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      RFK Jr faces calls to quit as CDC chief fired and senior staff resign: ‘an embarrassment’

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      It’s been a tumultuous week for US health agencies, with the departure of several top officials, uncertainty around new Covid vaccine restrictions, and even more experts calling for the removal of top health official Robert F Kennedy Jr.The director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Susan Monarez, was fired by the Trump White House after some controversy, and four other top officials also resigned.“[The] CDC basically imploded yesterday and now it’s truly in shambles,” said Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist and former senior adviser for the CDC. “This is a national security risk to Americans. Without steady-headed, evidence-informed leadership, everything from outbreaks to data to chronic diseases to injury is in jeopardy.”Kennedy also released controversial and confusing restrictions on Covid vaccines on Wednesday.“I’m worried that these confusing changes will cause chaos in the vaccine distribution system that will make it harder for people–even those at high risk of severe illness–to get the Covid vaccines they may want,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University school of public health.The chaos on Wednesday intensified scrutiny of Kennedy after controversial moves on vaccines and the shooting at the CDC reportedly motivated by anti-vaccine briefs.Kennedy “has to go”, said Colin Carlson, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Yale University’s school of public health, who has joined other health professionals to call for his resignation or termination.Monarez, who was confirmed as the CDC head only weeks ago on July 31, was released from her post on Wednesday evening per a post on X by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).But lawyers representing Monarez, Mark S. Zaid and Abbe Lowell, responded in a statement posted to Bluesky that she had neither resigned nor been fired.“She will not resign,” Zaid wrote.Monarez had refused to “rubber-stamp reckless, unscientific directives,” the statement said. An hour and a half later, the White House doubled down and said Monarez had officially been fired.Four other top officials at the CDC also resigned on Wednesday including Debra Houry, the CDC’s chief medical officer; Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; Daniel Jernigan, the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; and Jennifer Layden, director of the office of public health data, surveillance and technology.Daskalakis wrote in his resignation letter that he had “never experienced such radical non-transparency, nor have I seen such unskilled manipulation of data to achieve a political end”.Daskalakis, a key figure in the Covid, mpox, and bird flu responses, added that “no CDC subject matter expert from my Center has ever briefed the Secretary” – during the worst measles outbreak in the US in decades that left two children and one adult dead.Earlier on Wednesday, Kennedy announced on X that updated mRNA Covid boosters were being approved for people “at higher risk”. There was no press release from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).The Pfizer vaccine is approved for anyone who is 5 years old or older with health conditions. The emergency use authorization for Pfizer’s pediatric vaccine was rescinded, as the Guardian previously reported might happen – which means it is no longer available to children under 5.The Moderna vaccine is approved for anyone over the age of 6 months with health conditions. That appears to mean there are no Covid vaccines available for children or adults without health conditions, as the summer Covid wave intensifies.Yet Kennedy also appeared to contradict himself in the post, writing: “These vaccines are available for all patients who choose them after consulting with their doctors.”Kennedy “very much contradicted himself yesterday, making a confusing situation even more confusing”, Jetelina said.FDA head Marty Makary said on X that any adult may choose to get the Covid vaccine. The officials seem to be referring to a practice known as off-label use, where a physician prescribes a medication for a use other than what it was approved for, Nuzzo said.“It’s possible for people who are not eligible to get them off label. But whether they will practically be able to do that is another question,” she said.In some states, pharmacists and other vaccinators are unable to administer vaccines to people who are not explicitly eligible.“It’s also dubious whether doctors will be willing to vaccinate off label, possibly worrying about legal risks. We’re already hearing about pregnant women being unable to get Covid vaccines after the secretary tweeted,” Nuzzo said.It’s not yet clear which higher-risk conditions may qualify. The CDC has a list for previous vaccines, but in May top FDA officials proposed a more stringent list of conditions. The proposed list included pregnancy, the recommendation for which Kennedy removed in May.There is confusion about whether patients may self-attest to a condition or if they need to provide proof – which may make it difficult for pharmacists and other vaccinators to interpret and implement the new rules. These restrictions may also make it harder for people to access the vaccines even when they’re eligible.“This is another way to reduce access to vaccines: Mass confusion,” Jetelina said.Usually the CDC’s independent advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP) meets to issue recommendations for the updated shots. Right now, the ACIP website lists the August/September meeting as “TBD”. These recommendations affect insurance coverage of the vaccines.This week’s moves are only part of the bedlam currently within US health agencies.On Tuesday, Kennedy said in a cabinet meeting that a fast-paced research project on autism was to identify “certain interventions” that are “almost certainly causing autism”. He said these results would be announced in September.This project, which included the creation of a national research registry of autistic people, has been panned by researchers and advocates as an unscientific attempt to link vaccines to autism.Last week, the CDC appointed Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan school of management, to lead an ACIP task force on Covid vaccines. Levi has said mRNA vaccines “cause serious harm including death, especially among young people”, adding: “We have to stop giving them immediately!”Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, called on Wednesday for Kennedy to be fired, writing: “we cannot let RFK Jr. burn what’s left of CDC.”Kennedy is “an embarrassment to both sides of the aisle”, said Carlson. “Seeing Patty Murray and the American Public Health Association (APHA) come to the same conclusion – that RFK has to go – gives me a lot of hope. Let’s fight. I think we can win.” More

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      CDC in crisis: who are the top officials resigning or being forced out?

