Showdown at CDC as director refuses to resign, amid pressure from HHS

Lawyers for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez said Wednesday evening that she would not resign, despite attempts by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to oust her for not putting a “rubber-stamp” on “unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.”

“Dr. Monarez has neither resigned nor received notification from the White House that she has been fired, and as a person of integrity and devoted to science, she will not resign,” lawyers Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell wrote in a statement on behalf of Monarez.

It comes after HHS posted a statement on X earlier Wednesday, stating that “Susan Monarez is no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

“We thank her for her dedicated service to the American people,” the account wrote.

The White House, which has the authority to dismiss Monarez, did not respond to a request for comment on next steps.

Monarez, the recently sworn-in director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was confirmed by the Senate just four weeks ago.

Monarez was the second nominee for the position, after President Donald Trump’s first nominee, Dave Weldon, didn’t appear to have the votes for a Senate confirmation, in part because of his history of vaccine skepticism.

Monarez, during her confirmation hearing, was clear about her support for vaccines: “I think vaccines save lives. I think that we need to continue to support the promotion of utilization of vaccines,” she said in July.

But over the last few months, her boss, Kennedy, has made significant changes to vaccine policy, particularly for COVID vaccines, that have the potential to limit access to the shot.

Earlier Wednesday, Kennedy’s FDA narrowed the scope for who will be approved to get the updated vaccines available this fall and winter.

The latest vaccines were only approved for elderly people — adults aged 65 and older — and for younger people if they have at least one underlying condition that puts them at higher risk for severe illness, departing from the prior guidance that everyone 6 months and older should get vaccinated.

The FDA decision will come before the CDC later this month, where Monarez and a committee of advisers, recently all replaced with handpicked choices by Kennedy, will have the chance to weigh in – and Monarez will ultimately need to sign off.

In March, Kennedy also oversaw a change to the pediatric vaccine schedule, shifting to a “shared clinical decision making” model that leaves the decision to vaccinate children against COVID to parents, alongside advice from a doctor.

Kennedy has defended the vaccine policy changes as advancing “science, safety, and common sense.”

Monarez’s lawyers said Wednesday that she was “targeted” for pushing back against Kennedy’s changes.

“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. For that, she has been targeted,” Zaid and Lowell said in the statement.

Following HHS’s statement about Monarez’s departure, the three most senior career officials at the CDC resigned, according to emails obtained by ABC News.

Deb Houry, Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director for Program and Science at CDC, Dan Jernigan, Director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, and Demetre Daskalakis, Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, sent emails to colleagues on Wednesday night informing them that they’d submitted their resignations, each mentioning changing policies at CDC.

“I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponizing of public health,” Daskalakis wrote to colleagues.

“You are the best team I have ever worked with, and you continue to shine despite this dark cloud over the agency and our profession,” he said.

Houry, who has worked at CDC through Democrat and Republican administrations, said “the science at CDC should never be censored or subject to political pauses or interpretations.”

“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. This is a heartbreaking decision that I make with a heavy heart,” Houry wrote.

The wave of departures comes during a tumultuous time for the CDC, just a few weeks after a shooting on the main campus in Atlanta that hit multiple buildings. Authorities said they found the alleged shooter had been harboring years-long grievances with the COVID-19 vaccine.

Monarez’s departure was first reported by the Washington Post.