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.

FBI Director Kash Patel has failed to follow through on his own promises regarding the Epstein files.

Months before Patel’s name was floated to run the bureau, Patel had told podcaster Benny Johnson that he believed the documents were being shielded from public view because of “who’s on that list.” During his confirmation hearing, the 45-year-old swore there would be “no stone left unturned” in the quest to make the Epstein files completely transparent.

But it all came to a head during a heated House Oversight Hearing Wednesday, when members of the lower chamber forced the bureau chief to confront the incongruencies between his prior stances and his recent lagging actions.

“This spring, you ordered hundreds of agents to pore over all of the Epstein files but not to look for more clues about the money network, or the network of human traffickers,” said Representative Jamie Raskin. “You pulled these agents from their regular counterterrorism or drug trafficking duties to work around the clock—some of them sleeping at their desks—to conduct a frantic search to make sure Donald Trump’s name and image were flagged and redacted wherever they appeared.”

Raskin then highlighted a July memo from the bureau, in which Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi determined “no further disclosure” regarding the Epstein files and the FBI’s investigation “would be necessary or appropriate.”

“In a few short months, how did you go from being a crusader for accountability and transparency with the Epstein files to being part of the conspiracy and cover-up?” Raskin continued. “The answer is simple. You said it yourself: because of who is on that list.”

Patel’s apparent disinterest in catching child predators has extended far beyond his back-and-forths in Congress. Instead, there appears to be a top-down transformation at the agency influenced by Patel’s personal ideology: Just about every agent on the FBI’s Baltimore domestic terrorism squad was directed to refocus their attention on detaining immigrants, forcing agents to pause investigations into violent child predators and pedophilia networks, MSNBC reported Tuesday.

While Patel is grilled on Capitol Hill, another fire appears to be growing against him in the inner echelons of the Trump administration. Patel’s clumsy handling of the manhunt for Charlie Kirk’s killer left the White House thoroughly unimpressed, with insiders reportedly on the lookout for Patel’s replacement.

Former Trump impeachment lead counsel and current Representative Daniel Goldman aimed some sharp remarks at Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as his Justice Department seeks to hit CodePink with a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) charge for yelling at President Trump while he was at dinner last week.

Trump called for the protestors to be jailed on Monday via RICO. On Tuesday Blanche told CNN he was happy to oblige.

“RICO is available to all kinds of organizations committing crimes and committing wrongful acts, not just organized crime, or ISIS, or terrorist organizations, and so it depends,” Blanche said Tuesday on CNN when asked to justify treating CodePink like the mob or a terrorist group. “It is again, sheer happenstance, that individuals show up at a restaurant where the president is trying to enjoy dinner in Washington, D.C. and accost him with vile words and vile anger … does it mean that it’s completely random that they showed up? Maybe. But to the extent that it’s part of an organized effort to inflict harm and terror and damage to the United States, there’s potential investigations there.”

Goldman rebuked Blanche’s comments online.

“I charged RICO cases. Yelling at the President is not a racketeering act and cannot be the basis for a criminal charge. @DAGToddBlanche knows better,” Goldman wrote Wednesday morning on X. “He is corrupting the DOJ with ridiculous comments like this.”

This all comes as the Trump administration moves to crack down on free speech as part of a mass disinformation campaign in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing. But to use RICO charges to achieve that is an extreme overreach at best.

Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has thrown his hat in the ring for governor.

Raffensperger garnered national attention in 2021 when he refused to “find” Donald Trump enough votes to throw Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results. Five years on, Raffensperger’s candidacy will prove a political litmus test for conservative appetites in the South, and whether or not they’re willing to veer away from MAGA’s clutches.

“I’m a conservative Republican, and I’m prepared to make the tough decisions. I follow the law and the Constitution, and I’ll always do the right thing for Georgia no matter what,” Raffensperger said in an announcement video.

Raffensperger will join an already crowded Republican primary for Georgia’s top position. His challengers include Georgia Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones—a Trump loyalist who has already received the president’s endorsement—and state Attorney General Chris Carr, who has similarly embraced the president’s politics in an effort to curry favor with his supporters.

But no one else on the ticket will likely draw MAGA eyes like Raffensperger, who half a decade later is still mired in the political turmoil of standing up to the movement’s figurehead.

