Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jail Snyder.

Former CDC director Susan Menares told members of a Senate panel she was ousted because she refused to agree to health secretary Robert F. Kennedy's Jr.'s demands on vaccines and other matters.

Here's NPR's Will Stone reporting.

Monarez told members of the Senate committee that Kennedy asked her to

offer blanket approval on future vaccine recommendations and to fire career scientists. During the

hearing, she recounted a string of events that she said led to her dismissal, culminating with a tense

meeting in late August. He called in that context, CDC the most corrupt federal agency in the world,

emphasized that CD employees were horrible people. He said that CDC employees were killing children

and they don't care. Kennedy has disputed Monares's accounts of why she was fired. The hearing comes

ahead of Thursday's meeting of the

CDC Vaccine Advisory Committee, which could lead to some changes in the childhood vaccine schedule.

Will Stone and PR News. The Justice Department escalating demands for election data from the states

at suing two Democratic-controlled states seeking to force them to hand over their full registration lists.

And Pierce-Myle Parks reports.

The Department of Justice has asked for sensitive elections data for many states, but Maine and Oregon

are the first states to be sued over the matter. The department says it needs the data to

determine if the two states are following federal election laws when it comes to keeping accurate

registration lists.

But states have constitutional authority to run their own elections, and voting officials on both

sides of the aisle have fought previous efforts to acquire the data DOJ is asking for, which includes

partial social security numbers. One reason is security risks. Another is that the Trump

administration has not been clear on what it plans to do

...