Ousted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez and the agency’s former chief medical officer (CMO) plan to blast Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a Senate hearing on Wednesday, multiple outlets reported.
In prepared remarks before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), Monarez will testify that she was fired for “holding the line on scientific integrity,” according to The Hill.
Debra Houry, the ex-CMO, will tell lawmakers she resigned because the CDC had become too politicized under Kennedy, Politico reported.
HELP Committee Chair Bill Cassidy, R-La., called for Wednesday’s hearing and for oversight into the shakeup at the CDC.
Earlier this month, RFK Jr. told lawmakers he asked Monarez to resign because she admitted she was not trustworthy. “I told her she had to resign because I asked her, ‘Are you a trustworthy person?’ and she said ‘No,'” Kennedy testified.
Monarez and Houry, instead, are going to tell lawmakers they were being pressured into being “rubber stamps” for Kennedy’s decisions.
“I was fired for holding the line on scientific integrity. But that line does not disappear with me. It now runs through every parent deciding whether to vaccinate a child, every physician counseling a patient, and every American who demands accountability,” Monarez wrote. “I could have kept the office and the title. But I would have lost the one thing that cannot be replaced: my integrity.”
Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon pushed back, accusing Monarez of undermining President Donald Trump’s health agenda.
“Susan Monarez was tasked with returning the CDC to its core mission after decades of bureaucratic inertia, politicized science, and mission creep corroded its purpose and squandered public trust. Instead, she acted maliciously to undermine the President’s agenda and was fired as a result,” Nixon wrote in a statement to Politico.
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