A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

The Trump White House Clown Show

For a guy whose political career is largely based on the reality TV one-liner “You’re fired,” President Trump sure had a hard time firing CDC Director Susan Monarez.

What may have confounded the White House, beyond its own ineptitude, is that Monarez is the first Senate-confirmed CDC director ever, as a result of a new post-pandemic law. She serves at the pleasure of the president, not of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is her boss, but has less power over her than if she were a run-of-the-mill political appointee.

Kennedy asked for Monarez’s resignation, and she refused, according to reports. He tried to fire her, and her attorneys said nope, sorry, the president has to fire her. The White House then announced it had fired her, and her attorneys again said nope, sorry, you’re not the president.

Let’s assume the White House already has or will sometime today figure out that a Senate-confirmed official who refuses to resign has to be fired by the president himself. He may be stumbling over himself in the precise process, but Monarez is gone.

Four other top CDC officials resigned in protest over the same RFK, Jr. anti-vax and pseudoscience madness that prompted Monarez’s revolt:

• Dr. Debra Houry, the chief medical officer
• Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases;
• Dr. Daniel Jernigan, the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; and
• Dr. Jen Layden, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance and Technology

It’s a devastating loss of institutional capacity and years of nonpartisan service in advancing public health.

Quote of the Day

Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, in his resignation letter:

The intentional eroding of trust in low-risk vaccines favoring natural infection and unproven remedies will bring us to a pre-vaccine era where only the strong will survive and many if not all will suffer.  I believe in nutrition and exercise.  I believe in making our food supply healthier, and I also believe in using vaccines to prevent death and disability.  Eugenics plays prominently in the rhetoric being generated and is derivative of a legacy that good medicine and science should continue to shun.

The recent shooting at CDC is not why I am resigning.  My grandfather, who I am named after, stood up to fascist forces in Greece and lost his life doing so.  I am resigning to make him and his legacy proud.   I am resigning because of the cowardice of a leader that cannot admit that HIS and his minions’ words over decades created an environment where violence like this can occur.  I reject his and his colleagues’ thoughts and prayers, and advise they direct those to people that they have not actively harmed.

IMPORTANT: RFK Jr. Restricts Access To COVID Vax

The personnel debacle at the CDC appears to be a direct result of Kennedy’s announcement (via X!) of the FDA decision to restrict access to the annual COVID vaccine to certain groups of eligible recipients, bypassing the normal process for vaccine approvals, disregarding the established science, and overriding the opposition of the public health community.

While it’s true that on its face Kennedy’s announcement suggests there may be many easy workarounds to obtain the COVID vaccine despite the new restrictions, the limitations represent precisely the scenario his critics and the public health sector have been warning about for months. Longtime experts with sterling reputations and an adherence to science and public policy particulars have been sidelined in favor of Kennedy’s shoot-from-the-hip bombast, his anti-vax biases, and the crowd of grifters, quacks, and charlatans, whom he attracts and elevates.

Under Kennedy, science has taken a backseat to conspiracists, opportunists, and snake-oil salesman. The result is now a nationwide limitation on access to a vital vaccine that has saved countless lives over the past five years.

Thread Of The Day

#NIH is hanging by a thread. The #CDC has been decimated. #RFK Jr. and Russell #Vought are psychopaths–I don't say this frivolously–they are cold, calculating, inflicting violence on millions through public policy. It is where we are right now. These men are not normal. 1/

— Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves.bsky.social) 2025-08-28T09:55:52.828Z

Senate Republicans Snubbed By Trump Yet Again

I can’t immediately think of any recent precedent for Senate-confirmed officials to be sacked as quickly as President Trump has canned IRS Commissioner Billy Long and the CDC’s Susan Monarez. They lasted mere weeks after going through the resource-intensive process of Senate confirmation.

The vetting, the background checks, interviews with individual senators, committee staff time and resources, the hearings themselves: It’s a formal constitutional process that even in the current degraded state of the GOP-controlled Senate still requires an investment and commitment from senators.

Not only that, but deals are struck, accommodations made, and horses traded to line up the votes and get nominations through the Senate. All of that is blown up if the president is willy nilly firing his Senate-confirmed appointees within weeks of their final approval from senators.

On the backend is the prospect of either another round of confirmation hearings for the next nominee or more ominously a series of interims, actings, and dual-hat appointments to bypass the Senate entirely. Even if you’re a Trump-captured Republican senator reluctant to speak out or do anything, this pattern has to give you pause.

