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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
New CDC chief was part of meetings where officials pressed ousted
leader on vaccines
By Adam Cancryn, CNN
Updated:
4:55 PM EDT, Fri August 29, 2025
Source: CNN
In the weeks before they moved to oust Dr. Susan Monarez as head of the
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, top US Department of
Health and Human Services officials repeatedly pressed her in meetings
to commit to signing off on potential new vaccine restrictions, two
people familiar with the matter said.
Among those present: Jim O’Neill, the No. 2 HHS official, who has
since become the CDC’s new acting chief, the people said.
It was not immediately clear what role O’Neill played in the meetings
or whether he directly sought to convince Monarez to pledge her support
for recommendations that might limit access to proven vaccines, two
people familiar with the matter told CNN.
HHS , and his deputy chief of staff, Stefanie Spear, led the internal
push to secure Monarez’s allegiance, the people said.
But O’Neill’s participation in the meetings, which has not been
previously reported, has spurred questions among staffers about whether
he would stand up to political pressure in running the CDC, which is
charged with making critical public health recommendations that
determine Americans’ access to a wide range of vaccines. It could
also complicate efforts to ease tensions between HHS leadership and CDC
staff, who are still reeling from and a shooting this month that killed
a police officer and .
An HHS spokesperson declined to comment, instead referring to a note
Kennedy sent to CDC staff on Thursday announcing O’Neill’s
appointment as acting director.
“Together, we will rebuild this institution into what it was always
meant to be: a guardian of America’s health and security,” Kennedy
wrote in the email, adding that O’Neill would “help advance this
mission.”
On Friday, O’Neill acknowledged his new role atop the CDC in a that
criticized the agency for losing trust during President Joe Biden’s
administration and asserted “we are helping the agency earn back the
trust it had squandered.”
In the meetings with Kennedy, O’Neill and other HHS officials,
Monarez refused to bend to the pressure, insisting on several occasions
that she would not back any actions before examining the underlying
evidence, the people said.
The standoff culminated on Wednesday — a high-profile moment that
spurred the resignations of four other senior officials and tipped the
agency into crisis.
O’Neill has had little discernible interaction with the CDC’s rank
and file since joining the administration in June, the people familiar
with the matter said.
But Kennedy, a longtime CDC critic and leading antivaccine activist
prior to joining the Trump administration, has taken the agency to task
in the aftermath of Monarez’s ouster.
“There’s a lot of trouble at CDC, and it’s going to require
getting rid of some people over the long term in order for us to change
the institutional culture,” he said during a news conference in Texas
on Thursday.
Kennedy has sought to advance major changes to the federal
government’s evaluation of vaccines in recent months, despite growing
misgivings among career scientists at the CDC and elsewhere within the
department.
The dispute with Monarez grew primarily out of the work done by the
Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a panel of independent
experts who make recommendations to the CDC on vaccine policy.
Kennedy fired all of the committee’s members in June and appointed a
new slate that includes allies who have questioned the safety of
vaccines, sparking concern inside and outside the CDC that they would
seek new restrictions on long-accepted vaccines.
The advisory committee is scheduled to meet in mid-September to examine
a range of vaccines, including recommendations for the hepatitis B
vaccine — an immunization long targeted by Kennedy and others who
have sowed doubt about its inclusion among the vaccines routinely given
to children.
O’Neill, a longtime biotech investor close to billionaire Peter Thiel
who did a stint at HHS during the George W. Bush administration, has
said little publicly about vaccines and kept a low public profile since
becoming Kennedy’s second-in-command.
During his confirmation hearing in May, O’Neill told Sen. Bill
Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, that he’s “very strongly
pro-vaccine” and supported the CDC’s vaccination schedule.
Some Kennedy allies have suggested that his appointment might help
dampen the blowback over Monarez’s ouster, especially among
Republican lawmakers alarmed by the recent chaos. That is because some
view O’Neill as a more experienced government hand with more
mainstream health care credentials who can provide some stability, two
people familiar with the discussions said.
Still, critics said there’s little expectation that O’Neill will
serve as a bulwark against any future efforts to limit vaccine access
— and, given his dual role at HHS and CDC, instead now appears
positioned to only accelerate Kennedy’s agenda.
“I don’t know who actually will be making those calls, but I do
understand that when we’ve been working on these data that we make
decisions from, a lot of that is coming from the White House, is coming
from HHS,” Dr. Dan Jernigan, one of the senior CDC officials who
resigned after Monarez’s firing, said Thursday on .” “And so I
don’t know exactly where we’re going to go next.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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