.
In a combative September 4 Senate Finance Committee hearing, Kennedy said she lied and that he never said she needed to pre-approve decisions, but admitted ordering her to fire officials, which she refused to do.
Monarez issued a statement through her lawyers after the hearing saying she sticks by her story and was willing to repeat it under oath. Shortly after, the HELP committee announced the Wednesday hearing.
EXPERT ADVISERS FIRED
Kennedy fired all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in June and replaced them with 12 handpicked members, including fellow anti-vaccine activists.
He has narrowed eligibility for COVID shots and cut funding for the development of new vaccines using the mRNA technology that was the basis of vaccines widely used during the pandemic.
Criticism of Kennedy has intensified since Monarez’s firing, which triggered resignations of four CDC officials, citing anti-vaccine policies and misinformation he and his team are pushing.
Among them was Houry, who plans to tell the panel she had been at the CDC for a decade and served under six different presidential administrations. Prior to joining the CDC, Houry spent a decade as an emergency room physician.
CDC leaders “were expected to serve as rubber stamps” for Kennedy’s decisions, Houry plans to say according to her prepared written testimony seen by Reuters.
“I resigned because Secretary Kennedy’s actions repeatedly censored CDC science, politicized our processes, and stripped agency leaders of the ability to protect the health of the American people,” she plans to say.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Additional reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
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