CDC Forced to Pause Rabies Testing Thanks to RFK Jr.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday that it had suspended diagnostic testing for a slew of viruses, including for rabies and a group of pox viruses that encompasses smallpox and mpox.

The CDC has provided diagnostic testing for decades, offering federal testing services for dozens of illnesses to state and local public health laboratories that are unable to do so independently.

The agency began a review of its offered tests in 2024, but the current climate at the CDC under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who has hacked away at staffing and deprioritized peer-reviewed medicine—has challenged staffers’ ability to provide such assistance.

“By July, the rabies team will be down to just one person with the clinical expertise to advise state and local officials, and the pox virus team will have none,” reported The New York Times.

Other tests were discontinued entirely by the CDC as of Wednesday morning. That included testing for the parasite that causes leishmaniasis, immune response testing for measles, antibody testing for Epstein-Barr Virus (a herpesvirus known to cause cancer), and respiratory panels for SARS-2 and influenza types A and B, among others.

Public health experts expressed concern over the dwindling testing resources, especially on the cusp of major events that would bring millions of people—and foreign illnesses—to the U.S., such as the World Cup and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

“In relative peacetime of no major outbreaks, no major pandemics, it’ll be fine,” Jill Taylor, the former director of the Wadsworth Center, New York state’s public health laboratory, told the Times. But “if we have an emergency all of a sudden, God help us,” she added.

Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, told the newspaper that the CDC expects some of the listed tests to become available again in the coming weeks, though he did not specify which tests would resume.

“In the meantime,” Nixon told the Times, “CDC stands ready to support our state and local partners to access the public health testing they need.”

Kennedy has almost single-handedly transformed HHS over the last year, replacing independent medical experts on the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel with a hodgepodge of vaccine skeptics. He also overhauled the child vaccination schedule without notifying his staffers, a decision that could potentially affect vaccine access and insurance coverage for millions of American families in the coming years.

He is running DHS with practically zero relevant experience. He has not worked in medicine, public health, or the government—rather, he is guided only by a pocketful of conspiracies that America’s foremost health experts have already thoroughly debunked, and his off-the-wall notions about health have thus far proved disastrous for the agency.

As a result, Americans have unilaterally lost confidence in the nation’s public health agencies since Kennedy took over, according to a survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania published last month.

Donald Trump’s legal case against birthright citizenship is not being received well by conservative justices on the Supreme Court.

During oral arguments Wednesday, Solicitor General John Sauer, whose job is to defend the government in the high court’s cases, ran into resistance from Chief Justice John Roberts.

“We’re in a new world now … where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who is a U.S. citizen,” Sauer tried to argue. Roberts quickly shot that point down.

“Well, it’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution,” Roberts replied.

Later, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, appointed by Trump in 2020, pressed Sauer about an argument he made in a reply brief to the court that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which grants citizenship to everyone born in the U.S., applies to the children of slaves brought unlawfully to the U.S. in defiance of laws against the slave trade.

“You can imagine that their parents were not only brought here in violation of United States law, but were here against their will and so maybe felt allegiance to the countries where they were from, and you say that the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to put all … newly freed slaves on equal footing, and so they would be citizens,” Barrett said. “But that’s not textual, so how do you get there?”

Sauer’s response was to claim that nineteenth century antebellum law said that while bringing slaves into the country was unlawful, their presence in the country wasn’t against the law. It’s a weird argument to make considering that the Trump administration is trying to deny citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants and those without permanent residency.

The Trump administration’s case is flimsy, and that became evident during oral arguments. In another instance, Sauer stumbled over a question from Justice Neil Gorsuch about whether the Trump administration considers Native Americans birthright citizens under the executive order in question. Trump himself seemed upset with how the arguments went, attending at first but leaving the proceedings halfway through, and then venting, incorrectly, on Truth Social that “we are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!” Perhaps he shouldn’t have tried to directly challenge the Constitution.

Donald Trump’s approval rating on the economy has hit some horrendous—and historic—new lows.

Speaking on CNN’s The Odds Wednesday, chief data analyst Harry Enten reported damning numbers for the Trump administration’s handling of the economy.

