DL Open Thread: Thursday, September 4, 2025
Florida Chooses Disease. Perhaps it’s just me, but killing off your citizens hardly seems the way to expand your electoral dominance. But who am I to judge?:
Florida plans to become the first state to end all vaccine mandates, including for schoolchildren, rejecting a practice that public health experts have credited for decades with limiting the spread of infectious diseases.
Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, made the announcement on Wednesday alongside Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican. Mr. DeSantis rose to national prominence during the coronavirus pandemic, and over time he has espoused increasingly anti-vaccine views.
“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body?” Dr. Ladapo, a vocal denigrator of vaccines, said to applause during an event on Wednesday in Valrico, Fla., near Tampa. “Your body is a gift from God.”
He added that the administration would be “working to end” all vaccine mandates. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Dr. Ladapo said, without elaborating.
Ho-kay.
Which reminds me, MAGA’s MAHAtma heads to Congress today as employees call for his firing:
More than 1,000 current and former Health and Human Services employees penned an open letter Wednesday calling for HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to either resign or be fired.
The letter — whose signatories were not publicly named — was released at a tense time for the health agency. Last week, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez was fired, and several other top CDC officials resigned from their jobs in protest. Staff are also reeling from layoffs, changes to the vaccine approval system — led by Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic — and a shooting outside the CDC headquarters last month.
Wednesday’s letter accused Kennedy of “endangering the nation’s health.” It cited last week’s upheaval at the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to rescind emergency approvals that made the COVID-19 vaccines available for young children, and the elevation of “political ideologues who pose as scientific experts” to key vaccine approval posts.
It called for Kennedy to resign, and said that if he declines to leave his post voluntarily, President Trump should pick a new HHS secretary.
“We swore an oath to support and defend the United States Constitution and to serve the American people. Our oath requires us to speak out when the Constitution is violated and the American people are put at risk,” the letter reads.
Kennedy is set to testify before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday morning, where he’s likely to face questions about the tumult at HHS.
Last week, the White House confirmed that Monarez was fired. Her lawyers called the firing “legally deficient” and said she was “targeted” because she “refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated public health experts.”
At least four other senior CDC leaders also stepped down last week, in some cases penning resignation letters that decried cuts to the CDC, accused the Trump administration of an “ongoing weaponizing of public health” and blasted “misinformation” about vaccines.
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician who chairs the Senate health committee, said the resignations will “require oversight.” He also sits on the Senate Finance Committee.
Meanwhile, Kennedy ousted every member of a CDC panel responsible for making vaccine recommendations earlier this year, in some cases replacing them with people who have questioned the safety of vaccines.
And last week, the FDA only authorized a set of updated COVID-19 vaccines for younger adults and children with preexisting health conditions, in addition to all seniors.
When people start getting sick, which is inevitable and which, in some cases, has already started (cough*measles*cough), that’s something that Trump can’t spin.
BTW, here’s a political ploy that won’t work:
Speculation that Mayor Eric Adams may drop his reelection bid reached a fever pitch Wednesday with two reports saying that President Donald Trump’s team is trying to find Adams a job if he bows out of the race.
Reporting in the New York Times Wednesday revealed Trump’s White House is accelerating its offensive against mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, with aides considering offering both Adams and Republican Curtis Sliwa jobs in his administration in exchange for them to drop out in hopes that their supporters will vote for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo instead of Mamdani.
“We have learned what New Yorkers have long suspected, that Andrew Cuomo is Donald Trump’s choice to be the next mayor of New York City,” Mamdani said during a press conference in Flatiron, who organized a press conference in the wake of the reports.
Mic drop.
The news comes after Adams returned from Florida. The Times reports that there he met with Trump administration officials and discussed job offers.
Separately, Politico revealed Adams was offered a job in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
It won’t work precisely for the reason that Mamdani cited. I like this guy.
