Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) demanded Friday that President Donald Trump dismiss Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., arguing that Kennedy’s rejection of mainstream science has destabilized the nation’s public health system and endangered people.
“Donald Trump knew Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would be a disastrous pick to lead health care in America and he nominated him anyway,” Schumer said in a statement. “Donald Trump made this mistake and now he must fire RFK Jr. immediately. RFK Jr.’s stubborn, pigheaded, and conspiracy-based attacks on proven science are going to make many more people sick and cause more deaths. Americans are in greater danger every day Robert Kennedy Jr. remains as HHS Secretary.”
The call follows a week of upheaval at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where Director Susan Monarez was fired and four senior scientists resigned in protest. The departures have been tied to bitter internal clashes over vaccine policy, with critics pointing to Kennedy’s influence as the source of the conflict.
White House spokesman Kush Desai confirmed Monarez’s termination late Wednesday, saying she had refused to resign despite being out of step with Trump’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. Kennedy’s allies in the MAHA movement have framed the shake-up as a long-overdue purge of a bureaucracy they argue lost credibility during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But several of the former CDC officials say it was Kennedy’s leadership, backed by Trump, that drove them out. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who led the agency’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases until his resignation, told CNN that Kennedy was undermining the institution’s mission.
“The CDC really is a place filled with great scientists and experts,” Daskalakis said Thursday night in an interview on CNN. “If the CDC is being characterized as trouble by Secretary Kennedy, I think we have to turn the mirror back to him, because I think that the trouble is emanating mainly from him. The disregard for experts, the clear statement that experts should not be trusted, really makes it seem unlikely that his mission for CDC is to be a bastion of scientific expertise.”
Kennedy will face questions directly next week when he testifies before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday at a hearing on “the president’s 2026 healthcare agenda.” While the session is supposed to be focused on broader policy, it is expected to become a high-stakes setting for senators to grill him about Monarez’s ouster after less than one month on the job.
CDC DIRECTOR OUSTER CAME AFTER CLASHES OVER VACCINES AND MORE
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a member of the panel who also chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said the “high-profile departures will require oversight.” Cassidy, who voted to confirm Monarez last month, has also warned that Kennedy’s shake-up of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, replacing experts with skeptics lacking scientific credentials, risks further undermining public confidence.
By keeping Kennedy in place, Schumer said, Trump is “doubling down on his own failure.” He added, “President Trump must admit his mistake and remove Kennedy now.”