Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) official Dr. Demetre Daskalakis was defiant on Thursday over his use of the term “pregnant people” in his resignation letter from the health agency this week, even as the presidential administration and its surrogates used the language to distract from a mass exodus of career scientists from the CDC.

“For my entire career, I have been an advocate for the LGBTQ community, through my work for HIV, through my work in Mpox. I find it outrageous that this administration is trying to erase transgender people,” Daskalakis said on CNN Thursday night.

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“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.”

Earlier in the day, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt signaled the administration’s strategy addressing the mass resignations at CDC — and the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez the previous day — by highlighting Daskalakis’ use of the term.

“I understand there were a few other people that resigned after the firing of Miss Monerez,” Leavitt told reporters at the White House daily briefing Thursday. “One of those individuals wrote in his departure statement that he identifies pregnant women as ‘pregnant people,’ so that is not someone who we want in this administration anyway. So 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.”

Daskalakis’ used the term “pregnant people” in his scathing denunciation of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the administration, citing “radical non-transparency,” “unskilled manipulation of data,” and “people of dubious intent and more dubious scientific rigor” onboarded to the department on Kennedy’s watch.

Among his criticisms, Daskalakis wrote, “The recent change in the adult and children’s immunization schedule threaten the lives of the youngest Americans and pregnant people.”

Of Leavitt’s comments, Daskalakis told CNN’s Kaitlyn Collins, “I accept the note from the press secretary and counter that with, ‘I don’t care.'”

“The people installed by Secretary Kennedy are full of ideology and bias that will actually contaminate the science,” he said. “The direction that the nation’s public health is going is not one that is evidence-based or science-based, which is why our resignations together are trying to raise a red flag for everyone.”

Judging by the right-wing reaction to Daskalakis’ use of the inclusive term that recognizes that trans men and nonbinary people can also get pregnant, it was a gift that’s distracting people from his and his colleague’s “red flag” message addressing the corruption of science at the CDC.

In an appearance on CNN after Leavitt called attention to the term, Scott Jennings, a former senior aide to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), ignored the charges Daskalakis made earlier on the network and mocked him.

“I just have to say, he didn’t use the term ‘pregnant people’ in his response,” Jennings said.

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