Centers for Disease Control Director Susan Monarez has abruptly left the post just weeks after being sworn in, the Department of Health and Human Services announced on Wednesday — a claim that was immediately disputed by her lawyers.
Why it matters: The dispute left the leadership of the agency in turmoil as a wave of high-level departures gutted the leadership of the agency that’s responsible for protecting the nation’s public health.
The latest: After HHS announced on X that Monarez is “no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” attorneys Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell posted on X Wednesday night that Monarez “has neither resigned nor received notification from the White House that she has been fired.”
- White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in an emailed Wednesday night statement: “As her attorney’s statement makes abundantly clear, Susan Monarez is not aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again.”
- He added: “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.”
Driving the news: The CDC’s chief medical officer Debra Houry resigned her position, according to internal emails viewed by Axios.
- Daniel Jernigan, CDC’s director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases and the CDC’s director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Demetre Daskalakis, also resigned their posts on Wednesday, according to the emails.
What they’re saying: “The intentional eroding of trust in low-risk vaccines favoring natural infection and unproven remedies will bring us to a pre-vaccine era where only the strong will survive and many if not all will suffer,” Daskalakis wrote in a blistering resignation letter he posted on X.
- “Vaccines save lives — this is an indisputable, well-established, scientific fact,” Houry wrote in an email.
- “I am committed to protecting the public’s health, but the ongoing changes prevent me from continuing in my job as a leader of the agency.”
- Monarez clashed with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over COVID vaccine policy changes and tried to get Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) to intervene after Kennedy urged her to resign, the Washington Post reported.
- Requests for comment from HHS and the White House were not immediately returned.
Monarez’s Departure comes the same day HHS announced it will limit who is eligible for COVID vaccines.
- During her brief tenure, the agency was targeted in an attack on its Atlanta headquarters by a gunman influenced by anti-vaccine rhetoric and moved ahead with hundreds of job cuts.
Between the lines: Monarez was confirmed to the job on July 29 after being nominated in May by President Trump following the withdrawal of his first pick, Dave Weldon.
- She walked a fine line during hearings in her support for vaccines while not contradicting Kennedy.
Catch up quick: Her departure continued a series of abrupt personnel changes throughout federal health agencies that saw FDA’s lead vaccine regulator Vinay Prasad return to his post earlier this month after he unexpectedly departed in late July.
Go deeper: “Unable to serve”: CDC vaccine chief slams Kennedy in resignation post
Maya Goldman and Emily Peck contributed.
This story has been updated with White House comment and details on the pushback from Monarez’s lawyers and Daskalakis’ resignation statement.