Trump’s Firing of the Fed’s Lisa Cook Not Easy To Reverse

Another gentle warning that the pretextual firing of Lisa Cook as a member of the Federal Reserve Board — while an egregious threat to the rule of law and the economy — may very well stand:

• Columbia University law professor Lev Menand: “The White House has good reason to think, based on Wilcox, that the court won’t side with Ms. Cook, at least during the pendency of the litigation, and possibly also following full review.”
• Georgetown law professor Marty Lederman: “[I]f the Supreme Court ultimately rules for Trump on the nonconstitutional questions … in a way that permits him to remove Cook, that would be, in effect, the end of statutorily guaranteed independence of the Federal Reserve, because it wouldn’t be difficult for any President to articulate some “cause” for removal of virtually any Fed Governor who doesn’t vote to regulate interest rates in accord with the President’s preferences.”
• The NYT’s Adam Liptak: “In removing the leaders of other independent agencies, Mr. Trump has given no reasons, saying he has the unilateral constitutional authority to control the executive branch, even in the face of congressional efforts to shield officials from political interference. … But with the Fed, Mr. Trump has tried something new. This time, he explained in a letter to Ms. Cook on Monday, there was “sufficient cause” to remove her.”

USAF Approves Giving Ashli Babbitt A Military Funeral

In a reversal from a Biden administration decision, the Air Force will give military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt, the Jan. 6 rioter shot and killed in the Capitol. Under Secretary of the Air Force Matthew Lohmeier notified Babbitt’s family of the decision in an Aug. 15 letter, which was shared by the right-wing group Judicial Watch and reported by The Hill.

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No-Bill for Assault With a Deli Weapon

A D.C. grand jury declined to indict the fired DOJ paralegal Sean Dunn who hurled a sandwich at a federal officer during protests against President Trump’s hyper-federalization of the nation’s capital, the NYT reports.

The incident outside a Subway location (it was reportedly a salami sandwich) came to represent both the intense local opposition to being targeted by Trump on the bogus pretext of out-of-control crime and the overall absurdity of the situation.

Failing to secure an indictment is a relatively rare occurrence because prosecutors control the entire process in front of a grand jury. With few exceptions, prosecutors are not in the business of bringing loser cases to grand juries.

This is the second case in the last week arising out of the Trumpian occupation of the District of Columbia where grand juries have declined to indict felonies. Three different grand juries declined to return indictments against Sidney Lori Reid, accused by prosecutors of injuring an FBI agent near the D.C. jail during the transfer of alleged gang members. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office eventually dropped the charge to a misdemeanor, which doesn’t require an indictment.

Prosecutors were seeking to indict Dunn on a similar assault charge that they failed to secure against Reid.

Footnote of the Day

U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen of the Western District of Virginia, a Trump appointee sitting by assignment, in his order dismissing a Trump administration lawsuit against all the federal judges in Maryland:

Indeed, over the past several months, principal officers of the Executive (and their spokespersons) have described federal district judges across the country as “left-wing,” “liberal,” “activists,” “radical,” “politically minded,” “rogue,” “unhinged,” “outrageous, overzealous, [and] unconstitutional,” “[c]rooked,” and worse. Although some tension between the coordinate branches of government is a hallmark of our constitutional system, this concerted effort by the Executive to smear and impugn individual judges who rule against it is both unprecedented and unfortunate.

Hannah Dugan Loses Motion to Dismiss

Wisconsin state Judge Hannah Dugan lost her bid to dismiss the Trump administration’s criminal prosecution of her for allegedly interfering with immigration enforcement officers trying to detain an undocumented immigrant in her courthouse. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman of Wisconsin ratified an earlier similar decision by a federal magistrate.

A Possible Clue To A Trump U.S. Attorney’s Resignation?

Deep in a somewhat convoluted NYT report on yet another bogus Trump DOJ effort to re-litigate and seek retribution for the federal inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election is a potential clue as to why former state legislator Todd Gilbert abruptly resigned last week as acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, after only a month on the job, without offering any reason publicly:

The investigation is based in Charlottesville, Va., more than a hundred miles from where the events at issue took place, but officials have justified placing it with that office because of an F.B.I. document storage facility in Winchester, Va., according to people familiar with the matter who described the case on condition of anonymity to publicly discuss it.

The NYT story then goes on to note Gilbert’s resignation. While the NYT stops short of connecting the resignation to the investigation, the juxtaposition in the story is … glaring.

