The Daily - The Fired C.D.C. Director Testifies

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

For weeks, fights have been escalating between top scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., culminating in his accusation that the agency’s top official, Dr. Susan Monarez, was untrustworthy.Dr. Monarez went before a Senate committee on Wednesday to give her side of the story.Sheryl Gay Stolberg, who covers health policy for The New York Times, discusses the testimony and the rift that the hearing exposed within the Republican Party over how far to go to support Mr. Kennedy and his vaccine agenda.Guest: Sheryl Gay Stolberg, a correspondent based in Washington who covers health policy for The Times.Background reading: The fired C.D.C. director described clashes with Mr. Kennedy and turmoil at the agency.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: Kenny Holston/The New York Times Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily. For weeks, fights have been escalating between the CDC's top scientists and the health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., culminating in his accusation that the agency's top official was untrustworthy and a liar. On Wednesday, that official, Susan Menares, went before Congress to give her side of the story. My colleague Cheryl Gay-Stolberg unpacks that testimony and the rift that the hearing exposed within the Republican Party over how far they will go

to back Kennedy and his vaccine agenda. It's Thursday, September 18th. Cheryl, thank you so much for making time for us. It was obviously a very busy day for you watching this hearing, which we were all glued to, so we really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. So on the show, we have been covering the chaos of the CDC because in just a span of a few weeks, the head of the agency was fired, several high-ranking officials quit in protest,

Robert of Kennedy Jr., the head of Health and Human Services, which obviously oversees the CDC. He had to answer for a lot of this in front of the Senate last week. And today, the person that he ousted was in front of Congress to explain her side of the story, which to me was quite striking because we haven't seen her, heard her voice, heard her explain her version of events. And I'm just sort of curious, you who actually covers this world, what were you going into this hearing looking for and paying attention to? I wanted to see what it really felt like to work with and for Robert. F. Kennedy, Jr., the health secretary. You know, the CDC has been through a really rough year since Mr. Kennedy took office. There have been mass layoffs. The secretary is dismantling the agency and reorganizing it. A gunman opened fire on the agency. That's right. I remember

that. Killing a police officer in a rain of bullets. And then finally, Kennedy pushes out the CDC director who was only 29 days on the job. So what happened here? Kennedy often talks about radical transparency. Yet a lot of what he does isn't really radically transparent. We don't have much insight into how he leads the agency, what he's like to work with. So I guess I would. wanted to know what it felt like to be a public health official in this era under his leadership. Basically, the hearing in your view is kind of a rare window into the inner workings of the CDC under Robert of Kennedy Jr. Yes, I think that's right. Okay, so set the stage for me. How does this hearing start? So the room is packed. There's an overflowing.

room because there's so many people out in the hallway waiting to get in. And Dr. Susan Menares, the fired CDC director, and also Dr. Deborah Howery, the former CDC chief medical officer, walk in, you know, and the cameras are going. But really, all eyes are on Menares. The chairman of the committee, Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, bangs the gavel, opens the hearing. This hearing is a direct response. to President Trump's call for radical transparency

in how we conduct governmental affairs. And announces that he is convening this hearing because he wants to know if federal health agencies are living up to the goal of radical transparency that President Trump has set. So he's basically using President Trump's words? He's really using Kennedy's words. It's Kennedy, who's always talked about radical transparency.

And I thank Secretary Robert Kennedy for echoing that call for radical transparency. And Cassidy was kind of throwing those words back at the health secretary. Now, it's important to remember that Cassidy is in a really precarious position. Now, I approach this hearing as both a doctor and as a senator. He's a doctor, an ardent proponent of vaccines, and he really agonized publicly over whether or not to vote. to confirm Kennedy. And he did vote to confirm him. He cast a crucial vote, and he did so, he said at the time, because Kennedy had offered him assurances that they would have a very close working relationship and that he would not undo current vaccine policy or create parallel

vaccine approval structures. Today we'll hear from Dr. Menares and Dr. Auri, who have raised serious allegations that strike at the core of the CDC's credibility. And he's clearly uncomfortable with some of the things that Kennedy has done. And he also notes that Dr. Menares is the first ever CDC confirmed director. All the Republicans voted for her, he said, and she gets fired 29 days later. And so part of our responsibility today is to ask ourselves, if someone is fired 29 days after every Republican votes for her, Like, what happened? Did we fail?

Was there something we should have done differently? He says, did we do our job? Is there something we missed? Yeah, I was watching the hearing, too, and what really struck me is that Cassidy seemed so, frankly, kind of frustrated that this person that he, as we know, was on the fence about seemed to have not really lived up to some of the things that he promised Congress. And so Cassidy, like, sets the tone for this hearing. And the big question, it seemed, was what happened inside the CDC from Dr. Menares' point of view? Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you again. Secretary Kennedy himself swore me in on July 31st, calling me a public health expert with unimpeachable scientific credentials.

