Trump Fires Top Transportation Official Overseeing Key Merger

President Trump has fired Surface Transportation Board member Robert Primus, a Democrat, who he himself first appointed to the railroad regulator board in 2020. Primus, who was expected to weigh in on a major railroad merger, is at least the fourth top official fired this week, joining ousted Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook, CDC Director Susan Monarez, and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Jeffrey Kruse. 

Primus plans to protest his firing. 

“This is deeply troubling and legally invalid,” he wrote in an email sent to The Wall Street Journal. He also noted that his firing would “adversely affect the freight rail network in a way that may ultimately hurt consumers and the economy.”

The White House disagreed.

“Robert Primus did not align with the President’s America First agenda,” the White House said in a statement. “The Administration intends to nominate new, more qualified members to the Surface Transportation Board in short order.”

It’s possible that Primus’s firing had something to do with his history of opposing megamerger’s for the sake of the public good. In 2023, he was the only member of the Surface Transportation Board to go against the Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern railroad merger. And Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern recently announced a $71.5 billion deal to join together to control all coast-to-coast rail shipments for the first time ever in this country—a megamerger that the Surface Transportation Board was still considering.  

It is unclear whether Trump has tapped a replacement for Primus, even as the ousted board member looks into a potential legal challenge. Cook and Monarez have also refused to vacate their positions. 

Yet another Republican member of Congress was blasted by his constituents at his own town hall over his support for President Donald Trump’s agenda. Barry Moore of Alabama, a U.S. representative and Senate candidate, slipped out the back door of a Wednesday event in Daphne, as the audience erupted in shouts of “Shame!”

According to a video of the event posted online, an early sign of trouble for Moore came at his first mention of Trump’s tax and spending plan, which includes historic rollbacks of the social safety net and, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will further enrich the rich and impoverish the poor.

The name of the so-called “big, beautiful bill” alone drew boos.

“So, I guess you guys maybe have read the legislation, I don’t know,” Moore said, leading more than one attendee to shout, “Have you?”

When Moore claimed inflation is the lowest it’s been in decades, attendees laughed in disbelief. The response was even more raucous when he claimed that no Americans will lose Medicaid under Trump’s plan. “That is not true!” “You’re lying!” people shouted.

Then came the Q&A portion, beginning with a question about whether Moore believes consumers pay for Trump’s tariffs. “So, right now, what we just saw in a report is that we haven’t seen inflation at all—” he began. But, sensing his evasiveness, the crowd began to chant: “Who pays the tariffs? Who pays the tariffs?”

Moore similarly struck out with his audience on social issues. He attributed Republican electoral gains in 2024, in part, to voters realizing that “they don’t want men in our daughters’ locker rooms,” a take that elicited outcry. (“There’s a pedophile in the White House!” one woman yelled.)

Asked if he supports “no-exception abortion bans, even if somebody you know were raped,” Moore said, “I am 100 percent pro-life,” and was once again showered in boos.

On the topic of immigration, one attendee asked why immigrants are being deported without due process. Moore replied that “due process for a citizen and noncitizen are different,” and the audience fell into chants of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” as the congressman headed out the back door.

The congressman licked his wounds during a Thursday appearance on a conservative radio show, where he claimed the event had been “hijacked” by left-wing “agitators.”

After deceiving their base and inadvertently sparking days of national controversy, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel will finally be called to testify before Congress.

Bondi and Patel will appear before the House Judiciary Committee, with the attorney general testifying on September 17 and the FBI director on October 9, according to Politico. The majority of the questioning is expected to focus on the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein case, like how Bondi went from claiming she had the Epstein files “sitting on my desk” to declaring the case closed, and why whatever files the administration has released contain virtually no new information.

While the Epstein files have not dominated the daily news cycle in recent weeks as they initially did, Congress’s return from recess next week may very well kick the discourse back into gear.

Democrats will likely focus on Trump’s relationship to the deceased sex predator, while Republicans will try to appease MAGA loyalists who have been chasing the story for years. Either way, Bondi and Patel are sure to face some tough questioning regarding their apparent mishandling of it all.

