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Senators to Grill RFK Jr.; Kathleen Sebelius is Interviewed about Kennedy Appearing before the Senate; New ICE Facility Opens in Louisiana; Monarez Writes Op-Ed. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired September 04, 2025 - 09:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[09:00:00]

MICHAEL IAN BLACK, ACTOR AND COMEDIAN: No. No. Because I don't want to do research. I don't want to have to think too hard about stuff. And I -- and I don't want to be serious.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: You are giving the two of us much too much credit.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: We are thrilled to have you as part of the CNN family. We should say that. Michael Ian Black, great to see you in person.

BOLDUAN: It's nice to see you again.

BLACK: It's good to see you.

BERMAN: Thanks so much for coming in.

BOLDUAN: Thank you.

BERMAN: Be sure to tune in to a new season of "Have I Got News for You." It premieres Saturday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific right here on CNN.

And a brand-new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

BOLDUAN: Here we go. Robert Kennedy Jr. forced to face some tough questions. Next hour, lawmakers are set to grill the HHS secretary over his vaccine policy and the major upheaval of the nation's health top health agency.

And this morning, Florida is moving to end all vaccine requirements in the state. What this means, though, for the long standing, constitutionally upheld practice of requiring certain vaccines for kids to attend school.

And the European Union is now banning the use of a key chemical ingredient in some gel nail polishes. The product, still available in the United States. So, that, obviously, raises questions.

I'm Kate Bolduan with John Berman. Sara is out. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL. BERMAN: All right, at the U.S. Senate right now, a live look. Very shortly, a hearing where the star witness will be the secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr.

In the meantime, we're standing by for a rally, which is set to begin any moment, featuring several Senate and House Democrats who say that Kennedy's leadership is creating a public health crisis. There are calls from within his own agency for him to resign that are growing louder. With the health of America's children and the future of vaccine policy hanging in the balance, the secretary is expected to face some tough bipartisan questions in the next few hours.

Under his tenure, the CDC has been really in turmoil. Its director, Susan Monarez, just fired. She had just been Senate confirmed after being nominated by President Trump. While he was being confirmed -- or since he has been confirmed, we've seen sweeping changes to U.S. vaccine policy.

With us now, CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, great to see you again.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: What we're really waiting on is to see what kind of questions Secretary Kennedy faces --

GUPTA: Yes.

BERMAN: And how he answers them. But the background here, the atmosphere, significant, right, when you have former and current employees calling for his resignation?

GUPTA: Yes. I mean that's -- that's pretty unprecedented. I mean we have seen HHS secretaries resign in the past. Tom Price, first Trump administration, and Kathleen Sebelius, after the flawed rollout of Obamacare.

But it's this -- this thousand or so person signed letter, and they're -- and they're pointing to really specific things. The firing of the CDC director, who, by the way, just wrote an op-ed in "The Wall Street Journal" talking about this that just came out just moments ago. But also just the impact that he's had on Covid 19 vaccines, revoking the emergency use authorization. And then the idea of putting political people into these scientific positions, that's what they wrote in the letter. That's their real concern.

And keep in mind, you know, one -- one thing that comes up over and over again, I think people need to remember, is that this is a really large organization, HHS. He is the CEO of the largest health enterprise in the world. We talk about vaccines a lot, but this is also insurance. This is funding. This is his ability to revoke mRNA funding, for example. So, there's all these different things.

Some of which, John, to your point, may come up today. We'll see what the questions are and what the follow up questions are because, I think, you know, that's -- that's going to be where we really get to the heart of some of these matters.

BERMAN: Yes, we're at the mercy of U.S. senators. Sometimes they want to hear themselves speak more than they actually want answers from the people there.

Big move in Florida --

GUPTA: Yes.

BERMAN: Where Governor DeSantis and senior health officials there are calling for an end to all vaccine mandates, which would include schools, Sanjay.

GUPTA: Yes.

BERMAN: Talk to me about the importance of vaccines in schools.

GUPTA: I think it's very clear because, you know, these programs have been around since the early '80s. All 50 states have vaccine requirements in place for schools. So, as a result of that, you collect a lot of data. And you can look at that data.

So, if you look overall at the impact on -- on the country as a whole, some 500 million cases of illnesses averted. This is over 30 years, 32 million hospitalizations, over a million deaths.

You know, I think the larger point is that if you look at many of these states, including Florida, exemptions are in place. So, people can opt out of vaccines for personal reasons or religious reasons.

So, you know, the question often is, how often do people take advantage of that? Florida is a little bit higher than the rest of the country, and the numbers have gone up, but it's still very much in the single digit, 3.6 percent overall for the country this past year.

And I think that's important because as much rhetoric as we hear about vaccines, the vast majority of parents are still getting their kids vaccinated.

[09:05:05]

And if you ask them, should mandates even be in place for kids, close to 80 percent say, yes. And parents say, yes, it should be in place. So, we'll see how this sort of tracks for the rest of the country.

You know, one thing I'll share with you, John, quickly, is that the amount of disinformation around measles vaccine has gone up significantly. The question being, are the -- are the vaccines more dangerous than the disease itself? This was a specific question. And they said, right now, about a third of the country has heard, 33 percent, that, in fact, the vaccines are more dangerous than the disease itself. That's part of the problem.

BERMAN: Meanwhile, cases of measles shooting up around the country.

GUPTA: Exactly. BERMAN: Sanjay, great to see you. Thank you very much.

GUPTA: You got it. Thank you.

BERMAN: Kate.

BOLDUAN: Joining us right now is Kathleen Sebelius, the former Health and Human Services secretary under President Obama, also former governor of Kansas.

A lot of things I want to ask you. But first and foremost, what do you want senators to ask Secretary Kennedy this time around?

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS, FORMER HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: Well, Kate, it's good to be with you.

And I think it's important that they go back to the hearing and re-ask questions that clearly he did not answer truthfully. Ask him again about his vaccine support and what he intends to do as he has dismantled the Vaccine Advisory Committee, ask him about what he intends to do with about 15 million people losing health insurance, how that makes America healthier, and what should those people do? What should folks do -- I mean my husband and I, right now, are home isolating with Covid. Our first time through this ball game. But lots of people have been through it before. We talked to the pharmacist, and they are very confused about when or if they're going to get an updated Covid vaccine, when it's going to be available, how they're going to get it. I know what questions to ask, but for most people, this is very confusing.

So, Secretary Kennedy has the biggest microphone on public health in the country, maybe in the world, and he is full of misinformation that he's driving to the American public, to the world public. So, they need to ask him, what is his plan to make America healthy again? How is he going to separate fact from fiction, from this junk science which he keeps pushing out, and whether or not he will stand up to the oath he took, which is to, you know, make sure that he keeps Americans safe and secure.

BOLDUAN: First and foremost, I hope you're feeling -- I hope your recovery is quick and easy. It's kind of you to come on when you're -- when you're under the weather. I appreciate it.

As, of course, everyone knows, you were Health and Human Services secretary. Sanjay mentioned previous -- I think Sanjay was talking about it just ahead of us, you resigned six months after what you had called a debacle rollout of the -- of Obamacare when -- when you were there. At the time you took responsibility for what happened in the department. If more than a thousand of your current and former employees wrote a letter for you to resign then, do you think that means a secretary should resign?

SEBELIUS: Well, I think it means that you've lost the trust of the very experts that you need to work on behalf of the American public. We did have a bad website. And, you know, frankly, we had 8 million people during the first enrollment who got health insurance for the first time, but a bad rollout. And I was the secretary, and I needed to be accountable and let the program move on. After five and a half years, I was pleased to do that. You fix it and you move on.

I'm shocked that these folks will never admit a mistake. And, you know, Secretary Kennedy clearly does not have the support of the experts throughout these critical agencies, throughout the FDA, slashed and leaders replaced, NIH, the gold standard for health research has been decimated. And again, you know, people do not support the secretary. But the CDC, the gold standard for health care, the budget is projected to be down 40 percent. Top leaders are gone. He fired a leader one month after she went through Senate confirmation, and he praised her work, because she would not bend to putting politicals in place.

BOLDUAN: Secretary, let me jump in on that, actually.

SEBELIUS: Yes.

BOLDUAN: Let me just in on that because who you're talking about, the CDC director, now former, Monarez, she actually just put out an opinion piece that I was just looking at, and that's why I was looking down, so I apologize, everyone.

SEBELIUS: No, no --

BOLDUAN: For the first time, directly addressing -- directly addressing what has occurred.

[09:10:00]

I'm going to read just a couple things that I've been able to quickly peruse.

SEBELIUS: Sure.

BOLDUAN: At one point she talks about what happened during her first week as CDC director, right, "a gunman opened fire at our Atlanta headquarters." And then she says, "just as we began to recover, I was confronted with another challenge," she writes, "pressure to compromise science itself." That coming from the CDC director, the former, herself. And also goes on to say this. I'll read this. "Those seeking to undermine vaccines use a familiar playbook, discredit research, weaken advisory committees, use manipulated outcomes to unravel protections that generations of families have relied on to keep deadly diseases at bay. Once trusted experts are removed and advisory bodies are stacked, the results are predetermined. This isn't reform, it is sabotage."

What do you think of that?

SEBELIUS: Well, I think Susan Monarez is a bright scientist who was well positioned to be a thoughtful head of CDC. And -- and good for her that she had a bright line. And as Dr. Rich Besser has said, when he talked to her just before she resigned, her bright line was, I'm not going to fire the experts on my team, and I'm not going to put out false information. That's a pretty important standard. The reason I shared with you my situation, Kate, is a lot of people

are dealing with diseases in this country. We want reliable information. We want to be able to know that if I go to a website, I can figure out how long I should isolate, how to keep other people safe and secure, when I can get more protection for myself and my families. If we begin to doubt that, if the vaccine becomes less available, which it's about to do, people won't have their insurance pay for it any longer, they'll be less likely to be able to keep themselves and their families safe.

Florida has put out some terrifying guidance suggesting that they're going to get rid of all vaccine mandates for kids in school. I can't imagine what I would do if I were a parent in Florida thinking about sending my child to a school where you have no idea if there could be a measles outbreak or, God forbid, even polio will reappear.

So, we are in uncharted territory. In my lifetime, CDC has been, you know, a standard for public health, not only here, but countries around the world have emulated it. And we have seen in about seven months a secretary with no scientific background, no training and a long history of vaccine skepticism and making money on suing vaccine companies begin to dismantle what is the protective shield around Americans.

This is about health security. And as we learned with Covid, this is about our economic security. Another infectious disease that we're not prepared for takes the whole economy down.

So, this is very dangerous territory. And that's what the United States Senate should focus on today. We have a secretary who could bring the economy of this country to a crashing halt.

BOLDUAN: Says a former secretary of Health and Human Services who understands this structure of that agency.

I appreciate your time. Secretary Sebelius, thanks for coming in.

And we, again, just to keep everyone updated, we are waiting, next hour is when this hearing of Robert Kennedy Jr. There are live pictures of the hearing room where he'll be taking tough questions. And we will be bringing this to you as it gets underway.

John.

BERMAN: Again, and I'm just rereading this -- this -- this letter from the fired CDC director.

BOLDUAN: Yes. Oh, yes.

BERMAN: And to hear her say that she was fired over a deliberate effort to weaken America's public health system and vaccine protections, pretty stark statements coming up. We'll wait and see if any senators asked about that new information.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely, John. BERMAN: All right, the next Powerball jackpot, the third largest in history, $1.7 billion. It comes Saturday. It's that high because everyone lost last night. You all lost. The chances of now winning, one in 292,000,000. But according to LendingTree, in the states where they have the lottery, per capita spending on the lottery is $320. Another way of saying that is people pay a regressive tax of $320 every year.

All right, Secretary Kennedy, we're just talking about him, vowed we would know the causes of autism by this month. What answers can he deliver, though, before studies have even begun?

Once dubbed the Alcatraz of the south, this prison is now the site of ICE's newest detention center. It will be at the country's largest -- it will be the country's largest maximum security prison. And officials say it's designed to hold the worst of the worst.

Europe bans a key chemical found in gel nail polish, classified as a type of reproductive toxicant.

[09:15:05]

So, why is it still legal here in the U.S.?

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BOLDUAN: The Trump administration is opening a new migrant detention facility inside a state prison in Louisiana. The new center is being called Camp 57. It will be at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola. That is the largest maximum security prison in the country.

CNN's Isabel Rosales is tracking this one.

Isabel, what is going on here?

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Kate.

The so-called Camp 57 is being repurposed on -- on an existing facility that was not in use.

[09:20:03]

And the name, according to DHS, is a nod to Governor Jeff Landry, being that he is the 57th governor of the state of Louisiana.

And you mentioned the overall facility, the state prison, has the name Angola. And it's very difficult to overstate just how large this is. This is on a sprawling land, over 18,000 acres, just north of Baton Rouge.

Now, according to the governor, this so-called Camp 57 will house more than 400 men. Half of them should be there by the end of the -- of the month, he says.

Now, the Louisiana State Prison has a history here. It's been accused in the past of forcing inmates to do labor in triple digit temperatures. And, in fact, back in 2021, a judge found that there was an adequate medical care given there to the prisoners in what was once a slave plantation.

Listen now to the governor and to other leadership as they announce the reopening of this facility.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. JEFF LANDRY (R-LA): This facility is designed to hold the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens.

PAM BONDI, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Look behind us. Louisiana, you're going to be an example for the rest of this country.

KRISTI NOEM, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: This is a facility that's notorious. It's a facility, Angola Prison, is legendary. But that's a message that these individuals that are going to be here, that are illegal criminals, need to understand.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROSALES: I reached out to the ACLU of Louisiana, who calls this a state sanctioned cruelty and pushed back on this idea that this is going to house the worst of the worst, saying that this is misleading and inflammatory. Their data shows that is just not the case when it comes to undocumented migrants there in the state that in large part have never been convicted of a crime, they say. They also said this, "Camp J," as it was previously known, now Camp 57, "was permanently closed after repeated findings of inhumane conditions, rampant abuse and preventable deaths. Its reopening represents a dangerous escalation in Trump's immigrant detention and mass deportation crisis, one that has made Louisiana the nation's epicenter of human suffering.

Now all of this, Kate, comes as the Trump administration has been opening to -- has been pushing to open similar facilities across the nation, especially in Republican-led states. We've heard of the Speedway Slammer in Indiana, the so-called Cornhusker Clink in Nebraska. And likely the most infamous of all, Alligator Alcatraz, down in the Everglades of Florida that a federal judge ordered operations to wind down, for it to essentially shut down before Halloween.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: All right, Isabel, thank you very much for keeping track of this for us. I appreciate the reporting.

Still ahead for us, we have breaking news. We're continuing to learn more and read more about the fired CDC director writing a scathing op- ed this morning, just released, just moments ago, and just before the HHS secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr., is set to sit down and testify in front of the Senate. She writes, "public health shouldn't be partisan," among much more.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [09:27:30]

BOLDUAN: Let's get back to the breaking news happening just this morning. The CDC director, now former CDC director, Susan Monarez, speaking out for the very first time since being fired and directly addressing what went down from her perspective. Monarez just put out a new op-ed calling out the HHS secretary, Robert Kennedy, saying that -- saying in part, and there's a lot in here, this isn't reform, it is sabotage.

CNN's Arlette Saenz joining us from Capitol Hill.

All of this happening is -- as attention goes to the hallway that you are in right now, Arlette, because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is just about to start testifying before the Senate.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right. We expect Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be up here on Capitol Hill very shortly where he could face a grilling over the turmoil at the CDC, as well as changes to vaccine policy.

But just before this hearing is set to get underway, the ousted CDC director, Susan Monarez, is out with a scathing "Wall Street Journal" commentary outlining how she believes Kennedy and the administration have threatened vaccine policy in the U.S. She specifically said that she was asked to pre-approve the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel that was handpicked by Kennedy. They are set to meet later this month.

And in this "Wall Street Journal" piece she wrote, "those seeking to undermine vaccines use a familiar playbook, discredit research, weaken advisory committees and use manipulated outcomes to unravel protections that generations of families have relied on to keep deadly diseases at bay. Once trusted experts are removed and advisory bodies are stacked, the results are predetermined. That isn't reform, it is sabotage. Public health shouldn't be partisan," she writes. "Vaccines have saved millions of lives under administrations of both parties. Parents deserve a CDC they can trust to put children above politics, evidence above ideology, and facts above fear."

Now, Kennedy's decision to remove members of this vaccine advisory panel did draw some criticism from Democrats, as well as some Republicans, like Senator Bill Cassidy. He will be a key figure to watch in this hearing today. This hearing is being held before the Senate Finance Committee. But he leads another Senate committee that deals with Kennedy's agency.

And Cassidy was a deciding vote to help confirm Kennedy earlier this year.

[09:30:03]

But Cassidy, even as Kennedy had espoused these anti-vaccine policies throughout.