CDC director who was fired amid clash with RFK scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill

By CNN Newsource

Published September 9, 2025 6:18 PM

By Adam Cancryn, CNN

(CNN) — Dr. Susan Monarez, the former head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will testify to Congress following her abrupt ouster last month amid a clash with US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policy.

The Senate’s health committee announced Tuesday that it will host her at a hearing next week, granting Monarez a high-profile perch to address her firing in front of cameras for the first time. Monarez will be joined by former senior CDC official Debra Houry, who resigned in protest following Monarez’s ouster.

Both have criticized Kennedy since their departures, accusing him of seeking to undercut the nation’s vaccine standards and make policy changes that aren’t adequately supported by science. Monarez wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed following her firing that she was removed after refusing to promise she’d sign off on recommendations made by a panel of advisers handpicked by Kennedy.

The committee also said it would hold a future hearing with HHS officials to allow them to respond to Monarez and Houry’s testimony.

Monarez’s firing, which came less than a month into her tenure and threw the CDC into further crisis, has raised concerns from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and prompted multiple Republican senators to express reservations about Kennedy’s vaccine agenda.

In the hearing announcement, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a doctor and vaccine proponent who chairs the health committee and and cast a pivotal vote in favor of Kennedy’s confirmation to run HHS, said Monarez and Houry’s testimony was critical because “Americans need to know what has happened and is happening at the CDC.”

“They need to be reassured child’s health is given priority,” said Cassidy.

The September 17 hearing is scheduled a day before the next meeting of the CDC vaccine committee, whose members will be appointed by Kennedy after he abruptly removed all previous 17 sitting members of the panel. The panel is schedule to consider altering recommendations for Hepatitis B, RSV and Covid-19 vaccines.

Cassidy had previously called for that meeting to be postponed in the wake of Monarez’s firing, though the committee has not indicated it will put off its session.

At a hearing last week in front of the Senate Finance Committee, Kennedy denied that he fired Monarez for refusing to sign off on vaccine policy changes and called the former CDC chief a liar. He said instead that he asked for Monarez’s resignation after she told him she was not a trustworthy person.

Since then, Kennedy and other Trump administration officials have pointed to Monarez’s ouster as evidence that the CDC needs a broader overhaul.

“The problem with CDC is it was supporting dogma all through Covid, Americans saw it for the first time. I’ve been watching for 20 years,” Kennedy said in a Fox News interview on Tuesday. “We need a CDC director who’s going to follow his science, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Following Kennedy’s testimony to Congress last week, Monarez’s lawyers rejected Kennedy’s claims as “false, and at times, patently ridiculous” and offered to have Monarez testify under oath.

Amanda Sealy contributed to this report.