What Will CDC Be Doing in Four Years? Will It Even Exist?
This has been a bad week for the CDC. Wednesday night, a spokesman for President Trump, Kush Desai announced that the White House had terminated CDC Director Susan Monarez because she was “not aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again.” She had been sworn into that position only last month by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Four other top leaders in CDC resigned in protest. So it is no surprise that many people wonder if CDC will even exist by the time Kennedy is through with it. If it does, what exactly will it be doing?
Political Obedience First
One lesson of this string of events is that this was a simple decision for an administration that values loyalty above pesky scientific nuances. Jonathan Allen explains that it’s a mistake to think this firing was about an assault on “establishment science.” Getting rid of dissent is the primary driver, he writes:
“For President Donald Trump, who has embraced the vaccine skepticism of his MAGA base while touting the delivery of Covid-19 vaccines under his first-term Operation Warp Speed program, the fight over Susan Monarez is mostly about stamping out dissent.”
Kennedy Is Useful
For now, Kennedy is quite useful to President Trump. Loyalist Stephen Miller has nothing but praise for Kennedy:
“Secretary Kennedy has been a crown jewel of this administration who’s working tirelessly to improve public health for all Americans.”
Chris Meekins was a deputy assistant secretary for pandemic preparedness in the first Trump administration. He explains how this odd relationship works:
“As someone who grew up during the Kennedy Camelot era, the idea of having a Kennedy report to him makes him feel good. RFK will be given a long-enough leash – will be given enough discretion – until there is a point when the political damage he’s doing to Republican efforts is greater than the political benefit he’s bringing.”
MAHA Moms Can Rationalize It
Despite speculation that MAHA moms are getting restless, it is not obvious that they will ever turn on Kennedy. Few of them raised strong objections when Kennedy rationalized the lack a action to restrict glyphosate:
“One hundred per cent of corn in this country relies on glyphosate. We are not going to do anything to jeopardize that business model.”
Though restricting glyphosate has been a key talking point for MAHA moms, Kennedy’s rationalization seemed to work.
So What Happens to CDC?
For now, it seems plain that CDC will continue shrinking. The appointment of an investment manager with strong libertarian credentials and no medical or scientific training suggests its credibility will suffer.
If the MAHA moms haven’t trusted CDC all along and the rest of us find good reasons to doubt its credibility going forward, we wonder what will be left. Still, you can find people who have hopes. Michael Osterholm, an eminent infectious disease expert, says:
“I think they’re trying to kill it – and it won’t die. It is fundamentally just far too important to the everyday lives of Americans as well as people around the world.”
For further perspective, click here, here, here, and here.
CDC Dissolving, illustration from Gemini AI image generation
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August 30, 2025
