kennedyJUNIOR only somewhat stymied by rejection of his maHAh nominees.

[UTUSN]

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-maha-agenda-stalled-top-164345489.html

Trump’s Maha agenda stalled as top CDC and surgeon general roles sit empty

.... Donald Trump has yet to nominate a permanent director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), leaving an agency that has been plagued by turmoil for the past year without a leader. At the same time, the president’s controversial pick for surgeon general, Casey Means, remains in limbo as her nomination stalls in the Senate. ....

In a statement, HHS said that Kennedy and Chris Klomp, who serves as the director of Medicare and deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), are “working with the White House on the CDC director search by evaluating candidates that can further the Trump administration’s objective of restoring the CDC to its original mission of fighting infectious disease”.

The agency’s last Senate‑confirmed director, Susan Monarez, took over in July but was fired less than a month later after clashing with Kennedy over his vaccine agenda. Since then, the CDC has seen an exodus of senior public health officials, many of whom accused the health secretary of politicizing the agency and stripping leaders of their independence. The upheaval followed a shooting at CDC headquarters in Atlanta, where a gunman – who blamed the Covid vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal – killed a police officer. ....

Most recently, a federal judge ruled earlier this month that Kennedy’s handpicked vaccine advisory panel was unlawfully appointed, and voided many of their recent decisions on vaccines, which included no longer recommending the latest version of the flu and Covid shots and the inclusion of the RSV shot for infants. ....

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[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. The fact that bullet-pocked windows remain in place at the agency's headquarters makes it difficult to be optimistic abo

The fact that bullet-pocked windows remain in place at the agency’s headquarters makes it difficult to be optimistic about the CDC’s future.

The fact that the CDC’s bullet-pocked windows remain in place, seven months after a shooting, is ridiculous. It's also emblematic of a larger problem:

RFK Jr has created an existential crisis at the agency, and its future is far from certain. tinyurl.com/3f55pccw

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-03-30T21:07:35.062Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/whether-the-cdc-will-survive-rfk-jr-s-tenure-is-an-open-question

Last August, a gunman opened fire in Atlanta near the campuses of both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Emory University, killing a police officer and shooting many windows at the CDC headquarters. The suspect, who did not survive the assault, was reportedly fixated on the Covid-19 vaccine, blaming it for his health problems.....

For his part, RFK Jr. did condemn the shooting in Atlanta in a short message published to social media, but the Cabinet secretary waited until a day after the violence, and he posted his statement after posting images of himself fishing. (Donald Trump, meanwhile, failed to comment altogether on the shooting that left a police officer dead.)

As difficult as this might seem to believe, the CDC’s shot-up windows still haven’t been replaced. The Associated Press reported:

The federal government has not yet replaced the bullet-pocked windows that serve as a grim reminder of an attack at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention more than seven months ago, the agency’s acting chief acknowledged Wednesday.

CDC employees asked Dr. Jay Bhattacharya about the broken windows during a staff meeting, noting that the panes were papered over. ‘We’re working on that,’ Bhattacharya said, adding that it’s a priority.

.....To be sure, the problems are not altogether new. Last fall, nine former CDC chiefs, including Anne Schuchat, who served as an acting director during Trump’s first term, linked arms and wrote a joint op-ed, in which they characterized Kennedy’s work as a dangerous public menace. (The headline said, “We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health.”)

It was around this same time when it became common to see reports quoting CDC insiders referring to the agency in the past tense. The New York Times published a report with a headline and subhead that immediately generated some attention: “Will the C.D.C. Survive? Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s assault may have dealt lasting damage to the agency, experts fear, with harsh consequences for public health.”

Seven months later, existential questions about the CDC’s future remain unanswered, and the fact that bullet-pocked windows remain in place at the agency’s headquarters make it difficult to be optimistic.