CDC left leaderless after new Director Dr. Susan Monarez is ousted and other key officials follow
Dr. Susan Monarez was sworn in as director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on July 31.
By Sarah Owermohle, Adam Cancryn, Brenda Goodman, Meg Tirrell, CNN
(CNN) — Dr. Susan Monarez, who was sworn in as director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on July 31, has been removed from the position, the White House said Wednesday.
Her departure was quickly followed by the resignation of several high-level veteran agency officials, leaving the CDC leaderless at a perilous time.
Morale, which was already low after deep staff cuts this spring, plummeted after a gunman opened fire on the agency’s main campus in Atlanta on August 8, pocking the buildings with hundreds of bullet holes and killing DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose. Shortly afterward, a further 600 employees got official termination notices.
“Susan Monarez is not aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement. “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.”
Monarez’s attorneys, Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell, said in a statement earlier Wednesday that “as a person of integrity and devoted to science, she will not resign,” and her team disputed the White House’s version of events.
The US Department of Health and Human Services said in a post on X on Wednesday, “Susan Monarez is no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We thank her for her dedicated service to the American people. [HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] has full confidence in his team at @CDCgov who will continue to be vigilant in protecting Americans against infectious diseases at home and abroad.”
HHS has not named an acting director to lead the CDC.
The ouster was first reported by the Washington Post.
Other high-level leaders depart
Shortly after Monarez’s departure was confirmed Wednesday, three other top CDC officials also announced that they were leaving. Dr. Debra Houry, the agency’s chief medical officer and deputy director of programs and science; Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; and Dr. Dan Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, were agency veterans whom staffers said were well-liked and trusted.
“For the good of the nation and the world, the science at CDC should never be censored or subject to political pauses and interpretations,” Houry wrote in a resignation email to staff that was shared with CNN.
“Vaccines save lives – this is an indisputable, well-established scientific fact,” she said. “Informed consent and shared decision-making must focus not only on the risks, but also on the true lifesaving benefits that vaccines provide to individuals and communities.”
While it is important to question and analyze research, “this must be done by experts with the right skills and experience, without bias, and considering the full weight of scientific evidence,” she wrote.
Houry then said that misinformation has already cost lives, citing the record high number of measles cases in the US this year.
Daskalakis shared his resignation email to Houry in a post on X.
“It is 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,” he wrote. “The lack of communication by HHS and other CDC political leadership that culminates in social media posts announcing major policy changes without prior notice demonstrate a disregard of normal communication channels and common sense. Having to retrofit analyses and policy actions to match inadequately thought-out announcements in poorly scripted videos or page long X posts should not be how organizations responsible for the health of people should function.”
Dr. Jennifer Layden, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology, also left the CDC on Wednesday, according to a source familiar with the situation who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to share the information.
“Our agency is crumbling,” said a source within the CDC who is not allowed to speak to the news media and did not want to be identified for fear of retribution. “All of our top people who kept us protected … from the new administration. From twisting science for their agenda. Science is data and facts. We’re simple people that way … we trust numbers and facts.
“The bullet holes aren’t even repaired on our buildings.”
Clashes with Kennedy
Monarez’s ouster followed days of internal pressure led by Kennedy’s deputy chief of staff and close confidante, Stefanie Spear, according to two people familiar with the situation. It also came soon after Kennedy summoned Monarez to Washington and demanded that she fire Houry, Jernigan and Daskalakis, according to two people familiar with the matter. Monarez refused, angering Kennedy and triggering his move to remove her.
Monarez also clashed with Kennedy and his team over vaccine policies, including an impending announcement that could draw links between immunizations and autism, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Kennedy suggested in a Tuesday meeting of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet that HHS would reveal research in September showing that “certain interventions now are clearly, almost certainly, causing autism.” Trump responded that “there has to be something artificially causing this, meaning, a drug or something.”
The CDC is readying to announce a new slate of appointees to its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in the coming weeks, according to a source who spoke on condition of anonymity. Kennedy dissolved the panel of independent vaccine advisers in June and days later named eight new members, many of whom have cast doubt on the safety of vaccines and public policy around vaccination. One member later dropped out during the required financial review.
Attorneys Zaid and Lowell said in their statement that “Secretary Kennedy and HHS have set their sights on weaponizing public health for political gain and putting millions of American lives at risk.”
“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,” they wrote. “This is not about one official. It is about the systematic dismantling of public health institutions, the silencing of experts, and the dangerous politicization of science.”
US Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat and a senior member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, called for Kennedy’s own ouster on Wednesday.
“Susan Monarez’s willingness to stand up for science and protect the integrity of the CDC is commendable and deeply important – however, it only further underscores the reality at HHS: Director Monarez is not the problem, RFK Jr. is. If there are any adults left in the White House, it’s well past time they face reality and fire RFK Jr.,” she said in a statement. “He is a dangerous man who is determined to abuse his authority to act on truly terrifying conspiracy theories and disinformation – leaving us unprepared for the next deadly pandemic and snuffing out potential cures while he’s at it.”
Monarez was President Donald Trump’s second pick to lead the CDC; the nomination of Dr. Dave Weldon was withdrawn in March after White House officials privately voiced concerns about his comments expressing skepticism about vaccines.
She was the first CDC director to be confirmed by the Senate, and her tenure was the shortest of any in the agency’s history.
Monarez was principal deputy director and acting director at the CDC from January to March. She has a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology but is not a medical doctor, making her the first CDC director since the 1950s not to have a clinical background.
Monarez’s tenure in government spans Republican and Democratic administrations. Before coming to the CDC, she was deputy director for the Advance Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, and was founding director of the Center for Innovation at the Health Resources and Services Administration. She held other leadership positions at the Department of Homeland Security and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.
In a news release the day of her swearing-in, Kennedy said that Monarez had “unimpeachable scientific credentials” and that he had full confidence in her ability to restore Americans’ trust in the agency.
“It is a great honor to join Secretary Kennedy and his HHS leadership team,” Monarez said in the news release. “I consider it a privilege to work alongside the public servants at CDC. Together we will strengthen and modernize the nation’s public health preparedness and response through science and innovation. We will work every day at CDC to Make America Healthy Again.”
The public health world was stunned by Wednesday’s shakeup.
“For 80 years, CDC has been a beacon of health protection for the United States and the world,” former agency Director Dr. Tom Frieden said in a post on LinkedIn. “That beacon is now in grave danger of being extinguished, endangering all of our health. Eroding health protection capacity at the top further undermines trust at a time when it is most needed.”
Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University’s School of Public Health, told CNN that “if these reports are true, the firing of Susan Monarez represents a very dangerous turn for American health.
“It is essential that the director of CDC yielded to evidence and not political whims and disinformation. If the CDC director was fired because she would not embrace Secretary Kennedy’s lies about vaccines, then we have entered a truly dangerous time for US health and security,” she said. “Continuing to dismantle our evidence-based public health system exposes America to dangerous threats, including the possibility of a biological attack. Our adversaries are watching.”
Former CDC Principal Deputy Director Dr. Nirav Shah told CNN on Wednesday that Monarez’s ouster “is another example of the chaotic leadership we’ve seen under Secretary Kennedy, and in times of increasing public health threats, stable leadership matters.”
“The instability we’re seeing at CDC will not help making Americans healthy again.”
CNN’s Michelle Krupa contributed to this report.
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