So Menares uses her opening statement to lay that out. She says a lot of things have been said about the reason she was removed. Since my removal, several explanations have been offered, that I told the secretary I would resign, that I was not aligned with the administration priorities, or that I was untrustworthy. None of those reflect what actually happened. She says, none of that is true. He directed me to commit in advance. to approving every ACIP recommendation, regardless of the scientific evidence.

She says that he wanted her to commit in advance to approving all the recommendations of his handpick panel of vaccine advisors. He wanted her to fire CDC civil servants, career scientists responsible for vaccine policy. She said no. I could not replace evidence with ideology or compromise my integrity. And at some point he says to her, Secretary Kennedy told me he could not trust me. He can't trust her. I told the secretary that if he believed he could not trust me, he could fire me.

And Menares testifies that she said to him, if you believe you can't trust me, you can fire me. Very different. Yeah. I could have stayed silent, agreed to the demands, and no one would have known. And she wraps up by saying that she could have stayed, she could have kept the title,

but that doing that would cost her the one thing that was most important, which was her own scientific integrity. So basically, in her testimony, she's trying to set the record straight on what went down that led to her firing. That's right. But when the Democrats questioned her, especially Senator Maggie Hasson,

they kind of gave her an opening to talk about the thing that I was really interested in, which is, what did it feel like to work for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.? When you pushed back on Secretary Kennedy's demands, how did he react? He was very upset. Menaris shared an account of this critical meeting that she had with the secretary and some of his top deputies about a week before her firing.

And she says... He was very upset throughout the entirety of our discussion. Kennedy was very upset and very animated. It was not a productive exchange. And she clearly doesn't want to go too far with that, but she tells the senators that Kennedy hurled insults about CDC employees. Emphasized that CD employees were horrible people, that CDC employees were killing children and they don't care.

He said that C employees were bought by the pharmaceutical industry, called in that context, CDC the most, corrupt federal agency in the world. He said CDC forced people to wear masks and social distance like a dictatorship. And the one I think that hurt me the most was a particularly vivid phrase, he said, during the COVID outbreak. CDC told hospitals to turn away sick COVID patients until they had blue lips before allowing them to get treatment. And it is fair to say, in your view, that those statements are not true. those statements are not true.

Thank you. She says none of that was true. None of those accusations were true. So on the whole, it sort of seems like Dr. Minares is painting a picture of Robert Kennedy Jr. as a leader who is tense and angry in meetings and who seems to have a real disdain for the agency that she works for. Yes, I think that's right. And another thing that came out under questioning from Senator Tamp. Tammy Baldwin, the Democrat of Wisconsin, is that after Kennedy threatened to push Minare's out, she called the Health Committee to share her concerns.

Secretary Kennedy became aware of that, and he was very concerned that I had spoken to members of Congress, and he told me I was never to do it again. and he told her never to do that again, that she should not talk to members of Congress. Congress and the American people need to know what is happening at the CDC. And this censorship is not radical transparency, and it is unacceptable. And Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, but the ranking member, says, I find it rather astounding that anyone is concerned,

that government heads of agencies talk to the elected officials of the United States of America. That is what they are supposed to do. This is exactly what a federal official is supposed to do. They're supposed to talk to senators who oversee their agency. And just the fact that Democrats were allying themselves

so aggressively with Manaras really illustrated this vast shift that has happened politically. over the past month. What kind of a shift? Well, every Democrat voted against confirming Susan Menares, and every Republican voted for her. And at this hearing today,

you had Democrats lauding her as a hero. Thanks to our witnesses for being here today. One of them, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. Dr. Menars, I owe you an apology. Actually apologized to her. When you were here for your confirmation hearing, my worries about the direction of HHS made me question you very significantly on your backbone, a trait that is not in long supply in this town. He said, I voted against you because I thought you would have no backbone. And I was wrong. And I apologized to you for being wrong.