Former Trump Labor Secretary Alex Acosta—who as U.S. Attorney to the Southern District of Florida provided Epstein with the sweetheart plea deal that allowed him to avoid any real punishment for his sex trafficking crimes—has also agreed to be interviewed by the House Oversight Committee on September 19.

Susan Monarez, former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, refused to bend to the Trump administration’s demands. Then she was fired.

That’s the explanation behind Wednesday’s sudden events, according to former CDC director Richard Besser.

Speaking with reporters Thursday, Besser explained that he had talked with Monarez hours before the Health Department announced her departure.

“She said that there were two things she would never do in the job,” Besser said. “She said she was asked to do both of those, one in terms of firing her leadership, who are talented civil servants like herself, and the other was to rubber stamp [vaccine] recommendations that flew in the face of science, and she was not going to do either of those things.”

Besser was concerned by her departure, he told ABC News. “She is a very principled scientist, a public servant, and having someone like that in that role gave me some hope there could be pushback against some of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s moves.”

Three top leaders at the agency resigned in the wake of Monarez’s dismissal, including former Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry, former National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Demetre Daskalakis, and National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Director Daniel Jernigan.

In June, Kennedy replaced independent medical experts on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel with vaccine skeptics. Monarez was confirmed to run the CDC in late July and lasted less than a month in her position.

Monarez’s time was spent constructing guardrails for the newly reconfigured panel, including a failed attempt to make the panel’s evidence and slides publicly available, and an unsuccessful bid to “replace the federal official that oversees the committee with someone with more policy experience,” Houry told Politico.

Skirting direct questions about Monarez’s sudden departure during an interview with Fox & Friends Thursday, Kennedy insisted that the CDC was in trouble.

“We need to fix it, and we are fixing it, and it may be that some people should not be working there anymore,” he said.

With or without Monarez, Kennedy’s policies have already greatly reduced Americans’ ability to access vaccines.

Just this month, he divested $500 million from mRNA research, effectively axing 22 mRNA studies since, according to Kennedy, they “fail to protect” against “upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.” He also deauthorized Covid-19 vaccinations for children and adults under 65, despite evidence that pregnant women and children are some of the most at-risk demographics for serious complications related to Covid infections.

Senator Lindsey Graham on Thursday threatened to slap tariffs on Norway for its sovereign wealth fund’s decision to divest from an American company reportedly complicit in Israeli human rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank.

As part of an ongoing ethics review meant to root out investments that contribute to Israeli violations of international law, the Norwegian wealth fund announced this week that it would exclude the construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar. The ethics council concluded, “There is no doubt that Caterpillar’s products are being used to commit extensive and systematic violations of international humani­tarian law.” Namely, “Bulldozers manufactured by Caterpillar are being used by Israeli authorities in the widespread unlawful destruction of Palestinian property,” the council found, as the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement has long pointed out.

Graham threatened the fund on X Wednesday, writing, “Your BS decision will not go unanswered.” On Thursday, he specified that he hopes to “put tariffs on countries who refuse to do business with great American companies” or to refuse visas to people punishing U.S. companies “for geopolitical differences.”

“To those who run Norway’s sovereign wealth fund: if you cannot do business with Caterpillar because Israel uses their products, maybe it’s time you’re made aware that doing business or visiting America is a privilege, not a right,” Graham warned.

The intimidation tactic is unsurprising from a politician who has proven himself an unquestioning cheerleader of the Israeli government amid the atrocities it is committing in Palestine. In June, Graham summed up his foreign policy approach regarding Israel as follows: “God blesses those who bless Israel.” (And the Republican senator has been blessed abundantly by pro-Israel lobbying groups, reportedly to the tune of $1 million throughout his political career.)

This is not the first time Graham has threatened hefty punishments on countries seeking to uphold international law.

In November 2024, Graham vowed that countries would face draconian sanctions if they complied with the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity. “If you help the ICC, we’re going to crush the economy,” the senator said at the time. “Because we’re next,” he added. “Why can’t they go after Trump, or any other American president, under this theory?”