The Purges

• DOJ: Roughly 75% of career lawyers in the DOJ Civil Rights Division have left in recent months, Bloomberg Law reports, replaced by what Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon is calling “a new class of Civil Rights Warriors.” 
• FEMA: The Federal Emergency Management Agency suspended the 36 employees who used their names when signing a letter to Congress this week warning that President Trump has gutted the government’s disaster response capabilities. A total of 182 employees signed the letter, but most did so anonymously.

Fox in the Hen House Alert

Heather Honey, a high-profile denier of Trump’s loss in the 2020 election and a protégé of Cleta Mitchell, has been appointed to a newly created senior position in the Department of Homeland Security, where she’ll help oversee the nation’s election infrastructure, ProPublica reports.

Corey Lewandowski Has Veto Power Over DHS Contracts

Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is the last stop before six-figure contracts reach the desk of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem for her approval, Politico reports. Noem has imposed an unworkable, micromanager requirement that she personally approve contracts and grants of more than $100,000, creating a persistent bottleneck in the third largest Cabinet department.

The Trials and Tribulations of Lisa Cook

For your perusal:

• Charlie Savage notes what’s different about this case from the other independent agency cases so far in Trump II: “His attempt to fire Ms. Cook presents a new twist. It raises the question of whether he alone can decide whether there is cause to fire an official at an independent agency whose leaders are protected by law from arbitrary removal — or whether courts will be willing and able to intervene if judges believe his justification is a pretext.”
• Politico reports that the courts may be reluctant to dig too deeply into whether Trump’s pretext for firing Cook is bogus.
• TPM’s Kate Riga makes the important point that Trump has used the purported “for cause” firing of Cook as a fallback position that may avoid a direct confrontation with the Roberts Court, which has already endorsed this year the independence of the Federal Reserve.
• TNR’s Greg Sargent is zeroing in on the origin of the bogus allegations against Cook from Federal Housing Finance Agency chief Bill Pulte: “People with experience in mortgage law and governance tell me that Cook’s lawyer, well-known D.C. attorney Abbe Lowell, has a major opening in the coming litigation. He can use the discovery process to shed light on why Pulte targeted these mortgages and on any White House involvement in that.”

Thread of the Day

Sorry to keep harping on this–I realize it's a bit deep in the weeds and legalistic, but this truly is a case of life or death for many (it involves USAID funding) and, unless I'm missing something, what the Solicitor General has just done is very alarming and difficult to defend. [1]

— Marty Lederman (@martylederman.bsky.social) 2025-08-27T01:17:13.937Z

Putting the D’oh! in DOGE

After the Roberts Court cleared the way in June for DOGE to have access to the sensitive Social Security information of all Americans, DOGE staffers that same month uploaded a crucial Social Security database to a vulnerable cloud server, according to new allegations by whistleblower Charles Borges that were made public Tuesday.

Denmark Summons U.S. Ambassador After Espionage Claim

The Danish foreign ministry summoned the U.S. ambassador today after Denmark’s main public broadcaster reported that three American men linked to President Donald Trump’s administration were carrying out an influence operation in Greenland. The U.S. men were not named in the Danish report.

A 3-Hour Presser Only A Dictator Could Love

In an orgy of “flattery inflation,” President Trump’s Cabinet members tried to outdo themselves with over-the-top cultist praise for their leader while he preened, strutted, and projected for TV cameras for more than three excruciating hours Tuesday.

“It bore similarities … to meetings of ministers in other countries where leaders have sought to exert strong, personal control over large stretches of national life,” the WaPo reported. 

For his part, Trump basked in the preposterous praise and further embraced the Roberts Court’s view of the unitary executive:

Trump on deploying the National Guard to Chicago: "I have the right to do anything I want to do. I'm the president of the United States."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-08-26T19:25:32.377Z

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More The Exception Than The Rule

Examples of capitulation and surrender to Trump’s authoritarianism continue to outpace those of defiance and resistance. But over the last few days in the District of Columbia, which Trump is pretending to occupy, we’ve seen a few instances of holding the line against the worst of his transgressions. They’re relatively small and by themselves, they’re not enough. But two examples in particular stand out:

You Will Deny Me Three Times

Three different federal grand juries in D.C. refused to indict a woman on felony charges that she assaulted an FBI agent during an immigration protest in July. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office finally conceded Monday and knocked it down to a misdemeanor, which doesn’t require a grand jury to charge.

It is relatively unusual for a grand jury to return a no-true bill.

It is highly unusual for three grand juries to return no-true bills in the same case.

It is questionable, to say the least, for prosecutors to persist in pursuing a felony indictment with a third grand jury.

Sidney Lori Reid, a protestor, was accused by prosecutors of injuring an FBI agent near the D.C. jail during the transfer of alleged gang members.