How often do you hear a member of Congress say something like that? I think it's pretty rare to hear a member of Congress say the words, I was wrong. I thought it was so striking. Yeah. And on the other side, you had Republicans, all of whom voted for Menares, really grappling with how to handle her firing, and for some with their growing unease about Secretary Kennedy. We'll be right back. So Cheryl, we just talked a lot about how the Democrats basically had this uniform opposition to the way that Robert of Kennedy Jr. has been leading the agency during his relative.

short tenure. And watching the hearing, as you noted, the Republican response was really a lot more fractured. So I'm curious if you can just sort of describe the various approaches. Yeah. So there are like two camps of Republicans at this hearing. There was the all in for Trump camp of Republicans. And by that I mean all in for Trump and Kennedy. And then there was the queasy kind of uneasy, um, uneasy Republicans who voted to confirm Kennedy and are now

asking a lot of questions. Thank you. So, uh, thank you so much for being here. And Dr. So to start with the all-in Republicans, I think a good example is Mark Wayne Mullen. I think you might have an honesty issue here that we want to point out. Mark Wayne Mullen was pressing her on whether or not she was telling the truth.

Your conversation with the secretary, you said that he said he didn't trust you. Correct. You testified to that. Is that really how that conversation went? Because there's other people in the room, and I think the conversation was, can he trust you? And your answer was? He said he could not trust me. No.

At one point, Mullins said, ma'am, it was a recorded meeting. There was a recording of the meeting on August 25th between Dr. Menara's and Secretary Kennedy in which Kennedy threatened to fire her. And that really set Chairman Cassidy off. I will note that if materials have been provided to Senator Mullen and invoked an official committee business, their committee records and all other senators on the committee have the right to see those records. He said, if there is a recording of this meeting, the committee needs to have it. It shouldn't be in the possession of one senator. And then Mullen later told

reporters he was mistaken. He didn't have a recording. There is no evidence, really, that a recording exists. Oh, dear. And then, you know, the other senators who are all in for Trump were the other doctors on the committee, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Roger Marshall of Kansas. And they seem to really want to reopen a discussion of vaccine policy in America. Okay, the CDC currently recommends between 70 and 80 shots over the child's lifetime. Do you fully support that recommendation that every child needs every vaccine as recommended by the CDC? The data associated with those recommendations has been validated and vetted. That is the current schedule. They make clear that they think the CDC is unwilling to challenge its decade-old recommendations for childhood vaccines. And they are prodding

minareas to talk about the evidence. See, everybody's like blithely going along. We can't change the childhood. You're somehow terrible if you want to change the childhood. We should be discussing what is the childhood vaccine schedule and the burden should be on you. You want to make all the kids take this? The burden is upon you.

And Paul was saying, look, we want to open up a discussion here about childhood vaccine recommendations, all vaccine recommendations. all vaccine recommendations. Okay, so that's the camp of Republicans who are aligning themselves with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and President Trump. What about the other Republican camp you mentioned? I think you called them queasy.

The queasy camp, yes. The queasy camp. The queasy camp is really led by Senator Cassidy, but also includes, I think, Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, Lisa Murkowski, the Republican of Alaska. and all express serious concern with Secretary Kennedy's approach to vaccine policy. What happens then to this scientific mission when there are none of the career public health

professionals to advise on the policy? But Cassidy is Exhibit A. As I close, I'm going to speak as a liver doctor. You know, as chairman of the committee, Cassidy has the right. right to make closing remarks, to close out the hearing. And he uses his remarks to deliver this impassioned speech on behalf of a vaccine that is very, very important to him, the hepatitis B vaccine. Folks, I'm a physician, as it turns out, I am a hepatologist, which is a liver specialist, and have published papers on liver disease, and have seen people die

from hepatitis. He's a liver specialist, and the vaccine is important to him. because hepatitis B is a disease of the liver. But the vaccine is also in Kennedy's crosshairs. One thing that reportedly is going to be discussed at the upcoming ACIP meeting is ending the recommendation for the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine. Kennedy has kind of gone after the low-hanging fruit,

if you will. He narrowed recommendations on COVID vaccines and hepatitis B vaccine is clearly up next in his sights. the vaccine is given routinely to infants at birth. That is the recommendation. But there's controversy over it. Hepatitis B is a disease that is transmitted either sexually or through dirty needles can also be transmitted during birth through the birth canal. And people like Kennedy and Rand Paul say, look, if this is a sexually transmitted disease and you get it through, you know, drug use, sharing, dirty needles. You know, let's just test moms for hepatitis B when they give birth. And if they're not positive for it, let them make a choice about whether to give this vaccine to their baby. It doesn't have to be routine. For those who say, why should a child be vaccinated for a sexually transmitted disease when they're at birth, the child passes through the birth canal. And that passage through

the birth canal makes that child vulnerable to the virus being transmitted. If that child is infected at birth, more than 90% of them develop chronic lifelong infection. But supporters of the vaccine say that you'd really be exposing a lot of kids to harm if you did that. That'd be really difficult to screen every mom for hepatitis B. And so that is... A debate that is going to happen just this week before the Advisory Committee for Immunization practices. The committee that makes recommendations for vaccines. Yes, and the committee is going to vote on the recommendation.

