The former director of Disease Control and Prevention, Susan Monarch, will come before the Senate next week for her first public appearance since she was expelled from her position, which caused a Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for her agenda of vaccine policy.
Monararez will join Deb Houry, former medical director and deputy director of the CDC Program and Sciences, who was one of the four main CDC officials who resigned in protest after Monaz was expelled. The audience will be on September 17 at 10 am
The two former officials will testify to the Senate Health, Labor, Labor, Labor and Pensions Committee, who is chaired by Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana doctor who was one of the key votes to confirm Kennedy, but since then he has become one of his most acute critics in the Republican Party.
“The health of children must be the highest priority. I thank President Trump and Secretary Kennedy for making radical transparency a priority,” Cassidy said in a statement to announce the hearing.
Susan Monarez, nominated being director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testifies to a confirmation hearing of the Senate Health, Labor, Labor and Pensions Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, on June 25, 2025.
Kevin Mohatt/Reuters
“To protect children’s health, Americans need to know what has happened and is happening in CDC. They must be sure that their child’s health has priority. Radical transparency is the only way to do it,” said Cassidy.
Monarch, who publicly announced the HHS “was no longer a director” on Wednesday afternoon at the end of August only four weeks after they confirmed it to the position, it caught the generalized attention when he refused to leave his position, asking President Donald Trump to weigh and shoot directly if he agreed with his secretary of the HHS.
She said she was expelled because she would not agree with Rubber Kennedy’s agenda or shoot at high -ranking scientists.
The measure stood out in the changes in Kennedy’s vaccine policy, which have been increased in recent weeks. Kennedy canceled around $ 500 million in RNM vaccine contracts at the beginning of August, changed the recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women to receive COVID-19 vaccines and, through the FDA, supervised the narrowing of the approval of the updated covid shots this fall only to people over 65 years or young Americans with minor conditions with minor conditions.
At the end of this month, a CDC committee will meet to discuss vaccine recommendations in a broader way, including measles, paps, rubella, chickenpox vaccine (MMRV) and respiratory syncitial virus (RSV). Kennedy has replaced all committee members with selected people, some of whom have expressed criticism of vaccines. Asked by ABC News on Tuesday, he plans to limit access to any of those vaccines, Kennedy said the committee would decide after a “real gold scientific review.”
“Parents deserve a CDC in which they can trust to put children above politics, evidence above ideology and facts above fear,” Monaz wrote in an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal on September 4. “I was fired for holding that line.”
Kennedy, who testified before the Senate last week at a very controversial audience, played the version of Monaz’s events.
“Did you do, in fact, what Marez director has said you did, which says:” You only accompany the recommendations of the vaccine, even if you did not believe such recommendations aligned with scientific evidence? “
“No, I didn’t,” Kennedy replied.
Kennedy remained in the recent Shakes of the CDC, saying that they were “absolutely necessary adjustments to restore the agency to their role as the world’s standard public health agency with a central mission to protect Americans from infectious diseases.”