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      A dispute over the dismissal of Susan Monarez, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has intensified, with her attorneys asserting she will not leave unless the president himself takes action.Monarez was officially removed late on Wednesday following a heated exchange in which the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, attempted to oust her, according to the White House. Her lawyer has countered that Monarez has no intention of resigning.As she was confirmed by the Senate, unlike previous CDC directors, Monarez technically serves at the will of the president, so Kennedy alone may not have had the authority to terminate her.Monarez, an infectious disease expert, was sworn in just a month ago by Kennedy but soon found herself at odds with him over vaccine policy, according to individuals familiar with the matter. In the wake of her removal, four senior CDC leaders abruptly resigned, apparently out of frustration with Kennedy’s approach to vaccines and his management style.Here’s a breakdown of the CDC leaders involved.Susan Monarez Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention View image in fullscreenMonarez is a microbiologist with bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Wisconsin. She joined the CDC as principal deputy director in January 2025, briefly served as acting director, and was confirmed by the Senate as the agency’s 21st director on 31 July. She became the first director without a medical degree and the first confirmed under a 2023 law.On 27 August, she was dismissed over conflicts about vaccine policy, a move her legal team has argued was improper because only the president has the authority to remove her.Debra HouryFormer chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science at the CDCView image in fullscreenHoury, a physician with degrees from Emory University and Tulane University, previously worked as an emergency doctor and at various facilities in Atlanta, as well as serving in academic leadership roles. At the CDC, she served as chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science.She resigned in late August 2025 following Monarez’s removal, citing the spread of vaccine misinformation, looming budget reductions and political meddling that she said undermined the agency’s mission.Demetre DaskalakisFormer director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDCView image in fullscreenDaskalakis, a public health physician known for his leadership in HIV prevention and vaccination programs, led the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. He received his medical degree from the NYU School of Medicine and completed postgraduate medical training at Harvard Medical School in 2003, before joining the CDC in 2020 as director of the division of HIV/Aids Prevention.He resigned from the CDC on 28 August, publishing a letter that denounced political interference, data manipulation and what he called a decline in scientific integrity.Daniel JerniganFormer director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases at the CDCView image in fullscreenJernigan, a longtime CDC official, directed the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases and played a key role in influenza and pandemic preparedness. Jernigan first joined the CDC’s epidemic intelligence service in 1994 and worked in the respiratory diseases branch on the prevention and control of bacterial respiratory pathogens.He left his position in August 2025 after Monarez’s ouster, joining other top officials in objecting to what they saw as the politicization of science and diminished trust in the agency’s leadership.Jennifer LaydenFormer director of office of public health data, science, technology at the CDCView image in fullscreenLayden, who led the office of public health data, surveillance, and technology at the CDC, focused on modernizing outbreak tracking and response systems. Layden received both her doctor of medicine and her doctorate in epidemiology from the University of Illinois at Chicago.Formerly Illinois’ chief medical officer, she also resigned after Monarez’s removal in August 2025, warning about the damaging effects of political influence on science-based decision-making. More

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      Rwanda accepts seven people from US as part of deportation deal

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      Seven people have arrived in Rwanda as part of a deal to accept deportees from the US, the Rwandan government has said.“The first group of seven vetted migrants arrived in Rwanda in mid-August … Three of the individuals have expressed a desire to return to their home countries, while four wish to stay and build lives in Rwanda,” Yolande Makolo, a government spokesperson, said on Thursday.Officials offered no information on the nationalities of the seven deportees. Rwanda said on 5 August it would accept up to 250 people from the US, and that it would have “the ability to approve each individual proposed for resettlement”.The first arrivals would be “accommodated by an international organisation with visits by the International Organisation on Migration and Rwandan social services”, Makolo said.Donald Trump’s administration has been pushing a deportation drive, negotiating controversial arrangements to send people to third countries, including South Sudan and Eswatini, formerly Swaziland.Rwanda signed a lucrative deal in 2022 to accept migrants from Britain, only for the agreement to be scrapped when Labour came to power last year.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKigali agreed to the scheme with Washington because “nearly every Rwandan family has experienced the hardships of displacement”, Makolo said earlier this month. Those who arrived in Rwanda would be provided with training, healthcare and accommodation, she added.The Trump administration has said third-country deportations are necessary because home nations sometimes refuse to accept the deportees.Rights experts have said the deportations may break international law by sending people to countries where they face the risk of torture, abduction and other abuses.Rwanda, which has a population of 14 million people, claims to be one of the most stable countries in Africa and has drawn praise for its modern infrastructure. However, the agreement with Britain drew criticism from rights groups and faced a long-running legal challenge.President Paul Kagame’s government has been accused of human rights violations and of crushing political dissent and press freedoms. More

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      CDC erupts in chaos after ousted chief Susan Monarez refuses to resign

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      The US’s top public health agency was plunged into chaos on Wednesday after the Trump administration moved to oust its leader Susan Monarez, sworn in less than a month ago, as her lawyers said she would not resign and that she was being “targeted” for her pro-science stance.Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was ousted on Wednesday evening, according to a statement from Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that offered no explanation its decision.“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,” HHS said in an unsigned statement posted to social media. Her lawyers pushed back in a statement, saying she had “neither resigned nor received notification” from the White House of her termination.Monarez, who was confirmed by the Senate just last month, appeared to have run afoul of Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, after she declined to support sweeping changes to US vaccine policies, according to reporting from the Washington Post and the New York Times.“First it was independent advisory committees and career experts. Then it was the dismissal of seasoned scientists. Now, Secretary Kennedy and HHS have set their sights on weaponizing public health for political gain and putting millions of American lives at risk,” her lawyers, Mark Zaid and Abbe David Lowell, said in a statement. “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.”The ousting has set off a wave of departures within the agency, with at least three other CDC leaders publicly resigning after the HHS announcement.The most explosive resignation letter came from Dr Demetre Daskalakis, who stepped down as the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, according to Inside Medicine, an industry newsletter that obtained the full statements.“I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponizing of public health. You are the best team I have ever worked with, and you continue to shine despite this dark cloud over the agency and our profession,” Daskalakis wrote. “Please take care of yourself and your teams and make the right decisions for yourselves.”Those concerns were echoed by another departing CDC leader, Dr Deb Houry, the chief medical officer, who wrote that “For the good of the nation and the world, the science at CDC should never be censored or subject to political pauses or interpretations.”Daniel Jernigan, who ran the Center for Emerging Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, has also quit the agency.Hours before Monarez was removed, Kennedy hailed decisions by the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday revoking the emergency use authorization for the Covid-19 vaccines manufactured by Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax that CDC experts estimate saved 3.2 million lives in the United States.Vaccines from the three manufacturers are now authorized by the FDA only for people who are 65 and older, or younger people with an underlying medical condition that puts them at risk for severe disease. Even those that qualify for the vaccines will only be able to get them in the US if the advisory panel, reshaped by Kennedy to include Covid vaccine opponents, votes to approve them.Monarez, 50, was the agency’s 21st director and the first to pass through Senate confirmation following a 2023 law. She was named acting director in January and then tapped as the nominee in March after Trump abruptly withdrew his first choice, David Weldon. She was sworn in on 31 July – less than a month ago – making her the shortest-serving CDC director in the history of the 79-year-old agency.Public health experts, meanwhile, are sounding the alarm about the chaos.“What’s happening at the CDC should frighten every American Regardless of whether you are MAGA, MAHA, neither, or don’t give a damn about labels or politics. It’s unclear whether the CDC director—confirmed just weeks ago—has been fired or not. Absolute shitshow,” Dr Craig Spencer, an emergency medicine doctor and professor at Brown University School of Public Health, posted. “And incredible career professionals resigned tonight, sounding a massive alarm,” he added. “This is pure chaos that leaves the country unprepared.”“RFK, Jr is increasingly becoming a liability for the White House,” Dr Jonathan Reiner, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at George Washington University, observed.“There is a wholesale destruction of leadership at the CDC. The newly confirmed Director is out,” Dr Ashish Jha, the Biden administration’s coronavirus response coordinator, wrote. “Most of the top leaders who run key centers have resigned en masse. Total implosion. All because of [Secretary Kennedy’s] leadership. What a complete disaster.”Maanvi Singh and agencies contributed reporting More

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      CDC chief ‘targeted’ for refusing to ‘rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives’, lawyers say – as it happened

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      Susan Monarez was removed from her position as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday without being told why she was fired, her lawyers said in a statement.“First it was independent advisory committees and career experts. Then it was the dismissal of seasoned scientists. Now, Secretary Kennedy and HHS have set their sights on weaponizing public health for political gain and putting millions of American lives at risk”, her lawyers, Mark Zaid and Abbe David Lowell, said in a statement posted on social media.“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. 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.”“This is not about one official,” the lawyers added. “It is about the systematic dismantling of public health institutions, the silencing of experts, and the dangerous politicization of science. The attack on Dr. Monarez is a warning to every American: our evidence-based systems are being undermined from within.”The Department of Health and Human Services offered no explanation when it announced in an unsigned social media post that Monarez, who was confirmed by the Senate as CDC director and sworn in by Kennedy just last month, was no longer in charge of the public health agency.Sources “who spoke anonymously for fear of retribution”, told the New York Times reports that Monarez had objected to sweeping changes to the panel of experts who advise the agency on vaccine policy made by Donald Trump’s anti-vaccine health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.An administration official also told the Times that Kennedy had summoned Monarez to his office on Monday and demanded that she resign. After she refused to do so, she called Dr Bill Cassidy, the Republican chairman of the Senate health committee. Kennedy then accused Monarez of “being a leaker” and said that she would be fired.Hours before Monarez left the agency, Kennedy hailed decisions by the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday revoking the emergency use authorization for the Covid-19 vaccines manufactured by Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax that CDC experts estimate saved 3.2 million lives in the United States.Vaccines from the three manufacturers are now authorized by the FDA only for people who are 65 and older, or younger people with an underlying medical condition that puts them at risk for severe disease.Even those that qualify for the vaccines will only be able to get them in the US if the advisory panel, reshaped by Kennedy to include Covid vaccine opponents, votes to approve them.This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but we will be back at it on Thursday morning. Here are the latest developments:

      The leadership of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was thrown into chaos after the health department announced the Senate-confirmed CDC director, Susan Monarez, was no longer in charge, but her lawyers said she refused to resign and had not been fired.

      First it was independent advisory committees and career experts. Then it was the dismissal of seasoned scientists. Now, Robert F Kennedy Jr and HHS have set their sights on “weaponizing public health for political gain” and “putting millions of American lives at risk”, lawyers for Monarez said in a statement. “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. 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.”

      At least three CDC senior officials resigned after Monarez was ousted. One squarely blamed Robert F Kennedy Jr’s leadership.

      “I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponization of public health,” Dr Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases told colleagues.

      Public health experts are sounding the alarm about the chaos at the CDC, as at least three senior leaders resigned following the ouster of the apparent ouster of the CDC director.

