Another high-ranking federal employee is refusing to leave after being ousted by the Trump administration.
Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Wednesday afternoon that “Susan Monarez is no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC].” A source told NewsNation that Monarez “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 few hours after HHS broadcast Monarez’ ousting, her lawyers announced that she’s not going anywhere. Attorneys Abbe Lowell and Mark Zaid issued a statement, saying:
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.
Lowell is also representing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, who is in a similar position as Monarez. President Donald Trump announced her “removal” on Monday, only to be met with an identical response. Cook said she wouldn’t step down. On Wednesday, she took it a step further and filed a lawsuit claiming the president lacked a valid reason to fire her. You can learn more about that in our report here.
If Monarez insists on staying on as director at the CDC, it appears she’ll be working with three fewer employees. CDC Chief Medical Officer Deb Houry, Director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Dan Jernigan, and Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Demetre Daskalakis reportedly resigned after HHS announced Monarez’ firing.
Turmoil at the CDC was to be expected, given that Kennedy took the position after years of lobbing intense criticism at vaccine policies and what he perceives to be an agency that has for decades failed to effectively address the nation’s collective poor health. Kennedy also served as a key international resistance figure during the Covid era, especially after the government rolled out the Covid-19 injections with lightning speed and an accompanying campaign of coercion.
With Kennedy at the helm, there has been a whirlwind of changes and drama in the nation’s multifaceted regulatory and medical system. Just recently, the secretary announced that his agency is conducting studies to determine what role psychiatric drugs play in triggering mass shootings, saying during a press conference:
One of the culprits we need to examine is … the fact [that] we’re the most overmedicated nation in the world, and a lot of those are psychiatric drugs that have black-box warnings on them, that warn of suicidal and homicidal ideation. We are doing those studies right now for the first time, and we will have an answer.
Shortly after Kennedy’s confirmation in February, the CDC pulled back $11.4 billion in Covid funding, money allocated for testing, vaccination, community health workers, and additional inane expenditures, including the ones that were supposed to address Covid health disparities among people of varying incomes or people of different races. HHS justified canceling those expenses with the apt observation that “the COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.” Just before this move, HHS canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in grants paid for by taxpayers to research “vaccine hesitancy.”
HHS has also changed guidance on Covid-19 shots for children. The agency reversed its recommendations of Covid-19 shots for healthy children and pregnant women back in May. It no longer recommends them to that demographic. But months later, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued its own, contrary recommendations. “The AAP is strongly recommending COVID-19 shots for children ages 6 months to 2 years,” The Associated Press reported. It cited an infectious-disease expert who said that children “6 months to 2 years are at high risk for severe illness from COVID-19,” a very curious statement considering that Covid-19 overwhelmingly — evidenced by every existent metric — affected older Americans. An HHS spokesperson responded to AAP’s rogue recommendation by saying that “the AAP is undermining national immunization policymaking with baseless political attacks.”
Also around that time, the Trump administration announced the elimination of 20,000 full-time jobs at HHS. The move was intended to reduce the agency’s workforce to 62,000. A press release for the agency said the cuts would save taxpayers $1.8 billion. The move was part of the larger Make American Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda, which also included consolidating the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) into one agency, the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA).
Kennedy defended the reduction by claiming to have taken over an agency swimming in inefficiency and “fiefdom”:
When I arrived, I found that over half of our employees don’t even come to work. … HHS has more than 100 communications offices and more than 40 IT departments and dozens of procurement offices and nine HR departments. In many cases, they don’t even talk to each other. While public health declines, a few isolated divisions are neglecting public health altogether and seem only accountable to the industries that they’re supposed to be regulating.
In April, the Food and Drug Administration, which sits under the HHS umbrella, announced plans to phase out petroleum-based artificial dyes by the end of 2026. Other related changes included implementing a ban on soda for food stamp recipients.
While all these are steps in the right direction, critics point out that the elephant in the room — the Covid shots — has still not been dealt with. If reports are accurate, that may indeed be at the center of Monarez’ firing. Nevertheless, for many, the fact that the Covid injection is still being paraded as a legitimate vaccine is frustrating. Especially since news of its harm continues to emerge.
In July, a new study conducted by many respected experts on the matter showed lasting genetic disruptions in people who developed severe side effects or cancer after taking Pfizer or Moderna’s mRNA Covid shot. Also, a study conducted by the Italian National Healthcare System “found the risk of all-cause death to be over 20% higher for those vaccinated with two or more doses of the COVID-19 vaccine compared to the unvaccinated,” according to reports. And a French national study suggests that the Covid-19 injection was linked “to a more than 20% increased risk of heavy menstrual bleeding in the first three months following the primary vaccination series.” The shot is also shown to cause brain clots and strokes.
Children’s Health Defense reported that a November study found that “COVID-19 vaccines pose a 112,000% greater risk of brain clots and strokes than flu vaccines and a 20,700% greater risk of those symptoms than all other vaccines combined.” And there’s no shortage of studies linking the mRNA technology to cancer. A recent preprint from July by researchers from Neo7Bioscience and the McCullough Foundation suggests that mRNA shots increase cancer risks.
The correct way to deal with an institution that has, at the very least, failed to facilitate good health among the American people, and at its suspected worst, contributed to the ill health and death of millions, is to shutter every federal “public health” agency. Typical of government departments, these public health agencies have proven extremely wasteful, an insult to the hardworking American taxpayer who keeps them afloat. There is also indisputable evidence of conflicts of interest among many who work there.
But perhaps most importantly, the U.S. Constitution does not grant the federal government any authority over public health. None. And it’s not as if widespread health crises did not exist during the time of America’s Founding Fathers. The 18th century saw smallpox and yellow fever epidemics. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson supported vaccination to address them, but they saw public health as a local issue.
That is how it should be addressed today.