Apparently, CDC Director Susan Monarez, PhD., confirmed by the Senate only a month ago, has been fired.  This is really bad – every competent leader at a critically important public health agency, the CDC, is being ousted or driven away at an institution already decimated by cuts, shot at, and subjected to incompetent appointees.  The purging of capable scientists devoted to excellence  just doesn’t stop.

Tom Friedman writes in his NYT essay The America We Knew Is Rapidly Slipping Away about how truth, justice, and the American way are disappearing. The termination of McEntarfer at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and cyberwarrior Jen Easterly at West Point are particularly galling (the latter after another loony Loomer post).  Friedman quotes Easterly from her response on LinkedIn:

“As a lifelong independent, I’ve served our nation in peacetime and combat under Republican and Democratic administrations. I’ve led missions at home and abroad to protect all Americans from vicious terrorists …. I’ve worked my entire career not as a partisan, but as a patriot — not in pursuit of power, but in service to the country I love and in loyalty to the Constitution I swore to protect and defend, against all enemies…Every member of the Long Gray Line knows the Cadet Prayer. It asks that we ‘choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong.’ That line — so simple, yet so powerful — has been my North Star for more than three decades. In boardrooms and war rooms. In quiet moments of doubt and in public acts of leadership. The harder right is never easy. That’s the whole point…To lead in this moment is to believe that with unshakeable certainty, to resist the cynicism that corrodes our institutions, to meet falsehoods with fidelity to truth and adversity with resilience.”

This government is losing the best among us.

Apparently, it’s hear no evil, see no evil, avoid all mention and then the problem of climate change disappears. Magic!  WashPo reports that the State Department has fired the remaining employees who worked on climate change negotiations.

Take Off the Mask, ICE is an excellent essay by former police officer and chief of police Brandon del Pozo, writing in the Atlantic.

Jeremy Faust summarizes the current cuts to Science, the NIH, CDC, etc. in his latest Inside Medicine Substack post.  It’s not pretty.

More insanity, this time coming from the incompetent head of HHS; as reported by the Washington Post:

Steven Pinker’s Harvard Derangement Syndrome essay in the NY Times is a must-read. A small part of that essay:

Just as clear is what won’t work: the Trump administration’s punitive defunding of science at Harvard. Contrary to a widespread misunderstanding, a federal grant is not alms to the university, nor may the executive branch dangle it to force grantees to do whatever it wants. It is a fee for a service — namely, a research project that the government decides (after fierce competitive review) would benefit the country. The grant pays for the people and equipment needed to carry out that research, which would not be done otherwise.

Mr. Trump’s strangling of this support will harm Jews more than any president in my lifetime. Many practicing and aspiring scientists are Jewish, and his funding embargo has them watching in horror as they are laid off, their labs are shut down or their dreams of a career in science go up in smoke. This is immensely more harmful than walking past a “Globalize the Intifada” sign. Worse still is the effect on the far larger number of gentiles in science, who are being told that their labs and careers are being snuffed out to advance Jewish interests. Likewise for the current patients whose experimental treatments will be halted, and the future patients who may be deprived of cures. None of this is good for the Jews.

The concern for Jews is patently disingenuous, given Mr. Trump’s sympathy for Holocaust deniers and Hitler fans. The obvious motivation is to cripple civil society institutions that serve as loci of influence outside the executive branch. As JD Vance put it in the title of a 2021 speech: “The Universities Are the Enemy.”

Katelyn Jetelina and Aaron Kesselheim discourse on the insanely illogical system of drug pricing in the U.S. in this edition of  Katelyn’s Your Local Epidemiologist.

Thank you, Harvard, for holding fast and refusing to submit to the spiteful demands of the current administration.
President Garber’s response is here. An excerpt:

“The work of addressing our shortcomings, fulfilling our commitments, and embodying our values is ours to define and undertake as a community. Freedom of thought and inquiry, along with the government’s longstanding commitment to respect and protect it, has enabled universities to contribute in vital ways to a free society and to healthier, more prosperous lives for people everywhere. All of us share a stake in safeguarding that freedom. We proceed now, as always, with the conviction that the fearless and unfettered pursuit of truth liberates humanity—and with faith in the enduring promise that America’s colleges and universities hold for our country and our world.”

Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary: “Any reporter who chooses to put their preferred pronouns in their bio clearly does not care about biological reality or truth and therefore cannot be trusted to write an honest story” (I mean, sorry, but WTF) … A spokesman for The NY Times said: “Evading tough questions certainly runs counter to transparent engagement with free and independent press reporting. But refusing to answer a straightforward request to explain the administration’s policies because of the formatting of an email signature is both a concerning and baffling choice, especially from the highest press office in the U.S. government.”

Which universe do you want to live in?