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Confirmed by the Senate only a few weeks ago, Susan Monarez has been removed from her post as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the latest in a series of major shakeups to rock the beleaguered public health agency.

The Washington Post first reported the news, citing several officials inside the Trump administration. When contacted by Ars Technica, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed the news and directed Ars to a post on its official X account. It read:

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. @SecKennedy 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 post did not offer any explanation for Monarez’s ouster. According to The Washington Post, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an outspoken anti-vaccine activist, had for weeks been pressuring Monarez to reverse course on her administration’s COVID-19 vaccines. He had asked her to revoke their approvals, but she refused to do so without first consulting the CDC’s vaccine advisory committees. Kennedy then reportedly asked her to resign, accusing her of being disloyal to President Trump’s agenda.

Monarez refused. Instead, she reached out to Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La. ), who had helped shepherd Kennedy’s own Senate confirmation earlier this year after Kennedy gave him assurances. Cassidy tried to push back against Kennedy’s demands, leading to a heated shouting match. Afterward, administration officials informed Monarez that she must either resign or face termination.

Lawyers for Monarez, Mark Zaid, and Abbe Lowell, took to social media with a statement of their own. They wrote that Monarez has not resigned and has yet to receive official notification from the White House about her termination. “Her ouster came after she refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts,” the statement read. “She chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda.” Zaid later told Ars Technica that at 8:15 p.m. ET on August 27, Monarez still had not received any formal notification of her termination.

CDC Official Stepped In for a Brief Interim Period

Monarez’s Senate confirmation in late July had been a breakthrough moment. She was confirmed in a 51–47 vote along party lines, becoming the first-ever CDC director to be subject to Senate confirmation after a 2022 law made the position subject to the chamber’s approval. Kennedy himself presided over her swearing-in on July 31, calling her “a leader with unimpeachable scientific credentials and a superb record of protecting and promoting the public health” and expressing hope that she would be able to restore confidence in the CDC.

Her résumé spoke for itself. Monarez has a PhD in microbiology and immunology. She previously worked as the deputy director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a public-private partnership inside the Biden administration. Before that, she was the deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), and also worked for the Department of Homeland Security, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the National Security Council. She also briefly served as the CDC’s acting director earlier this year, until she stepped down to allow Trump to formally nominate her.

Public health experts had praised her appointment. Jennifer Nuzzo of Brown University described Monarez as “a loyal, hardworking civil servant who leads with evidence and pragmatism.” Georges Benjamin, the head of the American Public Health Association, described her as “an excellent researcher and manager.”

But her tenure as CDC director was cut short in an atmosphere of profound turmoil. The CDC has been hemorrhaging hundreds of staffers via layoffs and buyouts. Many of its programs have been cut or disrupted. Kennedy himself has inflamed tensions by branding COVID-19 vaccines “the deadliest vaccine ever made” and the CDC a “cesspool of corruption.”

On August 8, tragedy also struck. A gunman radicalized by vaccine misinformation opened fire at the CDC campus, where he had traveled after watching an online livestream about the agency. The shooter fired nearly 500 rounds, and about 200 hit six different CDC buildings. One local police officer was killed, and terrified CDC staffers scrambled for cover. The shooter had blamed vaccines for his own health problems and specifically targeted the CDC.

Her reported ouster has only compounded the sense of crisis at the CDC. Stat News has confirmed the resignations of three other high-ranking officials: Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; Deb Houry, the CDC’s Chief Medical Officer; and Demetre Daskalakis, the head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

Daskalakis’s departure message read, “I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponization of public health.” Houry’s farewell note emphasized that science should “never be censored or subject to political interpretations.”

Earlier the same day, Politico reported that Jennifer Layden, the head of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology, also resigned.

For many on both inside and outside the CDC, the spate of resignations marks a low point for an agency once regarded as the gold standard of evidence-based public health. It is now mired by political interference and a crisis of trust at a time when the need for public health expertise could not be greater.