RFK Jr. Just Kneecapped the CDC on His First Day

Hours after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged that the Department of Health and Human Services would not undergo a staff purge, it did.

The Trump administration laid off half of its Epidemic Intelligence Service, otherwise known as the “Disease Detectives.” The lay off affected 1,260 staff, reported NBC News’s Lewis Kamb.

Top-ranking officials with the CDC, the HHS subagency that oversees the program, told CBS News that the cuts would have a devastating effect on the country’s ability to assess blooming diseases. They are just some of the thousands of probationary workers taking a hit as Elon Musk’s DOGE combs the federal government for possible programs to slash.

“The country is less safe,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, an alumna of the disease research program, told CBS. “These are the deployable assets critical for investigating new threats, from anthrax to Zika.”

Many staffers that go through the program serve on the frontlines of public health responses before later rising through the ranks of the CDC. Another health official observed to the news outlet that many of the fired staffers were early career professionals who had been trained by the agency.

“Now their dream is canceled,” the unidentified official said.

Kennedy was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday. In an interview with Fox News after he was sworn in, Kennedy pledged that employees who work in service of public health had “nothing to worry about” under his tenure fronting America’s health policy.

“If you’ve been involved in good science, you’ve got nothing to worry about,” Kennedy said. “If you care about public health, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Kennedy’s role as secretary of HHS will have him oversee a budget of nearly $2 trillion and a staff of 90,000 federal employees, as well as hand him the reins of other critical health programs under the fold of HHS, such as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

The 71-year-old’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda has not been laid out in specifics, but Kennedy has vaguely promised to tackle the nation’s rising obesity rates and SNAP benefits (formerly known as food stamps), and has claimed he will work the Department of Agriculture to eradicate ultra-processed foods from the American market.

Donald Trump’s attempt to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams keeps escalating, with seven federal prosecutors resigning rather than carry out the order. 

Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove gathered the entire Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department, which handles all federal public corruption cases, in one room on Friday and threatened to fire those unwilling to dismiss the case against Adams, according to Reuters. He gave them one hour to come up with a name to file the motion, after which one prosecutor did under duress. 

“This is not a capitulation-this is a coercion,” a source familiar with the meeting told Reuters. “That person, in my mind, is a hero.”

Bove had moved the case to the Public Integrity Section from the Southern District of New York after its acting U.S. attorney, Danielle Sassoon, resigned Thursday rather than drop the charges. After her, the acting head of the section, John Keller, also resigned. Then, the case was sent to the  DOJ’s criminal division, which handles all federal criminal cases. Its acting head, Kevin Driscoll, refused to drop the case, and handed in his walking papers. 

That wasn’t the end, though. Three other deputies in the Public Integrity Section—Rob Heberle, Jenn Clarke, and Marco Palmieri—also quit their jobs Thursday. Then, the lead prosecutor on Adams’s case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten, also resigned and ripped the order in his resignation letter to Bove, who seems to have been tasked with carrying out Trump’s instructions. 

On Thursday, it seemed as though Trump’s DOJ was repeating the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre” of the Nixon administration, when the top two leaders of the DOJ resigned rather than file special counsel Archibald Cox on President Nixon’s orders. But the case of Trump wanting to drop charges against Adams in exchange for cooperation on his cruel immigration policy has far surpassed the 1973 incident, with more than triple the number of DOJ resignations taking place. 

These resignations show a commitment by these prosecutors to resist appearing corrupt, and to stand by their strong case against Adams, who has cozied up to the president in the last few months to save his own skin. Will other government officials also fight against Trump’s shameful actions?

The Trump administration on Friday booted the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One, citing the newswire’s choice to continue referring to the recently renamed “Gulf of America” as the “Gulf of Mexico.”

“The Associated Press continues to ignore the lawful geographic name change of the Gulf of America,” wrote White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich on X. “This decision is not just divisive, but it also exposes the Associated Press’ commitment to misinformation.”

Moments after Donald Trump was inaugurated, the newly minted president signed an executive order officially renaming the ocean basin to linguistically claim it as America’s.

