Legal professionals for Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez mentioned Wednesday night that she wouldn’t resign, regardless of makes an attempt by Well being and Human Providers Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to oust her for not placing a “rubber-stamp” on “unscientific, reckless directives and fireplace devoted well being consultants.”
“Dr. Monarez has neither resigned nor acquired notification from the White Home that she has been fired, and as an individual of integrity and dedicated to science, she won’t resign,” legal professionals Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell wrote in an announcement on behalf of Monarez.
It comes after HHS posted an announcement on X earlier Wednesday, stating that “Susan Monarez is not director of the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention.”
“We thank her for her devoted service to the American folks,” the account wrote.
Susan Monarez, nominee to be the Director of the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention testifies throughout her affirmation listening to earlier than the Senate Committee on Well being, Schooling, Labor, and Pensions, June 25, 2025 in Washington.
Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Pictures
The White Home, which has the authority to dismiss Monarez, didn’t reply to a request for touch upon subsequent steps.
Monarez, the just lately sworn-in director of the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC), was confirmed by the Senate just four weeks ago.
Monarez was the second nominee for the place, after President Donald Trump’s first nominee, Dave Weldon, did not seem to have the votes for a Senate affirmation, partly due to his historical past of vaccine skepticism.
Monarez, throughout her affirmation listening to, was clear about her help for vaccines: “I feel vaccines save lives. I feel that we have to proceed to help the promotion of utilization of vaccines,” she mentioned in July.
However over the previous few months, her boss, Kennedy, has made important adjustments to vaccine coverage, notably for COVID vaccines, which have the potential to restrict entry to the shot.
Earlier Wednesday, Kennedy’s FDA narrowed the scope for who will likely be accepted to get the up to date vaccines obtainable this fall and winter.
The newest vaccines have been solely accepted for aged folks — adults aged 65 and older — and for youthful folks if they’ve no less than one underlying situation that places them at increased threat for extreme sickness, departing from the prior steerage that everybody 6 months and older ought to get vaccinated.
The FDA determination will come earlier than the CDC later this month, the place Monarez and a committee of advisers, just lately all changed with handpicked decisions by Kennedy, can have the prospect to weigh in — and Monarez will finally must log off.
In March, Kennedy additionally oversaw a change to the pediatric vaccine schedule, shifting to a “shared medical determination making” mannequin that leaves the choice to vaccinate youngsters towards COVID to oldsters, alongside recommendation from a health care provider.
Kennedy has defended the vaccine coverage adjustments as advancing “science, security, and customary sense.”
Monarez’s legal professionals mentioned Wednesday that she was “focused” for pushing again towards Kennedy’s adjustments.
“When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fireplace devoted well being consultants, she selected defending the general public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been focused,” Zaid and Lowell mentioned within the assertion.
Following HHS’s assertion about Monarez’s departure, the three most senior profession officers on the CDC resigned, based on emails obtained by ABC Information.
Deb Houry, Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director for Program and Science at CDC, Dan Jernigan, Director of the Nationwide Middle for Rising and Zoonotic Infectious Ailments, and Demetre Daskalakis, Director of the Nationwide Middle for Immunization and Respiratory Ailments, despatched emails to colleagues on Wednesday evening informing them that they’d submitted their resignations, every mentioning altering insurance policies at CDC.
“I’m not in a position to serve on this position any longer due to the continuing weaponizing of public well being,” Daskalakis wrote to colleagues.
“You’re the finest group I’ve ever labored with, and also you proceed to shine regardless of this darkish cloud over the company and our career,” he mentioned.
Houry, who has labored at CDC by way of Democrat and Republican administrations, mentioned “the science at CDC ought to by no means be censored or topic to political pauses or interpretations.”
“I’m dedicated to defending the general public’s well being, however the ongoing adjustments forestall me from persevering with in my job as a pacesetter of the company. This can be a heartbreaking determination that I make with a heavy coronary heart,” Houry wrote.
The wave of exits comes throughout a tumultuous time for the CDC, only a few weeks after a shooting on the main campus in Atlanta that hit a number of buildings. Authorities mentioned they discovered the alleged shooter had been harboring years-long grievances with the COVID-19 vaccine.
Monarez’s departure was first reported by the Washington Put up.
