Susan Monarez, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testifies during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on June 25, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s candidate to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advanced out of a Senate committee Wednesday following a party-line vote, moving her one step closer to confirmation.
Susan Monarez’s nomination now goes to the floor, where she will likely secure the backing needed to officially take on the role of CDC director after garnering support from Republicans across the political spectrum during the committee’s 12-11 vote.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., will be in charge of scheduling that vote, though if it isn’t held during the next few weeks, Monarez will have to wait until after the chamber’s August recess.
Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-La., said during the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee’s markup he believes Monarez is a strong candidate for CDC director and that he hopes she will help get the nation’s ongoing measles outbreak under control.
“The United States needs a CDC director who makes decisions rooted in science, a leader who will reform the agency and work to restore public trust in health institutions,” Cassidy said. “With decades of proven experience as a public health official, Dr. Monarez is ready to take on this challenge.”
Sanders criticizes Monarez on vaccine safety
Every Republican senator on the committee, including Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, voted to advance Monarez’s nomination.
Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, ranking member on the panel, opposed Monarez’s advancement along with the Democrats on the committee.
Sanders argued that during Monarez’s time as acting director of the CDC, she didn’t do enough to counter Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., especially on the safety of vaccines.
“Today, the United States is reporting the highest number of measles cases in 33 years,” Sanders said. “In my view, we need a CDC director who will defend science, protect public health and repudiate Secretary Kennedy’s dangerous conspiracy theories about safe and effective vaccines that have saved, over the years, millions of lives.”
Second CDC choice from Trump
Monarez testified before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in June, a standard part of the confirmation process.
Trump originally selected former Florida U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon to run the Atlanta-based CDC shortly after he secured election to the Oval Office in November. But the White House pulled Weldon’s nomination in March, after it appeared he couldn’t secure the votes needed for confirmation.
Later that month, Trump announced his plans to nominate Monarez in a social media post.
“Dr. Monarez brings decades of experience championing Innovation, Transparency, and strong Public Health Systems,” Trump wrote. “She has a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, and PostDoctoral training in Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine.
“As an incredible mother and dedicated public servant, Dr. Monarez understands the importance of protecting our children, our communities, and our future. Americans have lost confidence in the CDC due to political bias and disastrous mismanagement. Dr. Monarez will work closely with our GREAT Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr. Together, they will prioritize Accountability, High Standards, and Disease Prevention to finally address the Chronic Disease Epidemic and, MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN!”
Last month, Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary and longtime anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attended the funeral for the second unvaccinated child in Texas to have died in the ongoing measles outbreak. While in Texas, he met with the two grieving families — along with two local doctors promoting unproven measles treatments, whom he called “extraordinary healers.”
Following the first death, Children’s Health Defense (CHD), the anti-vax organization Kennedy led until recently, pushed its own narrative claiming that the 6-year-old Mennonite girl did not actually die from the measles. In this effort, CHD has relied heavily on Pierre Kory, a Wisconsin doctor who has both amplified that assertion and claimed that the measles virus has been weaponized by unknown conspirators.
Kory is a Kennedy ally who has been widely criticized for spreading Covid misinformation during the pandemic, including pushing the use of ivermectin as a “miracle drug” for treating that virus.
For years, CHD and Kennedy have promoted the debunked claim that the standard measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine given to almost all children in the U.S. is tied to autism. With an upsurge in the pandemic-era, right-wing embrace of the anti-vax movement — and of Kennedy himself — there has been a notable decrease in routine pediatric vaccinations in the U.S.
Now that measles immunization rates have fallen below thresholds to maintain herd immunity in certain parts of the country, outbreaks such as the one in West Texas are expected to become more common. In February, Texas reported the country’s first measles death in a child in the more than two decades since the disease was classified as eradicated in the U.S.
In response to this death, CHD posted a video on March 19 featuring Kory and Ben Edwards, another Texas doctor Kennedy applauded, discussing the girl’s medical records, which her parents released to the organization.
Despite having no training in pediatric medicine and having had his board certifications in internal medicine and critical care revoked last year, Kory claimed the child’s death was due to incorrect antibiotic management of a bacterial pneumonia infection that had “little to do with measles.” Edwards — a family doctor who has been treating measles-stricken children in Texas with medications not indicated for measles and was accused of seeing pediatric patients while actively infected with measles himself — concurred with Kory.
Without being able to examine the medical records themselves, pediatricians consulted for this article were limited in their critique of Kory’s assessment. But they did question his understanding of empiric antibiotic recommendations for pediatric pneumonia. Secondary bacterial pneumonia infections following viral diseases are common, and pneumonia is a well-documented complication of a measles infection.
These doctors also questioned the strong personal bias underpinning Kory’s assessment and pointed to his history of extreme claims about Covid made online and to right-wing media outlets as evidence against his reliability as an “expert.”