“While their right to irresponsible and dishonest reporting is protected by the First Amendment, it does not ensure their privilege of unfettered access to limited spaces, like the Oval Office and Air Force One,” Budowich said. “Going forward, that space will now be opened up to the many thousands of reporters who have been barred from covering these intimate areas of the administration. Associate[d] Press journalists and photographers will retain their credentials to the White House complex.”

The Associated Press—an international publication—has defended its decision to defy the Trump administration’s guidance on renaming the body of water by citing its global audience. The wire pointed to its style change for Mount Denali to Mount McKinley under the rationale that Trump has singular authority as the head of the federal government to rename national landmarks.

“The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen,” the outlet said in a statement. “As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.

“The Associated Press will use the official name change to Mount McKinley. The area lies solely in the United States and as president, Trump has the authority to change federal geographical names within the country.”

The lead prosecutor assigned to New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s public corruption case resigned Friday, in a mic-drop statement slamming the Department of Justice official who thought he’d be stupid enough to drop the charges at Donald Trump’s behest.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten wrote a scathing letter to acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who earlier this week had ordered federal prosecutors in New York to drop the charges against Adams alleging he had sought out and taken bribes from the Turkish government.

Bove argued that the prosecution would interfere with Adams’s ability to execute Trump’s crackdown on immigration. It seems the DOJ sought to remove the charges to ensure Adams’s compliance with enacting Trump’s mass deportations in his sanctuary city.

Scotten, a graduate of Harvard Law School who was awarded two bronze stars for his service as a troop commander in Iraq, made sure to set the record straight, telling Bove that he was nobody’s fool.

“I have received correspondence indicating that I refused your order to move to dismiss the indictment against Eric Adams without prejudice, subject to certain conditions, including the express possibility of reinstatement of the indictment. That is not exactly correct,” Scotten wrote.

“The U.S. Attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, never asked me to file such a motion, and I therefore never had an opportunity to refuse. But I am entirely in agreement with her decision not to do so,” he wrote.

Sassoon, a Trump appointee with a solid conservative record, joined a cascade of resignations Thursday over the order to drop the charges. She revealed that Adams’s lawyers had requested a quid pro quo agreement and that her office had been planning to bring forward a superseding indictment against Adams.

“There is a tradition in public service of resigning in a last-ditch effort to head off a serious mistake. Some will view the mistake you are committing here in the light of their generally negative views of the new Administration. I do not share those views,” Scotten continued.

“I can even understand how a Chief Executive whose background is in business and politics might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal. But any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way.

“If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me,” Scotten concluded.

Read his full letter here.

A major lawsuit to end Elon Musk’s takeover of the federal government has landed before one of Donald Trump’s least favorite judges.

Judge Tanya Chutkan, who presided over Trump’s federal election interference case, was assigned the federal lawsuit filed by 14 states against the president and Musk, attacking the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s authority.

Chutkan gained the national spotlight as she refused to accept arguments from Trump’s legal team at nearly every step in the January 6 case. She infuriated Trump when she placed a gag order on him in October 2023 and said that his presidential candidacy did not give him “carte blanche” to vilify public servants “who are simply doing their job.” Trump lashed out at the judge, calling her “the most evil person” as she seemed unwilling to bend to the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.

Now Chutkan will preside over a pivotal lawsuit that will determine the future of the U.S. government and the second Trump administration. The suit directly attacks Musk as a “21st century tech baron,” claiming that “the scope and reach of his executive authority appear unprecedented in U.S. history.”

“His power includes, at least, the authority to cease the payment of congressionally approved funds, access sensitive and confidential data across government agencies, cut off systems access to federal employees and contractors at will, and take over and dismantle entire independent federal agencies,” the lawsuit states.

Trump is not likely to be happy with Chutkan being assigned the case but so far has not mentioned her on his Truth Social account, as of this writing. Likewise, Elon Musk hasn’t posted on X. But it’s only a matter of time, considering that several MAGA personalities, such as Laura Loomer, are already attacking her. The right will soon be on the attack, led by the president and Musk, escalating their attempts to undermine the federal judiciary and constitutional separation of powers.