August 28, 2025 – The White House unleashed chaos at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday when Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Donald Trump attempted to fire CDC Director Susan Monarez. As a result, four key CDC leaders resigned, including Daniel Jernigan, who led the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID).
The center is responsible for tracking foodborne illness outbreaks, zoonotic diseases like bird flu, and antibiotic resistant bacteria, which often develops on farms. Jernigan was at the helm for just under three years, but he worked on public health surveillance and infectious diseases at the CDC for 25 years, under three Democrat and two Republican administrations.
Gail Hansen, a prominent public health veterinarian and zoonotic disease expert, said she was “gobsmacked and nearly overwhelmed” by the news.
“The loss of intellect and institutional memory is staggering,” she said.
NCEZID often works with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to address disease outbreaks, including foodborne diseases.
Earlier this week, for example, HHS, the CDC, and the USDA confirmed the first human case of New World Screwworm, a parasitic infestation that primarily affects livestock. The individual was infected during travel, and the CDC reported that the public health risk for Americans is currently low. The now-leaderless NCEZID will be responsible for “conducting an epidemiological assessment in coordination with local health authorities” and is also still monitoring the ongoing bird flu outbreak.
Andrew deCoriolis, the executive director of the advocacy organization Farm Forward, said he believes the CDC’s response to the bird flu outbreak was already too slow and inconsistent and involved too much meat industry influence. Now it will be worse.
“At a moment when the country urgently needs transparency and decisive action on spiraling crises like bird flu and foodborne illness, these firings all but guarantee an even weaker public health response,” he said.
The exodus adds to other operational woes at the NCEZID. NBC News recently reported that in July, the office scaled back its tracking of common foodborne pathogens, including campylobacter and listeria, due to funding cuts.
Hansen said she’s particularly concerned about that. “It is especially pathetic to know that listeria is one of the pathogens that will not be tracked through FoodNet, since CDC is in the midst of working with other state and federal agencies to contain a multistate outbreak of listeria that has sickened 17 and killed 3 people,” she said.
Monarez, who had clashed with Kennedy over vaccine policies, is challenging her dismissal. In addition to Jernigan, three other top officials resigned: Debra Houry, the CDC’s chief medical officer; Jennifer Layden, who led the Office of Public Health Data; and Demetre Daskalakis, who directed the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Daskalakis posted a lengthy resignation letter online that said the administration is treating “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 CDC has lost about 3,000 employees—nearly a quarter of its staff—since Trump took office. HHS, which includes the CDC, did not respond to a request for comment.
“The combination of loss of morale and loss of top leaders is strangling public health,” Hansen said. “This should be the alarm to provoke the public and Congress to act to restore CDC before the next catastrophe strikes.” (Link to this post.)
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