Some health experts say Cassidy deserves blame for CDC turmoil as a doctor who was concerned about Kennedy’s vaccine views but voted to confirm him.
CDC Director fired amid White House clash over public health agenda
The White House says it has fired CDC Director Susan Monarez after she refused to resign, citing her lack of alignment with President Trump’s agenda.
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The turmoil at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pushed out the director after clashing over his approach to vaccines has generated bipartisan concern and put a spotlight on a key senator who was instrumental in Kennedy securing his job.
CDC Director Susan Monarez was fired following a dispute with Kennedy over vaccination policy. After Monarez’s termination, resignation letters followed on Aug. 27 from CDC Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry and top officials for immunization and contagious diseases.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, responded with a social media post on Aug. 27 saying, “These high profile departures will require oversight” by a Senate committee he chairs.
The shakeup comes after Kennedy was criticized for his mixed messaging on a measles outbreak, firing a vaccine advisory panel and cutting $500 million in funding for developing mRNA technology, which is used in the two most common COVID-19 vaccines. Cassidy has spoken out about some of Kennedy’s moves, including slashing funding for mRNA research.
A longtime vaccine skeptic, Kennedy in May withdrew a federal recommendation for COVID shots for pregnant women and healthy children and followed up in June by removing all 17 members of the CDC’s expert vaccine panel.
In addition to calling for oversight after the CDC shakeup, Cassidy also said in a statement on Aug. 28 that the agency’s vaccine advisory panel should indefinitely postpone a Sept. 18 meeting. Kennedy replaced the fired vaccine panel members with hand-picked advisers, including fellow anti-vaccine activists.
“These decisions directly impact children’s health and the meeting should not occur until significant oversight has been conducted,” Cassidy said.
Cassidy said “serious allegations” have been made about the panel’s “membership, and lack of scientific process being followed.”
“If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership,” he added.
Yet some health experts believe Cassidy deserves blame for what’s happening as a physician in an important leadership position who was concerned about Kennedy’s vaccine views but voted to confirm him anyway. As such, Cassidy needs to do more than oversight said Dr. Thomas Farley, the former top public health official in New York City and Philadelphia.
“Cassidy now, I think, does bare some responsibility to stop (Kennedy) from causing more damage,” Farley said, arguing Kennedy needs to be fired.
Cassidy’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Cassidy swing vote
A longtime environmental lawyer, Kennedy has no educational background in medicine or health care. He ran for president as an independent in 2024 but dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump.
Among his most controversial statements that have been discredited: Antidepressants are related to school shootings, wi-fi causes cancer, fluoride in public water systems causes bone cancer and IQ loss, and COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” to attack “Caucasians and Black people” while sparing “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese” people.
Cassidy was considered a key swing vote during the confirmation process in January. Kennedy’s nomination advanced 14-13 in the Senate Finance Committee with Cassidy’s support.
“I’ve been struggling with your nomination,” Cassidy bluntly told Kennedy during the confirmation process. “Does a 71-year old man who spent decades criticizing vaccines… can he change his attitudes and approach now that he’ll have the most important position influencing vaccine policy in the United States?”
The Louisiana senator ultimately cast the decisive vote to move Kennedy’s nomination forward in committee, and joined with every Republican other than Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, in voting on the Senate floor to confirm Kennedy as Health secretary.
Cassidy said in his floor speech that Kennedy and members of the Trump administration reached out to reassure him “about their commitment to protecting the public health benefit of vaccination” and he received “assurances.” The senator also promised to be on guard.
“If Mr. Kennedy is confirmed, I will use my authority… to rebuff any attempts to remove the public’s access to life-saving vaccines without ironclad, causational scientific evidence that can be defended before the mainstream scientific community and before Congress,” Cassidy said. “I will carefully watch for any effort to wrongfully sow public fear about vaccines.”
Cassidy’s role in the confirmation process is now being resurfaced as Kennedy works to reshape the CDC in ways that many medical professionals find alarming.
Some Kennedy critics are pointing the finger at Cassidy for his confirmation vote.
“Just one senator could have prevented most of this by not confirming RFK, Jr. And in my view, Cassidy, as a physician, is really the one to blame!” Dr. Douglas Henley, the former executive vice president and CEO of the American Academy of Family Physicians, wrote on social media Aug. 28 in response to another doctor criticizing Kennedy after the CDC resignations.
Farley believes Cassidy was under significant political pressure to approve President Donald Trump’s HHS pick. He is up for reelection in 2026 in a state Trump carried by 22 percentage points.
“He gave in to that pressure, so that was a mistake that we all potentially could suffer from,” said Farley, who once worked at the CDC and on a Louisiana vaccination effort with Cassidy before he was senator. “I hope he can figure out how to now fix that mistake.”
Kennedy at odds with CDC
Monarez, a who has doctorate in microbiology and previously worked at the Department of Homeland Security, National Security Council and in the White House, was ousted less than one month after the Senate confirmed her to the role. Her attorneys said she was targeted because she “refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.”
Kennedy said on Fox News that the CDC “is in trouble, and we need to fix it, and we are fixing it.”
“And it may be that some people should not be working there anymore,” he added.
For Kennedy’s critics, the past seven months have only confirmed their reservations about his fitness for the nation’s top health job.
Democrats have called for Kennedy’s termination amid the CDC upheaval.
Rep. Don Beyer, D-Virginia, called Kennedy a “kook” with “crackpot conspiracy theories” in a social media post on Aug. 28 and said if President Donald Trump doesn’t fire him he will “bear the responsibility for the unnecessary and preventable illnesses and deaths that result.”
Contributing: Joey Garrison, Ben Adler, Reuters, Savannah Kuchar, Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy
