Washington — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday denied that he pressured the ousted director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to preapprove vaccination recommendations from a panel he overhauled before her firing.

Susan Monarez was fired from the position less than a month after her Senate confirmation. In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Monarez said that Kennedy "pressured me to resign or face termination" in an Aug. 25 meeting.

"One of the troubling directives from that meeting more than a week ago: I was told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric," she wrote.

The piece was published shortly before Kenned

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