Free Republic

The U.S. Senate voted… along party lines, 51 to 47, to confirm Susan Monarez as the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Monarez has been serving as the acting head of the CDC since January, and previously worked as the head of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. At her confirmation hearing before the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pension (HELP) committee on July 9, Monarez garnered praise from the Republican chairman, Sen. Bill Cassidy, who is a physician, for her commitment to rebuilding public trust in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Democratic Sen....

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stands at a crossroads. After years of pandemic fallout, opioid deaths, and declining public trust, the agency needs bold, decisive leadership. What it doesn’t require is another physician at the helm. In recent years, the CDC has almost exclusively been led by physicians, clinicians whose primary training, instincts, and oath revolve around caring for individual patients. But medicine and public health, though deeply related, are fundamentally different. Medicine treats individuals. Public health protects populations. Leading the CDC is less about diagnosis and more about infrastructure, logistics, and prevention. It is a...

The Trump administration withdrew the nomination of former Florida Rep. David Weldon (R) to head the CDC earlier this month, with the former lawmaker saying the reason was the lack of sufficient support among Republicans to secure his confirmation. President Trump chose Susan Monarez, a longtime federal employee and current acting CDC director, as his new pick. Monarez has served as acting CDC director since Jan. 23, 2025. Prior to this, she served as deputy director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). Before entering government work, she was a science and technology policy fellow with the American...

Secretary of Health and Human Services RFK Jr. attempted to calm the MAHA masses after new CDC director nominee Susan Monarez was attacked online for messages tweeted by a previous director. In a Tuesday X post, RFK Jr. urged, “X posts that erroneously attribute Biden-era tweets supporting masks, lockdowns, vaccine mandates, etc. to my @CDCgov Director nominee, Susan Monarez, have understandably provoked agita within the MAHA movement.” “I handpicked Susan for this job because she is a longtime champion of MAHA values, and a caring, compassionate and brilliant microbiologist and a tech wizard who will reorient CDC toward public health...

@btysonmd (Brian Tyson, MD) MAHA is officially over. Talk about being FO by the powers that may be. Lesson learned. Never trust the government for anything!!!! @SecKennedy (@HHSgov Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) X posts that erroneously attribute Biden-era tweets supporting masks, lockdowns, vaccine mandates, etc. to my @CDCgov Director nominee, Susan Monarez, have understandably provoked agita within the MAHA movement. I handpicked Susan for this job because she is a longtime champion of MAHA values, and a caring, compassionate and brilliant microbiologist and a tech wizard who will reorient CDC toward public health and gold-standard science. I’m so grateful...

President Donald Trump has selected Susan Monarez as his new nominee to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Monarez, a scientist whose previous work looked at using artificial intelligence to improve health, has already been serving as acting director. The White House abruptly withdrew Trump's first pick, Dr. Dave Weldon, a Republican former congressman from Florida, just before he was scheduled for a confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Labor, Education and Pensions Committee three weeks ago.