      As a Senate-confirmed official, only the president has the authority to fire her, and, for once, Donald Trump has been strangely silent as this drams unfolded. But the White House press office issued a statement saying that Monarez had been removed, not by Trump but by “the White House”.
      While differences over vaccines appear to have been central to the rift between the ousted CDC director, Susan Monarez, and Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary, Monarez also stood out from her bosses by mourning for the officer who died defending the agency’s campus in Atlanta from a gunman who was driven by misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine.While Monarez publicly mourned David Rose, who, as our colleague George Chidi wrote, was murdered by a lie, others in the CDC were distressed that Kennedy said little, and Trump nothing about the attack on their campus.The confusion over whether or not Susan Monarez is still the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after the health department said she was not, and her lawyers said she has not resigned or been fired, partly stems from the fact that Monarez was confirmed by the Senate last month.As a Senate-confirmed official, only the president has the authority to fire her, and, for once, Donald Trump has been strangely silent as this drama unfolded on Wednesday night.But the White House press office has just issued a statement saying that Monarez has been removed, not by Trump but by “the White House”.“As her attorney’s statement makes abundantly clear, Susan Monarez is not aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again” the White House deputy press secretary, Kush Desai, said in a statement to the Guardian. “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 CDC.”As Aaron Fritschner, an aide to Don Beyer, a Democratic congressman, observed: “Don’t think ‘the White House’ has the power to terminate the Director of the CDC. The President does, but they didn’t say that he did, which is curious.”Public health experts are sounding the alarm about the chaos at the CDC, as at least three senior leaders resigned following the apparent ouster of the CDC director.“What’s happening at the CDC should frighten every American Regardless of whether you are MAGA, MAHA, neither, or don’t give a damn about labels or politics. It’s unclear whether the CDC director—confirmed just weeks ago—has been fired or not. Absolute shitshow,” Dr Craig Spencer, an emergency medicine doctor and professor at Brown University School of Public Health posted. “And incredible career professionals resigned tonight, sounding a massive alarm,” he added. “This is pure chaos that leaves the country unprepared. Imagine cases of Ebola in the U.S. right now? We would be an absolute mess.”“RFK, Jr is increasingly becoming a liability for the White House,” Dr Jonathan Reiner, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at George Washington University, observed. “I doubt the president feels good about RFK’s incessant attack on his COVID vaccine triumph and he’s likely not going to be pleased that the HHS Sec is usurping the role of the President in hiring/firing senate confirmed officials.”“There is a wholesale destruction of leadership at the CDC. The newly confirmed Director is out,” Dr Ashish Jha, the Biden administration’s coronavirus response coordinator, wrote. “Most of the top leaders who run key centers have resigned en masse. Total implosion. All because of [Secretary Kennedy’s] leadership. What a complete disaster.”Dr Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned on Wednesday from his position as the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, just posted his full, blistering resignation letter on Instagram.In the letter, the veteran public health official blames the views and erratic leadership of Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary, for making it impossible for him to continue.“I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health. The recent change in the adult and children’s immunization schedule threaten the lives of the youngest Americans and pregnant people,” Daskalakis wrote, in reference to the decision in May, for the CDC to remove its recommendation of the Covid-19 vaccine for healthy children and pregnant women.He added that the data to support this change was never shared with the CDC and that a public information sheet on the change, “written to support the Secretary’s directive” was circulated by the health department “without input from CDC subject matter experts”.Daskalakis also called out Kennedy’s fondness for “social media posts announcing major policy changes” without consulting CDC experts in advance. “Having to retrofit analyses and policy actions to match inadequately thought-out announcements in poorly scripted videos or page long X posts should not be how organizations responsible for the health of people should function,” he wrote.“The intentional eroding of trust in low-risk vaccines favoring natural infection and unproven remedies will bring us to a pre-vaccine era where only the strong will survive and many if not all will suffer,” he added. “I believe in nutrition and exercise. I believe in making our food supply healthier, and I also believe in using vaccines to prevent death and disability. Eugenics plays prominently in the rhetoric being generated and is derivative of a legacy that good medicine and science should continue to shun.”“The recent shooting at CDC is not why I am resigning,” Daskalakis wrote, drawing attention to the gunman who fired hundreds of rounds into CDC buildings who was motivated by unfounded theories about injuries from the Covid-19 vaccine that Kennedy has promoted.“My grandfather, who I am named after, stood up to fascist forces in Greece and lost his life doing so. I am resigning to make him and his legacy proud. I am resigning because of the cowardice of a leader that cannot admit that HIS and his minions’ words over decades created an environment where violence like this can occur. I reject his and his colleagues’ thoughts and prayers, and advise they direct those to people that they have not actively harmed,” Daskalakis wrote.“For decades, I have been a trusted voice for the LGBTQ community when it comes to critical health topics,” the doctor, who formerly led HIV/AIDS prevention at the CDC, and once dressed in drag to administer meningitis vaccines, added. “I must also cite the recklessness of the administration in their efforts to erase transgender populations, cease critical domestic and international HIV programming, and terminate key research to support equity as part of my decision.”Susan Monarez was removed from her position as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday without being told why she was fired, her lawyers said in a statement.“First it was independent advisory committees and career experts. Then it was the dismissal of seasoned scientists. Now, Secretary Kennedy and HHS have set their sights on weaponizing public health for political gain and putting millions of American lives at risk”, her lawyers, Mark Zaid and Abbe David Lowell, said in a statement posted on social media.“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. 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.”“This is not about one official,” the lawyers added. “It is about the systematic dismantling of public health institutions, the silencing of experts, and the dangerous politicization of science. The attack on Dr. Monarez is a warning to every American: our evidence-based systems are being undermined from within.”The Department of Health and Human Services offered no explanation when it announced in an unsigned social media post that Monarez, who was confirmed by the Senate as CDC director and sworn in by Kennedy just last month, was no longer in charge of the public health agency.Sources “who spoke anonymously for fear of retribution”, told the New York Times reports that Monarez had objected to sweeping changes to the panel of experts who advise the agency on vaccine policy made by Donald Trump’s anti-vaccine health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.An administration official also told the Times that Kennedy had summoned Monarez to his office on Monday and demanded that she resign. After she refused to do so, she called Dr Bill Cassidy, the Republican chairman of the Senate health committee. Kennedy then accused Monarez of “being a leaker” and said that she would be fired.Hours before Monarez left the agency, Kennedy hailed decisions by the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday revoking the emergency use authorization for the Covid-19 vaccines manufactured by Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax that CDC experts estimate saved 3.2 million lives in the United States.Vaccines from the three manufacturers are now authorized by the FDA only for people who are 65 and older, or younger people with an underlying medical condition that puts them at risk for severe disease.Even those that qualify for the vaccines will only be able to get them in the US if the advisory panel, reshaped by Kennedy to include Covid vaccine opponents, votes to approve them.Inside Medicine, a newsletter written by Jeremy Faust, a public health researcher and emergency medicine physician, just published the full text of email statements three CDC leaders who resigned on Wednesday sent to their colleagues to explain their reasons for leaving the US public health agency after its new director abruptly departed.The most explosive charge came from Dr Demetre Daskalakis, who stepped down as the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponizing of public health. You are the best team I have ever worked with, and you continue to shine despite this dark cloud over the agency and our profession,” Daskalakis wrote. “Please take care of yourself and your teams and make the right decisions for yourselves.”“For the good of the nation and the world, the science at CDC should never be censored or subject to political pauses or interpretations,” Dr Deb Houry, the agency’s chief medical officer, wrote. “Vaccines save lives – this is an indisputable, well-established, scientific fact. Informed consent and shared decision-making must focus not only on the risks but also on the true, life-saving benefits that vaccines provide to individuals and communities. It is, of course, important to question, analyze, and review research and surveillance, but this must be done by experts with the right skills and experience, without bias, and considering the full weight of scientific evidence. Recently, the overstating of risks and the rise of misinformation have cost lives, as demonstrated by the highest number of US measles cases in 30 years and the violent attack on our agency.”Houry’s statement seemed like a clear response to recent statements and actions to limit access to vaccines by the anti-vaccine health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.Dr Daniel Jernigan, who resigned as director of the premiere US center for the study of emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases, told colleagues: “I believe strongly in the mission of public health and the leadership that CDC has given for almost 80 years; however, given the current context in the Department, I feel it is best for me to offer my resignation.”Jernigan, whose center included the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, testified to Congress last year that the CDC estimates that the vaccination of children born between 1994 and 2021 “will prevent 472 million illnesses and 29.8 million hospitalizations, help avoid 1,052,000 deaths, and save nearly $2.2 trillion in total societal costs”.He also pointed to research that, as of November 2022, Covid-19 vaccines had “saved more than 3.2 million lives in the United States, prevented more than 18.5 million hospitalizations, and averted over $1.15 trillion in healthcare costs”.“I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponization of public health,” Dr Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned on Wednesday from his position as the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC told colleagues in an email obtained by STAT, a health news site.Those concerns were echoed by another departing CDC leader, Dr Deb Houry, the chief medical officer, who wrote that “ongoing changes prevent me from continuing in my job as a leader of the agency” adding that science should “never be censored or subject to political interpretations”.The two CDC leaders, and their colleague Daniel Jernigan, who ran the Center for Emerging Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, quit the agency after the abrupt departure of Susan Monarez, the Senate-confirmed director of the CDC.US officials announced on Wednesday the departure of the director of the nation’s top public health agency, after less than one month in the job.“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,” the US Department of Health and Human Services wrote in a statement posted on social media.HHS officials did not explain why Monarez is no longer with the agency. Before the announcement was made, Monarez told the Associated Press: “I can’t comment.”Three senior officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention resigned on Wednesday after the new CDC director Susan Monarez, abruptly left the agency.Shortly after the US Department of Health and Human Services, HHS, announced on social media that Monarez “is no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention”, at least three CDC leaders resigned: Dr Debra Houry, the chief medical officer; Dr Daniel Jernigan, the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; and Dr Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.There was no immediate explanation for why any of the senior leaders have left the top US public health agency. Monarez was sworn in just four weeks ago. More

