Linked List: August 28, 2025

Thursday, 28 August 2025

Trump Fires CDC Director, Anti-Vax Wingnuts Now Running Asylum 

Shelby Talcott, reporting under the euphemistic headline “White House Fires CDC Director Over Vaccine Disagreements”:

A showdown at the CDC culminated in the White House formally firing its director, Susan Monarez, on Wednesday night.

Monarez was ousted earlier in the day, after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked her to step down amid disagreements over changing vaccine policies, The Washington Post reported — and HHS confirmed her departure.

But Monarez’s lawyer, Mark Zaid, pushed back. Zaid said in a statement later that a White House staffer had delivered the news, and given that Monarez is a Senate-confirmed officer, “only the president himself can fire” her. “For this reason, we reject the notification Dr. Monarez has received as legally deficient and she remains as CDC Director,” Zaid said.

Four other top CDC directors also resigned Wednesday. “These high profile departures will require oversight by the” Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, panel chair Bill Cassidy, R-La., posted on X.

The “White House” didn’t fire Monarez. Donald Trump did. And while technically, she was fired over “vaccine disagreements”, yes, those disagreements weren’t scientific or medical. It was science on one side, and abject quackery on the other. We really needed the CDC five years ago. We’re in big trouble if we need them again before the US electorate ousts these wingnuts.

Here’s a headline, and coverage, from The Guardian that captures the situation with clarity and without mincing words: “CDC Chief ‘Targeted’ for Refusing to ‘Rubber-Stamp Unscientific, Reckless Directives’, Lawyers Say”

How AirPods Work 

Truly phenomenal video from Real Engineering about a genuinely phenomenal product. In my review of the AirPods Pro 2 in 2023 — a year after they originally shipped, when the cases were changed to use USB-C — I called them “the best single expression of Apple as a company today”. That remains true. AirPods exemplify everything that sets Apple apart: miniaturization, “it just works” ease of use, opinionated design (you get them in any color you want, so long as it’s white), and, most of all, joyfulness.

It occurs to me that Apple doesn’t brag enough about its engineering accomplishments these days. Under their previous CEO, they’d spend more time in product introduction explaining how things work, like a lecture in a 101 college course. I miss that. This Real Engineering video fills in those gaps.