ATLANTA — Susan Monarez, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who was ousted by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last month, will now testify in front of Congress.
Monarez and other high-level officials who have since resigned from the CDC over her firing are expected to testify on Sept. 17 at 10 a.m., ABC News reported Tuesday night.
They will testify before the Senate committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee, chaired by Rep. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a doctor himself.
“Children’s health must be the top priority. I thank President Trump and Secretary Kennedy for making radical transparency a priority,” Cassidy said in a statement to announce the hearing.
“To protect children’s health, Americans need to know what has happened and is happening at the CDC. They need to be reassured that their child’s health is given priority. Radical transparency is the only way to do that,” Cassidy said.
Upon Monarez’s firing last month, she said she was being pushed out because she wouldn’t agree to rubber-stamp Kennedy’s agenda or fire high-ranking scientists.
Kennedy said the fired CDC director was untrustworthy, stood by his past anti-vaccine rhetoric, and disputed reports of people saying they have had difficulty getting COVID-19 shots.
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Kennedy has made sweeping changes to agencies tasked with public health policy and scientific research by laying off thousands of workers, firing science advisers and remaking vaccine guidelines.
Kennedy came under fire last week during his own hearing in front of the Senate Finance Committee, receiving criticism from both sides of the aisle.
His remarks were met with criticism from several senators, including Sen. Maria Cantwell, (D-WA), who accused him of conflating chronic disease with the need for vaccines.
“You’re a charlatan. That’s what you are. You’re the ones who conflate chronic disease with the need for vaccines. The history on vaccines is very clear. This is the 20th century,” Cantwell said.
Senators questioned Kennedy about the upheaval at the CDC, including the firing of Monarez, whom Kennedy had previously praised.
Sen. Ron Wyden, (D-OR), pressed Kennedy on whether he had instructed Monarez to support vaccine recommendations regardless of scientific evidence.
“Did you, in fact, do what Director Monarez has said you did, which is tell her just go along with vaccine recommendations, even if you didn’t think such recommendations aligned with scientific evidence that?” Wyden asked Kennedy.
“No, I did not,” Kennedy said.
“So, she’s lying today to the American people in the Wall Street Journal?” Wyden asked Kennedy.
“Yes, sir,” Kennedy replied.
Georgia U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock flat-out told Kennedy that he should resign.
“You are a hazard to the health of the American people,” Warnock said. “I think that you ought to resign. And if you don’t resign, the president of the United States — who put forth Operation Warp Speed, which worked — should fire you.”
Kennedy’s testimony also included questioning the data on COVID deaths and the effectiveness of vaccines, despite the CDC reporting over 1.2 million American deaths from the virus.
“We at HHS are enacting a once-in-a-generation shift from a sick care system to a true health care system that tackles the root causes of chronic disease,” Kennedy said.
ABC News and the Associated Press contributed to this article.
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