Letters from an American - August 29, 2025

Episode Date: August 30, 2025

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August 29th, 2025. Chaos continues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, where President Donald J. Trump stepped in on Wednesday night to support Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in his crusade to fire recently confirmed Susan minarez when she refused to rubber stamp his attack on vaccines. With her ouster, three top scientists at the CDC resigned. Chief Medical Officer Deborah Howry, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Demetra Daskalakis, and National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Director Daniel Jernigan. The CDC you knew is over, Daskalakis

said, unless someone takes radical action, there is nothing there that can be salvaged. On Thursday, CDC staff and supporters rallied outside the agency's Atlanta headquarters, whose windows are still pocked with bullet holes from a terrorist who had become convinced the coronavirus vaccine had injured him to honor the resigning leaders. In place of Menares, the White House is appointed as acting CDC director Jim O'Neill, a biotech investor close to billionaire Peter Thiel and a former speechwriter at the Department of Health and Human Services during the presidential term of George W. Bush. O'Neill has no training in either medicine or the science of infectious diseases.

As Monvee Singh and Robert Mackie of The Guardian reported, O'Neill supported the use of Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID despite no evidence that they worked. He also has embraced conspiracy theories about COVID online. The administration's chaos extends to the Social Security Administration, or SSA, where the administration forced chief data officer Charles Borgé to resign today. Borgé had acted as a whistleblower for the agency when he identified serious data breaches that leave more than 300 million Americans at risk of identity theft and the loss of benefits. In his resignation letter, Borges noted that he was leaving involuntarily after the administration

had made it impossible to perform his duties legally and ethically, and had caused him serious attendant mental, physical, and emotional distress. In his letter, Borgesi noted that he has served this country for almost my entire adult life, first as an active duty naval officer for over 22 years, and now as a civil service. servant. I was deployed during 9-11, decorated for valor in combat during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and graduated from U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. As a civil servant, I have served as a Presidential Innovation Fellow in the Centers for Disease Control during COVID, within the Office of Management and Budget on the Federal Chief Information Officer Data Team, and now serve as the

SSA chief data officer. I have served in each of these roles with honor and integrity. McKina Kelly and David Gilbert of Wired reported that less than 30 minutes after Borgiaz's resignation hit the inboxes of SSA staff, it disappeared. The removal of dedicated civil servants for trying to protect the public extends to the Environmental Protection Agency, where tonight the Trump administration fired at least seven employees for signing a letter criticizing the agency's leadership for undermining the EPA mission of protecting human health and the environment. The firings are, Amdula Jasa of the Washington Post noted, an escalation of the administration's effort to clamp down on dissent within the federal bureaucracy.

The Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career-efficient using their agency position and title to unlawfully undermine, sabotage, and undercut the will of the American public that was clearly expressed at the ballot box last November, an EPA spokesperson said. But increasingly, it seems obvious that the administration is claiming a mandate for policies that voters did not intend to endorse. That includes the outing last week of an undercover intelligence officer, which has in the past been enough to lead to an indictment of an administration official. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released the name of a senior undercover Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, officer, when she published a list of 37 current and

former officials from whom she was stripping security clearances. Brett Forrest of the Wall Street Journal reported that Gabbard did not consult with the CIA. before posting the list on X. At the time, Gabbard said she was acting on Trump's orders. Andrew Eger of the bulwark took a step back today to look at the general operating system of the Make America Healthy Again, or Maha, part of the Trump administration,

and noted that it has always operated by throwing out wild conspiracies while actual scientists try to do the work of protecting America's public health. Now, he notes, Kennedy and Maha are the dog that caught the car. Faced with creating the new system that they promised voters would keep them healthier, they are flailing. Their key public health report relied on fake studies concocted by AI, and Kennedy has slashed through advisory bodies and is currently limiting access to COVID vaccines, all while the administration's budget reconciliation bill is forcing people off health care insurance. Kennedy recently mused wildly about watching children in airports and realizing they have mitochondrial challenges.

