Is the Trump Regime Trying to Kill Us?

The biggest threat to our health and safety is in the Oval Office

Overnight, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention melted down. The Washington Post reported:

The White House on Wednesday fired Susan Monarez as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after she refused to resign amid pressure to change vaccine policy, which sparked the resignation of other senior CDC officials and a showdown over whether she could be removed....

“When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda,” [Her] lawyers, Mark S. Zaid and Abbe Lowell, wrote in a statement. “For that reason, she has been targeted.”

Soon after their statement, the White House formally fired Monarez.

Several of the CDC officials who quit issued denunciations of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s politicization of a critical source for medical information and analysis.

No hostile power could have dreamed up so many ways to threaten the Americans’ health and safety as has the MAGA crowd. In attacking scientific expertise and destroying funding for life-saving government programs, the Trump regime has multiplied domestic dangers to all Americans, but especially to their most ardent supporters: those who live in red states and lack state governments willing to pick up the slack when the feds desert them. Preventable deaths have already occurred and will continue, due to Trump’s blunders.

The destruction of one of the most basic federal functions, emergency response, should worry all Americans. “Current and former FEMA officials are warning Congress that the Trump administration’s policies have undermined the nation’s ability to respond to natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina,” Politico reports. “The message, in a public letter addressed to Congress and the White House’s FEMA review council, comes ahead of the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.” The letter’s 181 signatories accused Donald Trump and his minions of abandoning “reforms designed to correct the agency’s mistakes in responding to the 2005 hurricane.”

Several of the signatories were subsequently put on “leave.”

From the freakish obsession with micromanaging spending to mindless staff cuts, the Trump crew has been taking measures that, if not designed to harm Americans, will almost certainly have that effect. Emergency response experts lambaste “DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s pattern of reviewing all contracts over $100,000 has slowed responsiveness, causing delays in deploying urban search and rescue teams in the wake of July 4 flooding that killed 138 people in central Texas.” At a time when climate change is increasing the number of extreme weather events, hobbling FEMA is particularly foolhardy.

FEMA certainly is not an isolated issue. Just a day before the FEMA letter was released, Politico reported that a rural Tennessee hospital nearly wiped out by Hurricane Helene may never be restored due to Trump’s big, disastrous bill. Unicoi County Hospital is one of hundreds of hospitals that may go under due to the massive Medicaid cuts. In addition to outright closures, “service line reductions and staff reductions, resulting in longer waiting times in emergency departments and for other essential services” will devastate the rural healthcare delivery service system (not to mention the economies of rural communities).

How many Americans will die driving hours to a distant hospital? How many rural resident will lose access to preventative care and critical diagnostic tests? How many trauma centers will close, leaving accident victims without emergency care? The Trump regime apparently does not care.

We also learned this week that RFK, the anti-vaxxer secretary of Health and Human Services, now plans to eliminate COVID vaccines altogether. “The prediction of a drastic move against the COVID vaccine comes after Kennedy canceled $500 million in funding for the development of mRNA vaccines,” the Daily Beast reports. “Such vaccines use a copy of a molecule called messenger RNA (mRNA) to provoke an immune response against certain diseases.”

Meanwhile, more than 750 current and former HHS employees demanded RFK Jr. “stop ‘spreading inaccurate health information’ and prioritize the safety of public servants in the health sector in the wake of this month's fatal shooting at the Atlanta headquarters of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” Yahoo News reported.

In a letter to RFK Jr. and members of Congress, signatories denounced him for “politicized rhetoric that has turned public health professionals from trusted experts into targets of villainization.”

Americans should understand that Kennedy’s anti-scientific crusade and the ensuing loss of life it inevitably will produce could have been prevented had Republicans such as Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a medical doctor, and every other Republican incumbent on the ballot in 2026, not rubber-stamped his nomination. Trump will not be on the midterm ballot, but voters will have the chance to hold accountable the Republicans who countenanced this unprecedented assault on Americans’ health and well-being.

The war against modern medicine has already claimed casualties. In Texas alone, the malicious anti-vax movement contributed to over 700 measles infections and two deaths. Here again, the “administration’s actions sowed fear and confusion among CDC scientists that kept them from performing the agency’s most critical function—emergency response—when it mattered most,” an investigation from KFF Health News shows.

Then last night we saw the complete disintegration of the CDC’s credibility, thanks to its crackpot secretary, the president who appointed him, and the GOP Senate that confirmed him.

As horrible as all that may be, the massive cuts to National Institutes of Health may produce the worst self-inflicted injury to the U.S. healthcare in generations. Last week, the MAGA Supreme Court majority countenanced Trump’s decision to cut off $783M in critical NIH-funded research.

The destruction of NIH’s scientific work triggered the so-called Bethesda Declaration, signed by 484 staff members accusing the Trump lackey who heads NIH of undermining decades of research, impairing the health and safety of medical trial participants, disrupting international scientific collaboration, and sacrificing the health and well-being of millions of people.

In particular, the signatories denounced him for targeting “multiple universities with indiscriminate grant terminations, payment freezes for ongoing research, and blanket holds on awards regardless of the quality, progress, or impact of the science.” With no scientific basis or expert input, the MAGA crew has hobbled “critical research and programs addressing” on everything from immunization to health disparities. The “dramatic reduction in life-saving research” constitutes an astounding act of self-sabotage.

The Trump’s regime’s actions in slashing emergency response funds, abandoning rural hospitals, revoking life-saving vaccines, and devastating scientific research are inexcusable. Ignorance, hostility to expertise, greed (redirecting money to fund tax cuts for billionaires), anti-government animus, and irrational conspiracy mongering will cost lives, devastate communities, and weaken our technological and economic edge.

Trump and his ilk pose a bigger threat to Americans’ health, safety, and lives than any foreign foe or domestic disaster. Voters in 2026 must disable the MAGA threat before more Americans—and our democracy—perish.