Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday defended the Trump administration’s push to overhaul the country’s chief federal health agency, arguing that it has descended into “malaise.” 

Kennedy was drawn into controversy this week after the White House said it fired the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency that falls under the Department of Health and Human Services. Former CDC Director Susan Monarez was ousted over accusations that she was attempting to block Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. 

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The HHS secretary defended changes to his department during a Fox & Friends interview, insisting that “the CDC has problems,” arguing the agency made critical errors on major policy issues, and contending it spread misinformation, including about the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“We need to look at the priorities of the agency if there’s really a deeply embedded, I would say, malaise at the agency, and we need strong leadership that will go in there and that will be able to execute on President Trump’s broad ambitions to restore this agency to gold standard science and to what it was when we were growing up, which was the most respected health agency in the world,” Kennedy said. 

“We saw the misinformation coming out of COVID; they got the testing wrong, they got the social distancing, the masks [and] the school closures that did so much harm to the American people [wrong],” he added. 

Monarez has refused to step down from power after reportedly clashing with Kennedy, specifically over vaccine policy, even as the HHS has said she is no longer the CDC director. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday, “The president has the authority to fire those who are not aligned with his [MAHA] mission.”

While some, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), have praised Monarez’s firing, the debacle has led critics to demand Kennedy’s ouster. 

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) called on Wednesday for the HHS secretary’s removal, writing, “We cannot let RFK Jr. burn what’s left of CDC.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the ranking member of the Senate Health Committee, said the sacking was “reckless” and called for a formal investigation into the firing of Monarez on Thursday. 

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the chairman of the Senate HELP Committee, revealed the committee will be probing the firing. The senator is also calling for a delay in a looming meeting of Kennedy’s vaccine advisers to review vaccine recommendations, saying the decisions “directly impact children’s health and the meeting should not occur until significant oversight has been conducted.” 

Lawmakers will have a public opportunity to question Kennedy during a congressional hearing of the Senate Finance Committee next month. 

Monarez’s firing led to a string of resignations from her colleagues at the CDC, with reports indicating National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Demetre Daskalakis, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Daniel Jernigan, and Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry have turned in their notices. 

Critics have accused Kennedy of spreading misinformation, particularly about vaccines, with Monarez alleging the HHS secretary “weaponi[zed] public health” and forced her to leave because she refused “to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives.” 

Among the issues Monarez clashed with Kennedy and his team over was an impending announcement that could draw links between immunizations and autism, according to CNN. 

Kennedy has painted his MAHA agenda as necessary to clean out an agency that has long been sold to the pharmaceutical industry and Washington lobbyists. HHS, which oversees multiple agencies such as the CDC, has lost sight of its original mission because it has become corrupted by big corporations and powerful interests who profit from making people sicker, not healthier, he has claimed. 

“Today, on the CDC’s website right now, they list the 10 top advances, the 10 greatest advances in medical science, and one of them is abortion, another is fluoridation, and another is vaccines. So we need to look at the priorities of the agency,” Kennedy said during the Fox News interview on Thursday. 

RFK JR. ANNOUNCES STUDIES COMING ON LINKS BETWEEN AUTISM AND ENVIRONMENTAL TOXINS

President Donald Trump’s firing of Monarez “has not caught us by surprise,” Kennedy added, saying, “I cannot comment on personnel issues, but 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.”

The CDC’s “10 top advances” denounced by Kennedy refer to an article written by CDC staff and published in 1999. The list praised “vaccination,” “family planning,” and “fluoridation of drinking water” as some of the greatest achievements of the 20th century. The CDC released an updated list in 2011 that no longer includes “family planning” or “fluoridation of drinking water.”