Eggers' observation about Maha fits MAGA as a whole. Trump and his ilk have spent years carping about how poorly the government is working and how much better they would be doing if they were the ones in charge. Voters gave them what they asked for and now they appear to be unwilling or unable to do the actual work of governing. Instead, Trump and his cronies are simply declaring emergencies and then announcing policies they claim will address those emergencies. When their policies backfire or raise opposition, they claim they are being sabotaged by the deep state, or that statistics are wrong. This morning, the White House Budget Office announced it was

unilaterally canceling $4.9 billion in foreign aid funding passed by Congress. The Office of Management and Budget is overseen by Director Russell Vote, a key author of Project 2025, the plan from right-wing institutions led by the Heritage Foundation, designed to decimate the modern U.S. government and replace it with Christian nationalism. The Constitution gives to Congress alone the power of spending money, and the executive branch has no authority to refuse to spend that money. Vote has argued that because the law permits the president to send to Congress a request to stop spending on certain items and gives Congress 45 days to consider the request, Trump can send a request with fewer than 45 days left before the end of the fiscal year, and consider the request

rubber-stamped. Both Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Patty Murray of Washington, who are the two top lawmakers on the Senate Appropriations Committee, reject the move. Collins called it a clear violation of the law. Murray called it a brazen attempt to usurp the power of Congress. Another major area in which Trump has simply done as he wished without regard for the law or economic reality is tariffs. The U.S. Constitution gives exclusively to Congress the power to impose

tariffs, but in 1977, Congress passed the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, often abbreviated as IEEPA, delegating to the president the power to adjust tariffs in times of national emergency. On February 1st, Trump declared such a national emergency to impose tariffs on China, Canada, and Mexico, and on April 12th, he again invoked it for new blanket tariffs. Congress could have ended Trump's power over tariffs by canceling the national emergency, a step Democrats were willing to take. But Republicans in the House used a procedural rule to make sure that Democrats could not cancel that emergency. A challenge to the president's declaration of a national emergency must come to the floor for a vote within 18 days of the challenge. The House defanged

that rule by declaring that each day for the rest of the congressional session will not constitute a day for the purposes of the National Emergencies Act. Importers hit by the tariffs sued, along with Democratic-led states, and in May, a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that President Donald J. Trump's sweeping Liberation Day tariffs were illegal. The IEEPA has meaningful limits, it wrote, and an unlimited delegation of tariff authority would be unconstitutional. Congress manifestly is not permitted to abdicate or to transfer to others the essential legislative functions with which it is thus vested, the court wrote. It blocked the tariffs Trump imposed under the IEPA. The administration appealed. Today, by a seven to four majority, a

federal appeals court upheld the decision, striking down Trump's use of emergency powers to impose tariffs. We conclude Congress, in enacting IEPA, did not give the president wide-ranging authority to impose sweeping tariffs, it wrote, noting that such an authorization would mean Congress had bestowed on a federal agency the taxing power. Such an authorization would be a sharp break with our traditions. The decision will not take effect until October 14th to allow the administration to appeal to the Supreme Court. For his part, Trump seemed to think the court would bend to his will,

which is in turn based on an ideology that the last few months have proven demonstrably wrong. Shortly after the decision came down, Trump posted on social media, all tariffs are still in effect. Today, a highly partisan appeals court incorrectly said that our tariffs should be removed, but they know the United States of America will win in the end. If these tariffs ever went away,

it would be total disaster for the country. It would make us financially weak and we have to be strong. The USA will no longer tolerate enormous trade deficits and unfair tariffs and non-tariff trade-based, imposed by other countries, friend or foe, that undermine our manufacturers, farmers, and everyone else. If allowed to stand, this decision would literally destroy the United States of America. At the start of this Labor Day weekend, we should remember that tariffs are the best tool to help our workers and support companies that produce great made-in-America products. For many years, tariffs were allowed to be used against us by our

uncaring and unwise politicians. Now, with the help of the United States Supreme Court, we will use them to the benefit of our nation and make America rich, strong, and powerful again. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.

This is my own.