White House Fires Cdc Director Susan Monarez After She Refuses To Resi

The White House on Wednesday said it had fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez after she refused to resign. Four other top CDC officials announced they were quitting the embattled health agency. The leadership crisis at CDC erupted the same day the Food and Drug Administration announced new limits on who can get the latest approved round of Covid vaccines in the U.S. "Susan Monarez is not aligned with the President's agenda of Making America Healthy Again," White House Spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement to NBC News. "Since Susan Monarez refused to resign despite informing [Health and Human Services Department] leadership of her intent to do so, the White House has terminated Monarez from her position with the CDC." The statement comes hours after attorney Mark Zaid said he was representing Monarez and that she had not actually been fired yet or stepped down, adding that she would not resign.

"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," Zaid said in a statement. "For that, she has been targeted." The White House announced late Wednesday that it had fired Susan Monarez as the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). "As her attorney's statement makes abundantly clear, Susan Monarez is not aligned with the President's agenda of Making America Healthy Again," White House spokesperson Kush Desai told Politico. "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." The confirmation capped hours of uncertainty over Monarez's position and whether she had indeed been removed as CDC director.

The Department of Health and Human Services posted on social media earlier Wednesday that Monarez was "no longer" head of the public health agency, but her lawyers said their client was "targeted" for "protecting... They added that she had not resigned but was not told she had been fired at the time of the HHS' social media announcement. Monarez's removal as one of the nation's top public health officials happens against the backdrop of broader changes at the Department of Health and Human Services, where Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. removed all the members of an influential vaccine advisory panel and cut off funding for critical mRNA vaccines. Lawyers for the fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director, Susan Monarez, say she was targeted for standing up for science and are challenging the legality of her termination.

(AP Video: Nathan Ellgren) Susan Monarez, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, arrives to testify before the Senate HELP Committee, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, June 25, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file) NEW YORK (AP) — The director of the nation’s top public health agency has been fired after less than one month in the job, and several top agency leaders have resigned. Susan Monarez isn’t “aligned with” President Donald Trump’s agenda and refused to resign, so the White House terminated her, spokesman Kush Desai said Wednesday night.

Her lawyers said she was targeted for standing up for science. WASHINGTON ‒ The White House said it fired Susan Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, amid a policy disagreement with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., yet she is refusing to step down from her post. Official notification of her termination from the White House came late on Aug. 27 after her attorneys denied she had been ousted, even after HHS announced earlier in the day that Monarez was no longer the CDC director. Still, following the notification, attorneys for Monarez said that as a presidential-appointed, Senate-confirmed officer, only President Donald Trump can fire their client.

They said notice from a White House staffer in the personnel office did not satisfy that requirement. "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 in a statement. Monarez's contested ouster, less than one month after the Senate confirmed her to the role, was followed by resignations from three other top CDC officials in protest of Kennedy's leadership, including his direction on... Former CDC Director Susan Monarez Reflects on Firing and Feuds

“I would never do that, as a scientist,” Susan Monarez says of being asked to approve changes to vaccine recommendations without knowing the details Susan Monarez, former Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, looks on before a Senate Committee on Heath, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing a week after she was fired at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on September 17, 2025. When Susan Monarez took the helm of the beleaguered US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in late July, she had her work cut out for her. Public trust in the agency had dropped considerably since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

And US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who oversees the CDC, had called the agency a “cesspool of corruption” that needed to be fundamentally rebuilt. Less than a month into Monarez’s tenure, US President Donald Trump fired her. She had lost the trust of Kennedy, who only a month earlier had said he had “full confidence” in her ability to lead the agency and that she had “unimpeachable scientific credentials”. The White House says CDC Director Susan Monarez was fired because she was not aligned with President Trump's mission to make America healthy again. What does the exodus mean for the agency?

And now to a portrait of an agency in apparent freefall. I would tell you who's in charge today at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta if we knew. To recap, Susan Monarez had just been confirmed as director at the end of July. Yesterday on X, the Department of Health and Human Services posted that she is no longer in charge. Monarez said, not so fast, that she would not resign, that only the president has the power to fire her, which White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says he has done. And then late this afternoon, we learned that Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill will be named interim director of the CDC.

That's according to an administration official not authorized to discuss the decision. Well earlier today, I spoke with someone who knows well the challenges of running the CDC - Dr. Tom Frieden. He was director there during the Obama administration. And I asked him is it clear to him who's in charge? TOM FRIEDEN: No, it is not.

This is unprecedented. There has, in the 80-year history of the CDC, never been a director fired and never had a situation like this where you have essentially a purge, where much of the top leadership leaves... The CDC works 24/7 to protect Americans from threats. And when the top leaders who have been there through Democratic and Republican administrations for decades, leave, we are all less safe. KELLY: You've just pointed out that it is not just Susan Monarez as director who appears to have exited the CDC in the last 24 hours. We know of four other senior leaders who have left, including the CDC's chief medical officer, including the director of the Center on Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

What are you hearing from Atlanta headquarters today? Leavitt says Trump fired Monarez; her attorneys say she hasn't heard from him. A rare political standoff continued between the leader of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Trump administration continued on Thursday, leaving CDC Director Susan Monarez's termination in limbo as high-level CDC... White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters President Donald Trump had fired Monarez, saying Monarez "was not aligned with the president's mission to make America healthy again." "It was President Trump who was overwhelmingly reelected on November 5," Leavitt said. "This woman has never received a vote in her life, and the president has the authority to fire those who are not aligned with his mission."

Leavitt said her replacement will be announced "very soon" either by Trump or by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. WASHINGTON — America’s public health system is headed to a “very dangerous place” with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

and his team of anti-vaccine advisors in charge, fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief Susan Monarez warned senators on Wednesday. Describing extraordinary turmoil inside the nation’s health agencies, Monarez and former CDC Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry described exchanges in which Kennedy or political advisors rebuffed data supporting the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Monarez, who was fired after just 29 days on the job following disagreements with Kennedy, told senators deadly diseases like polio and whooping cough, long contained, are poised to make a comeback in the... “I believe preventable diseases will return, and I believe we will have our children harmed by things they don’t need to be harmed by,” Monarez said before the Senate health committee.

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