CDC Director Ousted Amid Claims She Wouldn't Push 'Reckless' Agenda

EAST ATLANTA, GA — Director Susan Monarez, the top staffer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, is being ousted for declining to "rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives," her attorney says amid confusion regarding her firing.

While the Trump administration reportedly says it has terminated Monarez less a month after she was appointed, Attorney Mark Zaid took to X early Wednesday to refute the claims and to confirm Monarez had no plans to resign from her post.

This comes after the Senate confirmed her for the position in late July.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, on Thursday criticized the CDC as a source of misinformation.

“The agency is in trouble and we need to fix it,” Kennedy told Fox News on Thursday morning, The Washington Post reported. “It may be that some people should not be working there anymore.”

"Our client was notified tonight by White House staff in the personnel office that she was fired," Zaid said in the X post. "As a presidential appointee, senate confirmed officer, only the president himself can fire her. For this reason, we reject notification Dr. Monarez has received as legally deficient and she remains as CDC Director. We have notified the White House Counsel of our position."

“Yesterday’s events are yet more evidence that putting a quack like Bobby Kennedy in charge of public health was a grave error,” Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff said in a statement Thursday.

“The Trump Administration has been engaged for months in a campaign to destroy the CDC, America’s preeminent disease-fighting agency,” he added. “The Administration’s extremism and incompetence are putting lives at risk.”

Contrarily, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said Monarez is out as director of the CDC.

White House spokesman Kush Desai, in a report from The New York Times, said Monarez was “not aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again,” and that “the White House has terminated Monarez from her position with the C.D.C.”

Following the news, CDC Chief Medical Officer Deb Houry, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Demetre Daskalakis and National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Director Dan Jernigan resigned Wednesday and were escorted from the Atlanta campus on Thursday, Reuters reported.

Dr. Jennifer Layden, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance and Technology, also resigned, the Associated Press reported.

In an email seen by The Associated Press, Houry lamented the crippling effects on the agency from planned budget cuts, reorganization and firings.

“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,” she wrote.

She also noted the rise of misinformation about vaccines during the current Trump administration, and alluded to new limits on CDC communications.

“For the good of the nation and the world, the science at CDC should never be censored or subject to political pauses or interpretations,” she wrote.

The latest hit to the CDC came after a gunman opened fire this month at the agency, riddling six of its buildings with almost 200 bullets and killing a DeKalb County police officer.

The 30-year-old accused shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said at the time.

The Associated Press contributed reporting and writing.

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