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bill cassidy
Sanders Demands Congress 'Immediately' Investigate Firing of CDC Director
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "must testify," and the CDC officials who were fired and resigned in protest also should be invited to do so, said the senator.
Aug 28, 2025
In the wake of a "Wednesday night massacre" at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and related resignations, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday called for an immediate congressional probe.
Just weeks after the Senate confirmed President Donald Trump's pick to lead the CDC, Dr. Susan Monarez, the director was forced out on Wednesday after reportedly clashing with Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Her ouster led to calls for firing Kennedy, four other officials resigning in protest, and a related walkout by agency staff.
Sanders (I-Vt.) serves as ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and in a letter, he asked Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), the panel's chair and a physician, to "immediately" call a hearing.
"I am very disturbed that the Trump administration apparently made this reckless decision because Director Monarez refused to act as a rubber stamp to implement Secretary Kennedy's dangerous agenda to substantially limit the use of safe and effective vaccines and undermine the confidence that the American people have in scientific achievements that have saved millions of lives," Sanders wrote to Cassidy.
RFK Jr. is pushing out scientific leaders who refuse to act as a rubber stamp for his dangerous conspiracy theories and manipulate science. Today, I am calling for a bipartisan congressional investigation into the firing of CDC Director Dr. Monarez.
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— Senator Bernie Sanders (@sanders.senate.gov) August 28, 2025 at 1:30 PM
"We need leaders at the CDC and HHS who are committed to improving public health and have the courage to stand up for science," he argued, "not officials who have a history of spreading bogus conspiracy theories and disinformation that will endanger the lives of the American people and people throughout the world."
Sanders—who previously served as the panel's chair—asked Cassidy to launch a "bipartisan probe" and stressed that "as part of that investigation, Secretary Kennedy must testify at a hearing in the HELP Committee as soon as possible. We should also invite Dr. Monarez and the senior CDC officials who resigned to testify as well."
Noting that Cassidy on Wednesday "called for oversight of the firings and resignations at the agency," Sanders made the case that "as a start, the American people should hear directly from Secretary Kennedy and Dr. Monarez and every member of our committee should be able to ask questions and get honest answers from them."
The senator also took aim at the HHS chief, writing that "it is absolutely imperative that trust in vaccine science not be undermined. The well-being of millions of people are at stake. In just six months, Secretary Kennedy has completely upended the process for reviewing and recommending vaccines for the public."
"Enough is enough," he declared. "We have got to make it clear to Secretary Kennedy that his actions to double down on his war on science and disinformation campaign must end. Too many lives are at stake."
In a statement released later Thursday, after the walkout, Sanders applauded CDC workers "for standing up for science and protesting the reckless decision of Secretary Kennedy to push out leading scientists from the agency."
"Speaking up takes real courage," he said. "Now is the time for all of us—whether you are a Democrat, Republican, independent, progressive or conservative—to come together and say enough is enough. Vaccines are one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century. We will not stand by silently as Secretary Kennedy takes them away."
"Let us be clear: We are witnessing a full-blown war on science, on public health, and on truth itself," Sanders emphasized. "In just six months, Secretary Kennedy has dismantled the vaccine review process, narrowed access to life-saving Covid vaccines, and filled scientific advisory boards with conspiracy theorists and ideologues. "
Slamming the reported reasons for Monarez's ouster as "outrageous and unacceptable," the senator concluded that "history will not look kindly on those who stayed silent in the face of this assault on science. We have a moral responsibility to act now."
This article has been updated with Sen. Bernie Sanders' statement on the walkout at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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'You Are Heroes': CDC Staff Stage Mass Walkout in Support of Officials Who Resigned in Protest
"We need congress to intervene," said one of the CDC officials who stepped down this week.
Aug 28, 2025
Staff members at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia on Thursday staged a mass walkout in a show of support for three top officials who resigned in protest this week.
The three officials in question—Demetre Daskalakis, Daniel Jernigan, and Debra Houry—resigned on Wednesday night to protest the ouster of former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez, who had just been confirmed weeks ago by the US Senate.
All three officials came to the CDC headquarters to clear out their offices and, as they left the building on Thursday afternoon, were followed out by hundreds of workers who cheered them and thanked them for their work at the agency.
Marissa Sarbak, a reporter with NBC Atlanta, posted a video showing the crowds that had gathered to support the departing officials.
Hundreds of people have come out to Roybal campus to show solidarity and support for the CDC leaders that resigned today following CDC Director Susan Monarez’s firing. We’re expecting the leaders who resigned to walk out in a few minutes. @11AliveNews pic.twitter.com/ptMuWcQMnY
— Marissa Sarbak (@MarissaSarbak) August 28, 2025
Sam Stein, a journalist at The Bulwark, reported that Houry gave a short speech outside the building in which she warned that the agency was in danger of falling apart and that more resignations would be coming soon unless drastic changes were made.
