Yesterday an unvaccinated child in Texas died of measles as nearly 140 people in Texas and New Mexico have been reported ill with the disease. This is the country’s first measles death since 2015. Measles cases appear almost every year, but usually the government works to suppress measles, as well as other contagious diseases. It’s not clear the Trump administration intends to do that. Yesterday the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) abruptly canceled a scheduled meeting to select the strains of flu to be included in next season’s vaccines. This year’s flu season has been severe: according to NBC News health and medical reporter Berkeley Lovelace Jr., 86 children and 19,000 adults so far have died from the flu this year and 430,000 adults have been hospitalized. On February 20, Lovelace reported that a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, scheduled for February 26–28, was cancelled. Speaking earlier this month in favor of confirming anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health and human services, Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and who is a doctor himself, assured his colleagues that Kennedy had promised to notify the Senate before making changes to vaccine programs and that “[i]f confirmed, he will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without change.” Cuts from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have made it hard for the country to confront the bird flu that is sweeping the poultry industry and now infecting dairy herds, as well. Marcia Brown of Politico reported today that the Trump administration is trying to rehire government employees who were working on combating the disease after widespread cuts to employees in the Agriculture Department during the first purge of government workers gutted research on it. Now some of the employees in the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, the National Animal Health Laboratory Network program, and so on, have been offered their jobs back, but those offers are haphazard, and not all employees are keen to take jobs that are clearly not secure. Indeed, health does not seem to be a top priority of the administration. Apoorva Mandavilli of the New York Times noted today that during his remarks at the Cabinet meeting yesterday, billionaire Elon Musk, who the administration has claimed in court is only an advisor to the president and neither leads nor is employed by DOGE, admitted that DOGE had made some initial mistakes, such as when it “accidentally canceled very briefly” efforts to contain an outbreak of Ebola in Uganda. But Musk reassured his audience that mistaken decisions were quickly reversed. DOGE “restored the Ebola prevention immediately, and there was no interruption.” Except they didn’t: in theory, USAID workers could get a waiver to continue work, but in reality, money did not resume and much of the work was forced to stop. The administration continues to insist it is cutting “waste, fraud, and abuse,” but the reality that it is cutting programs on which Americans depend is becoming clearer. During yesterday’s Cabinet meeting, Trump indicated that the next major round of workforce cuts will be at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), created by Congress in 1970 at the urging of Republican president Richard M. Nixon to protect clean air, land, and water. Trump said that 65% of the 15,000 people who work there will be fired; an official later clarified that the president meant that the budget would be cut by 65%. Today, three former heads of the EPA warned in a New York Times op-ed that Americans would miss the agency “when it’s gone.” William K. Reilly and Christine Todd Whitman, who headed the EPA under Republican presidents, and Gina McCarthy, who headed it under a Democratic president, recalled how between 1970 and 2019 the EPA “cut emissions of common air pollutants by 77 percent, while private sector jobs grew 223 percent and our gross domestic product grew almost 300 percent.” The EPA minimizes exposure to dangerous air during wildfires, cleans up contaminated lands, and tests for asbestos, lead, and copper in water,, delivering health benefits that outweigh its costs, the authors say, by more than 30 to 1. Trump administration officials claim they are enacting the policies their voters demand, but Melanie Zanona, Jonathan Allen, and Matt Dixon of NBC News reported Tuesday that the blowback on Republican representatives willing to hold town halls during the House recess was so intense that House leaders are urging them simply to stop holding constituent events. If they want to continue to do so, leaders suggest making sure they vet attendees to make sure there won’t be altercations that go viral on social media, as several have done recently. Leadership wants to stop what they say is a developing narrative that paints Republicans in a bad light. Republican National Committee senior advisor Danielle Alvarez told the NBC News reporters: “The president's policies are incredibly popular, and the American people applaud his success in cutting the waste, fraud and abuse of their hard-earned taxpayer dollars…. Pathetic astroturf campaigns organized by out-of-touch, far-left groups are exactly why Democrats will keep losing.” But today’s news is unlikely to quiet the blowback. The administration announced cuts of 800 workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which monitors ocean currents, atmospheric changes, and climate change and provides weather and ocean reports. It suggested further cuts tomorrow could bring the total to 1,000. NOAA’s weather reports and marine forecasts are vital to Americans. As climate scientist David Ho pointed out, for example, NOAA operates both of the U.S. tsunami warning centers. Employees from them were fired today. Also in DOGE’s crosshairs is Social Security. Today the administration announced a major “organizational restructuring” of the Social Security Administration. This restructuring appears to mean large cuts to the agency, even though staffing is already at a 50-year low. It is not clear exactly how many positions will be cut; multiple outlets say half of the agency’s 57,000 employees will be let go, while an executive at the agency told Erich Wagner and Natalie Alms of Government Executive that the initial number of firings will be 