Sept. 17, 2025:
WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s public health system is headed to a “very dangerous place” with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his team of anti-vaccine advisers in charge, fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief Susan Monarez warned senators on Wednesday (Sept. 17, 2025).
Describing extraordinary turmoil inside the nation’s health agencies, Monarez and former CDC Chief Medical Officer Chief Debra Houry described exchanges in which Kennedy or political advisers rebuffed data supporting the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
Monarez, who was fired after just 29 days on the job following disagreements with Kennedy, told senators deadly diseases like polio and whooping cough, long contained, are poised to make a comeback in the U.S.
“I believe preventable diseases will return, and I believe we will have our children harmed by things they don’t need to be harmed by,” Monarez said before the Senate health committee.
Monarez describes her firing by RFK
Monarez said she was ordered by Kennedy to resign if she did not sign off on new vaccine recommendations, which are expected to be released later this week by an advisory panel that Kennedy has stocked with medical experts and vaccine skeptics. She said that when she asked for data or science to back up Kennedy’s request to change the childhood vaccination schedule, he offered none.
She added that Kennedy told her “he spoke to the president every day about changing the childhood vaccination schedule.”
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician who chairs the powerful health committee, listened intently as Monarez and Houry described conversations with Kennedy and his advisers.
“To be clear, he said there was not science or data, but he still expected you to change schedule?” Cassidy asked.
Cassidy carefully praised President Donald Trump for his commitment to promoting health policies but made it clear he was concerned about the circumstances surrounding Monarez’s removal.
Houry, meanwhile, described similar exchanges with Kennedy’s political advisers, who took an unprecedented role in preparing materials for meetings of the CDC’s advisory vaccine panel.
Ahead of this week’s meeting of the panel, Houry offered to include data around the hepatitis B shot that is administered to newborns to prevent spread of the deadly disease from the mother. She said a Kennedy adviser dismissed the data as biased because it might support keeping the shots on the schedule.
“You’re suggesting that they wanted to move away from the birth dose, but they were afraid that your data would say that they should retain it?” Cassidy asked.
Critical vaccine decisions are ahead
During the Senate hearing, Democrats, all of whom opposed Monarez’s nomination, also questioned Kennedy’s motives for firing Monarez, who was approved for the job unanimously by Republicans.
“Frankly, she stood up for protecting the well-being of the American people, and for that reason she was fired,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats.
Monarez said it was both her refusal to sign off on new vaccination recommendations without scientific evidence and her unwillingness to fire high-ranking career CDC officials without cause that led to her ousting.
Kennedy has denied Monarez’s accusations that he ordered “rubber-stamped” vaccine recommendations but has acknowledged he demanded firings. He has described Monarez as admitting to him that she is “untrustworthy,” a claim Monarez has denied through her attorney.
While Senate Republicans have been mostly loath to challenge Trump or even Kennedy, many of them have expressed concerns about the lack of availability of COVID-19 vaccines and the health department’s decisions to scale back some childhood vaccines.
Others have backed up Kennedy’s distrust of the nation’s health agencies.
Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall, a doctor, aggressively questioned Monarez about her “philosophy” on vaccines as she explained that her decisions were based on science. Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville said Trump was elected to make change and suggested Monarez’s job was to be loyal to Kennedy.
“America needs better than this,” Tuberville said.
The Senate hearing was taking place just a day before the vaccine panel starts its two-day session in Atlanta to discuss shots against COVID-19, hepatitis B and chickenpox. It’s unclear how the panel might vote on the recommendations, though members have raised doubts about whether hepatitis B shots administered to newborns are necessary and have suggested COVID-19 recommendations should be more restricted.
The CDC director must endorse those recommendations before they become official. Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill, now serving as the CDC’s acting director, will be responsible for that.
“I’m very nervous about it,” Monarez said of the meeting.
Aug. 28, 2025:
UNDATED-AP- 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 say she’s being targeted for standing up for science, and won’t leave unless the president himself fires her, which is the legal process for a Senate-confirmed officer.
The Latest:
RFK, Jr., wants new CDC leaders to address ‘deeply embedded’ agency opposition
HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. declined to directly comment on the ouster of CDC Director Susan Monarez and the resignations of several other top agency officials in an appearance Thursday (Aug. 28, 2025) on Fox and Friends. But he signaled that he continues to have concerns about CDC officials being aligned with his and Trump’s outlook on health policy.
“So we need to look at the priorities of the agency, if there’s really a deeply, deeply embedded, I would say, malaise at the agency,” Kennedy said. “And we need strong leadership that will go in there and that will be able to execute on President Trump’s broad ambitions.”
The White House confirmed late Wednesday that Monarez was fired after it was determined she isn’t “aligned with” Trump’s agenda and refused to resign. She was sworn in as head of the CDC less than a month ago.
Fired CDC Director won’t leave because termination was legally invalid, lawyer says
Attorney Mark Zaid said in a post on X late Wednesday that CDC Director Susan Monarez, as a presidential appointee and Senate-confirmed officer, can be fired only by President Donald Trump.
Zaid says that instead, Monarez was informed of her firing by staff in the presidential personnel office. Zaid says that notification was “legally deficient” and that Monarez will remain as the public health agency’s leader.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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