Washington, Aug. 28 -- Less than a month after taking office, Susan Monarez, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was fired today.
"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 Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the CDC, said in a post on X, without offering any explanation.
Sworn in as the CDC chief on July 31, Monarez has thus become the shortest-serving CDC director in the agency's history. A few hours after the HHS announcement, Monarez's legal team issued a statement that she had neither resigned nor been fired.
Her lawyers accused HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr....