Top US public health agency loses number of key officials as director ousted weeks into the job. Key US politics stories from Wednesday 27 August at a glance
The leading US public health agency faced a number of top-level resignations on Wednesday after its director was ousted from her job, with one departing official reportedly saying he was leaving “because of the ongoing weaponization of public health”.
US officials announced CDC director Susan Monarez had left her role just weeks after being sworn in. This was followed by the resignations of three senior CDC officials – Dr Debra Houry, the chief medical officer, Dr Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, and Dr Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
Daskalakis told colleagues “I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponization of public health”, according to an email obtained by STAT, a health news site.
Houry echoed his concerns and wrote that “ongoing changes prevent me from continuing in my job as a leader of the agency”, adding that science should “never be censored or subject to political interpretations”.
Here is the key Trump administration news of the day.
Reporting from the Washington Post and the New York Times indicated that Susan Monarez ran afoul of Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, after she declined to commit to fully support changing the coronavirus vaccine policy.
Monarez was the agency’s 21st director and the first to pass through Senate confirmation following a 2023 law. She was named acting director in January and then tapped as the nominee in March after Trump abruptly withdrew his first choice, David Weldon.
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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.
The former Labour leader, 72, was in Washington DC on Wednesday for the meeting with Trump. The Axios website reported that Trump’s son-in-law and former senior adviser, Jared Kushner, was also in attendance.
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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, according to multiple reports.
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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.
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Donald Trump’s tariffs of 50% have come into force on most US imports from India. The US president followed through on his threat to punish one of the world’s largest economies for its purchases of discounted Russian oil. We explain how hard the tariffs will hit India and what it might do about that.
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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.
Catching up? Here’s what happened 26 August 2025.