(NewsNation) — Susan Monarez, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was fired from her position following an argument with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over her refusal to pull approvals for several COVID-19 vaccines, a source told NewsNation.
According to the source, Monarez and Kennedy argued before she was asked to resign. When she refused, she was fired on Wednesday. Monarez’s attorneys have pushed back against the firing, according to NewsNation partner The Hill.
“Dr. Monarez 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,” her attorneys, Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell, said in a prepared statement.
Monarez’s attorneys took aim at Kennedy and said he and the Department of Health and Human Services “have set their sights on weaponizing public health for political gain and putting millions of American lives at risk.”
They said Monarez “refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.”
The HHS on Wednesday doubled down on Monarez’s firing on social media: “Susan Monarez is no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We thank her for her dedicated service to the American people.”
In response to the agency’s statement, at least three top officials at the CDC have resigned: Deb Houry, CDC chief medical officer; Dan Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; and Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
Jernigan, Daskalakis and Houry were escorted off the premises Thursday, according to a source familiar with familiar with the resignations.
