White House says Trump has fired CDC Director Susan Monarez

The White House on Wednesday said President Donald Trump has fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez after she refused to resign, and will name a new replacement soon.

“The president fired her, which he has every right to do,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing.

She said Trump has “the authority to fire those who are not aligned with his mission,” and that he or Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will announce a new director “very soon.”

In a statement, lawyers for Monarez said “we’re not aware of anything new happening.”

“Receiving an email from an HR staffer simply saying ‘you’re fired’ is insufficient as a matter of law to constitute the termination of a federal employee, especially one appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate,” Monarez’s attorney Mark Zaid said.

It’s the latest in a leadership upheaval at the CDC.

Earlier Thursday, Zaid said she remains in the role because she is a presidential appointee and only Trump can fire her. Zaid said White House personnel had fired her, not the president.

He also said she “refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts” and that “she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda.”

“For that, she has been targeted,” he said.

Monarez and Kennedy were at odds over vaccine policy, The New York Times reported Wednesday, citing an anonymous administration official.

Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic, has taken several steps to change immunization policy in the U.S.

Monarez, a longtime federal government scientist, was sworn in on July 31. She is the first CDC director to be confirmed by the Senate following a new law passed during the pandemic that required lawmakers to approve nominees for the role.

At least four other top health officials announced Wednesday they were quitting the agency shortly after the Health and Human Services Department said Monarez was “no longer” CDC director in a post on X.

In an interview on Fox News on Thursday, Kennedy declined to comment on “personnel issues.” But he said the agency “is in trouble, and we need to fix it, and we are fixing it, and it may be that some people should not be working there anymore.”

He said Trump has “very, very ambitious hopes for the CDC right now.” But Kennedy said the CDC “has problems,” claiming that the agency took the “wrong” approach when it came to social distancing, masking and school closures during the Covid pandemic.

“If there’s really a deeply, deeply embedded … malaise at the agency, and we need strong leadership that will go in there and that will be able to execute on President Trump’s broad ambitions for this agency, the gold standard science and who it was when we were growing up,” Kennedy said. “We’re going to be the most respected health agency in the world.”

The leadership departures comes at a tumultuous time for the agency, which is reeling from a gunman’s attack on its Atlanta headquarters on Aug. 8. A police officer died in the shooting. 

— CNBC’s Angelica Peebles contributed to this report.