CDC director Susan Monarez fired by Trump administration
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention leadership was in stunning disarray Wednesday evening after the Trump administration fired the agency’s director hours after she refused to resign under pressure.
The director, Susan Monarez, said she was resisting being ousted by the nation’s top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for political reasons after about a month in office, News.Az reports, citing NBC News.
“When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted,” said her lawyers, Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell.
“Dr. Monarez has neither resigned nor received notification from the White House that she has been fired, and as a person of integrity and devoted to science, she will not resign,” added the attorneys, who did not reply to a request for comment.
The White House fired back shortly afterward, formally terminating Monarez.
“As her attorney’s statement makes abundantly clear, Susan Monarez is not aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again. Since Susan Monarez refused to resign despite informing HHS leadership of her intent to do so, the White House has terminated Monarez from her position with the CDC,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said.
That volley capped an evening of public spectacle at the CDC. It started around 5:30 p.m., when the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC and which Kennedy leads, said on X that “Monarez is no longer director” of the agency. “We thank her for her dedicated service to the American people,” the post continued.
That sparked a near-immediate leadership exodus from the CDC, which is charged with safekeeping the public health of the more than 300 million people in the United States.
At least four top officials announced their resignations, including Dr. Debra Houry, the chief medical officer; Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; Dr. Daniel Jernigan, the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; and Dr. Jen Layden, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance and Technology.
Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, has been a controversial figure to lead the country’s health agencies. He has cut $500 million in contracts focused on developing mRNA vaccines, drawing sharp criticism from the scientific community and former government officials, and under his guidance, HHS has made a number of vaccine policy decisions that limit access to vaccines or call vaccine safety into question in recent weeks.
Some of those sentiments were echoed by the officials who resigned. In his resignation letter, Daskalakis wrote, “I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponizing of public health.”
Houry’s resignation letter spoke about the continued spread of misinformation around vaccines.
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