https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09/17/us/trump-news
Susan Monarez, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ousted by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., told a Senate committee on Wednesday that she was fired for “holding the line on scientific integrity” and said the nation’s top health official had attacked the agency and undermined public health.
Dr. Monarez told the Senate Health Committee that she was dismissed after refusing Mr. Kennedy’s demands to fire C.D.C. vaccine officials and to preemptively agree to approve vaccine recommendations without seeing the science behind them. Another witness, Dr. Deb Houry, who resigned as the C.D.C.’s chief medical officer over Dr. Monarez’s dismissal, told the panel she believed Mr. Kennedy should resign, citing the deaths of children during a measles outbreak in Texas.
Children, she said, “have died under his watch.”