Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is set to face pointed questions when he travels to Capitol Hill next week.
Kennedy's push to remove the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), less than a month after she won Senate confirmation, is sparking broad scrutiny in Washington.
The exit of several other high-level CDC officials, along with questions over vaccine policy, are raising concerns among Democrats and many in the health community, even as the GOP cheers a number of the administration's moves.
Kennedy is scheduled to appear before the Senate Finance Committee on Sept. 4, the panel announced Thursday. The hearing is focused on the president's health agenda for the coming year, and the Cabinet member is expected to be pressed by Democrats over the upheaval at the CDC.
Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said Kennedy "has placed addressing the underlying causes of chronic diseases at the forefront of this Administration's health care agenda."
"I look forward to learning more about @HHSGov's Make America Healthy Again actions to date and plans moving forward," he wrote Thursday on X.
RED LINES: CDC Director Susan Monarez was abruptly ousted from her role this week amid a clash over vaccine policy. The New York Times reported she was removed after she declined to fire agency leaders or commit to accept all recommendations from a vaccine advisory panel Kennedy overhauled earlier this year.
Monarez's lawyers contested the decision to remove her, with the White House ultimately stepping in to say she was fired. The CDC chief had just completed her first month after being confirmed by the Senate. The Trump administration has tapped Kennedy's deputy, Jim O'Neill, to serve as acting director of the CDC, officials told The Hill.
O'Neill was sworn in as deputy HHS secretary in June and worked at the department during the George W. Bush administration. More recently he has been a Silicon Valley investor and was former CEO of the Thiel Foundation, funded by GOP donor Peter Thiel.
Richard Besser, CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a former acting CDC director in the Obama administration, told reporters on Thursday that Monarez refused to fire top CDC leaders and sign off on changes to vaccines.
"She said that there were two things she would never do in the job," Besser said at a news conference. "She said she was asked to do both of those, one in terms of firing her leadership, who are talented civil servants like herself, and the other was to rubber-stamp [vaccine] recommendations that flew in the face of science, and she was not going to do either of those things."
The Hill's Alejandra O'Connell-Domenech and Joseph Choi have five key takeaways from Monarez's ouster.
MAHA MOVES: The Trump administration said Thursday the CDC needs to align with the president's "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) agenda. In an interview on Fox News's "Fox & Friends," Kennedy criticized the CDC for touting water fluoridation, vaccines and abortion as pillars of public health.
"The agency is in trouble, and we need to fix it — and we are fixing it," Kennedy said.
Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, has sought to throttle access to COVID-19 vaccines in recent months, while overhauling the panel that has long advised the CDC on vaccine approvals. He has worked to shift the focus of public health agencies to environmental toxins that he blames for causing obesity, autism and mental health issues.
"We need to look at the priorities of the agency," Kennedy told Fox, saying he believes "there's really a deeply, deeply embedded, I would say, malaise at the agency, and we need strong leadership that will go in there and that will be able to execute on President Trump's broad ambitions."
Scientists and public health experts have expressed dismay at Kennedy's rationale. In addition to curtailing broad access to COVID-19 vaccines, Kennedy seeks to overhaul vaccine policy more broadly, which experts and former CDC staffers warn could harm Americans' health.
Demetre Daskalakis, head of the agency's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, was among the CDC officials who resigned Wednesday, saying in his resignation letter "enough is enough."
"I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public's health," he wrote.
▪ The Hill: Kennedy said Thursday he thinks his agency's forthcoming report on autism will reveal an "aggregation of causes" that lead to the neurological disorder.
▪ The Atlantic: The CDC's departing leaders discuss the agency's future — or lack thereof.
CONGRESSIONAL BACKLASH: Kennedy's reshaping of the CDC has drawn bipartisan criticism in Congress, chiefly from Democrats but with notable GOP voices.
"Yesterday's events are yet more evidence that putting a quack like Bobby Kennedy in charge of public health was a grave error," Sen. Jon Ossoff (D), whose home state of Georgia is home to the CDC's headquarters, said in a Thursday statement. "The Trump Administration has been engaged for months in a campaign to destroy the CDC, America's preeminent disease-fighting agency."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called for a bipartisan investigation into the removal of the CDC head. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) echoed that push, calling Monarez's firing "outrageous."
"I am extremely alarmed at the firing of the CDC director," GOP Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) told reporters. "I know her. I have met with her several times and talked with her on the phone, and I see no basis for her firing."
CONFIRMATION PROMISES: Republican senators who voted to confirm Kennedy must reconcile his CDC vaccine policies with the promises he made at his confirmation hearings.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician and chair of the Senate's health panel, said in January he faced a "dilemma" over whether to support Kennedy's confirmation based on his rhetoric surrounding vaccine science. Cassidy ultimately voted to confirm Kennedy.
Following Monarez's ouster, Cassidy called for the department's vaccine advisory panel to indefinitely postpone its next meeting, citing "serious allegations" raised "about the meeting agenda, membership, and lack of scientific process being followed."
"If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership," he said in a statement.
Still, it's unclear how far GOP senators will go in challenging the Trump administration's moves, writes The Hill's Alexander Bolton.
The overwhelming majority of GOP senators have repeatedly sought to downplay major differences of opinion with Trump and the most controversial members of his Cabinet this year. Both Collins and Cassidy are up for reelection next year.
Republican strategists warned the CDC shake-up could underscore concerns that Kennedy is attempting to bend policy to fit a political narrative regardless of scientific reality.
"It's a huge problem for CDC, for the country and for Kennedy's credibility," one strategist said. "He talked as if he just wanted transparency and to engage in a conversation, and he's clearly trying to cook the [books] on this point."
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