More tests of the removal powers of the president.
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The White House said late Wednesday that it had fired Susan Monarez, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after a tense confrontation in which Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried to remove her from her position and she refused to resign.
Because Dr. Monarez had been confirmed by the Senate — previous C.D.C. directors were not subject to such confirmation — she served at the pleasure of the president. Mr. Kennedy most likely did not have the authority to dismiss her.
Her lawyers insisted she was staying put. But at 9:30 p.m., a spokesman for President Trump, Kush Desai, said in an email message that Dr. Monarez had been terminated.
“As her attorney’s statement makes abundantly clear, Susan Monarez is not aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again,” Mr. Desai wrote.
“Since Susan Monarez refused to resign despite informing HHS leadership of her intent to do so, the White House has terminated Monarez from her position with the C.D.C.”
Dr. Monarez’s firing, along with the resignations of four of the C.D.C.’s top leaders, will undoubtedly throw the nation’s public health agency into further turmoil after a tumultuous month in which agency employees were laid off and a gunman fired a barrage of bullets at the Atlanta headquarters, killing a policeman and terrifying employees.
Dr. Monarez’s lawyers, Mark S. Zaid and Abbe Lowell, asserted in a statement earlier Wednesday that Dr. Monarez’s situation was symbolic of larger issues.
“It is about the systematic dismantling of public health institutions, the silencing of experts, and the dangerous politicization of science,” Mr. Zaid and Mr. Lowell wrote. “The attack on Dr. Monarez is a warning to every American: Our evidence-based systems are being undermined from within.”
- Susan Monarez.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- Vaccination policy.