Constituents at Ohio Representative Warren Davidson’s town hall drowned him out with boos, jeers, and chants of “tax the rich” on Wednesday night. Attendees were particularly upset about Ohio’s National Guard being deployed in Washington, D.C., Davidson’s support for President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and tariffs.

“[How will you lower] the inflated levels of government spending today to a level that is sustainable and will not crush our children with debt?” Read one of the constituent submitted questions.

“Yeah great question, thank you for that. I think that—”

“Tax the rich! Tax the rich! Tax the rich! Tax the rich!” the crowd interrupted, growing louder with each chant.

The town hall later turned to the Republican representative’s support for the Trump administration’s agenda.

“Why would you vote to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill when it raises the national debt to $3.4 trillion, and hurts the poorest of Americans?” A constituent asked Davidson. The crowd applauded in support of the question.

“The One Big Beautiful Bill is a imperfect bill, but it is—it is beautiful,” Davidson answered weakly, pausing between words while the audience groaned and yelled, “Bullshit!” at him. “If we did not pass this bill, we would have faced a default on our debt. [Which is] inacceptable [sic]. Almost everyone in the room, if you pay income taxes, would’ve had your taxes increased.”

The crowd grumbled again.

“And I’d just like to know … who is in the super high income tax bracket that gets tips? No tax on tips. No tax on Social Security. These things are big wins for Americans,” Davidson continued as the crowd grew more and more irate. “And look, President Trump is doing a great job of securing the border.”

“No!” the crowd screamed, booing even more.

Davidson was a bit dismayed by his constituents’ indignation.

“I tried to basically serve the people that wanted to come have an actual town hall,” Davidson told Ohio’s Spectrum News. “It was disappointing that a lot of other people were very disruptive. So hopefully the people that endured and stayed through it all got some benefit out of it.”

Vice President JD Vance is having a temper tantrum over people criticizing the phrase “thoughts and prayers” as a suitable response to a deadly mass shooting.

MSNBC host Jen Psaki called out leaders’ lackluster response to the school shooting in Minneapolis Wednesday, drawing the ire of the vice president.

“Prayer is not freaking enough,” Psaki wrote in a post on X Thursday. “Prayers does not end school shootings. Prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers.”

Vance, who is known for his emotional outbursts—both online and off—appeared to have been stewing on this argument, and slammed Psaki’s statement.

“We pray because our hearts are broken. We pray because we know God listens. We pray because we know that God works in mysterious ways, and can inspire us to further action,” Vance wrote Thursday morning. “Why do you feel the need to attack other people for praying when kids were just killed praying?”

Vance appears to be willfully misinterpreting Psaki’s criticism. The host was making the point that constituents should expect more from their leaders than some kind of rhetoric—and the “further action” Vance mentions never seems to materialize after mass shootings.

The vice president had offered his own helpless response to the deadly incident on Wednesday. “We’re at the WH monitoring the situation in Minneapolis. Join all of us in praying for the victims!” Vance wrote.

It’s worth noting that the Trump administration is already leaping into action—but not by banning guns, or doing anything that might actually prevent another mass shooting.

President Trump announced Wednesday that the White House would lower the flags to half-mast through Sunday evening. And on Thursday, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he would investigate whether antidepressants can be linked to homicidal ideation (spoiler alert: the NIH have already found no significant connection between the two).

Maybe it’s the brain worms, but Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims he can look at a child and diagnose them with cellular difficulties.

The 71-year-old wellness conspiracist warned reporters Wednesday that America’s children are suffering from “mitochondrial challenges,” an non-clinical term that suggests Kennedy is capable of peering into a person’s cellular health at a glance.

“I know what a healthy child is supposed to look like,” Kennedy said. “I’m looking at kids as I walk through the airports today, as I walk down the street, and I see these kids that are overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation, you can tell from their faces, from their body movements and from their lack of social connection.”

“I know that’s not how our children are supposed to look,” he added.

