Another bureaucrat dug in like a tick and is refusing to leave the building — quite literally.
Susan Monarez, the freshly minted (and now very un-minted) director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is making headlines not for any breakthrough in public health, but for flat-out refusing to leave her post after being told she’s out. Fired. Done. Thank you for your service — now pack up your Fauci bobblehead and go.
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. @SecKennedy has full confidence in his team at @CDCgov who will continue to be vigilant in protecting Americans against infectious…
— HHS.gov (@HHSGov) August 27, 2025
But Monarez isn’t going quietly into that Beltway night. Nope. She’s lawyering up with not one but two of Washington’s favorite celebrity attorneys, Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell — yes, that Abbe Lowell — and she’s insisting she hasn’t resigned and hasn’t been fired. According to them, it’s all a big, ugly political mess because she wouldn’t play ball with what they describe as “unscientific, reckless directives.” That’s right, Monarez and her legal entourage are claiming she’s being punished for — get ready for it — following “The Science™.”
🚨 BREAKING: CDC Director Susan Monarez has been OUSTED by RFK Jr. after she attempted to push for the COVID vaccine, per multiple reports
Multiple other top CDC officials are out as well, as they too complained about rescinding approvals for the vaccine
Good riddance! 👋🏻 pic.twitter.com/xOJ3ws06Cz
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) August 27, 2025
And by “science,” we mean the same science that spent years lecturing America while being wrong about masks, wrong about school closures, wrong about vaccine efficacy, and somehow still managed to call anyone who asked questions a “threat to public health.”
Now, let’s back up a second. Monarez was hand-picked by the Trump administration after the original nominee bowed out. She sailed through Senate confirmation as the first-ever Senate-confirmed CDC director (thanks to a 2022 law change). She doesn’t even have a medical degree, but hey — that hasn’t stopped plenty of other folks in Washington from telling us how to live our lives. She’s got a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology, which is fine, but let’s not pretend she’s been out in the trenches with doctors or patients.
Now, less than a month into the job, the new boss at Health and Human Services — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., of all people — decides she’s out. According to anonymous sources (because of course), Monarez wouldn’t agree to walk back certain COVID-19 vaccine approvals, and that apparently put her on the naughty list. Next thing you know, she’s trying to go over the administration’s head to a sitting senator, which — let’s just say — didn’t go over well. One could argue that the maneuver crossed from “principled stand” to “bureaucratic insubordination” pretty quickly.
NEW: RFK Jr. says the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez is just the beginning of cleaning out the ROT inside the agency.
As Secretary Kennedy explained, the CDC was at the CENTER of the Covid misinformation campaign…and the problems run MUCH deeper.
“Today on CDC’s website… pic.twitter.com/y1RgEM1Ci1
— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) August 28, 2025
And let’s not ignore the irony here. For years, conservatives were told that challenging the CDC was tantamount to declaring war on reality. But now that someone inside the CDC stands in the way of a new administration’s policies, suddenly it’s heroic to resist authority. Remember when career officials were supposed to fall in line with elected leadership? Funny how that rule changes depending on who’s in charge.
The dominoes didn’t stop with Monarez. Three other top CDC officials have now hit the eject button — including Demetre Daskalakis, who wasted no time posting a dramatic resignation letter on social media. He decried “views” that don’t “reflect scientific reality” and made sure to throw in grievances about transgender policy, HIV programs, and vaccine scheduling. Because apparently, the entire fate of public health now rests on whether federal agencies use all the right buzzwords.
Let’s be real here. The CDC has spent years torching its credibility, and now it’s being treated like a political fiefdom instead of a scientific agency. Monarez may be trying to spin this as a moral stand, but at the end of the day, if the President and HHS Secretary don’t want you running the CDC — guess what? You don’t run the CDC. That’s how this works. You can’t just plant your heels in the linoleum and declare yourself director for life.
The Left spent four years screaming about how Trump needed to respect the so-called “norms” of government and let the bureaucrats do their jobs. Now we’ve got a President who campaigned on draining the swamp of his own party’s missteps, and suddenly the permanent government class thinks they’re untouchable.
Sorry, but if you want to set public health policy, you don’t get to ignore elected leadership just because you disagree. You want to call the shots? Run for office. Until then, maybe remember that nobody voted for Susan Monarez.
