Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy, M.D., R-La., called for an upcoming meeting of vaccine policy advisors to be indefinitely postponed amid “serious allegations” of biased decision-making and ongoing upheaval at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Cassidy, who is among the nation’s most influential lawmakers on health issues, said in a Thursday statement that there are open questions regarding the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices' (ACIP’s) membership, the agenda for its Sept. 18 meeting and a “lack of scientific process being followed.”
Recommendations and vaccine schedules developed by the ACIP are tied to private and some public insurance coverage obligations and, in some states, can affect which shots can be administered by pharmacists or other practitioners. Vaccines given outside of the panel’s recommendations can also bring higher liability risks in case of safety events.
According to a Federal Register notice (PDF) made public Thursday, the September meeting’s agenda “will include discussions on COVID-19 vaccines; Hepatitis B vaccine; measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (MMRV) vaccine; and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV),” and for each could include recommendation votes and Vaccines for Children schedule updates. The agenda will also include updates on ACIP work groups.
“These decisions directly impact children’s health and the meeting should not occur until significant oversight has been conducted,” Cassidy said in his statement. “If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership.”
The physician senator was the deciding vote to move ahead the confirmation of Department Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a history of anti-vaccine comments and activism. Cassidy, at the time, said he only voted in favor after receiving promises from the nominee that U.S. vaccine policy would not be imperiled.
The months since that confirmation have seen steady shifts in vaccine policy and oversight institutions now under RFK Jr.’s watch. Among the most notable was a full rewrite of the ACIP, all 17 members of which the secretary tossed in June and replaced with eight appointees with ties to vaccine skepticism. (One later resigned due to conflicts of interest.)
That new advisory panel—widely denounced by physician, public health and infectious disease groups—went on to conduct a two-day meeting later that month in which it recommended against the inclusion of the preservative thimerosal in flu shots and called for new scrutiny into childhood vaccine safety. Cassidy had also called for that meeting to be postponed, albeit with softer language than in Thursday’s statement.
Since then, major medical groups have been barred from ACIP work groups, and Retsef Levi, Ph.D.—one of the new ACIP panel’s members with a history of critiquing mRNA vaccines—was named to lead a COVID-19 immunization work group.
While these and other vaccine-related policy moves have sparked calls for oversight among medical professional groups and public health leaders, weeks of frustration among CDC staff and a series of leadership departures have triggered a five-alarm fire.
Wednesday, media reports and a brief statement from the HHS suggested CDC Director Susan Monarez, Ph.D., was no longer in her post. In the hours that followed, her lawyers said that Monarez was being pressured out and refused to step down without President Donald Trump firing her directly. Representatives of the White House has said Monarez’s removal has the president’s support.
Reports citing anonymous agency sources described confrontations between Monarez and RFK Jr. over her refusal to rubber-stamp the secretary’s preferred vaccine policies. When RFK Jr. requested her resignation, Monarez reportedly called Cassidy and other Republican senators for support, further angering her boss and triggering the push to remove the director.
Further, at least four senior leaders at the agency announced their own coordinated resignations. Some penned letters condemning RFK Jr.’s leadership and alleging that he was dictating policy changes without appropriate evidence or involvement of agency staff.
The protest departures are a culmination of turmoil at the public health agency, which in recent weeks faced a targeted shooting, employee terminations and revoked union recognition.
Hundreds of current and former civil servants recently signed on to an open letter calling for RFK Jr. to reconsider his most controversial policy changes and shift his rhetoric, which they said villainizes the agency and contributed to the attack. Thursday afternoon, agency employees went a step further and staged a mass walkout in support of the resigning leaders.
“We need Congress to intervene," Debra Houry, M.D., who until Wednesday was chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science, told press during the walkout. "We need our appropriations. We need to follow science. We need to have ethics back. All of these scientists … are doing the work on the ground. We need to be able to do [it] without interference and following the science.”
RFK Jr. does not appear to be backing down, telling Fox & Friends in a Thursday morning interview that the “agency is in trouble and we need to fix it—and we are fixing it, and it may be that some people should not be working there anymore.” He also characterized some of the agency’s longstanding support of certain public health tools, including vaccines, as a misstep.
RFK Jr. is scheduled to testify next Thursday in front of the Senate Finance Committee, according to a recent update to the committee’s website. Though a markup and hearing on the president’s 2026 Health Care Agenda are on the agenda, ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he intends to question the secretary on “secrecy and stonewalling” at his department.
“After the mass firings and resignations of respected senior scientists and public servants at CDC over the last 24 hours, it is more imperative than ever that Kennedy answer to the public and their representatives about the chaos, confusion and harm his actions are inflicting on American families,” Wyden said in a Thursday afternoon statement. “Contrary to his promises of radical transparency, federal health agencies have been shrouded in secrecy and misinformation with no accountability to the public or Congress. Amid the largest cuts to American health care in history, Kennedy’s radical secrecy is setting up the nation for a health calamity.”