A flurry of resignations at the nation’s largest public health agency has alarmed health officials across the country who fear that Donald Trump’s administration and its Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are endangering millions of lives by politicizing science and dismantling institutions that save lives.
Four top officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention abruptly left their positions Wednesday after the agency’s director, Susan Monarez, was forced out of the job.
The agency operates under the Department of Health and Human Services and Secretary Kennedy, who had sworn Monarez into office less than a month ago after she was appointed by Trump and confirmed by a Senate vote.
In their public resignation letters, outgoing health officials delivered bleak warnings about the state of the agency, which they say is relying on “unscientific” policies while promoting “misinformation” that “will result in death and disability of vulnerable children and adults.”
“We can trust the CDC no more,” according to Lawrence O. Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown Law and professor of medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center.
“America is going to be far less healthy, far less safe, and when the next global health emergency hits, we’ll knock on CDC’s door and no one will be there,” he told The Independent.
Monarez’s removal signals a “dangerous politicization of science and public health,” Gostin said.
“The CDC is on fire — and RFK Jr. is the arsonist,” according to Erik Polyak, executive director of 314 Action, a science-focused progressive political action committee.
“He’s torching the agency in the middle of a five-alarm blaze by firing and forcing out the very experts who’ve spent their lives keeping Americans safe from outbreaks and epidemics,” Polyak added. “America has never been more vulnerable than it is today.”
The abrupt departures will likely throw the agency into further chaos after a series of controversial public health decisions, mass firings, and a shooting at its Atlanta headquarters which killed a police officer.
Their “departures are a serious loss for America,” according to Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
“The loss of experienced, world-class infectious disease experts at CDC is directly related to the failed leadership of extremists currently in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services,” he said in a statement.
After HHS announced that Monarez was “no longer” the CDC director, four career officials at the agency announced they were leaving: chief medical officer Debra Houry; National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases director Daniel Jernigan; public health data chief Jennifer Layden; and respiratory diseases director Demetre Daskalakis.
“Enough is enough,” Daskalakis wrote in his resignation letter, which he posted to social media.
“I am not sure who the Secretary is listening to, but it is quite certainly not to us,” he wrote. “Unvetted and conflicted outside organizations seem to be the sources HHS use over the gold standard science of CDC and other reputable sources.”
Kennedy, a prolific vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist, should “not be considered a source of accurate information,” Daskalakis wrote.
“The intentional eroding of trust in low-risk vaccines favoring natural infection and unproven remedies will bring us to a pre-vaccine era where only the strong will survive and many if not all will suffer,” he said.
In her letter, Houry warned that the “overstating of risks” of vaccines alongside “the rise of misinformation” has “cost lives, as demonstrated by the highest number of U.S. measles cases in 30 years and the violent attack on our agency.”
Daskalakis said he was not resigning because of the CDC shooting but because of the “cowardice” in the Trump administration that fosters violence against public health agencies.
“My grandfather, who I am named after, stood up to fascist forces in Greece and lost his life doing so,” he added. “I am resigning to make him and his legacy proud. I am resigning because of the cowardice of a leader that cannot admit that HIS and his minions’ words over decades created an environment where violence like this can occur. I reject his and his colleagues’ thoughts and prayers, and advise they direct those to people that they have not actively harmed.”
The Independent has requested comment from HHS.
Earlier Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration moved to revoke emergency use authorization for Covid-19 vaccines and approved new versions of the shots for adults over age 65 and young people considered at higher risk of severe disease — changes that will likely make vaccines much harder to access for healthier people.
Monarez was then reportedly called into a meeting with Kennedy and pressured to resign, which she refused.
That afternoon, the X account for HHS announced Monarez was “no longer” CDC director.
“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,” her lawyers Mark S. Zaid and Abbe David Lowell said in a statement.
“For that, she has been targeted,” they added. “As a person of integrity and devoted to science, she will not resign.”
Hours later, the White House said Monarez was “terminated.”
Trump “has every right” to fire officials who are “not aligned with his mission,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday.
A “replacement” will be announced “very soon,” Leavitt said.
Trump’s firing of Monarez “makes absolutely no sense and underscores the destructive chaos” inside Kennedy’s health department, according to Dr. Robert Steinbrook, health research director at Public Citizen, which has joined an avalanche of litigation against the Trump administration.
“The CDC is being decapitated,” he said. “This is an absolute disaster for public health.”
At a press conference on Thursday, former CDC director Richard Besser said he is “dumbstruck” by the apparent lack of urgency among members of Congress to perform oversight over Trump’s health officials and the destructive wave of public health decisions made under Kennedy.
Lawmakers are “shirking their duty to such a profound level,” he said.
