Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, says the departures of several high-level officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including Director Susan Monarez, “will require oversight.”
Cassidy, who cast a pivotal vote to confirm Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in February, supported Kennedy’s controversial nomination after receiving his assurance that he would not dismantle the nation’s vaccine safety systems.
The Louisiana Republican posted his statement pledging oversight of the shake-up at CDC on social platform X.
Now, Monarez and several other senior officials at CDC are set to leave their posts after a battle with Kennedy over the administration’s vaccine policies.
The White House announced Wednesday that Monarez had been terminated because she is “not aligned with the president’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again.”
Monarez’s lawyers, Mark S. Zaid and Abbe Lowell, said in a statement that she was targeted for dismissal as part of “the systematic dismantling of public health institutions, the silencing of experts and the dangerous politicization of science.”
“The attack on Dr. Monarez is a warning to every American: Our evidence-based systems are being undermined from within,” they wrote.
The HHS announced Friday afternoon that Monarez was “no longer” the head of the CDC, but her lawyers argued she served at the pleasure of the president and could only be fired by President Trump.
Four other senior officials at the agency announced their resignations after Monarez was ousted from her job: Debra Houry, the CDC’s chief medical officer; Demetre Daskalakis, the agency’s top respiratory illness and immunization officer; Daniel Jernigan, a senior official who helped oversee responses to infectious diseases; and Jennifer Layden, who handled public health data.
Daskalakis said in a resignation letter posted to social media that he would no longer serve at the agency because Kennedy and his staff are pushing views about vaccines that “do not reflect scientific reality.”
“I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health,” he wrote.
“The recent change in the adult and children’s immunization schedule threaten the lives of the youngest Americans and pregnant people,” Daskalakis added.
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