CDC chief Susan Monarez refuses to resign amid ‘targeted’ ousting – US politics live

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Attorney general says 105 arrests made in DC on Wednesday

Attorney general Pam Bondi said that federal law enforcement made another 105 arrests in DC on Wednesday, including seizing 12 illegal firearms.

Bondi said that this brings the arrest tally to 1,283 – since 7 August, when the surge of federal officers assisting local police began.

Bernie Sanders says CDC chief's firing is 'outrageous'

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an Independent, who serves as the ranking member on the health, education, labor and pensions (Help) committee, said that Robert F Kennedy Jr’s attempt to fire Susan Monarez was “outrageous”.

“The Sen. HELP Committee must hold a hearing with Kennedy & the CDC Director as soon as possible. Vaccines save lives. Period,” Sanders said on X.

As Monarez is a Senate-confirmed official (the first CDC director to receive this stamp), removal from office can only come from president, or an impeachment process by Congress. Monarez’s lawyers say that her termination is “legally deficient”, since it didn’t come from Trump himself.

Donald Trump doesn’t have any public-facing events today, according to his official schedule. He’s due to sign executive orders later, but that remains closed to the press. If anything changes we’ll bring you the latest.

We can expect to hear from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at 1pm today. She’ll hold a briefing, and we can expect questions on several topics: the school shooting in Minneapolis that killed two children and injured 17 people on Wednesday, the fallout of the CDC director’s firing, and the latest on foreign policy – particularly after Russian airstrikes on Kyiv killed at least 12 people overnight.

CDC chief Susan Monarez refuses to resign amid 'targeted' ousting

Hello, I’m Shrai Popat, and welcome to today’s coverage of US politics live.

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. But 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.”

Democratic senator Patty Murray, who serves on the Senate health committee called for Kennedy to be fired and said he is “a dangerous man who is determined to abuse his authority to act on truly terrifying conspiracy theories and disinformation”.

“If there are any adults left in the White House, it’s well past time they face reality and fire RFK Jr,” Murray said.

Meanwhile, Dr Mandy Cohen, a former CDC director under president Joe Biden, said: “We lost exceptional leaders who have served over many decades and many administrations. The weakening of the CDC leaves us less safe and more vulnerable as a country.”

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.”

Read our full report here:

In other developments:

• Former 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.

• A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Kilmar Ábrego García, who was already wrongfully deported once, cannot be deported again until at least early October.

• National 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.

• 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.