Why is Bill Cassidy So Afraid of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?

Bill Cassidy, the moderate Republican senator who helms the Senate Health Committee, gave a feeble reaction to the committee’s Wednesday hearing with fired CDC Director Susan Monarez.

As a physician, Cassidy’s pro-vaccination stance has put him at odds with President Trump’s anti-vax health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Cassidy voted to confirm in February. At a September 4 hearing, for instance, the Louisiana senator questioned how Kennedy could reconcile being staunchly anti-vaccine while heaping praise on his boss’s 2020–21 initiative to develop and distribute Covid-19 vaccines. Kennedy’s answers laid bare his cravenness.

But Cassidy had his own low moment Wednesday. Seemingly keeping his own political future in mind, he remained reticent after Monarez’s testimony.

As he seeks reelection in 2026, Cassidy faces a competitive GOP primary. He is already on the president’s bad side—due to his past criticism of and impeachment vote against Trump—and his chances would worsen if Trump were to publicly oppose him. Before the hearing, a Republican source close to the White House told CNN, “The White House is watching” and that Cassidy could “seal his own fate” with the hearing—“if he hasn’t already”—if it was perceived as too anti-Kennedy.

Perhaps that accounts for Cassidy’s tight-lipped response to the hearing—during which Monarez revealed that RFK Jr. told her to either fire CDC scientists and rubber-stamp recommendations by his overhauled vaccine advisory committee, or resign.

After the damning testimony, CNN congressional correspondent Manu Raju reported on X that he could only eke out the following answer from Cassidy on Monarez’s claims: “I’ll let her speak for herself.” Pressed further on his feelings about the hearing, the senator replied, “What do you think?” before disappearing behind closing elevator doors.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said Wednesday that she doesn’t want Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA to be taken over by Jews.

Using a final message from the late right-wing activist, Greene hit back at Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s claim that Kirk had been an ally of Israel, delivering an antisemitic plea to keep his conservative youth organization in the control of Christians.

“Do not allow a foreign country, foreign agents, and another religion to tell you about Charlie Kirk. And I hope a foreign country and foreign agents and another religion does not take over Christian Patriotic Turning Point USA,” she wrote on X.

Kirk’s message showed that he had offered her an appearance at America Fest 2025 to debate about AIPAC. “Not with me,” he wrote. “No pressure. Well do whatever you want.”

Greene appeared to be claiming that his openness to debate about Israel meant that he wouldn’t be interested in his organization falling into the hands of Jewish people. She also pointed to Tucker Carlson’s claim that Kirk was appalled by Netanyahu’s catastrophic military campaign in Gaza, and Candace Owens’s claim that Kirk had started having “rational thoughts about Israel” before his death, causing a rift with other conservatives.

Greene reminded her followers that Kirk was a “Christian movement leader, a giant in American history,” and a “Christian martyr for Jesus Christ.” There has been widespread speculation that Kirk’s wife, Erika, will take over for her husband as CEO of Turning Point USA.

Last week, the Israeli prime minister appeared on American media to assure its audience Israel had absolutely nothing to do with Charlie Kirk’s death but that some anonymous cabal of Muslims and leftists was behind it.

Dr. Susan Monarez, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head who was ousted by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., thinks that his upheaval of the CDC will lead to the return of diseases America hasn’t seen in decades, including polio.

“What is your concern? What are the long-term implications for the well-being of our kids and the future of our country if faith in vaccine science is undermined?” Senator Bernie Sanders asked Monarez, who was testifying before the Senate about Kennedy Jr.’s time at HHS.

“I believe preventable diseases will return,” Monarez responded. “And I believe that we will have our children harmed for things that we know they do not need to be harmed by. Polio, measles, diphtheria, whooping cough. I worry about the ramifications for those children, in illness and in death. I worry about our school systems. I worry about our medical institutions having to take care of sick kids that could have been prevented by effective and safe vaccines. I worry about the future of trust in public health.”

This is an absolutely damning response from a former CDC head who said she was pushed out of a job that used to value science and research for reasons that were likely completely political. It’s hard to see Monarez’s firing by Kennedy as purely coincidental, as her extensive research background in immunology and microbiology directly contradicts Kennedy’s pseudoscientific MAHA agenda.

“Would you agree with me in suggesting that the overwhelming body of scientific and medical thought believes that vaccines have been a major public health advance for the people of this world?” Sanders followed up.

“I absolutely agree with that,” Monarez replied.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave Susan Monarez two worrisome ultimatums before she was fired as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Monarez told a Senate committee Wednesday.

