A top official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who resigned on Thursday pushed back after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt criticized him for using the term “pregnant people” in his resignation letter.
Leavitt told reporters that one of the departing officials “identifies pregnant women as pregnant people,” adding, “that’s not someone who we want in this administration.”
She was referring to the resignation letter of Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who wrote, “the recent change in the adult and children’s immunization schedule threaten the lives of the youngest Americans and pregnant people.”
Daskalakis resigned along with Dr. Deb Houry and Dr. Dan Jernigan. All three officials opposed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s changes to the CDC’s vaccine advisory board and other vaccine policies.
Their departures came shortly after Susan Monarez was removed as CDC director, part of a broader shake-up inside the health department.
“I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health,” Daskalakis wrote in his letter.
Leavitt also told reporters, “If people are not aligned with the president’s vision and the secretary’s vision to make our country healthy again, then we will gladly show them the door.”
Later that night, Daskalakis appeared on CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins. He said he has always defended the LGBTQ community and was outraged that the Trump administration “is trying to erase transgender people.”
“I very specifically used the term pregnant people, and very specifically added my pronouns at the end of my resignation letter to make the point that I am defying this … terrible strategy at trying to erase people and not allowing them to express their identities,” Daskalakis said. “So I accept the note from the press secretary and counter that with, I don’t care.”