Kennedy then went on to lament the prevalence of autism, which he got wrong. The health secretary told the Austin crowd that one in 25 Texans have autism—a baseless overexaggeration. In reality, one in 31 people are estimated to have autism, according to data based on national averages that was released by the Autism Society of Texas.

Kennedy has waged an unscientific war on America’s public health policy since he took the reins of the Department of Health and Human Services in February.

So far, he has replaced independent medical experts on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel with vaccine skeptics. He also warned against the use of the MMR vaccine during Texas’s historic measles outbreak, recommending that suffering patients instead take vitamins. And he founded his new directive for America’s health policy—the “Make America Healthy Again” report—on studies generated by AI that never existed in the real world.

His anxieties surrounding autism are particularly alarming. Kennedy is a part of a growing movement of anti-vax parents who refuse to provide their children with the same public health advantages that they received in their youth, mostly in fear of thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories that, at one point, linked autism to the jab.

The researcher who sparked that myth with a fraudulent paper lost his medical license and eventually rescinded his opinion. Since then, dozens of studies have proven there’s no correlation between autism and vaccines, including one study that surveyed more than 660,000 children over the course of 11 years.

Regardless, Kennedy’s ideologies—and his firm grip on HHS—has already eaten away at America’s vaccine access.

Just this month, he has deauthorized Covid-19 vaccinations for children and adults under 65, and divested $500 million from mRNA research, effectively axing 22 mRNA studies since,according to Kennedy, they “fail to protect” against “upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.”

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is investigating whether antidepressants can be linked to homicidal ideation after a mass shooting in Minneapolis.

While appearing on Fox & Friends Thursday morning, Kennedy was asked whether he planned to examine the drugs used by the shooter, who authorities identified as transgender. Host Brian Kilmeade appeared anxious for Kennedy to link the shooter’s medical transition to the deadly incident which killed two children.

“We’re launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor] drugs, and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence. You know, many of them have black box warnings that warn of suicidal ideation and homicidal ideation,” Kennedy replied.

As head of the Department of Health and Human Services, Kennedy has suggested that the people who take antidepressants—some 11 percent of the population—are more likely to become school shooters. In January, Kennedy said that the National Institutes of Health needed to study SSRIs and video games as potential causes of increased gun violence, dismissing actual guns as a potential cause.

One 2015 study published by the National Library of Medicine, which is run by the NIH, found that “antidepressants should not be denied to either adults or adolescents due to a presumed risk of homicidal behavior.”

Minnesota Senator Tina Smith slammed Kennedy’s comments in a post on X Thursday.

“I dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community, in effect, guns don’t kill kids, antidepressants do,” she wrote. “Just shut up. Stop peddling bullshit. You should be fired.”

New York Representative Ritchie Torres—one of AIPAC’s strongest soldiers—left Jewish comedian and talk show host Adam Friedland stunned by the soulless, robotic talking points he kept leaning on to justify Israel’s abhorrent genocide of Palestinians. 

“Hamas murdered thousands of people so,” said Torres in one of the multiple viral clips the interview generated. 

“So what does that mean?” Friedland asked. 

“That Hamas is a terrorist organization for murdering innocent children and civilians.”

“How many civilians have been killed in this war?” Friedland asked earnestly. Torres went quiet for a beat, as if trying to remember how AIPAC taught him to respond to good-faith questions about the carnage Israel has unleashed on Gaza.

“The war is a tragedy—” said Torres.

“Ninety percent of them have been civilians!” said an exasperated Friedland, referring to an IDF database that confirms over 80 percent of the Palestinians murdered by Israel have been noncombatant civilians. “They’ve killed, they’ve killed journalists!” 

“People have been killed in a war, it’s been a tragedy,” Torres said emotionlessly. 

‘They’ve killed people waiting for aid.” 

“But you’re suggesting that it is the policy of the Israeli government to murder civilians, and that’s, that is a notion that I reject.” 

“You gotta like, listen man, you gotta be like a human being about this,” Friedland replied.

