From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily.

For weeks, fights have been escalating between the CDC's top scientists and the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., culminating in his accusation that the agency's top official was

untrustworthy and a liar. On Wednesday, that official, Susan Menares, went before Congress to

give her side of the story. My colleague Cheryl Gay-Stolberg unpacks that testimony and the rift that the hearing exposed

within the Republican Party over how far they will go to back Kennedy and his vaccine agenda.

It's Thursday, September 18th.

Cheryl, thank you so much for making time for us. It was obviously a very busy day for you watching this hearing, which we were all glued to, so we really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

So on the show, we have been covering the chaos at the CDC because in just a span of a few weeks, the head of the agency was fired, several high-ranking officials quit in protest. Robert of Kennedy Jr., the head

of Health and Human Services, which obviously oversees the CDC. He had to answer for a lot of this

in front of the Senate last week. And today, the person that he ousted was in front of Congress to explain her side of the story, which to me was quite striking because we haven't seen her, heard her voice, heard her explain her version of events. And I'm just sort of curious, you who actually covers this world, what were you going into this

hearing looking for and paying attention to? I wanted to see what it really felt like to work

with and for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the health secretary. You know, the CDC has been through a

really rough year since Mr.

Kennedy took office. There have been mass layoffs. The secretary is dismantling the agency and

reorganizing it. A gunman opened fire on the agency. That's right. I remember that.

Killing a police officer in a rain of bullets. And then finally,

Kennedy pushes out the CDC director, who was only 29 days on the job. So what happened here?

Kennedy, happened here. Kennedy often talks about radical transparency.

Yet, a lot of what he does isn't really radically transparent.

We don't have much insight into how he leads the agency, what he's like to work with. So I guess

I wanted to know what it felt like to be a public health official in this era under his leadership.

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