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      Trump news at a glance: top CDC officials resign over ‘weaponization of public health’

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      The leading US public health agency faced a number of top-level resignations on Wednesday after its director was ousted from her job, with one departing official reportedly saying he was leaving “because of the ongoing weaponization of public health”.US officials announced CDC director Susan Monarez had left her role just weeks after being sworn in. This was followed by the resignations of three senior CDC officials – Dr Debra Houry, the chief medical officer, Dr Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, and Dr Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.Daskalakis told colleagues “I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponization of public health”, according to an email obtained by STAT, a health news site.Houry echoed his concerns and wrote that “ongoing changes prevent me from continuing in my job as a leader of the agency”, adding that science should “never be censored or subject to political interpretations”.Here is the key Trump administration news of the day.CDC director ousted after less than a month in jobReporting from the Washington Post and the New York Times indicated that Susan Monarez ran afoul of Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, after she declined to commit to fully support changing the coronavirus vaccine policy.Monarez was the agency’s 21st director and the first to pass through Senate confirmation following a 2023 law. She was named acting director in January and then tapped as the nominee in March after Trump abruptly withdrew his first choice, David Weldon.Read the full storyTony Blair attends White House meeting with Trump on postwar GazaFormer British prime minister Tony Blair has attended a White House meeting with Donald Trump to discuss plans for postwar Gaza, the Guardian understands.After stepping down as prime minister in 2007, Blair took on the role of Middle East envoy until 2015 and spent time in Jerusalem trying to formulate a plan for a two-state solution.The former Labour leader, 72, was in Washington DC on Wednesday for the meeting with Trump. The Axios website reported that Trump’s son-in-law and former senior adviser, Jared Kushner, was also in attendance.Read the full storyJudge blocks Trump administration from deporting Kilmar Ábrego García againA federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Kilmar Ábrego García, who was already wrongfully deported once, cannot be deported again until at least early October, according to multiple reports.Read the full storyNational guard troops deployed in DC rake leaves and clear homeless campsNational guard troops have spent their last days of the summer mulching cherry trees, collecting trash and clearing homeless camps across Washington DC, as Donald Trump’s federal takeover of the capital evolved the guard from makeshift cops to armed jacks of all trades.Read the full storyHow hard will Trump’s tariff hit India, and what is Delhi doing about it?Donald Trump’s tariffs of 50% have come into force on most US imports from India. The US president followed through on his threat to punish one of the world’s largest economies for its purchases of discounted Russian oil. We explain how hard the tariffs will hit India and what it might do about that.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Republicans in California are proposing a “two-state solution” for the Golden state, in a move that is unlikely to go anywhere but is reflective of partisan divisions amid a nationwide battle over control of Congress.