Hah-vahd Beats Trump In Court. It all comes down to the Supreme Court. An unprecedented litany of illegal actions by Trump can be deemed legal by the Solomoronic solons:
A federal judge gave Harvard University a win in its legal battle against the Trump administration, ruling with the Ivy League school in its attempt to restore nearly $3 billion in federal funding for research frozen by the White House.
The decision from U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston on Sept. 3 rejected the administration’s argument that it was targeting the university funds due to allegations of antisemitism on Harvard’s campus.
The judge wrote in her 84-page ruling that it was “difficult to conclude anything other than that defendants used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.”
The decision is a major victory for Harvard, the only university to take the White House to court. (The rest caved to their eternal shame.) The Trump administration has argued its legal fights with several universities are over campus antisemitism, but Harvard sees a bigger battle regarding its overall academic freedom and federal spending.
Fearing the strangers inside two approaching black Durangos were going to rob him – or worse – Calvin Warren put the Hyundai Elantra in gear and hit the gas.
Quickly, the vehicle climbed onto a sidewalk on Wilmington’s East Side and crashed, disabling the car.
That’s when Warren felt his face turn to fire as he got out of the sedan to run. He’d been shot.
The shooter was not a robber, though. It was a police officer, who along with other members of Wilmington police’s Drug, Organized Crime and Vice Division, was conducting a drug investigation on Jan 28.
“They made no indication they were police,” the 32-year-old told Delaware Online/The News Journal in a series of communications earlier this year. “They were driving two unmarked Dodge Durangos with no police lights.”
Wilmington police did not respond to questions about this incident, but in court documents, said members of this unit were in unmarked SUVs and in plain clothes while wearing “black tactical vests marked Police.”
Warren told Delaware Online/The News Journal he realized the people in the SUVs were police after he was already injured on the ground and approached by officers.
I read through the entire article to see what the Mayor might say. Dog Bites Man: He didn’t say anything.
What do you want to talk about?
To speak of a different Kennedy, the Kennedy Center’s dance programs went MAGA and ticket-buyers went bye-bye.
https://www.washingtonian.com/2025/09/03/stephen-nakagawa-maga-former-dancer-kennedy-center-ticket-sales/
‘Trump Relocates Kennedy Center To Branson, Yakov Smirnoff Appointed Executive Director’?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Mike Judge movie “Idiocracy” called all this nearly 20 years ago. More evidence to come when President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho (I mean Donald J. Trump) stages the UFC championship on the White House lawn (already working on it) and RFK Jr. tells everybody to drink Brawndo instead of getting vaccinated (speculation so far).
Now I’ve gotta go look up ‘Brawndo’…
we’ve already been told to drink bleach.
when will major countries begin suggesting that america is a risky travel location for health purposes the same way 3rd world countries are? and in all honesty if canadians stop going to florida in the winter their economy will collapse
OK, here we go…ya gotta see this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbxq0IDqD04
For those who’ve never seen “Idiocracy,” this provides more context:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMHfBobgLSI
Based on what I’ve seen, RFK Jr., who has called at least two senators liars this morning, could never get through the Senate now.
The questions from Sen. Cassidy of Louisiana, whose support was especially vital to his confirmation, demonstrated that.
Don’t know what will happen if Cassidy and perhaps one or two others, call for RFK’s resignation. The guy’s a total crackpot.
How many zeroes will Calvin Warren’s check have on it? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know that it won’t hurt the Wilmington police at all, nor the individual officers. Your local hairdresser has more culpability for wrongdoing than any police agency.
I think everyone should read that story.
Then see what they can do to finally force some LEOBOR reform.
The police caused that entire situation. Period.
Unionized police forces are the root cause of many of these issues. At will employment of police officers would be a goof (first) step of correcting the many systemic and cultural issues at play. If you want to prove you are a “good cop”, start by tearing up your union membership card and then we’ll talk.
When record numbers of “Freedom Measles” cases jam the hospitals, it will not be the children and grandchildren of Senators and Cabinet members. They’ll all be vaccinated, even if it meant going to Denmark to get the shot.