Senator Calls for Kennedy's Resignation During Hearing

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended his policies on Thursday morning during a frequently testy Senate hearing. Some early highlights:

• Kennedy defended mass firings at the CDC in his opening statement, saying the agency has a mandate to protect Americans and "failed that responsibility miserably during COVID," reports CBS News. "The people at the CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving," Kennedy said.
• The changes he has enacted, said Kennedy, "were absolutely necessary adjustments to restore the agency to its role as the world's gold standard public health agency."

• Senate Democrats disagreed. Sen. Ron Wyden in particular called for Kennedy's resignation during the hearing, saying the health secretary had "elevated conspiracy theories, crackpots, and grifters," per the Washington Post. "Families are confused," Wyden noted, per CBS. "They're scared about who to trust about their health care."
• In one notable exchange between the two, Wyden asked how many deaths of children would be acceptable "for enacting an agenda that I think is fundamentally cruel and defies common sense," per the Post. Kennedy shot back that Wyden has never questioned why the US has high chronic disease rates.
• Kennedy also denied pressuring recently ousted CDC chief Susan Monarez to rubber-stamp vaccine changes, a claim she made in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.