      The US Food and Drug Administration has approved updated Covid vaccines but has placed new restrictions on who can get them.

      Florida’s immigration jail known as “Alligator Alcatraz” will probably be empty of detainees within days,a state official has said, indicating compliance with a judge’s order last week that the facility must close.

      The Fulton county commission in Georgia will be fined $10,000 a day for violating a court order to appoint two Republicans associated with Trump-aligned groups pushing voter fraud conspiracies to the county’s election board.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened 26 August 2025. More

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      ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ to be vacated in compliance with court order to shut it

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      Florida’s immigration jail known as “Alligator Alcatraz” will probably be empty of detainees within days, a state official has said, indicating compliance with a judge’s order last week that the facility must close.The Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s administration appealed the order by federal court judge Kathleen Williams that the tented detention camp in the Florida Everglades, which attracted criticism for its harsh conditions, must be dismantled within 60 days.But in an email reported Wednesday by the Associated Press, Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida department of emergency management, which operates the jail on behalf of the federal government, appeared to confirm it would be shuttered.“We are probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days,” Guthrie wrote to Mario Rojzman, a Miami Beach rabbi who has been helping to arrange chaplaincy services.Representatives for Rojzman confirmed the authenticity of the memo to the news agency. Guthrie’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The Miami Herald had previously reported that hundreds of detainees were moved from “Alligator Alcatraz” to other immigration facilities in the state in advance of Williams’s ruling.On Monday, protesters who have maintained an almost permanent presence at the gates of the jail reported seeing convoys of buses driving out.Maxwell Frost, a Florida Democratic congressman, said that he was told during a tour last week that only about 300 to 350 detainees remained.“Alligator Alcatraz” was touted by Donald Trump as a holding camp for up to 3,000 undocumented immigrants as they awaited deportation. The jail, he said, was reserved for “the most vicious people on the planet”.Since it opened in early July after being hastily constructed in late June at a remote disused airstrip about 50 miles (80km) west of Miami, it drew waves of criticism. Several lawsuits sought its closure, and there have been claims that hundreds of those detained had no criminal records or active proceedings against them.Williams’s ruling was a significant victory for a coalition of environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians, who claimed the camp had caused permanent and irreparable damage to the ecologically fragile wetland and its wildlife.Another lawsuit, filed by groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), claimed detainees were abused by jail staff, and that their human and constitutional rights were denied because they were refused access to attorneys and due process.The plaintiffs said the Everglades facility was not needed, especially because Florida plans to open a second immigration detention facility in the north of the state that DeSantis has dubbed “deportation depot”.Williams had not ruled by Wednesday on a request by attorneys for the state to stay her order of closure. In her original 82-page ruling, she said she expected the population of the facility to decline within 60 days by transferring detainees to other facilities, and once that happened, fencing, lighting and generators should be removed.She wrote that the state and federal defendants could not bring anyone other than those who are already being detained at the facility onto the property.The environmental groups and Miccosukee tribe had argued in their lawsuit that further construction and operations should be stopped until federal and state officials complied with federal environmental laws. Their lawsuit claimed the facility reversed billions of dollars spent over decades on environmental restoration.State officials have signed more than $245m in contracts for building and operating the facility at a lightly used, single-runway training airport in the middle of the rugged and remote Everglades. The center officially opened on 1 July.In their lawsuits, civil rights attorneys described “severe problems” at the facility which were “previously unheard-of in the immigration system”. Detainees were being held for weeks without any charges, had disappeared from the online detainee locator maintained by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice), and nobody at the facility was making initial custody or bond determinations, they said.Detainees also described worms turning up in the food, toilets that did not flush, flooding floors with fecal waste, mosquitoes and other insects everywhere and malfunctioning air conditioning that alternated the temperature between near freezing and extreme heat. More

