Newsom Just Hired Former CDC Leaders To Boost California’s Public Health

Gov. Newsom just tapped former CDC leaders Susan Monarez and Dr. Debra Houry as top consultants in a new state effort called the Public Health Network Innovation Exchange, or PHNIX, because if the feds are going to play politics with vaccines and science, Daddy’s going to build a parallel upgrade that runs on facts and functional software.

The announcement landed December 15, 2025, with Newsom formally naming Monarez and Houry to newly created advisory roles meant to modernize California’s public health infrastructure, according to the Associated Press report on the hires. And the message is almost too crisp: when the national public health apparatus gets destabilized, California isn’t going to sit around refreshing cable news and praying. We’re going to recruit the grownups, wire up the systems, and keep people alive anyway.

PHNIX: California building the “we don’t have brainworms” health network

PHNIX is being sold as a modernization project because that’s what it is: better data infrastructure, smarter funding, tighter integration of emerging science and technology, the whole “public health should not run like a fax machine” agenda, as described in The Guardian’s coverage of the initiative and appointments. And if that sounds boring, congratulations on being a normal person. Unfortunately, boring competence has become controversial in a country where a loud chunk of the right thinks epidemiology is a cult and measles is a personality trait.

What Newsom is doing here is aggressively practical: build durable systems that don’t collapse every time D.C. gets a new set of political appointees that spent most their life being addicted to drugs and taking shots of unpasteurized milk. PHNIX is basically California saying, “We’re going to treat public health like infrastructure,” because it is infrastructure. Data systems. Funding pipelines. Regional coordination. The stuff you only notice when it fails, at which point people start dying and the same people who defunded everything are suddenly screaming about government incompetence.

Susan Monarez and Debra Houry: the CDC veterans who refused to cosplay as anti-vax staffers

The delicious part, politically speaking, is who Newsom chose.

Susan Monarez, a microbiologist and immunologist, was recently bounced from the CDC director job after conflicts over vaccine policy, as reported by The Guardian. In California, she’ll be a strategic adviser focused on health technology and public funding. If you’re keeping score, that’s “take the most weaponized parts of public health debates and put a scientist in charge of making the systems work.”

Debra Houry, formerly the CDC’s chief medical officer and deputy director, resigned amid the upheaval and is now appointed Senior Regional and Global Public Health Medical Adviser, according to the AP. That title is a mouthful, but the job is straightforward: help California stay connected to real medical consensus and serious public health practice, even when the federal situation is… whatever the hell it’s been lately.

And yes, the backstory is the whole point. Reuters reported that Monarez was pushed out after only weeks in the role, with multiple senior officials resigning in the fallout, and that Monarez’s lawyers dispute the legality of her removal, arguing only the president can remove a Senate-confirmed CDC director (Reuters). Politico also described HHS declaring Monarez “no longer director” of CDC (Politico). You don’t need a PhD to understand the vibe here: the federal health apparatus got shoved into a political blender, and California just hired two of the people who got tossed out for not playing along.

Monarez and Houry later went to Congress and warned about vaccine misinformation and weakened scientific oversight, according to the Los Angeles Times coverage of their testimony. So, naturally, California’s hiring them to help run a project designed to strengthen public health infrastructure and defend science-based policy. That’s not subtle. That’s the point.

RFK Jr - Yeah, that guy.

The whole PHNIX push is framed as a response to controversial federal decisions under HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., including allegations of politicized vaccine policies and destabilizing internal changes at the CDC, per The Guardian. If you’ve been watching this saga, you already know how this movie goes: weaken institutions, purge expertise, amplify misinformation, then act shocked when trust collapses.

And California has already been laying track for this. In September, Newsom’s office highlighted a West Coast coalition issuing unified vaccine recommendations and noted California passing a law to break from future federal guidance if necessary (Gov. Gavin Newsom’s official site). PHNIX fits into that exact posture: regional resilience, science-forward policy, and a refusal to let national dysfunction boomerang into state-level harm.

The criticism is predictable: “political,” “grandstanding,” “California thinks it’s better than us”

Opponents are already doing the little routine where they pretend this is “politically motivated” rather than, you know, a state responding to a federal public health crisis by hiring qualified experts. The AP notes the debate over motives, with critics framing it as politics and supporters arguing it’s about emergency response capacity and scientific integrity (AP).

Here’s the deal: public health became political when a bunch of right-wing grifters realized they could turn “wash your hands” into a civil war. California responding with actual infrastructure, data modernization, and expertise is politics in the same way that fixing a bridge is politics. Yes, it is an act of governance, which is inherently political. That’s what adults do: they govern.

What’s still fuzzy because public programs don’t materialize fully formed out of a press release

There are real unknowns here. The reporting makes clear the ambition, but not the full operational blueprint: the exact PHNIX budget, timelines, and measurable targets haven’t been spelled out in public announcements yet. That matters, because “modernization” can either mean “new dashboards that look pretty” or “systems that detect outbreaks faster, target resources better, and rebuild trust through transparency.” California needs the second one. And frankly, with Monarez focused on health tech and funding strategy, that’s the kind of mandate you’d expect.

There’s also the question of how PHNIX interacts with federal agencies going forward. Is it complementary? Is it a workaround? Does it become a model other states copy when they realize the CDC is being run by a man with holes in his brain and the worm is in charge now?

And for the MAGA crowd who gets hives every time California demonstrates functional governance: cope. Your influencers told you competence is tyranny. Meanwhile, Newsom is over here stacking expertise like it’s a championship roster, because pandemics, outbreaks, and health system strain do not care about your feelings, your podcasts, or your bumper stickers.