What did Donald Trump do today?

He admitted screwing over scientists from blue states out of revenge but said that wasn't "political."

Among the casualties of Trump's assault on federal science programs last year were 624 grants from the Department of Energy that were marked for cancellation. 284 of them were, in fact, canceled. Of those, 283 of them were from states that "had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing Senators.” That language comes from Jeff Novak, a DoE lawyer, in a recent court filing.

In other words, the Trump administration has admitted in open court that it deliberately canceled grants on research into improved energy technologies based on whether or not the recipients were in a blue state.  

But in a comment today, Trump's Department of Energy insisted that refusing all grants from states that didn't give Trump their electoral votes somehow wasn't a political decision: "None of the termination decisions were based on political considerations."

This is just the latest in a string of episodes where Trump has openly punished the states that voted for his opponents—which, collectively, represent more than half of the nation's population and tens of millions of his own supporters. He's all but stopped signing disaster declarations in blue states, and he's trying to shut off Medicaid funding to two blue states whose governors he particularly hates. 

It's not new behavior: at the height of the COVID outbreak in 2020, he threatened to hold off on supplying urgently needed medical equipment unless blue-state governors like "the woman in Michigan" (Gov. Gretchen Whitmer) until they were appropriately "appreciative" of him in public. 

The Trump administration is currently finalizing an administrative rule that would purport to give him the power to cancel any grant that didn't "demonstrably advance the president’s policy priorities"—essentially giving Trump a personal veto over any scientific or academic research that he didn't like, regardless of what Americans' representatives in Congress had specified in appropriations bills for that funding.

Why does this matter?

• Punishing the citizens you think of as your enemies is what dictators do.   

• Americans deserve a president who isn't constantly looking to screw over the places where more than half of them live.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He threatened New York City voters.

 

Election Day in New York City is tomorrow, featuring a three-way race for mayor between Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, and disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo running as an independent after losing in a huge upset to Mamdani in the Democratic primary. Mamdani is generally regarded as the favorite, but both he and Cuomo are campaigning hard in the closing days, and the result is far from certain.

 

Trump has tried several times to interject himself into the race, mostly by calling Mamdani a "communist" (which is a lie) and with threats to blockade New York City from government services if the Democratic nominee won. He's also threatened to arrest Mamdani and strip him of his citizenship. He repeated those charges again today, in the form of an endorsement of Cuomo.

 

There are two aspects that bear mention here: one legal, and one political.

Legally, this is an empty threat from Trump—as long as Trump bothers to obey the law. Relatively little in the way of federal funds earmarked for NYC or the surrounding region are discretionary. Of course, Trump could—and has—illegally impounded funds for much of his second term, but even then it's not clear how he could really do more to hurt New Yorkers for voting in a mayor he doesn't like than he already is. Just recently, he declared that he was ending a massive $16 billion tunnel project linking the city with New Jersey, something he has no legal authority to do, and apparently for no real reason other than that NY Sen. Chuck Schumer had backed it. (For that matter, it's not even clear within the Trump White House that it even has been shut down: there are already conflicting reports.) 

Politically, Trump endorsing Cuomo is bizarre at best: they loathe one another. Trump was furious when Cuomo rejected his offer of a corrupt quid pro quo where New York would drop its various criminal investigations into Trump and his businesses in exchange for Trump targeting bureaucratic punishments against New York specifically. Even though Cuomo didn't have much direct authority over what state and local prosecutors do, Trump blamed him for the successful prosecution of the Trump Organization for tax fraud and the successful seizure and shutdown of Trump's phony charity. Cuomo was one of several state governors Trump tried to extort praise from in exchange for emergency aid in the early weeks of the COVID-19 shutdown.

The two men do have one thing in common: an extremely long list of credible allegations of sexual harassment and assault.

Until recently Trump, a convicted felon, could have put his vote where his mouth is: New York allows felons to vote after they've served any prison sentence, and Trump couldn't be sentenced to incarceration at all because of his re-election. But his official residency for voting purposes, and the place where he spends nearly as much time as the White House proper, is at his resort in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Why does this matter?

• Donald Trump doesn't get to tell people how to vote in any election.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He regurgitated a mess of conspiracy theories about vaccines, autism, and Tylenol.

In a rambling press appearance today with Robert Kennedy Jr., Trump made a number of dangerous and medically illiterate claims about vaccines, autism, and the over-the-counter pain medicine Tylenol, based on his "feelings" and—to all appearances—conspiracy theories of the kind that Kennedy believes.

