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Trump administration faces rare bipartisan pushback for firing CDC director | Trump administration
The Trump administration is facing rare bipartisan pushback for firing the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), amid turmoil at the US’ top infectious disease agency that prompted dozens of staff to walk out of its headquarters in protest on Thursday.
The White House has said Susan Monarez, who was confirmed as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just a month ago, was fired as she was “not aligned with the president’s agenda” – only for Monarez to refuse to depart. The official’s lawyers have said that, as a Senate-confirmed appointee, only Donald Trump himself can remove her.
Monarez was reportedly fired by Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, for refusing to remove agency officials and committing to restricting proven vaccines.
Kennedy, who previously founded an anti-vaccine group, has long spread misinformation about immunizations and this week placed new restrictions on who can get Covid vaccines.
This stance, along with concerns about budget cuts and political interference to the work of the CDC, prompted the resignation of four top agency leaders. On Thursday, dozens of CDC staff walked out of their Atlanta headquarters in support of Monarez and the other departed leaders.
The extraordinary turmoil at the CDC has provoked bipartisan alarm in Congress, earning the Trump administration a rare rebuke from normally slavishly loyal Republicans.
“She’s been on the job for only three weeks and I am very concerned and alarmed by this removal,” Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine, said of Monarez. Collins said there was “no basis” to remove the CDC director.
Bill Cassidy, another Republican senator who chairs the senate health committee, said that an upcoming meeting of the Department of Health and Human Services committee that advises on vaccine use should be postponed due to the attacks upon the CDC.
“If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership,” Cassidy said, adding that “serious allegations” have been made about the lack of scientific process in vaccine recommendations.
Bernie Sanders, the independent senator, said that people of all political persuasions should be alarmed by the attempt to restrict access to vaccines, which he called “one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century”.
“We are witnessing a full-blown war on science, on public health, and on truth itself,” Sanders said. “In just six months, Secretary Kennedy has dismantled the vaccine review process, narrowed access to life-saving Covid vaccines and filled scientific advisory boards with conspiracy theorists and ideologues.”
The Trump administration shows no sign of backing down, however. In a press briefing on Thursday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, criticized one of the departing CDC officials for using the term “pregnant people” in his resignation letter.
“I understand there were a few other individuals who resigned after the firing of Ms Monarez,” she said. “One of those individuals wrote in his departure statement that he identifies pregnant women as pregnant people, so that’s not someone we want in this administration anyway.”
The official, Demetre Daskalakis, resigned from his position as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC on Wednesday, accusing the administration of using the agency to “generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health”.
Daskalakis responded to Leavitt’s remarks in an interview on CNN. “I find it outrageous that this administration is trying to erase transgender people,” he said.
“I very specifically used the term pregnant people, and very specifically added my pronouns at the end of my resignation letter to make the point that I am defying this terrible strategy at trying to erase people and not allowing them to express their identities.
“So I accept the note from the press secretary and I counter that with: I don’t care.”
The Bill Belichick honeymoon at North Carolina lasted exactly one possession.
TCU scored 41 unanswered points on the way to a 48-14 win over North Carolina in Belichick’s first game as head coach. The Tar Heels opened the game with an impressive touchdown drive and then promptly got run over by the Horned Frogs until the game was out of reach.
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TCU put the game away one play into the second half when Kevorian Barnes broke a 75-yard TD run. The Horned Frogs led 20-7 at halftime and Barnes made the lead insurmountable at that point.
[Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2025 NFL season]
The opener showed just how far North Carolina has to go simply to be relevant this season.
Belichick has preached fundamentals since his introductory news conference in December and, well, North Carolina was not fundamentally sound. The Tar Heels had tackling issues, dropped passes and even dropped punt snaps. It was a disastrous performance for nearly every unit.
Read Nick Bromberg’s story on the game right here and see how it all played out below.
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Landslide kills more than 1,000 in Sudan’s Darfur region, armed group says | Humanitarian Crises News
The Sudan Liberation Movement/Army appeals for UN help to recover bodies from a village buried by a landslide after heavy rain.
Published On 2 Sep 2025
A landslide has destroyed an entire village in Sudan’s western Darfur region, killing an estimated 1,000 people, according to a rebel group that controls the area.
News agencies said the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army issued a statement late on Monday reporting the disaster in the Marra Mountains area of Darfur.
The rebel group said the landslide struck on Sunday after days of heavy rainfall in the area, and the village was “completely levelled to the ground”, leaving only one survivor.
“Initial information indicates the death of all village residents, estimated to be more than one thousand individuals, with only one survivor,” the group said in a statement.
The rebels also appealed to the United Nations and international aid agencies for assistance in recovering the bodies of victims, which included children.
News of the disaster comes as Sudan’s ongoing civil war – now in its third year – plunges the country further into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with famine already declared in parts of Darfur.
People fleeing clashes between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in North Darfur state had sought shelter in the Marra Mountains area, and food and medication were reported by the Reuters news agency to be in short supply.
Factions of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army, which controls the area where the landslide occurred, have pledged to fight alongside the Sudanese military against the RSF.
Fighting has escalated in Darfur, especially in el-Fasher, since the army took control of the capital, Khartoum, from the RSF in March.
El-Fasher has been under siege for more than a year by the RSF, which is seeking to capture the strategic city, the last major population centre held by the army in the Darfur region.
The paramilitaries, who lost much of central Sudan, including Khartoum, earlier this year, are attempting to consolidate power in the west and establish a rival government.
كشفت السلطة المدنية في مناطق سيطرة حركة تحرير #السودان بقيادة عبد الواحد عن وفاة جميع سكان قرية ترسين في وسط جبل مرة نتيجة انزلاقات أرضية أمس الأحد.
الانزلاقات الأرضية المُدمّرة للقرية الواقعة في وسط جبل مرة حدثت بسبب الأمطار الغزيرة التي هطلت خلال الأسبوع الأخير من شهر أغسطس… pic.twitter.com/PFycp1xGbe— Sudan News (@Sudan_tweet) September 1, 2025
Some earthquake-hit local families were recently deported by Pakistan – local mediapublished at 03:54 British Summer Time
Some families affected by the earthquake had just recently been deported from Pakistan, according to local news outlet Tolo News.
Mohammad Aslam, who lives in Ghaziabad village in Kunar, said he’d lost five members of his family.
“The whole house collapsed on us. We lost five people – my father, two of my uncle’s sons, and two of my cousins’ children,” he told Tolo News, external.
It’s unclear what circumstances Aslam was in before being deported by Pakistan.
The quake-hit area of Kunar, which was hit by an earthquake late on Sunday, sits near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan.
According to the UN, Pakistan had earlier this year accelerated its drive to expel undocument Afghans. In March, NGO Human Rights Watch said, external Pakistani authorities had been “coercing” Afghan refugees to return to Afghanistan – despite the risk of persecution by the Taliban and dire economic conditions.
More than 3.5 million Afghans have been living in Pakistan, according to the UN’s refugee agency. Pakistan has taken in Afghans through decades of war, but the government says the high number of refugees now poses risks to national security and causes pressure on public services.
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