Susan Monarez, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), addressed the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Wednesday to testify on the recent turmoil at the public health agency. Monarez told Senators that before she was fired last month, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. demanded two things of her that she said were “inconsistent with [her] oath of office.”
“He directed me to commit in advance to approving every [Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices] recommendation, regardless of the scientific evidence. He also directed me to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy without cause,” Monarez claimed. “He said, if I was unwilling to do both, I should resign. I responded that I could not pre-approve recommendations without reviewing the evidence, and I had no basis to fire scientific experts.”
“Vaccine policy must be guided by credible data—not predetermined outcomes,” she continued.
Monarez told the committee that Kennedy was “very upset” when she said she wouldn’t pre-emptively approve vaccine recommendations from an advisory panel.
“He was very upset. The entire meeting was very tense. He was very upset throughout the entirety of our discussion, and it was not a productive exchange of information,” said Monarez.
Kennedy has yet to publicly respond to Monarez’s testimony. TIME has reached out to HHS for comment.
Last month, the Trump Administration said it had fired Monarez, who had only been at the helm of the agency for about a month. Her firing prompted several top CDC officials to resign, including then-Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry, an emergency physician who also appeared before the Senate on Wednesday.
Monarez’s attorneys said she was “targeted” after she “refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.” A few days later, nine former CDC leaders wrote a piece for the New York Times, accusing Kennedy of endangering Americans’ health.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, said during Wednesday’s hearing that Monarez “stood up for protecting the well-being of the American people, and for that reason, she was fired.”
Sanders went on to emphasize that the hearing was about far more than just Monarez’s firing. “The issue is deeper than that. It is about Secretary Kennedy’s dangerous war on science, public health, and the truth itself,” Sanders argued. “Unacceptably, we now have an HHS secretary who does not believe in established science, and who listens to conspiracy theorists and ideologues rather than doctors and medical professionals. It is absurd to have to say this in the year 2025, but vaccines are safe and effective.”
Monarez echoed that sentiment during her own testimony.
“Today should not be about me. Today should be about the future of trust in public health,” she said. “I could have stayed silent, agreed to the demands, and no one would have known. What the public would have seen were scientists dismissed without cause, and vaccine protections quietly eroded, all under the authority of a Senate confirmed director with unimpeachable credentials. I could have kept the office, the title, but I would have lost the one thing that cannot be replaced: my integrity.”
“Some may question my motives or mischaracterize my words; that is part of public life. But I am not here as a politician; I’m here as a scientist, a public servant, and a parent committed to protecting the health of future generations.”
Since Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic, was confirmed to run HHS earlier this year, he has overseen several changes to the country’s vaccination policy.
In May, Kennedy said the CDC would no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women and healthy children. Several respected medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, released their own guidance, diverging from Kennedy’s recommendations.
A month later, Kennedy removed all the members of a committee that offers recommendations on vaccines to the CDC. He replaced them with new members, some of whom appeared to share his vaccine skeptic views. In August, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said that this year’s COVID-19 shots would only be approved for people ages 65 and older, or people who have a higher risk of developing serious illness—a considerable shift from previous guidance, which stated that the shots were recommended for everyone older than 6 months. The change has left many people uncertain about if they will be able to get their COVID-19 boosters this year. Amid the uncertainty, several states—including Massachusetts, California, Oregon, and Washington—launched their own initiatives to protect vaccine access.
Read More: RFK Jr. Doubles Down on Vaccine Skepticism in Contentious Hearing
Hundreds of public health workers signed an open letter in late August that urged Kennedy to “stop spreading inaccurate health information” and commit to protecting staffers, in the wake of a shooting at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta just weeks before. The public health workers said the attack “came amid growing mistrust in public institutions, driven by politicized rhetoric that has turned public health professionals from trusted experts into targets of villainization—and now, violence.”
Kennedy faced heated questioning from lawmakers during a Senate hearing earlier this month, including over his firing of Monarez and his recent changes to the country’s immunization policy.
During the hearing, Sen. Tina Smith, a Democrat from Minnesota, questioned Kennedy over his remarks on a podcast, when he cast doubt on the safety of vaccines.
“When were you lying, Sir, when you told this committee that you were not anti-vax, or when you told Americans that there’s no safe and effective vaccine?” Smith asked Kennedy.
“Both are true,” Kennedy responded.
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