“People who are dying in the war, which to me is a tragedy because war is a tragedy—” 

“Do you feel in your heart that what you’re saying is right?” 

“If Hamas, if you remove Hamas—” 

“You don’t actually think that—”

“I told you what I believe,” Torres said sharply, the monotone cadence slipping a bit. “Don’t tell me what I believe, I’ve told you what I believe.” 

“Why would you believe that?” 

“Because there are people who see the world differently.” 

Multiple other clips of the interview also went viral, as Torres struggled to respond to Friedland’s earnest concerns about the genocide, and the impacts of Israel’s actions on the Jewish community worldwide.

“What does it look like to have a flag with a Jewish star, and I’m Jewish, for kids to be starving right now?” Friedland asked Torres.

“It just sounds like you’re justifying antisemitism,” Torres said.

“Are you crazy right now?”

The conversation continued, and tensely. 

“If you have disagreements with the Israeli government, you should voice your criticism of the Israeli government,” Torres said in a later clip. “But there is no justification for intimidation or harassment against American Jews.” 

“I’m telling you as a Jew right now that we are receiving a lot more hate because of what the people with the flag that has a Jewish star on it are doing to other people right now,” Friedland responded passionately. “As a Jewish person … how painful it is for us to say, and it hurts my stomach to say this—and you’re gonna say ‘I disagree, I disagree’—that this is a genocide. And that hurts to say that a Jew could do that. It hurts because we grew up with learning about what hatred is. We grew up learning about this. And the same year the state of Israel was established, 1948, the world saw the Holocuast, and they established standards for what a genocide is. It was the same year. And the world said this shouldn’t be a thing that happens.” 

Torres has been an empty-headed AIPAC mouthpiece for some time now. His first time truly criticizing Israel’s actions over the last two years was last month, and it was uninspiring. His mind-numbingly obtuse interview with Friedland only reinforces just how far gone he is. 

Torres can say the word tragedy as much as he wants, it only makes his loyalty to AIPAC and the other Israeli lobbies that line his pockets that much more obvious. Torres can say that this genocide is so unfortunate, and it’s always so sad when people die, but he still refuses to say anything bad about Israel, no matter how many men, women, and children they bomb and shoot and brutalize, no matter how many hospitals and mosques and churches and schools they destroy.

And frankly, it is Israeli policy to murder civilians. How could it not be when an overwhelming majority of those killed are just that? IDF soldiers have admitted to being ordered to open fire indiscriminately at Palestinians desperately rushing to aid sites. Just two days ago Israel bombed Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, waited for aid workers to get there, and bombed it again ten minutes later. Twenty people were killed, including journalists, workers, and doctors. Israel simply called the very deliberate bombing of the same spot twice a “tragic mishap.” And yet Torres remains unflinching in his defense of the genocidal government.

The interview has resonated deeply across the internet. 

“This interview is insane. Adam Friedland wrestles with the profound inner conflict and shame of being raised Zionist and opposing the Israeli genocide while Ritchie Torres sneers at him through the most banal talking points and accuses him of doing a ‘gotcha’ interview,” journalist and podcast host Alex Goldman wrote on X. 

“Ritchie Torres defending Israel by telling Adam Friedland he doesn’t know the Jewish experience is one [of] the most antisemetic statements I have witnessed in recent memory lol,” wrote another user. 

Others pointed out the cold, eerie mannerisms that Torres addressed Friedland with. 

“One thing that struck me abt the Adam Friedland interview with Ritchie Torres is how deeply, unsettlingly strange Torres is as an individual,” another popular account said. “His movements, his expressions, his terrible timing, the way he sits—it’s almost as if he’s literally an alien. disturbing, in many ways.”

“How Ritchie Torres can sit there and argue with a jew, who lived in Israel, comes from a family who went through [apartheid] in [South Africa] and was also a Middle Eastern studies major in college, and is crying from his soul and say this is wild. He’s a fucking robot. Adam Friedland 2028,” another account wrote.

Friedland’s full interview with Torres can be found here.