3 senior leaders quit after CDC director is ousted

Three senior leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offered their resignations Wednesday shortly after a government social-media account said Susan Monarez was no longer director of the agency.

In separate emails, Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Demetre Daskalakis, and National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Director Dan Jernigan cited ongoing budget cuts, agency reorganization and politicalization of public health efforts in their decisions to the leave the CDC. Government Executive obtained copies of the messages.

“For the good of the nation and the world, the science at CDC should never be censored or subject to political pauses or interpretations,” said Houry in an email to CDC senior leaders, adding that “proposed budget cuts and reorganization plans will negatively impact CDC’s ability to address” a range of public health challenges. 

“I am committed to protecting the public’s health, but ongoing changes prevent me from continuing my job as a leader of the agency,” she said.

The resignations came just hours after the official X account of the Department of Health and Human Services said that Monarez was “no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” ending the Senate-confirmed leader's tenure after less than a month. HHS officials did not say why.

Monarez has neither resigned nor been told she was fired, her lawyers Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell said in a Wednesday evening statement reported by the Washington Post, which broke the news of her ouster.

“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,” they wrote. “For that reason, she has been targeted.”

The resignations come less than three weeks after a gunman fired hundreds of bullets into the CDC’s Atlanta headquarters over what police said was opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine shot. 

After the shooting, CDC employees told Government Executive that before Monarez arrived as director, they had received “almost no communication from leadership, basically since the beginning of the year” and that she had been working to improve on that. 

In June, CDC officials said the the agency had lost nearly a quarter of its staff, some 3,000 employees, since President Donald Trump took office, through reductions in force, retirement incentives, deferred resignation, and firings. Some layoffs have been reversed.

The CDC has also been at the center of controversy related to policy actions by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Since his confirmation in February, Kennedy, a noted vaccine critic, has replaced the members of a vaccine advisory board and terminated $500 million in research funding for mRNA vaccines.

In their statement, Monarez's lawyers accused Kennedy of “weaponizing public health for political gain” and “putting millions of American lives at risk” by purging health officials from government.

Daskalakis and Jernigan also cited broader policy moves within the CDC as the reasons behind their resignations.

“I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponizing of public health,” Daskalakis said in his email. “You are the best team I’ve ever worked with, and you continue to shine despite this dark cloud over the agency and our profession.”

HHS and CDC officials were not available for comment.