Furthermore, Kory has been inconsistent in his messaging around this measles death when addressing various audiences. When Alex Morozov, founder of the counter-misinformation group Eviva Partners, confronted Kory about his statements regarding the young girl’s cause of death at the so-called “Summit for Truth & Wellness” on March 29, the answer he got was very different. At that event, Kory suggested this was a case of the measles being “weaponized.”
In an audio recording of their conversation published by Morozov, Kory said:
Do you want to know the real story on this case? Quite a few of us believe that they weaponized the measles virus. And this measles is more. They’re doing this on purpose. She got sicker from the measles probably because they monkeyed with the measles virus…. Do you know how many bioweapons labs there are and what they can do?
Like the unfounded claim of an error in medical treatment, this “weaponized measles” narrative has spread rapidly throughout the online crankosphere. However, this conspiratorial rhetoric has not been accompanied by urgent recommendations for increased vaccinations to prevent infection from a supposedly more virulent strain.
Kennedy, who promoted pandemic conspiracy theories along with ivermectin as an alternative to Covid vaccines, has called Kory “honest, brave, and sincere” and “a brave dissident doctor.” The doctor appeared with him at various campaign-related events in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, both before and after RFK Jr. suspended his own campaign and joined forces with Trump to launch the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement.
As ivermectin proved to be ineffective against Covid, Kory turned on the life-saving mRNA vaccines while cozying up to Kennedy and CHD. Kory and the ivermectin group he co-founded — the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), now called the Independent Medical Alliance following a pro-MAHA rebrand — have rallied with Kennedy and CHD on multiple occasions, including against Covid vaccine mandates during the deadly Omicron wave in late 2021 and early 2022.
Kory has not just turned on Covid vaccines, but routine childhood immunizations in line with Kennedy’s and CHD’s established anti-vax rhetoric as well.
In 2023, Kory appeared in an FLCCC webinar about pediatric vaccines titled “Your Child, Your Choice.” The same year, despite his lack of pediatric credentials, he served as an “expert” on the issue of childhood vaccinations for Republicans in Wisconsin.
That same year, Kory testified at the Wisconsin Capitol as part of a GOP-led effort to block adding the meningitis vaccine as a state requirement for school-aged children, which is required in many other states and has been recommended by the Center for Disease Control’s Advisory Council on Immunization Practices since 2005. (While Kory and company were initially successful, the meningitis vaccine was eventually added to Wisconsin’s requirements as of the 2023/24 school year.)
During this measles outbreak, both Kennedy and Kory have once again promoted “alternative” treatments.
Kennedy has drawn heavy criticism for pushing vitamin A as a treatment for measles while simultaneously failing to provide a sorely needed, full-throated endorsement of the MMR vaccines. Following the second death, while the HHS secretary correctly called the vaccines the “most effective way” to prevent measles, he quickly undermined his own statement. In his tweet about the funeral, Kennedy included a shoutout to doctors Edwards and Richard Bartlett, his other “extraordinary healer” from Texas, for their use of unproven treatments on infected children in the local community.
On March 31, Kory appeared in another CHD video about the first Texas child’s death, claiming she should have received intravenous vitamin C, which is not indicated for measles-related pneumonia. Of note, prior to his co-authorship of questionable papers on the use of ivermectin to fight Covid, Kory co-authored a since-retracted paper on a Covid hospital protocol that featured vitamin C.
Given his past statements on Covid and routine pediatric vaccines as well as his ties to Kennedy and CHD, Kory would have a vested interest in distancing himself from children’s deaths from vaccine-preventable illness. But this is dangerous, experts warn, during a measles outbreak where vaccines play a vital role in stopping the spread of disease.
A representative for the hospital that treated the first child spoke out against “misleading and inaccurate claims” about this case being circulated online. “Our physicians and care teams follow evidence-based protocols and make clinical decisions based on a patient’s evolving condition, diagnostic findings, and the best available medical knowledge,” the spokesperson said.
CHD did not back down in the wake of the second pediatric measles death early last month. The organization requested hospital records for this case while offering a free e-book — featuring a foreword by Kennedy — on “secrets the government and media aren’t telling you about measles and the measles vaccine.” The book accuses the mainstream media of weaponizing outbreaks “for political gain.”
In an email to their followers on April 7 — the day after the second child’s funeral — CHD announced an April 17 webinar event called “Inside the Measles Deception” featuring Kory, Booker, and Edwards. The restricted event was available only to their donors.
On April 8, CHD tweeted, “Our mission hasn’t changed. The MMR vaccine is dangerous and has caused more deaths than measles,” a claim that is totally unsubstantiated. The next day, Kory returned for another CHD video claiming to have reviewed the medical records for the second case and, unsurprisingly, again maintained that the 8-year-old girl did not die from the measles. He said:
“This is just getting exhausting, this constant fear-mongering by the media. I’ve already lost so much trust in the institutions of society. But to see them rampage like this on inaccuracies and peddling falsehoods and just distortions, it’s terrible. It’s terrible for our health. They are scaring people into getting what I think is a very dangerous vaccine.”
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