CDC Staffers Stage Walkout In Protest Against Trump Administration, RFK Jr.

Topline

Staffers and ex-leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention walked out of the health agency’s Atlanta headquarters Thursday, protesting against Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s public health policies and the contested firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez.

Hundreds of staffers and protesters demonstrated outside the CDC’s headquarters Thursday afternoon for at least an hour.

Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, is one of multiple CDC leaders who resigned from the agency this week, saying in Thursday’s walkout to “get the politics out of public health” and, “Let the science lead us, because that’s how we get to the best decisions for public health.”

Jernigan resigned from the CDC this week alongside the agency’s chief medical officer, Debra Houry, and Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

Houry said her and CDC leadership “reached a tipping point,” calling out Kennedy’s promotion of “vitamins over vaccines” and saying “we knew it was a powerful statement for the three of us to do this together.”