President Trump supports the decision of the Director of Health and Social Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to dismiss the head of the health agency responsible for preventing disease epidemics in the United States, said the White House secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday.
The demonstration of support occurred one day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were plunged into chaos, while director Susan Monarez, appointed by Trump and scientist of the long -standing government, was dismissed with other officials. Monarez, which the Senate confirmed as a new CDC chief in July, said through her lawyers that she was dismissed after a disagreement on the scientific rigor of the orders that Kennedy made. His departure was announced suddenly on the X account of health and social services on Wednesday evening.
Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell, lawyers of Monarez, said in a statement that she had been targeted after refusing “non -scientific rubberstamp, reckless guidelines and health experts dedicated to fire”. Lawyers said that his dismissal was symptomatic of a greater effort to undermine the country’s scientific institutions for political reasons. “This is the systematic dismantling of public health institutions, the silence of experts and the dangerous politicization of science,” they wrote.
Leavitt told journalists that President Trump had dismissed Monarez after refusing Kennedy’s request to resign. “The declaration of her lawyers clearly indicated that she was not aligned with the president’s vision to make America again healthy,” said Leavitt. “The president has the power to dismiss those who are not aligned with his mission.”
The CDC chief doctor, Deb Houry, and other senior CDC managers also resigned on Wednesday. The dismissal Monarez is a “dangerous” decision, said Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who called for an investigation into the dismissal of Monarez and urged Senator Bill Cassidy, the first republican of the Senate health committee, to hold a hearing on his departure.
CDC leaders have more and more found in the middle of an showdown with Kennedy on his vision of health policy, especially around vaccines. A key panel of the CDC which makes vaccine recommendations should meet in mid-September and can vote on the recommendation criteria for vaccines to protect against COVID-19, hepatitis B, MMRV and RSV, according to a preliminary program. On Thursday, Cassidy urgently asked that the next meeting of the vaccine panel be postponed, saying that “serious allegations” were made regarding the scientific process followed before the meeting. “These decisions have a direct impact on the health of children and the meeting should not occur as long as significant opinion has been carried out,” Cassidy said in a statement.
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Leavitt said Trump and Kennedy “undertake to restore confidence and credibility to the CDC by ensuring that their leadership and decisions are more confronted with the public, more responsible, protecting our public health systems and by restoring it to its main mission to protect the Americans against transmissible diseases, to invest in innovation, to prevented and respond to threats future. “
Trump himself regularly praises his own efforts during his first mandate to accelerate the production of COVVI-19 vaccines during the pandemic thanks to a program called WARP SPEED Operation. But so far it is sustained because Kennedy has worked to correct the directives of the federal vaccine and undermine a well-established scientific consensus on the advantages not only of COVVI-19 vaccines, but for polio, measles and other diseases.
Thursday, Kennedy Jr. raised concerns about additional disruptions to the CDC, telling Fox News that the agency is “in difficulty and we must repair it”. Some people from the CDC “should no longer work there,” he said.
Kennedy shot Monarez less than 30 days after officially taking his post. During the Juron de Monarerez ceremony on July 31, Kennedy had congratulated his “impeccable scientific references” and said that he had “full confidence in his ability to restore the role of the CDC as the most reliable authority in public health”. Her self -confidence and scientific expertise did not survive per month.