In campaign videos, Raffensperger frames himself as a tough-on-liberals Republican who fought “and won” against the likes of former state Representative Stacey Abrams and former President Joe Biden, upholding traditional party ideals such as lowering taxes while focusing on the production of “good paying jobs.”

Raffensperger didn’t shy away from participating in the conservative culture war, either. In the same video, the secretary of state promised to deliver a “bold conservative agenda” as Georgia’s next governor. That plan, though vague, partly focused on putting parents “in charge” of their kids’ education, as well as banning transgender surgery for minors.

How seriously Georgia is affected by transgender surgeries is unclear, though a study by UCLA found that just 3.3 percent of American youths across the country identify as transgender or gender nonconforming.

Raffensperger is now the second gubernatorial hopeful to have openly defied Trump. Georgia’s former Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan announced Wednesday that he is running for governor—as a newly minted Democrat.

The immigration raid on the Hyundai plant in Georgia earlier this month, which saw more than 300 South Korean workers detained and, last week, flown back to Seoul, has proven to be an enduring, self-inflicted disaster by the Trump administration.

Reports of the harrowing conditions the workers experienced continue to emerge, as South Korea this week announced its intention to investigate human rights violations. “One by one, we were cuffed at the wrists, then chained at the waist and shackled at the ankles. Then we were put on the bus. I couldn’t understand why we were being treated this way,” one worker told the BBC for a Tuesday story.

The worker said the detention center was “very cold. We weren’t even given blankets for 2 days. I was wearing a short sleeve T-shirt, so I put my arms inside my clothes and wrapped myself in a towel to try to stay warm at night,” he said. “The worst part was the water. It smelt like sewage. We drank as little as possible.”

Meanwhile, the raid seems poised to inflict significant economic harm on the U.S. and the Peach State. Construction on the raided facility is reportedly paused until 2026. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has warned that South Korean firms “will be very hesitant to make direct investments in the United States” in light of the incident—and indeed, several have already suspended U.S. projects.

President Trump, evidently feeling the heat, took to Truth Social on Sunday: “I don’t want to frighten off or disincentivize Investment into America by outside Countries or Companies,” he wrote. “We welcome them, we welcome their employees, and we are willing to proudly say we will learn from them.”

Much of the blame for the incident and its fallout belongs to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, according to a Tuesday report in Forbes. Charles Kuck, an immigration lawyer representing several of the workers (who he says were in the U.S. on business visas and though a visa waiver program) told the publication that the arrests were “entirely driven” by Miller’s quota of 3,000 immigration arrests per day.

“ICE agents screwed up by arresting people who did not abuse the visa, were eligible to engage in the type of work for which they were admitted, but ICE considered it a successful operation because they met Miller’s quota,” Kuck said.

President Donald Trump is mounting a pressure campaign to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James for mortgage fraud, without providing any evidence to support the charges against her, ABC News reported Wednesday.

After five months of digging, investigators have yet to produce a shred of evidence that James falsified bank documents to secure favorable terms on a mortgage for her Virginia home, multiple sources briefed on the probe told ABC News.

Still, Trump has directed top officials at the Justice Department to aggressively pursue an investigation against James. Two Trump stooges, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte and Ed Martin, the head of the DOJ’s Working Weaponization Group, have urged U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Erik Siebert to seek an indictment against James.

When federal prosecutors declined, Pulte encouraged Trump to fire Siebert and have him replaced with someone who would do his bidding, sources told ABC News.

Pulte and Martin have staked their claim that James committed mortgage fraud on a single document claiming that the home she purchased in 2023 would be her primary residence. But investigators haven’t been able to prove she knowingly lied, or that the document was even considered by loan officers. Lawyers that drafted the document said the error was the result of a template that wasn’t corrected, sources said. Every other document submitted for the mortgage accurately stated she would not reside at the home.

Pulte has also lobbed similar claims of mortgage fraud at other Trump opponents, such as Democratic Senator Adam Schiff and Federal Reserve Chair Lisa Cook—which have already begun to fall apart.

Since Trump entered office, the administration has set off on a campaign of retribution against James. Months after the probe into her residences started in April, the DOJ launched an investigation into whether she violated Trump’s constitutional rights in taking legal action against him in a winning bank fraud case, costing him $454 million for his family’s business practices.