The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been thrust into turmoil following the abrupt removal of its director, Susan Monarez, and the resignation of several top officials, all against a backdrop of fierce debate over vaccine policy and political influence at the nation’s leading public health agency.
On August 28, 2025, both the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the White House issued statements declaring that Monarez had been removed from her post as CDC director. Yet, the story hardly ends there. Monarez’s attorney, Mark Zaid, fired back late that night, asserting that only President Trump himself has the legal authority to remove a Senate-confirmed presidential appointee like Monarez. "Our client was notified tonight by White House staff in the personnel office that she was fired. As a presidential appointee, Senate-confirmed officer, only the president himself can fire her," Zaid wrote, according to Nexstar Media. He further argued, "We reject notification Dr. Monarez has received as legally deficient and she remains as CDC Director." Zaid said the White House Counsel had been notified of their position.
Despite this assertion, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters the next day that President Trump had indeed fired Monarez, and that a new nominee for CDC director would be announced soon. The president himself has remained silent on the matter, leaving the public and the CDC’s own staff in a state of confusion about who is actually in charge.
The leadership crisis deepened when four senior CDC leaders—including Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases—resigned on August 27, 2025. According to The New York Times and the Washington Examiner, these officials accused HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of politicizing the agency and weaponizing it for his own political ends. In his resignation letter, Daskalakis wrote, "I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health."
Monarez herself, a career government scientist, had been nominated after Trump’s first pick for the CDC, former Florida Rep. David Weldon, failed to gain enough Republican support in the Senate. Her confirmation was a narrow one: a 51-47 vote, largely along party lines, with Democrats opposing Kennedy’s appointment as HHS secretary. Monarez’s support for vaccines put her at odds with Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, though she avoided direct criticism of him during her confirmation hearing.
The rift between Monarez and Kennedy reportedly came to a head over vaccine policy. According to The New York Times, Kennedy told Monarez on August 25, 2025, to resign or be fired, frustrated by her resistance to his directives. Instead, Monarez reached out to Senator Bill Cassidy, the Republican chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee—a move that further infuriated Kennedy. Cassidy announced on August 29 that his committee would conduct oversight of the CDC leadership changes, though what form that will take remains unclear.
In a statement, Monarez’s attorney alleged she was being targeted because she "refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts," adding, "she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda." Monarez, the statement said, "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."
The White House, however, doubled down. Spokesperson Kush Desai stated, "As her attorney’s statement makes abundantly clear, Susan Monarez is not aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again. Since Susan Monarez refused to resign despite informing HHS leadership of her intent to do so, the White House has terminated Monarez from her position with the CDC."
The leadership shake-up comes amid sweeping changes to federal vaccine policy. In June, Kennedy dismissed all previous members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replaced them with seven new appointees. Thirteen of the 17 previous members had been appointed by former President Joe Biden. The committee, which guides national immunization policy, has grown increasingly controversial under Kennedy’s stewardship.
Demetre Daskalakis, in an interview with ABC’s This Week on August 31, warned that the agency was moving in an "ideologic direction" that could undermine public health. "From my vantage point, as a doctor who’s taken the Hippocratic oath, I only see harm coming," Daskalakis said. He added, "They’re really moving in an ideologic direction where they want to see the undoing of vaccination." Daskalakis specifically cited Kennedy’s new appointees to ACIP as pushing for a rollback of vaccine recommendations.
Recent FDA actions have also fueled controversy. In August 2025, the FDA approved COVID-19 vaccines for people over 65 and for younger individuals only if they have underlying conditions. This, Daskalakis warned, could leave millions—including young children—without access to vaccines. "Six months old to 2 years old, their underlying condition is youth; 53% of those children hospitalized last season had no underlying conditions. The data say that in that age range, you should be vaccinating your child. I understand that not everybody does it, but they have limited access by narrowing that recommendation. Insurance may not cover it," Daskalakis explained to ABC.
Kennedy, for his part, celebrated the FDA’s move on social media, writing, "I promised 4 things: 1. to end covid vaccine mandates. 2. to keep vaccines available to people who want them, especially the vulnerable. 3. to demand placebo-controlled trials from companies. 4. to end the emergency. In a series of FDA actions today we accomplished all four goals." He added, "The emergency use authorizations for Covid vaccines, once used to justify broad mandates on the general public during the Biden administration, are now rescinded."
The policy shift doesn’t stop with COVID-19 vaccines. In early August, HHS cancelled $500 million worth of mRNA vaccine development, affecting 22 vaccines in the pipeline. Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Kennedy’s newly appointed chair of ACIP, announced in June that a working group would review the Hepatitis B vaccine for newborns. The upcoming ACIP meeting in mid-September will include the Hepatitis B vaccine on its agenda, a move Daskalakis said raises further alarm about the future of childhood immunization in the United States.
As the dust settles, the fallout from the CDC’s leadership crisis and the broader conflict over vaccine policy is only beginning to be felt. With oversight hearings looming and the agency’s top ranks in flux, the direction of American public health policy hangs in the balance.
