Susan Monarez, the nominee of President Donald Trump who will be the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), testifies for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in the building of the Dirksen Senate Office on June 25, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Kayla Bartkowski | Getty images
The White House said on Thursday that President Donald Trump has fired the Centers for Disease Control and the Director of Prevention Susan Monarez after she refused to resign.
Hours later, NBC News reported that the White House had taken advantage of Jim O'Neill, Undersecretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, to serve as an interim director of the CDC. O'Neill swore as deputy secretary in June, and is a key assistant for HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The temporal appointment suggests that Kennedy could have a clearer path to make changes in the United States immunization policy, particularly after Monaz had rejected some of his requests. Monarez's permanent replacement will have to be confirmed by the Senate.
During an informative session on Thursday, the White House Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Trump dismissed Monarch, “who has every right to do.” She said Trump has “the authority to fire those who are not aligned with their mission” and that he or Kennedy Jr. will announce a new director of the CDC “very soon.”
The earlier Thursday, Monarch's lawyer, Mark Zaid, said that Monarrez would remain in the paper because she is a presidential designated and that only Trump can fire her. Zaid said the White House staff had tried to fire her, not the president.
In a statement, Monarch's lawyers said “they were not aware of anything new.”
“Receiving an email from a human resources employee who simply says 'is fired' is insufficient as a matter of right to establish the termination of a federal employee, especially one designated by the president and confirmed by the Senate,” said Zaid.
He also said that she “refused to stamp of non -scientific rubber, reckless directives and shot dedicated health experts” and that “she chose to protect the public instead of serving a political agenda.”
“That's why, she has been attacked,” he said.
Monarch and Kennedy disagree on vaccine policy, the New York Times reported Wednesday, citing an anonymous administration official.
Kennedy, an outstanding skeptic of the vaccine, has taken several measures to change immunization policy in the United States
Monarch was sworn on July 31. A federal government scientist for a long time, is the first director of the CDC to be confirmed by the Senate after a new law approved during the pandemic that required the legislators to approve the nominees for the role.
Trump's movement to expel it is the last one in an agitation of leadership in the CDC.
At least four other senior health officials announced Wednesday who resigned from the agency shortly after HHS said that Monaz “was no longer” the director of the CDC in a publication about X.
In a Fox News interview on Thursday morning, Kennedy refused to comment on “Personnel problems.” But he said that the agency “is in trouble, and we have to solve it, and that we are fixing it, and it may be that some people should no longer be working there.”
Kennedy said Trump has “very, very ambitious hope for CDC at this time.” But he said that the CDCs “have problems”, claiming that the agency adopted the “incorrect” approach when it was social distancing, masking and school closures during the Covid pandemic.
“We need to analyze the priorities of the agency, if there is really deeply rooted discomfort … discomfort in the agency, and we need a strong leadership that will enter there and that can be executed in the wide ambitions of President Trump for this agency, the science of the gold standard and what it was when we were growing, which was the most respected health agency in the world,” Kennedy said.
Leadership outings arrive at a tumultuous moment for the agency, which is recovering from the attack of a gun against the Atlanta headquarters of the CDC on August 8. A police officer died in the shooting.
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect the right day that the White House said Trump dismissed Susan Monarch after she refused to resign, and to reflect the correct writing of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s last appointment.
– Angelica Peebles de CNBC contributed to this report.