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      America survived a coup attempt. Can it endure dictatorial creep? | Lawrence Douglas

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      January 6 demonstrated that longstanding democracies can readily resist a disorganized effort at a coup. They are less equipped to withstand the normalization of exceptional measures: the use of federal agents to quell domestic protest, the staging of police raids on the homes of leaders’ political opponents, the pretextual invocations of emergency powers. Each of these steps may seem temporary and targeted; they may even enjoy a thin patina of legality. But over time, a democratic order turns into what Ernst Fraenkel, a German-Jewish lawyer whose book The Dual State stands as one of the first and most perceptive examinations of Hitler’s regime, called a “prerogative state” – a government in which the executive “is released from all legal restraints and depends solely on the discretion of the persons wielding political power”.So let us be clear: Trump’s commandeering of control of the Washington DC police department was simply an opening salvo. While Americans were greeted with images of soldiers in combat gear, toting rifles and establishing roadblocks and checkpoints near the National Mall, Trump was already tasking his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, with creating “specialized units” of the national guard to be “specifically trained and equipped to deal with public order issues”.What are the politics behind this militarization of domestic policing? Trump says he alone has the will and resources to pacify the “killing field” of Chicago, but clearly his “crime fighting” justification is no more than a ruse. Statistics – that is, reality – tell us that the crime rate in Washington DC was at a 30-year low when Trump sent in the troops. Which is not to deny the rhetorical power of ruses. Installing soldiers in Democratic strongholds allows Trump to present himself as the protector of law and order, especially to Maga supporters who have been trained by rightwing news outlets to view the nation’s largest and most multiethnic metropolitan areas as dens of iniquity and vice. Never mind that this is the president who pardoned members of the lawless mob that stormed the Capitol, fired career justice department prosecutors who worked to hold insurrectionists to account, and has installed in the department the likes of Jared Lane Wise, an insurgent who was charged with urging his fellow rioters to kill members of the police.Militarizing the police also serves Trump’s politics of intimidation. Here we can connect the deployment of troops on the National Mall to the FBI’s raid on John Bolton’s residences. Both are disturbing displays of the kind of force more familiar to a police state than to a constitutional democracy. The fact that both acts were formally legal – two federal magistrates signed off on the Bolton warrants, while several statutes specific to the District of Columbia authorized the president’s use of the national guard – makes them textbook examples of the kind of dictatorial creep that Fraenkel diagnosed.Deploying troops to police Chicago would, of course, represent a far more alarming and legally dubious exercise of executive power. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, a post-Reconstruction law, essentially bars presidents from using troops as domestic police. But we would be naive to conclude that federal law provides an adequate safeguard against the consolidation of the prerogative state. The Insurrection Act carves out disturbing exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act, allowing the president, in cases of “rebellion”, to deploy the military to enforce federal law. Would a supreme court that has held that a president enjoys broad immunity from future prosecution for all “official acts”, no matter how nefarious, question a president’s determination of what constitutes a “rebellion”?While the appearance of troops on the streets of Chicago or New York may frighten marginalized communities from exercising their basic rights of free movement, it may also trigger an equally dangerous and predictable response. The specter of city streets patrolled by soldiers trained to fight enemy combatants, not US citizens, may well serve not to quell violence but to invite it. The prospect of protests turning ugly and violent is all too real. The deployment of troops, under the pretext of responding to an emergency, then works to create the very emergency that justifies an ever-greater deployment. The danger is this is precisely what the president wants.Why? Trump has already aggressively inserted himself in the battle over the 2026 midterms, pushing Texas to further gerrymander its already gerrymandered districts; jesting that war may supply a justification for delaying elections; and pledging to issue an executive order ending mail-in ballots – while clearly lacking the authority to do so. What if he were to deploy troops to polling places on election day?In principle, a strong edifice of law explicitly bars such a deployment on election day, but imagine if the president, in the wake of a series of violent protests, invokes the Insurrection Act to “safeguard” polling stations from domestic unrest. Now we have armed soldiers at polling stations, handling ballots and “monitoring” the chain of custody – all done in the name of protecting democracy. Legally, such a deployment would stretch the Insurrection Act beyond recognition, but courts deliberate slowly; elections are decided in days.As Fraenkel noted, authoritarianism does not operate outside law; it manipulates law until legality and illegality are indistinguishable.

      Lawrence Douglas is a professor of law at Amherst College in Massachusetts More