Susan Monarez, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s handpicked CDC appointee, was privately assuring health officials that she would reverse her own boss’s directives, according to agency staffers.
A New York Magazine report published Tuesday revealed that the since-fired Monarez urged the CDC’s former chief medical officer, Debra Houry, not to resign after Kennedy, 71, fired all the vaccine experts at the agency.
“Please wait…When I come, I will make changes,” Monarez reportedly promised Houry.
Monarez, a microbiologist who became the first non-physician to lead the agency in its history, made headlines after she was ousted by the health secretary in August—just 29 days after her shaky Senate confirmation, which passed without a single Democrat’s support.
The report, which details the chaos that has engulfed the CDC since Kennedy, a conspiracy theorist with no science background, was appointed by Donald Trump, shows that even before she formally assumed the role, Monarez’s allegiance lay not with Kennedy but with fact. The article was compiled from the firsthand accounts of 16 former and current health officials.
Monarez—referred to in the article only as Kennedy’s “political appointee”—alleged that the health secretary told her that CDC staffers were “horrible people who were killing children,” and directed her to “fire staffers until she achieved total compliance with his demands” —something she was unwilling to do.
She later showed Houry an “email showing a new procedure wherein [she] needed approval [from Kennedy] to make any policy or staffing change,” according to the outlet.
Houry called her back and said: “Well, that’s not gonna f–king work. You’ve been cut out.”
Monarez has said that Kennedy then issued her an ultimatum: obey or resign. Just 29 days after her Senate confirmation, she was ousted. Houry quickly followed her out the door.
Before she was confirmed, Monarez was lauded by Kennedy as having “unimpeachable scientific credentials,” and he expressed his “full confidence in her.”
For her part, Monarez believes Kennedy was pressuring her to “compromise science”—and, in doing so, putting children’s lives at risk, according to an essay she penned for the Rupert Murdoch owned-Wall Street Journal in September.
“Parents deserve a CDC they can trust to put children above politics, evidence above ideology and facts above fear,” she wrote. “I was fired for holding that line.”
New York Magazine’s account of Kennedy’s tenure arrives the same week as Olivia Nuzzi—who Kennedy reportedly had a fling with—released her salacious memoir American Canto.
Nuzzi, 32, allegedly sparked a romantic relationship with the married health secretary after interviewing him for New York Magazine in 2023.
In the book, Nuzzi claims their relationship “never turned physical,” but that they had phone sex, shared intimate photos, and said they loved each other. Kennedy, who has been married to actress Cheryl Hines since 2014, denies having an affair.
Nuzzi also casually drops information that would have been useful before Kennedy became the nation’s health chief—such as his poor reactions “in crisis,” his tendency to screech and lose his temper, and that he was doing psychedelic drugs despite being a “sober” recovering heroin addict.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Department of Health and Human Services for comment.
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