“This is no April Fools’ joke, this is a disaster. All these numbers are a disaster for President Trump,” Enten said.

Trump’s disapproval rating on inflation had dropped to 72 percent, according to Enten’s poll, putting him on par with Presidents Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter, two other commanders-in-chief whose terms were marred by high inflation. At about the same point in their presidencies, Biden had a 68 percent disapproval rating on inflation, and Carter had a 68 percent disapproval rating overall.

“When you have Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter on the board, and you’re matching them or slightly exceeding them, you know it’s bad,” Enten said.

CNN News Central’s John Berman pointed out that inflation had been far higher under Biden and Carter.

That may matter a little less in Trump’s case, considering the fact that the president has repeatedly claimed to have “defeated” inflation entirely. Meanwhile, the economy in Trump’s first year back in office saw rising inflation, very little GDP growth, and practically no job growth.

More than two-thirds of Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of gas prices, as his reckless war in Iran has shuttered global energy trade through the Strait of Hormuz and sent gas prices skyrocketing to $4 per gallon within only a few weeks. Trump’s 76 percent disapproval rating dwarfed Biden’s highest all-time disapproval rating on gas prices, which was only 72 percent.

Trump’s disapproval rating on the economy was greater than the highest disapproval ratings for two-term presidents at about this time in their second terms. His disapproval rating on the economy was 69 percent, while George Bush was at 57 percent, and Barack Obama at 56 percent.

Enten called it: “The worst of all time at this point in term number two.”

President Trump broadcast his anger Wednesday as the Supreme Court appeared to doubt his executive order repealing birthright citizenship.

“We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship! President DONALD J. TRUMP,” he wrote on Truth Social shortly after oral arguments concluded.

The U.S. is of course not the only country in the world with birthright citizenship. After breaking precedent and attending oral arguments in person, Trump ended up leaving early when it began to look like the Supreme Court wouldn’t rule in his favor.

Multiple justices on the court appeared skeptical of the Department of Justice’s case. Chief Justice John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett all pushed back on Solicitor General D. John Sauer’s arguments.

At one point, Roberts expressed confusion regarding Sauer’s argument that Trump’s executive order makes sense because children of ambassadors and hostile enemies already don’t have access to birthright citizenship.

“Then you expand it to the whole class of illegal aliens who are here in the country,” Roberts said. “I’m not quite sure how you can get to that big group from such tiny and sort of idiosyncratic examples.”

The solicitor general tried to point to birther tourism as an example of how things have changed since the Fourteenth Amendment. “It’s a new world,” Sauer said.

“It’s the same Constitution,” the chief justice replied.

Trump was in the room for this exchange—and others that likely only further frustrated him after his nightmare week with the judiciary.

The Trump administration’s lawyer, Solicitor General John Sauer, admitted before the Supreme Court Wednesday that he hadn’t thought too much about one of the big questions in President Donald Trump’s attempt to repeal birthright citizenship: What happens to Native Americans?

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who has carved out a niche for himself by carefully considering Indian law, asked Sauer if Native Americans today would be considered birthright citizens under the Trump administration’s test.

“I think so?” Sauer replied, clearly unsure. “I mean, obviously they’ve been granted citizenship by statute.”

“Put aside the statute; do you think they’re birthright citizens?” Gorsuch said again.

“No, I think the clear understanding that everybody agrees in the congressional debates is that the children of tribal Indians are not birthright.”

“I understand that’s what they said,” Gorsuch said. “But your test is the domicile of the parents, and that would be the test you’d have us apply today, right?”

“Yes, yes,” Sauer said.

“Are tribal Indians born today birthright citizens?” Gorsuch asked yet again.

“Ah, I think so, if they were lawfully domiciled here,” Sauer replied. “I’m not sure—I have to think that through.”

“I’ll take the yes,” Gorsuch said.

The Trump administration clearly hasn’t considered the implications of the executive order Trump signed on his first day in office repealing birthright citizenship. That a DOJ lawyer can’t explain whether Native Americans would be U.S. citizens in Trump’s vision is certainly unsettling.