5 contentious moments from Senate hearing with former CDC leaders

Two former top officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Pensions and Labor Committee on Wednesday to talk about their former employment and concerns and the future direction of the public health agency.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired director Susan Monarez. Chief medical officer Dr. Debra Houry was one of several top CDC officials who quit.

Much of the hearing focused on vaccines and it was over the question of vaccine recommendations that Monarez said she was fired. She said she refused to “pre-approve” recommendations to back changing vaccine guidelines and that she asked for but was not provided scientific data to back changes. She also said she was told that vaccine guidelines from the CDC would be changing in September.

The Senate hearing was being held a day ahead of a two-day meeting where the Advisory Committee on Immunization and Practices is slated to discuss several vaccines, including the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, as well as vaccines for hepatitis B and COVID-19. It will be the first recommendation-making hearing of the group, whose members are all newly appointed after Kennedy fired the existing panel members. Critics have noted that some of the new members share Kennedy’s wariness about vaccines, while others say they will bring fresh eyes to the issue.

In opening remarks, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, the committee chairman, said he was approaching the hearing in both his political and physician capacity, adding that “I should be, but frankly I think we all should be, first and foremost friends and allies of the American people. They are looking to us to figure out how our government works best for them.”

He added that as an elected official he was focusing on Monarez’s role as the first Senate-confirmed CDC director.

“It’s such an important position that we demanded a role in her or his choosing. And so part of our responsibility today is to ask ourselves, if someone is fired 29 days after every Republican votes for her, the Senate confirms her, the secretary said at her swearing in that she has ‘unimpeachable scientific credentials’ and the president called her ‘an incredible mother and dedicated public servant,’ like what happened? Did we fail? Was there something we should have done differently?”

The Senate hearing, however, did not bear the marks of a united effort to learn what has happened and is happening in the CDC, though senators on both sides of the aisle seemed to agree that what Cassidy called “turmoil at the top of the nation’s top public health agency” isn’t good for the health of Americans.

The discussion and angle of the questions largely, though not completely, broke along party lines. The entire hearing is available on YouTube.

Here are several key moments from the somewhat contentious hearing:

• The most hostile-sounding exchange was between Monarez and Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., who noted that both Monarez and Houry were getting notes from a pair of lawyers. She asked that they be introduced and their names be put into the record, but Monarez said she would be happy to introduce them privately. Eventually, Houry was asked and she provided their names: Abbe Lowell and Mark Zaid. When Moody criticized Monarez for reaching out to Cassidy and the committee after she was fired, Cassidy defended the action as “appropriate” since the committee has jurisdiction over the CDC.
• The firing of Monarez itself is a he-said, she-said event, and Kennedy and Monarez represented the event differently. Kennedy has said he fired her as “untrustworthy” and she said he asked for “blanket approval” for any changes to vaccine guidelines. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., said Monarez was mischaracterizing the Kennedy-Monarez conversation and that there was a recording. He then backtracked, saying he was “mistaken.” Said Cassidy during the hearing, ”In case he’s mistaken that he was mistaken, if there is a recording, it should be released and it would beg the question of what other conversations were recorded.”
• Several Democratic senators apologized to Monarez for voting against her nomination, including Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who said he had doubted she would stand up to the administration if she disagreed on public health. “You swore an oath to public health and safety, not to political ideology, and you kept that promise to the American people,” he said.
• Houry said she offered to brief Kennedy on measles outbreaks, but was not given the opportunity to do so. She also told Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, that everyone left in the director’s office has political but not scientific credentials. Scientists, she said, are “a level down” directing centers, but 80% are “acting directors” because others have “been fired, resigned or retired.”
• NBC noted that during the hearing, Kennedy posted on X that "@SenRandPaul questions Susan Monarez on the efficacy of childhood COVID vaccines — and he brings the receipts." The exchange with Paul, R-Ky., was notably hostile on both sides, with Paul disagreeing with each of Monarez’s answers to his questions on vaccine efficacy and whether COVID-19 vaccines should be given to someone 6 months old and hepatitis B vaccines to a day-old child. At one point he noted of her response, “that’s a ridiculous answer” and at another point he said “untrue.”