And Cassidy clearly feels a real sense of urgency here. Now, by the way, there's some who said they've never seen it, so therefore it cannot exist. It does occur. It occurs less often now. So we can argue, now that we've controlled it, do we let the genie out of the bottle? He's got the platform here on the eve of this hearing, and he wants to make his views known. And his views are at odds with those of the health secretary that he is almost singularly responsible for installing an office. Thank you again for the witnesses.

Thank you for the audience. You're very respectful. The committee stands adjourned. The statement that Cassidy makes at the end of the hearing in a lot of ways sort of seemed like he's setting the stage for something much larger, that this fight over public health isn't just about one vaccine, that he is talking about something that feels a little bit more existential. Yes, I think he is using hepatitis B to illustrate the broader story of what will happen if all of these. vaccine recommendations get rolled back. And I think he's kind of saying that, you know, we did the COVID vaccines. Now we're going to go after hepatitis. What's next? What other disease is going to be on the horizon because vaccine recommendations are being undone? He's issuing a

warning. But beyond the debate about vaccines, in some ways it feels like this hearing, was a larger referendum about how much pushback is possible in this current political environment. And what I thought seemed like it was on display here was that Republicans who did not agree with what is happening at the CDC, they could push back on RFK Jr. for undermining science, in their view. But what they would not do is they would not push back on President Trump. And that was a line that senators like Murkowski and Collins and Cassidy, that was something they were so careful to tow. I think that's exactly right.

Cassidy, he is in a tight spot. He's running for re-election. He's got a primary challenge from the right. And to the extent that RFK Jr. is embraced by Trump, it will be very difficult to really go after him. But if Trump grows dissatisfied in some way with Kennedy, then it will be a lot easier for these Republicans who are uneasy with the health secretary to go after him. But there isn't evidence of that yet. My colleague Maggie Haberman and I reported last week that while there are tensions between Trump and Kennedy, there's no evidence of a break between them.

Cheryl, I feel like there were a couple things that stood out to me about this hearing. One, as you mentioned, was this high wire act that Republicans were doing. And another one was the fact that we were hearing from somebody who was directly singled out by the Trump administration to be fired, speaking publicly for the first time in this, obviously, very public format. And I just sort of wonder at the end of all of this, what was your big takeaway? This is about the health of future generations. Vaccines have long been considered a singular achievement of public health. Other than clean water and sanitation, vaccines have swept scourges out of our lives, from smallpox to polio to what were once considered more routine childhood diseases like measles before the vaccine was introduced in 1963. And we're at this moment where everything is being thrown into

question. All of this is up for debate. And you saw that in the split between Republicans and between the Republican doctors, right? You had one doctor, Cassidy's saying, don't undo this progress. We need these vaccines. And you had another doctor, Rand Paul, saying, look, we need to start having a debate. We need to open up a debate. And I think what we're going to see is really the diminution of the influence of the CDC. We're already seeing that. For its 80 years in existence, the CDC has issued recommendations that have been followed by states, every state, in the country.

That is no longer the case. We have breakaway states now, like Florida. which announced that it is ending its childhood vaccine mandates. Cassidy's own home state of Louisiana has a whooping cough outbreak now. Two children have died in that outbreak, and Cassidy has asked publicly for Kennedy to recommend and encourage vaccination. Kennedy hasn't said a word about the pertussis or hoping cough vaccine. So I think we're really on a precipice,

And I think that's what this hearing revealed. Cheryl, thank you so much. Thanks, Rachel. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. on Wednesday that it was pulling Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show, quote, indefinitely, over comments that he made in his opening monologue earlier this week about the motives of the man who shot Charlie Kirk.

We hit some new lows over the weekend with the Maga Gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. Conservatives accused the longtime host of inaccurately describing the politics of the alleged shooter. The abrupt decision by the network, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, came hours after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, assailed Mr. Kimmel, and suggested that the FCC might take action against the network because of the remarks that Kimmel had made on his Monday telecast.

And the move exacerbated concerns that Trump administration was intentionally targeting media organizations and speech that it objects to. And the Federal Reserve lowered interest. rates for the first time this year by a quarter point, and signaled that it might cut rates again this year because of ongoing concerns about the labor market. The decision comes as President Trump has intensified his pressure campaign on the Fed, which has included an attempt to oust a sitting member of the Board of Governors. Today's episode was produced by Stella Tan, Jessica Chung, and Alex Stern, with help from

Caitlin O'Keefe. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Linn. and Lizzo Balin, and was engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for the Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.