The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was one of many parts of the vast government censorship cartel. The removal of a leading figure at the agency has exposed a deep issue at the agency: censorship.
President Donald Trump dismissed Susan Monarez, his recently appointed CDC director, after she allegedly opposed the administration’s healthcare agenda. And while Monarez was not in charge during the peak of the censorship problem, this move appears to have unveiled the potential need for more house cleaning within the agency.
White House spokesman Kush Desai defended Monarez’s ouster in an email statement to The Washington Post: “Susan Monarez is not aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again. Since Susan Monarez refused to resign despite informing HHS leadership of her intent to do so, the White House has terminated Monarez from her position with the CDC.”
Four other top CDC officials resigned after Monarez was fired. Several resigned after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy rescinded emergency authorization for the COVID-19 vaccines. The officials asserted that the agency was being weaponized and that “misinformation,” a word often used to justify censorship, was being spread about vaccines. The departing officials, according to Just The News, included: “Dr. Debra Houry, the CDC's chief medical officer; Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; Dr. Daniel Jernigan, the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; and Dr. Jen Layden, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance and Technology.”
Media Research Center and other free speech entities have exposed the CDC for extreme censorship efforts. MRC Free Speech America’s groundbreaking 57 Biden censorship initiatives study highlighted how CDC officials, including then-directors Robert Redfield and Rochelle Walensky, were involved in the federal censorship campaign to pressure Big Tech into censoring certain content. Though the two directors are no longer with the agency, during their tenure, the CDC sometimes worked in concert with the NIAID in an attempt to silence critics of the Biden government’s COVID-19 recommendations.
From “Initiative #20: The COVID-19 Censorship Orders” in the study:
“Sometimes in concert with NIAID, the Center for Disease Control, through its Division of Digital Media, spent years directing Facebook (later Meta) and Google to censor critics of its authoritarian COVID-19 recommendations. The CDC even told Facebook to produce detailed reports on its “amplification” policies so the Department could better direct censorship on issues such as masking, lockdowns and vaccines.”
Learn about the Biden Regime’s Full-Scale War on Free Speech with 57 Censorship Initiatives
For its part, America First Legal also exposed the health agency for its part in pressuring Big Tech. AFL obtained documents in 2023 through a lawsuit, showing that the CDC was part of the Biden administration's effort to apply foreign intel methods to censor Americans’ speech.
In fact, Walensky brazenly celebrated her agency’s efforts to censor Americans, bragging she worked to “forestall misinformation,” the typical leftist catchword for speech with which they disagree. That same year, Reason Magazine senior editor Robby Soave published what he called “The Facebook Files,” providing evidence that the CDC had significant influence on the censorship campaign Meta platforms mounted against what they labeled COVID-19 misinformation.
Free speech is under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