"We need congress to intervene," she emphasized.
Jernigan, who until Wednesday has served as the director of the CDC's National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, told The Washington Post that his "last straw" was being forced to work with David Geier, who has long pushed false theories linking childhood vaccinations to autism.
"The current administration has made it very difficult for me to stay," said Jernigan, who has nearly two decades of experience working at the CDC. "We have been asked to revise and to review and change studies that have been settled in the past, scientific findings that were there to help guide vaccine decisions."
Monarez was reportedly pushed out by Health Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who, like Geier, has also in the past pushed conspiracy theories linking vaccines to autism.
Kennedy's decision to oust Monarez has drawn bipartisan concern. Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Tina Smith (D-Minn.) have both called on President Donald Trump to fire Kennedy, while Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) called for HHS to postpone its scheduled Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meeting, given what he described as "serious allegations" that have been made by the resigned CDC officials.
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Pharma-Funded Republican Comes Out Swinging Against Medical Debt Cancellation
Sen. Bernie Sanders, by contrast, argued that "we must cancel all medical debt" and "move to Medicare for All."
Jul 12, 2024
A Republican senator heavily bankrolled by the pharmaceutical industry spoke out Thursday against calls to cancel medical debt, arguing that wiping out a financial burden saddling 100 million Americans "is not a solution."
"One-time cancellation of medical debt... is a Band-Aid approach to a one-time problem that's gonna come back," Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing on the nation's medical debt crisis.
After dismissing medical debt cancellation on the grounds that it would not address the "root causes" of the crisis, Cassidy—the ranking member of the Senate panel—proceeded to make clear that he opposes the kinds of transformational healthcare reforms that advocates say are necessary to eliminate the problem of medical debt for good.
"We may hear today about Medicare for All," Cassidy accurately predicted. "But I also say that a healthcare system in which you think it's free because the taxpayer is footing the bill—you've never seen how expensive something can be until you perceive that it is free."
Watch Cassidy's remarks:
Cassidy is a major recipient of campaign cash from the pharmaceutical industry, whose stranglehold on prescription drug prices has been a significant driver of medical debt in the U.S.
Over the course of his career, the Louisiana Republican has raked in over $1 million in donations from the pharmaceutical and health product industries, according to OpenSecrets.
STAT News reported last year that Cassidy reaped "a slew of campaign donations" from Big Pharma executives shortly after he officially became the top Republican on the Senate HELP Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—a leading supporter of canceling medical debt and enacting Medicare for All.
In May, Sanders and several Democratic allies introduced legislation that would eliminate all of the roughly $220 billion in outstanding U.S. medical debt.
Contrary to Cassidy's suggestion that the bill would do nothing to prevent the future accrual of medical debt, Sanders' legislation would "amend the Public Health Service Act, updating billing and debt collection requirements to limit the potential for future debt to be incurred," the senator's office noted in a summary.
Neale Mahoney, a medical debt expert at Stanford University, said in a statement after the bill was unveiled that the measure "cuts off medical debt at the source by requiring hospitals to uphold their obligation to provide charity care to eligible patients who cannot afford to pay and supports hospitals so they can forgive debt before it gets sold to debt collectors."
During his opening remarks at Thursday's hearing, Sanders called medical debt "one of the most outrageous and cruelest" aspects of the nation's "dysfunctional" healthcare system.
"Pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies charge the American people for the 'crime' of getting sick," said Sanders. "Let's be clear: The medical debt crisis our nation is experiencing is a uniquely American phenomenon—does not exist in other countries around the world."
"We are the only major country on Earth," the senator added, "where an emergency visit to a hospital can cause patients to lose their homes and their life savings."
1 out of 4 cancer patients in America either declared bankruptcy or lost their homes to eviction or foreclosure as a result of medical debt in 2022.
That is insane.
We must cancel all medical debt.
We must move to Medicare for All. pic.twitter.com/LSQoFyrCKm
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) July 11, 2024
Recent polling found that a majority of Americans believe it is "extremely or very important" that the federal government act to provide relief for those with medical debt. The health policy organization KFF estimates that around 3 million U.S. adults have more than $10,000 in medical debt and 14 million owe more than $1,000.
Abdul El-Sayed, director of Wayne County, Michigan's Department of Health, Human, and Veteran Services and an outspoken Medicare for All supporter, said in his testimony at Thursday's hearing that a single-payer healthcare system would "address the porous nature of health insurance" and help prevent the accumulation of medical debt "by guaranteeing universal health insurance coverage from birth."
"One of the main drivers of costs in our current system is administrative overhead, higher in our country than in any other country in the world," said El-Sayed. "Much of that overhead is imposed by the complexity of billing multiple health insurers. With only one insurer that bears no profit motive, we could eliminate some of that cost burden—ultimately reducing the costs born on Americans that show up as medical debt."
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