Trump appears to have swallowed the totally unfounded theory that Tylenol use during pregnancy, also known as acetaminophen, is connected to autism. Kennedy, who is more or less open in his embrace of eugenics and seems to regard people on the autism spectrum with a mixture of pity and contempt, has seized on this drug that almost every American has taken at one time as the root cause of the fantastically complex range of behaviors that fall under the autism spectrum. In reality, there is no known cause of autism spectrum disorders, and there is almost certainly no one cause.

Trump, who struggled to pronounce the word "acetaminophen" and seemed to be seeing it for the first time as he read it from a notecard, nevertheless felt confident telling pregnant women that "taking Tylenol is, uh, not good." It's not clear if Trump knows that acetaminophen is the one of the only over-the-counter pain medicine that is approved for use during pregnancy: actual studies have shown that it is much safer for developing fetuses than naproxen sodium (Aleve) and aspirin, which have been linked to lower birth weights (though not to autism). But he did seem to believe that pain is just something that pregnant women should just have to endure: "If you can't tough it out, if you can't do it—that's what you're gonna have to do."

Medical organizations all over the world immediately denounced Trump's statements. 

He also listed his objection to the current vaccine schedule for infants: that "eighty" shots are given at once, or perhaps eighty vaccines in one shot—it wasn't clear. In his own words:

I think it has—I think it's very bad. They're pumping, it looks like they're pumping into a horse. You have a little child, a little fragile child, and you get a, a vat of 80 different vaccines, I guess. 80 different blends. And they pump it in. Uh, so ideally, a woman won't take Tylenol, and uh, on the vaccines, it would be good, instead of one visit where they pump the baby, you load it up with stuff, uh, you do it over a period of four times or five times.

Trump seemed mostly to be talking about the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella (although Trump seemed unable to remember what the R stood for). All three can cause death or serious lifelong complications in children. This is what an infant getting vaccinated actually looks like:

There's a particularly strong whiff of hypocrisy for Trump on the issue of what drugs people should be allowed to take at what stage of clinical certainty. He nearly died of COVID-19 in early October 2020. It's very likely that what saved his life was a highly experimental therapy called a monoclonal antibody cocktail—one that had barely begun human trials, and that he was able to receive only because he effectively gave himself special permission: the FDA, which answered to Trump, has to approve each such exception. He also had close personal and financial ties to the CEO of the drug company that made the treatment. 

Monoclonal antibodies have since been shown to be highly effective in treating COVID-19, but the ones Trump received were not available to the public on a temporary, emergency basis until several months later. About 60,000 Americans died of COVID-19 in the intervening period. The therapies that Trump recommended for people who didn't have special access to experimental drugs, at an eerily similar press conference in April 2020, were the antimalaria drug chloroquinine and the injection of household cleaning products.

Why does this matter?

• Past a certain point, it doesn't matter if Trump actually believes Kennedy's anti-scientific conspiracy theories, or just doesn't care if they become policy. 

• An absentee parent with no medical knowledge shouldn't be making national health policy based on what he "feels."   

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said vaccine-makers were conspiring to cover up how good their vaccines are.

Today, Trump (or someone posting on his behalf) appeared to be trying to lay the groundwork to walk back some of the most extreme decisions made using his authority as President by his Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy. In a post to his private microblogging service, Trump said this:

It is very important that the Drug Companies justify the success of their various Covid Drugs. Many people think they are a miracle that saved Millions of lives. Others disagree! With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW. I have been shown information from Pfizer, and others, that is extraordinary, but they never seem to show those results to the public. Why not??? They go off to the next "hunt" and let everyone rip themselves apart, including Bobby Kennedy Jr. and CDC, trying to figure out the success or failure of the Drug Companies Covid work. They show me GREAT numbers and results, but they don't seem to be showing them to many others. I want them to show them NOW, to CDC and the public, and clear up this MESS, one way or the other!!! I hope OPERATION WARP SPEED was as "BRILLIANT" as many say it was. If not, we all want to know about it, and why???  

There's a lot to unpack here. First, Trump appears to mean vaccines, not drugs—although he has, famously, gotten those two very different kinds of things confused in the past. 

There is no secret data that pharmaceutical companies are hiding from the public that show their vaccines work. That means that Trump is either lying or confused when he says he's being shown "GREAT numbers and results" that aren't being shared with the public or the CDC. In reality, every clinical trial of the COVID vaccines has shown results so striking that it's impossible to interpret them as anything other than dramatically increasing individuals' immunity to the virus. The answer Trump wants "NOW" has been available to him and everyone else since December of 2020:

Graph showing results of a large-scale clinical trial of the first mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dec. 31, 2020. The blue plots (trending sharply upward) show cumulative COVID infections in a group that received a placebo injection, and the red plots (almost flat) show cumulative cases in patients who received the actual vaccine.

