White House Fires CDC Director, Who Refuses To Step Down

On Wednesday (Aug. 27), the White House announced that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez had been fired, a little over a month after being confirmed to the position by the Senate. The Department of Health and Human Services released a statement initially. The decision is reportedly due to Monarez being at odds with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and “not being aligned with the president’s agenda” regarding vaccines.

Attorneys for Monarez issued a statement explaining that she is refusing to leave her post, stating that only President Donald Trump has the authority to make such a move. “For this reason, we reject the notification Dr. Monarez has received as legally deficient and she remains as CDC Director. We have notified the White House Counsel of our position,” Monarez’s attorneys, Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell said.

Shortly afterward, four senior officials at the CDC – Debra Houry, the chief medical officer; vaccine safety chief Daniel Jernigan, ; Jennifer Layden, head of the office for public health data; and Demetre Daskalakis, who headed the office in charge of issuing vaccine recommendations. Monarez and others at the CDC were opposed to Kennedy’s decisions “weaponizing public health for political gain and putting millions of Americans at risk,” with Kennedy reportedly pushing her to back changes to the CDC’s vaccine policy or risk being fired. 

“I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health,” Daskalakis said in a statement after his resignation, adding it was “untenable to serve in an organization that is not afforded the opportunity to discuss decisions of scientific and public health importance released under the moniker of CDC.”

The announcement came on the day that major restrictions on eligibility for the COVID-19 vaccine were announced by Kennedy, who is a notorious anti-vaxxer. Another bone of contention between Monarez and Kennedy was over the administration’s reaction to a gunman attacking the CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, in July, killing an officer.