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I believe Susan Monarez
Nothing is more important to public health right now than the days ahead, and it is telling that both Politico and PBS focused on the same passages of today’s testimony from Monarez about RFK Jr. No one paying attention should be surprised.
Consider the timeline of two events that should give pause to anyone with a sense of history. On August 8, 2025, a gunman fired more than 180 rounds into CDC headquarters. Just over two weeks later, on August 25, 2025, Susan Monarez testified that RFK Jr. described CDC employees as “horrible people” who were “killing children.” The law distinguishes between protected speech and words that cross the line into unprotected categories. The doctrines of “fighting words” and speech directed to inciting “imminent violence” are not abstract here. What was required in that moment was responsibility and restraint, an acknowledgment that rhetoric framed as an attack on life itself carries foreseeable risks. Instead, the response was to add fuel to an already burning fire.
Did he stop there? Hardly, the CDC..
“the most corrupt federal agency in the world”.
“horrible people”
“killing children and do not care.”
“bought by the pharmaceutical industry.”
This is the same script recycled again and not unlike what I have noted before. Those like RFK Jr. are remarkably common: people who proclaim that nameless and faceless industries are poisoning you for profit and that your own physician is conspiring to keep you sick. It is conspiratorial, pathologic paranoia masquerading as truth, accusation dressed as revelation. A recognizable syndrome of delusional reasoning that spreads fear, erodes trust in institutions, and primes audiences for real world harm and potential violence.
But here is where the rhetoric collides with the law. The First Amendment does not license every utterance. Courts have long drawn distinctions between protected speech and categories of expression that fall outside its shelter: fighting words, true threats, and incitement to imminent violence. When a federal agency has already been the target of a shooting, the calculus changes. Speech that might otherwise be chalked up to hyperbole takes on a different legal and factual posture. What was once opinion can become evidence of reckless disregard for the foreseeable risk of violence.
This is not merely a political squabble; it is a legal fiasco in the making. Words spoken in the glare of cameras and recorded in sworn testimony are now potential exhibits in courtrooms, probed by lawyers parsing the boundary between free expression and unlawful incitement. Defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, even civil conspiracy, claims that normally fall flat against the bulwark of free speech, suddenly find new life when paired with bullets lodged in the walls of public health offices.
This is the language of a dark age, when reason is drowned out by conspiracy, when public servants are branded as villains, and when persecution becomes the fate of those who speak out. Some are targeted literally with bullets, others figuratively with smears, threats, and accusations designed to destroy their credibility and silence their voices.
History tells us where this path leads. It never ends well.