Monarez, the CDC director whom Kennedy previously endorsed, accused the secretary of a \u201cdeliberate effort to weaken America\u2019s public-health system and vaccine protections\u201d in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week.<\/p>\n
Kennedy\u2019s explanation for her firing \u2013 as he told Senator Elizabeth Warren \u2013 was simply: \u201cI asked her, \u2018Are you a trustworthy person?\u2019 And she said, \u2018No.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Bitter exchanges <\/p>\n
Once a respected environmental lawyer, Kennedy emerged in the mid-2000s as a leading anti-vaccine activist, spending two decades spreading voluminous misinformation before being tapped by President Donald Trump as health secretary in his second administration.<\/p>\n
Since taking office, he has restricted Covid-19 shots to narrower groups, cut off federal research grants for the mRNA technology credited with saving millions of lives, and redirected funding toward research on debunked claims linking vaccines to autism.<\/p>\n
Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee leading the hearing, set the tone by demanding Kennedy be sworn in under oath \u2013 accusing him of lying in prior written testimony when he pledged not to limit vaccine access.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is in the country\u2019s best interest that Robert Kennedy step down, and if he doesn\u2019t, Donald Trump should fire him before more people are hurt,\u201d Wyden thundered.<\/p>\n
But Republican committee chairman Mike Crapo shot down the request, praising Kennedy\u2019s focus on chronic diseases such as obesity.<\/p>\n
The exchanges only grew more ill-tempered.<\/p>\n
Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell branded Kennedy a \u201ccharlatan\u201d over his attacks on mRNA research, while Kennedy accused Senator Maggie Hassan of \u201ccrazy talk\u201d and \u201cmaking things up to scare people\u201d when she said parents were already struggling to get Covid vaccines for their children.<\/p>\n
Vaccines have become the flashpoint in an ever-deepening partisan battle.<\/p>\n
Conservative-leaning Florida on Wednesday announced it would end all immunisation requirements, including at schools, while a West Coast alliance of California, Washington and Oregon announced they would make their own vaccine recommendation body to counter Kennedy\u2019s influence at the national level.<\/p>\n
Republican dissent <\/p>\n
Republicans mostly closed ranks around Kennedy, though there was some notable dissent.<\/p>\n
Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician whose support was key to Kennedy\u2019s confirmation, criticised his cancellation of mRNA grants. He was joined by fellow Republican doctor Senator John Barrasso and Senator Thom Tillis.<\/p>\n
Cassidy pressed Kennedy on whether President Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership that sped Covid vaccines to market.<\/p>\n
Kennedy agreed Trump should have received the prize \u2013 but in nearly the same breath, praised hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, drugs championed by conspiracy theorists that have been proven ineffective against Covid-19.<\/p>\n
– Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monarez, the CDC director whom Kennedy previously endorsed, accused the secretary of a \u201cdeliberate effort to weaken America\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[3050,3041,3053,3043,3054,3058,3039,3042,3052,3049,2082,71,266,134,527,293,3038,3047,3051,111,139,69,1523,3056,3044,3037,3046,3048,388,3045,662,3057,1361,3055,3040,3059],"class_list":["post-1991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-absolutely","tag-agency","tag-blistering","tag-call","tag-criticism","tag-curb","tag-defends","tag-democrats","tag-faced","tag-firing","tag-for","tag-from","tag-government","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-his","tag-jnr","tag-kennedy","tag-necessary","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-resign","tag-resignation","tag-rfk","tag-robert","tag-said","tag-scientist","tag-secretary","tag-shakeup","tag-steps","tag-that","tag-urging","tag-us","tag-vaccines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}