WASHINGTON — Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. heads to Capitol Hill for testimony Thursday, a week after Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez was fired and a series of vaccine-related decisions drew criticism from lawmakers, including Senate health committee chair, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La.
Monarez’s firing led several senior CDC officials to resign and fueled a staff protest outside the agency’s Atlanta headquarters last week. In a scathing editorial in The New York Times on Monday, nine former CDC directors called Kennedy “dangerous” and said his actions are “unlike anything our country has ever experienced.”
“My hope during the hearing is that he’s asked tough questions,” Dr. Richard Besser, who served as acting CDC director in 2009 and was among the former directors who signed the Times editorial, said in an interview. “How is the country healthier and safer by firing the CDC director?”
Among his recent actions, Kennedy fired all the members of an influential CDC panel that makes recommendations on vaccinations and replaced them with his own handpicked members, some of whom are known anti-vaccine activists. He slashed $500 million in mRNA vaccine research and announced that the Food and Drug Administration had limited this fall’s Covid shot approval to people 65 and up and those with underlying medical conditions.
The moves have prompted outcry, including from more than 1,000 current and former Department of Health and Human Services employees who published a letter Wednesday demanding that Kennedy resign.
Since Monarez’s ouster, Kennedy has largely steered clear of public questioning.
On Tuesday, Kennedy defended the direction he has taken the public health agency in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, saying that he is working to restore public trust and protect the public from infectious disease threats.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was once the world’s most trusted guardian of public health,” Kennedy wrote. “But over the decades, bureaucratic inertia, politicized science and mission creep have corroded that purpose and squandered public trust.”
Besser, who is now CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said, "How do you protect the nation from threats when you move to eliminate some of the leading experts in disease prevention and health promotion?”
A key test
Thursday’s hearing before the Senate Finance Committee is not only a key test for Kennedy, but for Cassidy, the pivotal vote behind his confirmation. (In addition to chairing the health committee, which oversees the CDC, Cassidy is also a member of the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over HHS.)
After publicly wavering, Cassidy announced he would support Kennedy and highlighted a series of promises he said he had secured, including that Kennedy would maintain a key vaccine advisory committee without changes and that he’d given Cassidy assurances about “protecting the public health benefit of vaccination,” among other things. (Kennedy subsequently fired everyone on the vaccine committee and made false claims about vaccines amid the country’s largest measles outbreak in 33 years.)
In May, Cassidy told NBC News that Kennedy had “lived up” to those promises even as critics raised concerns that he was chipping away at public faith in vaccines.
This week, Cassidy was mum about what he planned to ask Kennedy on Thursday.
“I haven’t decided that,” he told reporters Tuesday. “But I want to carefully frame the question. The issue is about children’s health, and there’s rumors, allegations, that children’s health, which is at issue here, might be endangered by some of the decisions that are purported to be made.”
Asked about the allegations from the CDC officials who resigned last week that Kennedy was putting his political agenda over science, Cassidy said: “So shouldn’t we find that out? You don’t presuppose they’re right, you don’t presuppose they’re wrong. You go out in a way in which both sides get a chance to say, and then we can judge. And so that’s my hope.”
Cassidy, who faces a primary challenge from his right flank next year amid criticism that he hasn’t stood by President Donald Trump enough, has raised concerns on social media in recent weeks about the CDC turmoil as well as the mRNA funding cuts.
In the wake of Monarez’s dismissal, Cassidy also diverged from Kennedy by urging the agency to “indefinitely” postpone a meeting of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee scheduled for this month.
“Serious allegations have been made about the meeting agenda, membership, and lack of scientific process being followed for the now announced September ACIP meeting,” Cassidy said in a statement, referring to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. “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.”
HHS hasn’t said whether it’s considering delaying the meeting.
“I commend him [Cassidy] on calling for them to suspend that hearing,” Besser said. “As a physician and a senator and as a chair of the HELP Committee, people will be looking at him for his take on the Secretary.”
Cassidy’s recent decision to ring the alarm bells over some of Kennedy’s decisions heightens the stakes for Thursday’s hearing in front of the Finance Committee. While Democrats, who have long warned that Kennedy shouldn’t be leading HHS over his views on subjects like vaccines, are expected to lay into him, it’s unclear whether the secretary will face any real pressure from senators from his adopted party, particularly Cassidy.
In an interview with NBC News, Cassidy declined to elaborate after he said he would conduct “oversight” of Kennedy and the recent shake-up at the CDC. He wouldn’t answer when asked if he regretted his vote for Kennedy or had confidence in him.
Cassidy’s skepticism is important not just because of his health chairmanship, but because he’s trusted on the issue by fellow Republicans on the Finance Committee.
“I’m interested to hear more about it,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who is also juggling Senate duties with a contested re-election primary for 2026. “And my sort of north star is Senator Cassidy, and so I’ll be interested in what he has to say.”
Cornyn, who is facing his own primary from a Republican trying to frame him as insufficiently conservative, said he’s still mulling what to ask Kennedy at the hearing Thursday.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who sits on the health committee, backed Cassidy’s call for oversight and questioned Kennedy’s decision-making on public health matters.
“We want to have this based on science,” she said. “Right now, it just doesn’t feel that way.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who is not running for re-election and sits on the Finance Committee, also said he’s taking cues from Cassidy on how to approach Kennedy.
“Whatever Bill Cassidy is saying is pretty much me,” Tillis said Wednesday.
And Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, told reporters that the CDC needs “stability” amid the flurry of departures.
“He’s in charge of the department and he needs to restore public trust in the CDC,” Thune said of Kennedy.
“Whoever ends up in that position, it shouldn’t be disqualifying to be in support or in favor of vaccines.”
