A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
The Trump White House Clown Show
For a guy whose political career is largely based on the reality TV one-liner “You’re fired,” President Trump sure had a hard time firing CDC Director Susan Monarez.
What may have confounded the White House, beyond its own ineptitude, is that Monarez is the first Senate-confirmed CDC director ever, as a result of a new post-pandemic law. She serves at the pleasure of the president, not of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is her boss, but has less power over her than if she were a run-of-the-mill political appointee.
Kennedy asked for Monarez’s resignation, and she refused, according to reports. He tried to fire her, and her attorneys said nope, sorry, the president has to fire her. The White House then announced it had fired her, and her attorneys again said nope, sorry, you’re not the president.
Let’s assume the White House already has or will sometime today figure out that a Senate-confirmed official who refuses to resign has to be fired by the president himself. He may be stumbling over himself in the precise process, but Monarez is gone.
Four other top CDC officials resigned in protest over the same RFK, Jr. anti-vax and pseudoscience madness that prompted Monarez’s revolt:
- Dr. Debra Houry, the 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
It’s a devastating loss of institutional capacity and years of nonpartisan service in advancing public health.
Quote of the Day
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, in his resignation letter:
The intentional eroding of trust in low-risk vaccines favoring natural infection and unproven remedies will bring us to a pre-vaccine era where only the strong will survive and many if not all will suffer. I believe in nutrition and exercise. I believe in making our food supply healthier, and I also believe in using vaccines to prevent death and disability. Eugenics plays prominently in the rhetoric being generated and is derivative of a legacy that good medicine and science should continue to shun.
The recent shooting at CDC is not why I am resigning. My grandfather, who I am named after, stood up to fascist forces in Greece and lost his life doing so. I am resigning to make him and his legacy proud. I am resigning because of the cowardice of a leader that cannot admit that HIS and his minions’ words over decades created an environment where violence like this can occur. I reject his and his colleagues’ thoughts and prayers, and advise they direct those to people that they have not actively harmed.
IMPORTANT: RFK Jr. Restricts Access To COVID Vax
The personnel debacle at the CDC appears to be a direct result of Kennedy’s announcement (via X!) of the FDA decision to restrict access to the annual COVID vaccine to certain groups of eligible recipients, bypassing the normal process for vaccine approvals, disregarding the established science, and overriding the opposition of the public health community.
While it’s true that on its face Kennedy’s announcement suggests there may be many easy workarounds to obtain the COVID vaccine despite the new restrictions, the limitations represent precisely the scenario his critics and the public health sector have been warning about for months. Longtime experts with sterling reputations and an adherence to science and public policy particulars have been sidelined in favor of Kennedy’s shoot-from-the-hip bombast, his anti-vax biases, and the crowd of grifters, quacks, and charlatans, whom he attracts and elevates.
Under Kennedy, science has taken a backseat to conspiracists, opportunists, and snake-oil salesman. The result is now a nationwide limitation on access to a vital vaccine that has saved countless lives over the past five years.
Thread Of The Day
Senate Republicans Snubbed By Trump Yet Again
I can’t immediately think of any recent precedent for Senate-confirmed officials to be sacked as quickly as President Trump has canned IRS Commissioner Billy Long and the CDC’s Susan Monarez. They lasted mere weeks after going through the resource-intensive process of Senate confirmation.
The vetting, the background checks, interviews with individual senators, committee staff time and resources, the hearings themselves: It’s a formal constitutional process that even in the current degraded state of the GOP-controlled Senate still requires an investment and commitment from senators.
Not only that, but deals are struck, accommodations made, and horses traded to line up the votes and get nominations through the Senate. All of that is blown up if the president is willy nilly firing his Senate-confirmed appointees within weeks of their final approval from senators.
On the backend is the prospect of either another round of confirmation hearings for the next nominee or more ominously a series of interims, actings, and dual-hat appointments to bypass the Senate entirely. Even if you’re a Trump-captured Republican senator reluctant to speak out or do anything, this pattern has to give you pause.
Trump’s Firing of the Fed’s Lisa Cook Not Easy To Reverse
Another gentle warning that the pretextual firing of Lisa Cook as a member of the Federal Reserve Board — while an egregious threat to the rule of law and the economy — may very well stand:
- Columbia University law professor Lev Menand: “The White House has good reason to think, based on Wilcox, that the court won’t side with Ms. Cook, at least during the pendency of the litigation, and possibly also following full review.”
- Georgetown law professor Marty Lederman: “[I]f the Supreme Court ultimately rules for Trump on the nonconstitutional questions … in a way that permits him to remove Cook, that would be, in effect, the end of statutorily guaranteed independence of the Federal Reserve, because it wouldn’t be difficult for any President to articulate some “cause” for removal of virtually any Fed Governor who doesn’t vote to regulate interest rates in accord with the President’s preferences.”
- The NYT’s Adam Liptak: “In removing the leaders of other independent agencies, Mr. Trump has given no reasons, saying he has the unilateral constitutional authority to control the executive branch, even in the face of congressional efforts to shield officials from political interference. … But with the Fed, Mr. Trump has tried something new. This time, he explained in a letter to Ms. Cook on Monday, there was “sufficient cause” to remove her.”
USAF Approves Giving Ashli Babbitt A Military Funeral
In a reversal from a Biden administration decision, the Air Force will give military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt, the Jan. 6 rioter shot and killed in the Capitol. Under Secretary of the Air Force Matthew Lohmeier notified Babbitt’s family of the decision in an Aug. 15 letter, which was shared by the right-wing group Judicial Watch and reported by The Hill.
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