Trump is correct that the CDC is in crisis. Most of its senior leadership has been fired by him, or quit in protest. In a scene straight out of the history of science in the Soviet Union, research scientists working for the CDC must submit their findings for political approval by Kennedy before they can be published. Trump has repeatedly tried to slash its budget, to the point that Congressional Republicans actually pushed back in his budget bill—after which he then simply withheld legitimately appropriated money anyway in order to force layoffs of public health workers.

 In August, a deranged man who believed in the same conspiracy theories about vaccines that Kennedy does fired 500 bullets into its headquarters, killing a police officer. When that happened, the Trump White House had virtually no reaction other than to criticize the agency again, making CDC employees worry that it would encourage more attacks.

Kennedy, who was calling himself a liberal as early as last year, is the HHS Secretary because of a political bargain he made to throw his support to Trump. It's never been entirely clear if Trump has ever managed to understand how much Kennedy hated "Operation Warp Speed," the push to find a COVID vaccine that is the one domestic program that actually succeeded on Trump's watch. 

If he did, it's not clear why Trump didn't simply force Kennedy to stop undermining that one accomplishment—except that this wouldn't be the first time in Trump's second term that he's seemed unable to muster the energy to rein in subordinates to whom he's delegated the authority of the presidency.

Why does this matter?

• Presidents are responsible for the people they appoint, and that's especially true when their appointees are especially incompetent. 

• Regardless of why Trump is apparently so confused, the health and safety of the American people requires a president who is not confused. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried and failed to quietly fire his CDC Director for not going along with his administration's attack on the COVID-19 vaccine.

For a man whose game show catchphrase was "you're fired," Trump is quite squeamish about actually firing people, and has gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid having to do it himself. He prefers to act through intermediaries or via social media—even when the person in question works in the same building as him. In his second term, at least where his inner circle is concerned, he's all but abandoned the concept, preferring instead to "promote" staff who offend or underperform in some way to diplomatic jobs.

With regular federal employees—the ones with no personal connection to Trump—it's a different story. Trump has fired hundreds of thousands of workers, including many he had no legal right to fire, forcing them to take legal action just to be temporarily reinstated. The full scope of Trump's decimation of the federal workforce is becoming clear: just shy of 200,000 government employees have lost their jobs, with another 100,000 expected this year. 

The damage done by those firings is far greater than the immediate loss of the workers' livelihoods. The job market itself has virtually shut down over the last few months, and unemployed former government workers are now competing with new entrants to what's left of the private sector market. Meanwhile, federal agencies are unable to staff critical positions because skilled workers are resigning too, either out of fear for the uncertainty of working under Trump or disgust at his treatment of workers.

All of these tendencies were on display today, as Trump unofficially and indirectly fired the head of the CDC, Dr. Susan Monarez—the person he'd appointed to the role just weeks ago. But while the firing was announced on the CDC's own social media site, as of late this evening, it had not actually been done, apparently in the hope that Monarez would resign of her own accord. 

Through her attorneys, Monarez posted this response to Trump's attempts to get her to fall on her sword:

Throughout the day, both CDC and White House spokespeople insisted that Monarez had been fired, but Trump himself must order it done, and whether through inability or unwillingness, he had not yet made any such order as of midnight Thursday.

Meanwhile, three other senior CDC officials resigned in protest tonight. Like Monarez, they cited the dangerous and anti-scientific orders from HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who today announced restrictions on who would be eligible to receive this winter's updated COVID-19 vaccine. Kennedy, a former talk show host and lawyer with no experience in health care, is a vaccine conspiracy theorist. The officials who resigned cited Kennedy's censorship of medical research to fit his personal political agenda, his purging of scientists who wouldn't promise to issue the findings he wanted, and the Trump administration's belief in the discredited science of eugenics.

Under today's orders, which appear to have set off the firings and resignations, Americans will no longer be able to simply choose to receive a vaccine at a convenient location like a pharmacy. Instead, they s will have to schedule a visit with their doctor first. This will add expense and inconvenience even for those whose access to health care won't be affected by Medicaid cuts in Trump's budget bill. 

Studies vary, but the COVID-19 vaccine is generally credited with saving 20,000,000 lives worldwide in its first year of availability alone.  

Full text of the resignation letters

Why does this matter?

• Americans' health and safety literally depends on letting competent public health officials do their jobs.  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He forced out the federal government's top remaining vaccine official.

