The White House says the director of the nation’s top public health agency has been fired after less than one month in the job, and several top agency leaders have resigned, saying President Donald Trump’s administration is putting politics in the way of keeping Americans safe.
Susan Monarez isn’t “aligned with” Trump’s agenda and refused to resign, so the White House terminated her, spokesman Kush Desai said Wednesday night. Her lawyers have challenged the firing, and said she was targeted for standing up for science.
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Mystery surrounds $1.2 billion Army detention tent camp in Texas desert
The Trump administration awarded a $1.2 billion contract last month to build and operate what’s expected to become the nation’s largest immigration detention complex. The money is going to a tiny Virginia firm with no experience running correction facilities.
A member of Congress who recently toured the camp said she was concerned that such a small and inexperienced firm had been entrusted to build and run a facility expected to house up to 5,000 migrants.
Chicago doesn’t want or need National Guard, Pritzker tells AP during city tour
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is doubling down on his message to Trump that the nation’s third-largest city doesn’t need or want military intervention to fight crime.
“We want to make sure and show off that there’s no emergency happening in Chicago,” the Democrat told The Associated Press during a walking tour Wednesday of a South Side neighborhood where revitalization has included an art studio, aquarium store and wine bar. “We’ve been trying to prevent crime and it’s been working.”
Pritzker, eyed as a possible 2028 presidential contender, has traded insults with Trump over his threats to deploy the National Guard to Chicago and Baltimore, as the administration has done in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
Pritzker and Chicago leaders vow to sue, but Pritzker meanwhile has convened news conferences, posted sarcastic social media and choreographed a campaign-style neighborhood stop to keep his city in the spotlight.
▶ Read more about Pritzker’s message to Trump
CDC director is fired and other agency leaders resign
The administration’s efforts to force Monarez out coincides with the resignations this week of at least four top CDC officials.
They include Dr. Debra Houry, the agency’s deputy director; Dr. Daniel Jernigan, head of the agency’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, head of its National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; and Dr. Jennifer Layden, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology.
In an email seen by an AP reporter, Houry lamented the damaging effects on the agency from planned budget cuts, reorganization plans and firings.
“I am committed to protecting the public’s health, but the ongoing changes prevent me from continuing in my job as a leader of the agency,” she wrote, noting the Trump administration’s misinformation about vaccines and new limits on CDC communications.
In a different email, Daskalakis wrote: “I am no longer able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponization of public health.”
▶ Read more about Monarez’s departure
Monarez’ lawyers say she’s been targeted for protecting the public
Susan Monarez’s lawyers Mark Zaid and Abbe David Lowell issued a statement Wednesday evening saying she had neither resigned nor been told she was fired.
“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. For that, she has been targeted,” the attorneys wrote.
“This is not about one official. It is about the systematic dismantling of public health institutions, the silencing of experts, and the dangerous politicization of science.”
CDC director Susan Monarez is out after less than a month on the job
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says Susan Monarez is no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
HHS officials did not explain why Monarez is no longer with the agency.
Before the department’s announcement, she told The Associated Press: “I can’t comment.”
Monarez was the agency’s 21st director and the first to pass through Senate confirmation following a 2023 law. She was sworn in July 31 — less than a month ago, making her the shortest-serving CDC director in the history of the 79-year-old agency.
▶ Read more about Monarez’s sudden departure
FDA limits COVID shot access for millions of adults and children
U.S. regulators approved Pfizer’s updated COVID-19 shot Wednesday but with limits that could complicate access for millions of American adults and children.
Pfizer said in a release its vaccine is now approved for all seniors to protect against the virus this fall. But the Food and Drug Administration narrowed its use for younger adults and children to those with at least one high-risk health condition, such as asthma or obesity. That presents new barriers to access for millions of Americans who’d have to prove their risk — and millions more who may want to get vaccinated and suddenly no longer qualify.
This year’s updated vaccines target a newer version of the continuously evolving virus and are set to begin shipping immediately. But it could be days or weeks before many Americans know if they’ll be able to get one, with access dependent on various decisions by federal health advisers, private health insurers, pharmacies and state authorities.
The new restrictions — previewed by FDA officials in May — are a break from the previous U.S. policy, which recommended an annual COVID-19 shot for all Americans 6 months and up.
Researchers send letter to FDA on abortion pill safety
More than 260 reproductive health researchers submitted a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday affirming the safety record of the abortion medication mifepristone.
In the letter, the researchers urge the FDA not to impose new restrictions on the drug and to make decisions based on “gold-standard science.”
Dr. Marty Makary, who leads the FDA, hasn’t committed to specific action on the pill, but many Americans wonder if there will be new restrictions under the Trump administration.
Medical professionals call it “among the safest medications” ever approved by the FDA. But a Christian conservative group that sued the FDA over the drug says it has caused “tens of thousands” of “emergency complications.”
Mifepristone is typically used with misoprostol in medication abortions, which make up close to two-thirds of abortions in the U.S.
