Fired CDC Director Susan Monarez has used the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal to attack the Trump administration over its vaccine policy.
In a blistering op-ed in the newspaper, Monarez accused the government of “sabotaging” vaccine policy and pressuring her to “compromise science”—and, in doing so, putting children’s lives at risk.
Monarez—who was dismissed last week after refusing to agree to what she described as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “deliberate effort to weaken America’s public-health system and vaccine protections”—declared: “I served for 29 days as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention… for doing that, I lost my job. America’s children could lose far more.”
Monarez’s choice of the Journal to criticize the government’s approach to health care is notable, as it is the latest example of Murdoch’s flagship title going on the attack against the Trump administration.
The paper is already fighting President Donald Trump in court over its Jeffrey Epstein “birthday letter” story, with the president suing Murdoch for at least $10 billion, calling the report “fake.”
The Journal has also, in the past month, criticized Trump’s “vendetta” against his former National Security Adviser John Bolton, and the president’s desire to control the Fed.
Monarez’s op-ed comes as RFK Jr. is reportedly stacking the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) panel with questionable appointments—including at least three known vaccine skeptics.
The body decides who should get which vaccines and when, and has a crucial Sept. 18 vote during which it may vote to remove certain shots from the schedule.
Monarez revealed that she was “pressured” during an Aug. 25 by Kennedy Jr. to “preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric” or resign.
She refused, warning that “once trusted experts are removed and advisory bodies are stacked, the results are predetermined… That isn’t reform. It is sabotage.”
The microbiologist’s stance came at the cost of her job.
However, during a fiery Senate committee hearing two hours after Monarez’s op-ed was published, Kennedy denied making such a threat, claiming that he never had a private meeting with Monarez, and accusing her of lying.
Monarez’s firing sparked a wave of top-level resignations, two days after the Daily Beast revealed secret government talks to yank the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine off the market altogether.
The vaccine has, in the past two weeks, been limited to the elderly and vulnerable, before Trump stated that he wants to see evidence from drug companies that it works.
Monarez wrote in the Journal: “Mr. Trump is right to call for proof. We should always demand evidence—exactly what I was doing when I insisted all CDC recommendations be based on credible data, not ideology or preordained outcomes.”
Monarez’s public response to her firing comes as the CDC is still reeling from an Aug. 8 gun attack on its Atlanta campus by a vaccine skeptic who killed a police officer and riddled agency buildings with nearly 200 rounds.
She wrote: “Amid the trauma, hundreds of CDC employees told me the same thing: We need to take immediate steps to rebuild public trust. That’s the CDC I know: service before self.
“Just as we began to recover, I was confronted with another challenge—pressure to compromise science itself.”
Monarez added that Kennedy’s approach to “undermine” vaccines followed “a familiar playbook”—notably to “discredit research, weaken advisory committees, and use manipulated outcomes to unravel protections that generations of families have relied on to keep deadly diseases at bay.”
She wrote: “Public health shouldn’t be partisan. Vaccines have saved millions of lives under administrations of both parties. Parents deserve a CDC they can trust to put children above politics, evidence above ideology and facts above fear.
“I was fired for holding that line. But the line doesn’t disappear with me. It runs through every parent deciding whether to vaccinate a child, every physician counseling patients, and every American who demands accountability.
“If we stay silent, preventable diseases will return—as we saw with the largest measles outbreak in more than 30 years, which tragically killed two children. If we act, the facts can still prevail.”
Monarez added: “I’m gone now, but that effort continues.”
The Daily Beast has contacted HHS and the White House for comment.
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