The White House on Thursday said President Donald Trump has fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez after she refused to resign, and that a new replacement will be named soon.

“The president fired her, which he has every right to do,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing.

She said Trump has “the authority to fire those who are not aligned with his mission,” and that he or Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will announce a new CDC director “very soon.”

In a statement, lawyers for Monarez said they were “not aware of anything new happening.”

Earlier Thursday, Monarez’s attorney Mark Zaid said Monarez would remain in the role because she is a presidential appointee and only Trump can fire her. Zaid said White House personnel had tried to fire her, not the president.

“Receiving an email from an HR staffer simply saying ‘you’re fired’ is insufficient as a matter of law to constitute the termination of a federal employee, especially one appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate,” Zaid said.

He also said she “refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts” and that “she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda.”

“For that, she has been targeted,” he said.

Monarez and Kennedy were at odds over vaccine policy, The New York Times reported Wednesday, citing an anonymous administration official.

Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic, has taken several steps to change immunization policy in the U.S.

Monarez was sworn in on July 31. A longtime federal government scientist, she is the first CDC director to be confirmed by the Senate following a new law passed during the pandemic that required lawmakers to approve nominees for the role.

Trump’s move to oust her is the latest in a leadership upheaval at the CDC.

At least four other top health officials announced Wednesday that they were quitting the agency shortly after HHS said Monarez was “no longer” the director of the CDC in a post on X.

In a Fox News interview Thursday morning, Kennedy declined to comment on “personnel issues.” But he said the agency “is in trouble, and we need to fix it, and we are fixing it, and it may be that some people should not be working there anymore.”

Kennedy said Trump has “very, very ambitious hopes for the CDC right now.” But he said the CDC “has problems,” claiming that the agency took the “wrong” approach when it came to social distancing, masking and school closures during the Covid pandemic.

“We need to look at the priorities of the agency, if there’s really a deeply, deeply embedded … malaise at the agency, and we need strong leadership that will go in there and that will be able to execute on President Trump’s broad ambitions for this agency, the gold standard science and to what it was when we were growing up, which was the most respected health agency in the world,” Kennedy said.

The leadership departures come at a tumultuous time for the agency, which is reeling from a gunman’s attack on the CDC’s Atlanta headquarters on Aug. 8. A police officer died in the shooting. 

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect the correct day the White House said Trump fired Susan Monarez after she refused to resign, and to reflect the correct wording of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s last quote.

— CNBC’s Angelica Peebles contributed to this report.

Best Buy surpassed Wall Street revenue and earnings expectations for its most recent quarter on Thursday, but stuck with its full-year forecast, citing tariff uncertainty.

On the company’s earnings call, CEO Corie Barry said the retailer is “increasingly confident about our plans for the back half of the year.” She said the company is “trending toward the higher end of our sales range.”

Yet she said, “given the uncertainty of potential tariff impacts in the back half, both on consumers overall as well as our business, we feel it is prudent to maintain the annual guidance we provided last quarter.”

The consumer electronics retailer said it expects revenue of $41.1 billion to $41.9 billion and adjusted earnings per share in a range of $6.15 to $6.30 for its full fiscal year 2026. In May, Best Buy had cut its full-year profit guidance from a prior range of $6.20 to $6.60.

The middle of Best Buy’s expected full-year revenue range would be roughly flat to its revenue of $41.53 billion in the previous year. Best Buy said it expects full-year comparable sales, a metric that tracks online sales and sales at stores open at least 14 months, to range between a 1% decline and a 1% increase.

Chief Financial Officer Matt Bilunas said the company’s full-year guidance reflects that some shoppers could hold off on purchases in the third quarter. He said the retailer could see a slowdown in the business in October “as people are waiting for those holiday deals to come.”

For Best Buy, back-to-school season is a crucial time as families and students come to the store for laptops, tablets and more. Barry said the company has seen “a strong customer response” to its sales events during the season.

“These results demonstrate an important aspect of our thesis: Our model really shines when there is innovation,” she said.

Shares of Best Buy were down about 4% in afternoon trading.

Here’s how the retailer did for the three-month period that ended August 2 compared with what Wall Street was expecting, according to a survey of analysts by LSEG:

• Earnings per share: $1.28 adjusted vs. $1.21 expected
• Revenue: $9.44 billion vs. $9.24 billion expected

Best Buy’s net income for the fiscal second quarter of 2026 fell to $186 million, or 87 cents per share, from $291 million, or $1.34 per share, in the year-ago quarter. Adjusting for one-time items, including restructuring charges, Best Buy reported earnings per share of $1.28.

Revenue increased from $9.29 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Best Buy has been navigating a challenging trifecta of factors. Customers have bought fewer kitchen appliances as they put off home purchases and projects because of higher interest rates. Some have hesitated to splurge on pricier items because of tariff-related uncertainty or held out on tech replacements as they wait for new or eye-catching items. The company’s annual sales have declined for the past three years.

To spur growth, Best Buy launched a third-party marketplace earlier this month to offer shoppers a wider selection of consumer electronics, accessories and more. On the marketplace, sellers who apply for the platform can list their own brands and items on Best Buy’s website and app.

The company already increased prices on some items because of tariff-related higher costs, Barry said on a mid-May call with reporters. She did not specify which items now cost more and described price increases as “the very last resort.”

Still, tariffs did not have a material impact on fiscal second-quarter financial results, Barry said on the company’s earnings call Thursday.

Along with adding more dedicated brand experts to its stores, Best Buy has added new experiences to attract and engage customers. It’s testing mini-showrooms with Ikea that feature kitchen and laundry room appliances and merchandise from both retailers in 10 stores in Florida and Texas. It is also rolling out new experiences with Breville and SharkNinja to show off trendy coffeemakers, beauty items and more, Barry said. And it has areas in stores where shoppers can try out Ray-Ban and Oakley sunglasses with Meta AI technology.

For the Nintendo Switch 2 launch, Best Buy worked with Nintendo to double the space in stores ahead of the June launch. Nintendo also brought game trucks to select stores, physical trailers where customers could play with the new system and try out the latest videogames.

Best Buy’s fiscal second-quarter online sales in the U.S. rose 5.1% year over year and accounted for about a third of Best Buy’s total U.S. revenue in the quarter.