On the morning of August 25, Monarez said, Kennedy “demanded two things” of the then director “that were inconsistent with my oath of office and the ethics required of a public official.”

One was “to commit, in advance, to approving every” recommendation by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, “regardless of scientific evidence.” The ACIP, responsible for providing national vaccine guidance, has undergone an upheaval under Kennedy—who has fired all of its members and appointed new ones, including vaccine skeptics, in their place.

Kennedy’s other directive, Monarez said, was “to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy without cause.”

“He said if I was unwilling to do both, I should resign,” Monarez said. When she resisted, Kennedy told her that “he had already spoken with the White House several times about having me removed.”

Monarez’s story Wednesday aligns with the account of former acting CDC Director Richard Besser—a confidant of the former director—who last month said she’d been asked to do “two things she would never do”: “one in terms of firing her leadership” as well as “to rubber-stamp [vaccine] recommendations that flew in the face of science.” It also matches Monarez’s recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, in which she wrote she was “told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric” on August 25.

Kennedy, for his part, offered his own version of events in a congressional hearing earlier this month. Straining credulity, the health secretary claimed that he directed Monarez to resign because he asked her, “Are you a trustworthy person?” to which she replied, “No.” He has denied Monarez’s claim that she was asked to blindly approve ACIP recommendations, but does not dispute that he told her to fire scientists.

FBI Director Kash Patel was accused Wednesday of being part of a cover-up for alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

New York Representative Dan Goldman tried to get into the weeds with Patel over the FBI director’s refusal to release names of Epstein’s associates that were involved in his alleged sex trafficking of minors.

“You are hiding the Epstein files, Mr. Patel! You are part of the cover-up,” Goldman claimed.

“Any allegations that I am a part of a cover-up to protect child sexual trafficking and victims of human trafficking and sexual crimes is patently and categorically false,” Patel responded.

During a contentious questioning, Goldman accused Patel of withholding additional information that wasn’t subject to court orders about Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking, and preventing the release of grand jury testimony that had been unsealed as part of discovery in a case against Ghislaine Maxwell.  

In August, a judge refused the government’s request to unseal grand jury testimony used in Maxwell’s case, ruling it would remain sealed to protect grand jury secrecy, and because it would “not reveal new information of any consequence.” But Goldman insisted that there were witness testimonies not included in the judge’s order. 

Judges weighing the Trump administration’s requests have said that its renewed effort to unseal grand jury testimony, which included a few dozen pages of hearsay that was nothing compared to what the government already had, was simply an effort to confuse the public, according to Politico. 

U.S. District Judge Richard Berman wrote in August that the Trump administration retained the power to release the records and that its files weren’t subject to the kind of secrecy afforded to grand jury material.

Patel denied that any testimony had been unsealed in Maxwell’s case, and claimed that there were other protective orders, and “limited” search warrants that prevented the release of additional information. He said that the “overwhelming majority” of the videos and photographs reviewed by the government were “pornographic material that was downloaded from the internet,” and would never be released.

Patel then doubled down on his outrageous claim that the government had absolutely no evidence that Epstein had trafficked girls and women to anyone else (despite a trove of survivor testimony to the contrary). Patel also admitted he had not personally reviewed the Epstein files in full. 

Goldman reminded Patel that he had “total control to release” information on others Epstein trafficked to, and asked why he wouldn’t release a list of names. Patel replied that he would not release child porn. 

“I’m not asking about that! Fine. I’m asking about all the other files!” Goldman demanded. 

“What other videos? Tell me? Tell me? Tell me!” Patel pressed, claiming that to his knowledge, there was no evidence Epstein trafficked to others. 

“That’s all we got,” the FBI director said.

Goldman battered Patel for not releasing witness testimonies, claiming that they were not subject to the court order and could be released with victims’ names redacted.

“Sir, do you know how court orders work? Do you know how protective orders work?” Patel asked. 

“Actually, Mr. Patel, I was a prosecutor—a real prosecutor for 10 years, so I know exactly how a court order works,” Goldman snapped. 

“Oh, so I was a fake one?” asked Patel, who had served as a national security prosecutor for roughly four years under the Obama administration.

Goldman pressed Patel to release witness statements that were not protected as part of grand jury testimony or were no longer under a protective order. He also asked Patel why he hadn’t gone to the court asking to unseal the witness testimony. 

Patel said that the DOJ had requested that the court unseal grand jury records before the judge had said no, but Goldman insisted there was other witness testimony.

After being told his time was up, Goldman accused Patel of playing defense for those involved in Epstein’s alleged crimes.

This story has been updated.