Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will face “hard questions” over a recent shakeup of top health officials when he appears before senators Thursday.

At Kennedy’s appearance before the Senate Finance Committee, which was first reported by POLITICO, Thune said that the secretary needs to “restore public trust” after Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez was fired and other top CDC officials quickly resigned.

“I would say that, you know, because somebody’s supportive or in favor of vaccines is not disqualifying for that job, so I assume he’ll have some questions to answer tomorrow,” Thune said.

The turnover at the CDC has sparked a wave of concern from some Senate Republicans on public health grounds. But it’s also exposed frustration that the administration is ousting officials just weeks or months into the job after the Senate spent valuable floor time confirming them.

“Honestly he’s got to take responsibility,” Thune added. “We confirm these people, we go through a lot of work to get them confirmed, and they’re in office a month?”

HHS isn’t the only Trump administration department that has seen quick exits. Two Senate-confirmed Treasury officials — IRS Administrator Billy Long and Deputy Secretary Michael Faulkender — departed after just months.\\

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who will question Kennedy as a Finance Committee member, also expressed frustration with Monarez’s departure.

“Man, you worked with this CDC director for some number of months, then you decided to put her forth for confirmation, and then you fired her four weeks later,” he said. “Why would we put a priority on replacing her if you determine within four weeks you made a bad decision after months of actually seeing her at work? That’s a question I have for him tomorrow.”

Thune added that Kennedy needs people in key positions who “have some stability and can hopefully command the trust of the American people.”

Thursday’s hearing was scheduled before the CDC shakeup. While Kennedy is coming to testify about Trump’s health agenda, he’s expected to face questions from both sides of the aisle about the turnover.

Kennedy defended the changes during a Fox News interview last week. Though he declined to talk about “personnel issues,” he added that the CDC “is in trouble, and we need to fix it, … and it may be that some people should not be working there anymore.”

Carmen Paun contributed to this report.

House members voted Wednesday to officially establish a new panel to investigate the events around the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

It’s the latest chapter in the Republican effort to rewrite the history of the events at the Capitol on that day, when a violent mob stormed the building as lawmakers attempted to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election in favor of Joe Biden over Donald Trump.

House Democrats ran their own Jan. 6 committee when they held the majority, where they convened public hearings and released a report detailing Trump’s efforts to circumvent the election results and his failure to stop his supporters from taking over the complex.

Language to create the new, GOP-led select subcommittee was buried in a larger “rule” that included a host of other provisions, including a formal approval of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. It will fall under the purview of the House Judiciary Committee and be chaired by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), who will, in his new role, have unilateral authority to issue subpoenas.

He plans to use his gavel to review security and intelligence failures around the attacks; many GOP lawmakers have blamed then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for allowing the Capitol to be breached in the first place and have in general downplayed the significance of the event.

Loudermilk will preside over a group of eight lawmakers to be appointed by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.); Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) will be able to consult on at most three of those members. In an interview, Loudermilk said he was sending Johnson his picks, and while the list had not yet been finalized, he pointed to Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) as a potential selection.

Nehls is a former sheriff who helped Capitol Police stave off rioters who tried break onto the House floor during the siege. Then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had initially made Nehls one of his picks to sit on the Democratic-led Jan. 6 committee, but withdrew GOP participation after Pelosi refused to seat his other selections, including the current Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

Asked how the previous Jan. 6 committee will inform the new panel’s work, Loudermilk said the goal was to create a report that more accurately reflected the events at the Capitol that day.

“The evidence is irrefutable that there was more politics than there was truth in that,” he said of the previous panel’s findings. “What we saw in the initial investigation, there was a lot more politics involved in decision-making than there ever should’ve been.”

Loudermilk will be required to produce a final report of the subcommittee’s finding by the end of 2026.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) served on the Democratic-led Jan. 6 committee and will be an ex officio member of the new panel in his capacity as the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.

In a statement, he said the Republican-chaired panel will present an opportunity “to examine the constantly growing criminal records of all the hundreds of violent felons, cop-beaters and white nationalists who Donald Trump pardoned and released onto our streets on his first day in office.”

Some House Republicans joined every Democrat in voting to sink an effort to censure Rep. LaMonica McIver over her involvement in a chaotic May scuffle outside an immigration detention center.

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) forced the vote to formally reprimand McIver and remove her from her position on the House Homeland Security Committee, a handful of his GOP colleagues had little appetite for moving forward with the punishment.

Five Republicans — Reps. Don Bacon and Mike Flood of Nebraska, Dave Joyce and Mike Turner of Ohio and David Valadao of California — joined every Democrat in voting to table the measure, while two Republicans — Reps. Andrew Garbarino of New York and Nathaniel Moran of Texas — voted present.

“I think it’s best to let Ethics Committee finish its report,” Bacon said.

A spokesperson for Turner said after the vote the Ohio Republican inadvertently voted to kill McIver’s censure; the incorrect vote did not change the outcome.

Several Democratic officials, including McIver and Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Rob Menendez, were attempting to conduct an oversight visit of the Newark, New Jersey, facility when federal agents arrested the city’s mayor.

Federal prosecutors abandoned a charge against the mayor, but acting U.S. Attorney Alina Habba then charged McIver with offenses that come with a maximum sentence of 17 years in prison. Habba accused McIver of slamming a federal agent with her forearm, “forcibly” grabbing him and using her forearms to strike another agent.

McIver denied wrongdoing, with her lawyers explaining that an “unnecessary, reckless, and disproportionate escalation” by federal agents led to “chaos and a serious scuffle involving a great deal of physical contact.”

The McIver censure resolution prompted Democrats to threaten........

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