Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, framed the closely-watched hearing he chaired on Wednesday as the kind of “radical transparency” that President Trump and his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., promised to bring to government.
But what transpired was somewhat radical in a different way.
Cassidy, a Republican doctor who does not fit neatly into Trump’s “Make American Great Again” movement, invited Dr. Susan Monarez, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to testify before the committee he chairs. In doing so, he handed Monarez, who the White House fired last month at Kennedy’s behest, the opportunity to speak about the turmoil unfolding at the agency.
Appearing alongside a second former public health official, Dr. Debra Houry, who resigned as the C.D.C.’s chief medical officer, Monarez said she had been asked by Kennedy to support changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, without pointing to any science or data that would justify such changes. Monarez also said she had been told by Kennedy not to communicate with members of Congress, nor to “speak or work with” career scientists at the C.D.C.
“I had refused to commit to approving vaccine recommendations without evidence, fire career officials without cause, or resign,” Monarez told the Senate health panel, giving her account of why Kennedy ousted her after only 29 days on the job.
“I was fired,” she added, “for holding the line on scientific integrity.”
Houry described learning about a key change to the department’s Covid-19 vaccine policy on the social media website X and scrambling to correct misinformation shared by Kennedy, such as when he said earlier this year on the cable channel News Nation that the measles vaccine contained “fetal debris.”
As remarkable as their allegations were, so was the fact that they were airing them at all.
Since Trump returned to the White House, the Republican-controlled Congress has been largely unwilling to exert oversight authority and scrutinize his actions. Even G.O.P. lawmakers who do not always agree with him have, for the most part, marched in lock step with him.
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The post How Vaccines Are Revealing Cracks in Trump’s G.O.P. appeared first on New York Times.