The Trump DOJ does not seemed chastened by the debacle of this case, the NYT reports (emphasis mine):

Addressing the criticism that the U.S. attorney’s office has received for its crackdown in recent days, Akaash M. Singh, a high-ranking official at the Justice Department, met with federal prosecutors on Monday, telling them that they should not be cowed by news articles, according to two people familiar with the matter. Mr. Singh also told prosecutors that if sitting grand jurors rejected their efforts to bring serious charges, they should simply impanel new grand juries, the people said.

You may recall that federal prosecutors in Los Angeles have also struggled to secure grand jury indictments of ICE protestors.

‘Absolutely Maddening’

In another case arising out of the Trumpian occupation of D.C., U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office moved to dismiss a firearms charge that was the product of an unlawful search — but not before U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui of Washington, D.C., savaged the government for its misconduct, HuffPost reports.

Torez Riley, a Black man on his way into a Trader Joe’s, was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm after he was searched by local law enforcement backed by federal agents.

Calling the case “absolutely maddening,” Faruqui said from the bench that there was no basis to search Riley other than the color of his skin.

“The Sixth Amendment doesn’t get thrown out the window because the government has decided to make a show of arresting people,” Faruqui said, in apparent reference to Trump’s federal operation in D.C.

As the HuffPost’s Dave Jamieson reports:

[Faruqui] said evidence from illegal searches has been suppressed in several of the cases he has overseen since Trump’s takeover. He described the mentality of the U.S. attorney’s office as “charge first, ask questions later.” And he noted that it all seemed to be for spectacle — “some big celebration” — that was “fundamentally damaging to our city.”

“Lawlessness cannot come from the government,” said Faruqui, who was himself a prosecutor for 12 years. “We’re pushing the boundaries here. We’re beyond the boundaries and something is going to have to break.”

The Riley case was among those highlighted by the NYT in a Sunday story on the weak and overcharged cases that have been charged in D.C. since Trump’s big show of force began.

Standing Up to the Dictator-in-Chief

Jonathan Bernstein assesses the current moment: “Trump’s buffoonery make[s] him very possible to defeat … but … if enough people surrender to him, he could wind up fully destroying the republic, incompetence and all. And the history of autocracy is full of those who regretted failing to stand up and fight when they still could.”

Federal Judge Threatens Kari Lake With Contempt

As a last step before a contempt trial, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Washington, D.C., ordered the deposition of Kari Lake. Lamberth is seeking to enforce his order restoring programming at Voice of America, whose dismantling Lake has presided over.

Trump Wants Black University President To Grovel

The Trump Department of Education is demanding a personal apology from George Mason University President Gregory Washington for his DEI policies as part of a settlement of its trumped-up claims that the Virginia public university violated civil rights law. Washington is refusing to apologize.

Trump Purports To Fire The Fed’s Lisa Cook

In a Constitution-shaking move that could have long-term adverse consequences for the rule of law and the U.S. economy, President Trump announced he was firing Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook for cause. Cook said she would fight her purported termination.

Judge Xinis Blocks Deportation of Abrego Garcia

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis has blocked for now the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, including to Uganda. Her decision came after an emergency phone hearing Monday.

The Trump DHS continued to treat the case with a casual callousness that shocks the conscience:

They’re making fun of the media referring to Kilmar Abrego Garcia as a Maryland man as they threaten to send him to Uganda, a country where he’s never lived.They’re simply fucking vile.

— Matt Novak (@paleofuture.bsky.social) 2025-08-26T02:19:00.870Z

TPM Exclusive

The University of Michigan hospital system confirmed to TPM’s Josh Kovensky and Kate Riga that it’s discontinuing gender-affirming care for those under 19 after receiving a subpoena from the Trump administration.

Oopsie!

The Department of Homeland Security hasn’t kept text message data among top officials since early April, it told a watchdog group in response to a FOIA request. That would appear to be a violation of the Federal Records Act.

Quote of the Day

“I don’t want to be defense only. We want offense too.” –President Donald Trump, who wants to rename the Department of Defense the Department of War

Have We Already Crossed The Line Into Fascism?

Garrett Graff argues we’re already there:

The United States, just months before its 250^th birthday as the world’s leading democracy, has tipped over the edge into authoritarianism and fascism. In the end, faster than I imagined possible, it did happen here. The precise moment when and where in recent weeks America crossed that invisible line from democracy into authoritarianism can and will be debated by future historians, but it’s clear that the line itself has been crossed.

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