Amna Nawaz
@PBSNewsHour·5.3M subscribers·62.2K videos
WATCH: Former CDC director says RFK Jr. didn’t call her after agency shooting
Posted
September 17, 2025
Views
1,347
Likes
24
Engagement
1.78%
September 17, 2025
1,347
24
1.78%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
1:14Now PlayingFormer CDC Director Susan Monarez said at a Senate committee hearing Wednesday that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did not call her after a gunman opened fire at the agency’s Atlanta headquarters.
“So are you telling me that the secretary of Health and Human Services failed to even give you a courtesy call upon learning that employees there had been shot at?” Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., asked.
“He did not call me,” Monarez confirmed.
Monarez testified in the hearing Wednesday about the political pressure she says she faced from Kennedy. She says she was fired after she refused to preapprove vaccine recommendations from a CDC panel without seeing scientific evidence. Kennedy has denied these claims and told senators earlier this month that she was lying.
Monarez’s firing led to the resignations of several other top health officials, including former chief medical officer Dr. Debra Houry, who also testified in Wednesday’s hearing.
The hearing comes a day before a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the panel that issues vaccine recommendations. Kennedy, known for his anti-vaccine advocacy, has come under fire for removing all members of the board and replacing them with people who align with his views. The panel is expected to vote on authorizations for COVID-19 vaccines, among others.
Sign up for Here's The Deal with Lisa Desjardins
Subscribe for exclusive content in our newsletters
PBS News podcasts
Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app
Find more from PBS News at
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