Dr. Peter Marks, who played a substantial role in developing the COVID-19 vaccine, was forced out by the Trump administration today. In his resignation letter, Marks said Trump's secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr., was backsliding on his confirmation hearing promises not to destroy what remains of the government's capacity to produce lifesaving vaccines.

Referencing Kennedy's beliefs about health and medicine, which are on the fringe even by the standards of most people who identify as "vaccine skeptics," Marks wrote: "It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies."

Kennedy was appointed HHS Secretary by Trump as part of a political bargain in which Kennedy—whose few supporters were generally socially liberal—would throw his support behind the notionally conservative Trump.

In addition to his belief in an extreme version of anti-vaccine conspiracy, Kennedy also claims to believe:

• that toxic megadoses vitamin A can cure the infectious disease of measles—which has led to an outbreak of poisonings in areas affected by a measles outbreak Kennedy is trying to downplay

• that the COVID-19 virus was genetically engineered to spare Jews

• that a single fraudlent study, arguably the most widely discredited single paper in medical history, shows that vaccines cause autism

• that fluoridation of water is responsible for almost every form of human illness (the same belief that was parodied as an old-fashioned, paranoid delusion in the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove)

• that pasteurized milk is unhealthy, but "raw" milk is not—in spite of countless outbreaks of salmonella, influenza, and other communicable diseases linked to it

• that the best way to treat an outbreak of bird flu in livestock chickens—which can be deadly to humans—is to let it rage through the entire American poultry system, in the hopes that the offspring of the few surviving birds will be immune

In addition to other massive cuts to federal health programs, Trump is in the process of firing as many as 20,000 other HHS employees.

Like Trump, Kennedy is vaccinated against all the diseases he now claims to believe that other Americans should not be—as are his children.

Trump himself did not comment on Marks' firing. He continued to remain out of public view today after a series of events earlier in the week in which he appeared confused, forgetful, or ill-informed. As is typical for Trump, he ended his workweek early this morning and will spend a  long weekend at his Florida compound.

Why does this matter?

• Presidents are responsible for the policies they let their staff implement.

• The overwhelming majority of Americans support vaccine research and expect the government to actually do things to combat infectious disease.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He found a public health official who will never contradict him.

Today, Trump announced that he would nominate Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health. The NIH is the country's biomedical and public health research agency. It plays a major role in setting public health policy, communicating about health issues to the public, and responding to disease outbreaks.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump was repeatedly infuriated by his own public health officials' unwillingness to simply agree that the pandemic was no threat, or that it would go away on its own, or—once Americans had already started dying by the tens of thousands—that miracle cures were somehow already available. 

In particular, Anthony Fauci—at the time, Director of the NIAID and so a key part of any disease outbreak response—seemed to enrage Trump with his unwillingness to let COVID misinformation go unchallenged, even if it had just come directly from Trump himself. As this site noted in May of 2020:

Fauci has been forced to publicly contradict Trump a number of times. In response, Trump has tried to limit Fauci's public appearances outside of the White House briefings. He's also sidelined Fauci from certain briefings where reporters were likely to ask questions where Fauci's answers would embarrass him. For example, Fauci was kept away from most of the briefings in the immediate aftermath of the debacle where Trump wondered aloud if injecting household disinfectants might cure the virus. Trump has even jumped in front of the White House podium to physically prevent Fauci from answering questions that would require him to contradict Trump.

As a result, Trump encouraged his political supporters to attack Fauci and other public health officials even while they were still fighting the outbreak—and, in the case of unpopular but necessary control measures like school closures, while the Trump administration was still following their advice.

Bhattacharya was one of a number of figures who rose to prominence as "COVID skeptics," gaining traction within the Trump political movement through a willingness to attack Fauci and other public health officials. His résumé is scant—he's never practiced as a physician and he has no experience managing even a small organization, much less an agency with a $48 billion budget—but the fact that he was saying along with Trump even in the first stages of the outbreak that no real response was necessary seems to have endeared him.

In particular, Bhattacharya said in March 2020 that he expected COVID would only kill 20,000 Americans—comparable to a flu season—and that the much grimmer forecasts were off by "orders of magnitude." He then embarked on a years-long campaign to discredit Fauci and other federal public health officials. His preferred strategy, which Trump endorsed too, was "herd immunity"—in essence, allowing the disease to run completely unchecked until enough of the survivors had immunity that it could spread no further.

COVID has killed 1.2 million Americans.

Why does this matter?

• The job of public health officials is to protect the public health, not the president's feelings.

• Any job where American lives are at stake is too important to give to an unqualified political crony.