7,000. At least five of the eight regional commissioners whose offices oversee and support the agency’s frontline offices across the country are leaving, and former Social Security administrator Martin O’Malley warned: “Social Security is being driven to a total system collapse.” There are also rumblings of concern among business people about the Trump administration’s approach to the economy. Trump said today that the 25% tariffs on products from Mexico and Canada he paused for a month in early February will take effect on March 4. An additional 10% tariff on goods from China will also go into effect that day. Tariffs are expected to drive up prices, and Bloomberg reported that in this quarter’s earnings calls for 500 of the country’s most valuable businesses, when company managers, investors, and analysts discuss the company’s financial performance, mentions of tariffs reached an all-time high. Selina Wang of ABC News reported the warning of economists that the mass firings and the Trump tariff threats are having a “chilling” effect on the economy. The tariffs make it hard to plan for future costs, so companies are holding back on investments, while people who lose their jobs or are afraid they’re going to lose their jobs stop spending money. A survey by the Conference Board, a nonpartisan nonprofit that provides insight for business, shows that consumer confidence is dropping dramatically. When Stanford University announced today that “[g]iven the uncertainty, we need to take prudent steps to limit spending,” adding that “we are implementing a freeze on staff hiring in the university,” Carl Quintanilla of CNBC posted: “‘Here come the multiplier effects.’” Voters and business people are not the only ones pushing back against Trump’s policies. Rachel Bluth and Melanie Mason of Politico reported today that the country’s 23 Democratic state attorneys general have been working together to stop Trump’s unconstitutional actions. Under the urging of then–attorney general Bob Ferguson of Washington state in February 2024, they began to prepare for cases based on Trump’s campaign statements, taking them seriously as potential policies, and on Project 2025, which they recognized would play a big part in a second Trump administration. They worked together to figure out the most effective strategies for challenging the administration in court. As Trump issued executive orders at breakneck speed in his first few days in office, they were ready to respond. Today, U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered the administration, specifically the Office of Personnel Management, to rescind the mass firing of government workers with probationary status, ruling that the firings were probably illegal. Alsup pointed out that Congress had given personnel decisions to the agencies themselves. “The Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever, under any statute in the history of the universe, to hire and fire employees at another agency. They can hire and fire their own employees.” “Probationary employees are the lifeblood of these agencies,” the judge added. “They come in at the low level and work their way up, and that’s how we renew ourselves and reinvent ourselves.” Meanwhile, Trump and his team appear to be trying to undermine the rule of law in the United States. Today, Rebecca Crosby and Judd Legum of Popular Information reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission has stopped its prosecution of Justin Sun, a Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur who had been charged in March 2023 with securities fraud. After Trump was elected in 2024, Sun bought $30 million worth of Trump’s World Liberty Financial crypto tokens, putting $18 million directly into Trump’s pockets. Since then, he has invested another $45 million in WLF. Altogether, Sun’s investments have netted Trump more than $50 million. Crosby and Legum note that the SEC also appears to have dropped its case against the crypto trading platform Coinbase after the platform donated $75 million to a political action committee associated with Trump and donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration. And, after Trump issued blanket pardons to those convicted of crimes associated with the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, including those who attacked police officers, his administration now appears to have put pressure on Romania to lift a travel ban on social media influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate. The brothers were under investigation in Romania for rape, human trafficking, and money laundering and are under similar allegations in the U.K. MAGA Republicans attracted followers by claiming they would stand up for law and order. So the arrival in the U.S. of the Tates was not universally popular among them. A number of MAGA Republicans rushed to distance themselves from the Tates. When news broke that they were headed for Florida, Florida’s attorney general said that Florida has “zero tolerance for human trafficking and violence against women,” and Florida governor Ron DeSantis appeared angry as he said he learned of the Tate brothers’ arrival through the media. — Notes: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/27/measles-outbreak-kentucky https://www.cdc.gov/fluview/surveillance/2025-week-07.html https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/27/trump-fired-bird-flu-hires-00206334 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/health/musk-ebola-funding.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/opinion/epa-staff-cuts-doge.html https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/27/politics/noaa-federal-workers-firings/index.html  https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/27/democrats-taking-trump-musk-winning-00206310 https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c70wq044znxt’ https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly22wdedqeo Bluesky: davidho.bsky.social/post/3lj74foqza222 carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3lj6i2b422k2n carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3lj6gc3u66c2v X: You’re currently a free subscriber to Letters from an American. 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Friday, February 28, 2025
February 27, 2025
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