Kennedy Accuses Monarez of Lying, Senators Call Kennedy a Hypocrite at Contentious Hearing
As more and more groups call for the health secretary’s removal from office, senators will question Kennedy on his recent moves, including the controversial firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks to the Senate Finance Committee Sept. 4, 2025
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will face the Senate Finance Committee Thursday as calls for his resignation—or dismissal—continue to pour in from the American healthcare community. The latest in these appeals came Wednesday as more than 1,000 current and former CDC employees published a letter formally calling for Kennedy’s resignation.
The authors—some of whom remained anonymous out of a “well-founded fear of retaliation and threats to personal safety”—cited several ways in which the embattled secretary “continues to endanger the nation’s health.” These include facilitating the firing of CDC director Susan Monarez, causing the resignations of three other senior CDC officials and the appointment of “political ideologues” such as mRNA skeptics Retsef Levi and Robert Malone to CDC vaccine advisory groups.
The CDC employees’ petition was preceded this week by similar calls from Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and prominent pediatrician Paul Offit, who this week was told his services on the FDA’s vaccine advisory group are no longer needed. Meanwhile, nine former CDC directors and acting directors from both Democratic and Republican administrations stopped just short of a call for Kennedy’s ouster but excoriated Kennedy in an op-ed published in The New York Times on Monday for “endangering every American’s health.”
Monarez’s controversial firing, as well as the restricted approvals last week of Pfizer/BioNTech’s, Moderna’s and Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccines, are sure to be a focus of Thursday’s hearing, which gets underway at 10 am EST. BioSpace will have live coverage throughout the day.
At the end of a three-hour-long hearing that escalated frequently into shouting matches, the Senate finance committee wrapped things up with Secretary Kennedy more or less peacefully, though not without some shots at opposing politicians.
“It’s not my intention to raise my voice,” Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) said, asking Kennedy about his intentions toward studying long COVID, which he said affects at least 20 million Americans—400 million people globally—at a cost of $1 trillion per year.
“It’s my hope we can come up with some therapeutics for this condition,” Young said.
Kennedy responded that there was a long COVID project at NIH that “yielded nothing,” without specifying what that project that was.
“I agree with that,” Young replied.
The NIH was awarded about $1.15 billion in 2020 during the first Trump administration to study long COVID, and in 2024, about $662 million was distributed to the Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) project. Since 2022, NIH studies on long COVID, including from RECOVER, have resulted in 126 publications.
But, according to Kennedy, “It was all ivory tower science. Same as the HIV crisis.”
After Sen. Wyden (D-OR) made a closing remark exhorting Kennedy to fairly study the safety of the abortion drug mifepristone, which Kennedy assented to do, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) adjourned the meeting.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) opened her remarks by taking Kennedy back to November 2024, when under consideration for the Health Secretary role, she recalled that he promised, “If vaccines are working for somebody, I’m not going to take them away.”
“Then last week, you announced that the COVID-19 vaccine is no longer approved for healthy people under the age of 65,” Warren continued. “In announcing the change, you said the vaccine will be available for anyone who wants it. Now, obviously both things cannot be true at the same moment, so let’s clear this up right now.”
Kennedy interrupted Warren, saying that “anybody can get [the COVID-19 booster shot],” but that it is not recommended for healthy people under the age of 65.
Warren clarified that the consequence of a lack of recommendation is that in many states, these individuals would not be able to walk into a pharmacy and receive the vaccine and that insurance companies do not need to cover it. “As Senator Dr. Cassidy said, you are effectively denying people vaccines,” Warren concluded.
Kennedy responded by saying that “we’re not going to recommend a product for which there’s no clinical data for that indication. Is that what I should be doing?”
“What you should be doing is honoring your promise that you made when you were looking to get confirmed in this job,” Warren replied.
Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Maggie Hassan (D-NH) went after Kennedy for his alleged contradictions in terms of Operation Warp Speed, the project launched during President Donald Trump’s first term that supported the development of COVID-19 vaccines for the U.S. market.
“I believe that President Trump deserves a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed,” Cassidy said. “If he had been President Obama, he would have gotten it.” Cassidy then asked if Kennedy agreed, to which the Secretary responded, “Absolutely.”
Cassidy then pointed out that Kennedy, as lead attorney for The Children’s Health Defense, engaged in multiple lawsuits attempting to restrict access to the COVID vaccine. “It surprises me that you think so highly of Operation Warp Speed when, as an attorney, you attempted to restrict access,” Cassidy said. The senator added that Kennedy’s agreement surprised him because of the $500 million in cuts to Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority contracts associated with mRNA vaccine development, a platform that was “critical” to Operation Warp Speed.
Kennedy responded that it was only later, during the mandates he alleged were instituted by former President Joe Biden, when he began litigating.
Referencing Kennedy’s recently appointed Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) members, and highlighting specifically mRNA vaccine skeptic Robert Malone, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) said, “There are people with ideas that are completely outside the mainstream pharmaceutical paradigm.”
Given this, Bennet asked the Secretary if the new ACIP panel will recommend changing the childhood vaccine schedule when they meet on Sept. 18 and 19. He additionally asked if Colorado parents and schools should be prepared for more measles and mumps outbreaks.
“I do not anticipate a change in the MMR vaccine,” Kennedy replied.
Kennedy and Bennet found some common ground, agreeing that parents should be free to make vaccine-related decisions for their children.
“Will that be true after your hand-picked panel makes their judgments about these vaccines?” Bennet asked. When Kennedy said he believed so, Bennet replied, “I will hold you to that, Secretary Kennedy, because this is not a podcast.”
Thursday, recently fired CDC director Susan Monarez revealed in an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal that she was faced with a directive from Kennedy to preapprove the recommendations of a “vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric.”
During Thursday’s hearing, Wyden introduced this editorial into the record and asked Kennedy, “Mr. Secretary, did you in fact do what Director Monarez said you did, which is tell her to just go along with vaccine recommendations, even if she didn’t think such recommendations align with scientific evidence?”
“No, I did not say that to her,” Kennedy responded, “and I never had a private meeting with her.”
“So she’s lying today to the American people in The Wall Street Journal?” Wyden countered.
“Yes, sir,” Kennedy alleged.
Sen. Wyden (D-Oregon), ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, requested that Sen. Kennedy be formally sworn in as a witness due to his “lies” to members of committee regarding promises that he would do nothing as HHS secretary to make it difficult or discourage people from taking vaccines.
Committee chairman Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) declined, saying, “I will personally object and will reject your request. We will treat this witness as we treat all of the other administration witnesses who come before us.”
Wyden went on to say that Congress has an opportunity to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits that lower the cost to premiums. Democrats are ready to pass an extension that stops a dramatic premium spike that forced many families to pay double what they do today, the Senator said. “Instead of finding ways to help American families pay less for health care, Robert Kennedy is focused on his anti-vaccine mission fueled by some kind of complex that the consequences be damned.”
Other opening comments from Wyden included:“Robert Kennedy has elevated conspiracy theorists, crackpots and Grifters, to make life or death decisions about the health care of the American people,” and “Just last week, [Kennedy] threatened doctors that deviated from the new anti-science vaccine guidelines he released that make it harder for pregnant women and children to get the COVID vaccine.”
