Daniel Payne, Chelsea Cirruzzo, and Elizabeth Cooney , 2025-08-27 21:31:00
WASHINGTON — Susan Monarez, the first Senate-confirmed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been ousted after just a month on the job — part of a series of high-ranking exits at the CDC. Within hours after the Trump administration confirmed her departure on Wednesday without explanation, two prominent Washington lawyers representing her issued a statement saying she had neither resigned nor yet been fired.
“She will not resign,” Mark Zaid said on social media with Abbe Lowell, adding, “When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubberstamp unscientific reckless directives she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda.”
At least three other agency senior leaders resigned, according to notes they sent to staff:
- Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases;
- Chief Medical Officer Deb Houry;
- Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
“I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponization of public health,” Daskalakis said in his 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,” Houry wrote, adding that science should “never be censored or subject to political interpretations.”
Monarez “is no longer director” of the CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the agency, said in a statement on social media.
Health 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,” the statement added.
The changes come after a series of firings and policy moves from Kennedy that are likely to remake the CDC and perhaps further alter federal stances on vaccines. The firings have left staff and public health experts fearful that the transformation of the agency at the hands of Kennedy, who for years has sown doubt in the safety of vaccines and sharply criticized public health leaders, could hobble the CDC’s ability to protect public health in the United States.
“CDC is gone,” one public health expert sent in a text to STAT after the news.
Two CDC staffers with knowledge of the firings told STAT they found out about Monarez’s firing from the Washington Post. People described as “politicals” came into the CDC asking where Monarez was, according to one of the staffers, but she wasn’t in the office. Staff were shortly thereafter sent home.
News of the ouster came the same day that Kennedy announced on social media that the Food and Drug Administration had revoked emergency use authorization for Covid-19 vaccines and issued narrower approvals that could make it harder for some to get it.
Another high-ranking official, Jennifer Layden, who oversaw the agency’s data and surveillance efforts, also left the CDC, according to a former U.S. health official with knowledge of the matter. Layden’s departure was first reported by Politico. The news about Monarez was first reported by the Washington Post.
Monarez had been slated to present at an agency all-hands meeting on Monday, but told staff she had been called to Washington, D.C., and canceled her plans to appear, according to a Friday email sent to the agency and shared with STAT. On Wednesday, rumors of her departure began circulating among some agency staff.
Her dismissal “comes as a shock to CDC employees,” one person in the agency, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said.
“For a workforce already stretched thin by political attacks, budget cuts, layoffs, and violence on their doorstep, today’s news feels like yet another destabilizing blow,” the person said.
Said another CDC employee: “It’s utter chaos. … I don’t know how we are expected to function as an agency, which is of course exactly the point. We are being undermined by this administration at every possible turn.”
Monarez’s removal comes just weeks after she was sworn into the role. In her short tenure, she faced a shooting on CDC’s main campus in Atlanta, unprecedented changes to the agency’s vaccine policy process, and a period of turmoil as the agency’s workforce was slashed.
During her confirmation hearing in June, Monarez walked a careful line, affirming public health measures like vaccines but not directly disagreeing with Kennedy.
After the shooting, she faced questions about the impact of misinformation about the CDC and demonization of public health officials from Trump officials, including Kennedy.
Monarez was not Trump’s first pick as CDC director. The administration pulled the nomination of his first choice, Dave Weldon, in March, just hours before his confirmation hearing was scheduled to begin. There were concerns he did not have sufficient support from lawmakers.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Jennifer Layden’s name.