Highlights from Aug. 28, 2025
- CDC UPHEAVAL: The Trump administration will tap Jim O’Neill — a deputy of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — as acting head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after the firing of Director Susan Monarez, who had refused to resign under pressure. Her departure prompted at least four top officials to exit the CDC.
- VANCE'S BATTLEGROUND VISIT: Vice President JD Vance traveled to Wisconsin today as part of his effort to sell the GOP’s sweeping domestic policy legislation dubbed the “big, beautiful bill.” He visited a steel fabrication facility in La Crosse, a city in Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden's district that Democrats are targeting as a potential pickup in next year's elections.
- FED'S COOK SUES: Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook sued President Donald Trump today to have her attempted firing declared "unlawful," beginning a landmark legal fight involving the independence of what is considered the world's most important central bank.
Vance cites ‘mental health crisis’ in remarks about seeking out ‘root causes’ of mass shootings
Vice President JD Vance said today that it’s time to start asking tough questions about what’s at the heart of mass shootings and appeared to connect the violence to what he called a “mental health crisis.”
“We really do have, I think, a mental health crisis in the United States of America. We take way more psychiatric medication than any other nation on Earth, and I think it’s time for us to start asking some very hard questions about the root causes of this violence,” Vance said at an event in Wisconsin in his first public remarks about yesterday’s church shooting in neighboring Minnesota, in which two children were killed.
In an interview today on Fox News, Vance called the shooter a “mentally deranged human being.”
FHFA Director Pulte says he sent Justice Dept. a '2nd criminal referral' on Fed's Lisa Cook
Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said tonight on X that he sent Attorney General Pam Bondi a "2nd criminal referral" related to Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook's mortgages.
Last week, Pulte first accused Cook of "mortgage fraud" in a letter to Bondi. Trump immediately called for Cook's resignation following his accusations and days later said he was firing her.
Cook sued Trump today over what her lawyers called an "unprecedented and illegal" attempt to remove her from her position at the central bank.
“President Trump did not purport to remove Governor Cook for ‘inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,’ or for any actions that were carried out in the course of her official duties," Cook's lawyers wrote in a filing.
The Fed declined to comment, and Cook's representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A judge is scheduled to hold a hearing in the matter at 10 ET tomorrow morning.
GOP Rep. Barry Moore exits through back door after he's heckled at Alabama town hall
Rep. Barry Moore, R-Ala., exited a town hall in his home district through the back door last night after he faced relentless heckling from attendees in Baldwin County.
Moore made the hasty departure after he responded to what a staffer announced would be the last question on the topic of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts — as seen in a roughly 40-minute video from the advocacy group Indivisible Baldwin County — after he was repeatedly mocked and laughed at for his comments at the event in Daphne, a suburb of Mobile.
In the video, Moore did not offer concluding remarks or bid good night to the rowdy crowd, as many chanted “Shame!”
China urges U.S. to welcome Chinese students and end ‘harassment’
China said it hoped the United States would follow through on Trump’s pledge to welcome Chinese students and end what it described as unwarranted harassment.
The Trump administration said in May that it would “aggressively revoke” Chinese student visas and apply stricter scrutiny to future applications, citing national security concerns. But Trump took a different stance Tuesday, saying he would allow 600,000 Chinese students into the country — more than double the current number — because U.S. colleges would struggle without them and because the United States is “honored to have Chinese students here.”
“Exchanges and cooperation on education help enhance interactions and understanding between people from all countries,” Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told reporters in Beijing yesterday. “We hope the U.S. will act on President Trump’s commitment to welcoming Chinese students to study in the country, stop groundlessly harassing, interrogating or repatriating them and earnestly protect their legitimate and lawful rights and interests.”
On Monday, the Chinese Embassy warned students to “exercise caution” if they were flying to the United States through Houston, where, it said, some had their electronic devices searched and were held for more than 80 hours before they were deported “without justification.” The embassy said Beijing had lodged a “stern representation” with Washington.
Trump’s remarks quickly drew backlash from conservatives, who accused him of displacing American students and opening the door to espionage.
There were about 280,000 Chinese students in the United States in the 2023–24 academic year, who contributed more than $14 billion to the economy in 2023 alone. That is down from more than 350,000 before the Covid-19 pandemic, as Chinese nationals think twice about studying in the United States amid rising tensions.
Campaign hitting California Democrats' redistricting plan begins online
The first ads against California's Democratic redistricting ballot measure have started running online, with digital ads inveighing against the measure for "threatening what voters built" with the state's independent redistricting commission.
"Voters approved an independent commission," the narrator says, according to the ad posted on Google's political ad disclosure site, before it quotes columnists and others calling the ballot measure an "attack on democracy." The ad from "No on Prop. 50" says Charles Munger Jr. is the group's top donor.
Californians will vote in November on whether to replace the state's independent commission-drawn map with one Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and other leading Democrats have pushed as a counterweight to the new Republican-drawn map in Texas.
The ballot measure fight is expected to be extremely expensive, given the national stakes and the high cost of advertising in the country's largest state.
Man who threw sandwich at federal officer in D.C. charged with misdemeanor assault
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office today charged a man accused of throwing a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent in Washington this month with misdemeanor assault, issuing the charge one day after she failed to persuade a grand jury to return a felony indictment.
Sean Dunn, who Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed was a Justice Department employee at the time of the incident, was seen in a now-viral video throwing a salami sub at the immigration agent, days after Trump directed the deployment of National Guard troops and federal law enforcement personnel to D.C. Trump framed the move as an effort to address crime in the city, even though data suggested criminal activity was already trending downward.
Democrats probe Trump administration’s retreat from public corruption cases
Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have given a “green light to would-be lawbreakers” by gutting the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section and folding one of the FBI’s public corruption squads, a group of congressional Democrats wrote in a letter today.
“DOJ’s refusal to enforce anti-corruption laws betrays the public trust and will create lasting harm to Americans’ faith in the integrity of government officials,” Democrats wrote in their letter to Bondi and Patel, which was first obtained by NBC News.
DNC vice chair to walk from Philadelphia to Harrisburg to protest transit cuts in his state
Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, a Democratic National Committee vice chair, will walk from Philadelphia to Harrisburg over five days to raise awareness of cuts to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority.
Kenyatta's walk will start tomorrow and conclude Tuesday, spanning 105 miles.
"I will walk a marathon a day to Harrisburg because that’s the reality riders are living," Kenyatta said in a statement. "My colleagues and I have delivered solutions. Republicans are blocking them—and it’s part of a bigger national pattern. Whether it’s public transit, schools, or healthcare, Republicans don’t want efficient public services; they want to break them.”
Kenyatta points to state Senate Republicans as responsible for the cuts, which were triggered last month amid a budget impasse in the state. Democrats maintain narrow control of the state House, while Republicans control the Senate.
Vance says Trump 'is not forcing anybody' to use National Guard in cities
Vice President JD Vance said today that the Trump administration isn't "forcing" the National Guard to deploy to American cities if it isn't invited by local leaders.
“We want governors and mayors to ask for the help. The president is not going out there forcing this on anybody," Vance said in response to a reporter's question about whether governors have the right to stop Trump from deploying the National Guard to cities around the United States.
Vance argued that Trump is simply asking “Why don’t you invite us in?” to help lower crime rates, he added.
“Why is it that you have mayors and governors who are angrier about Donald Trump offering to help them than they are about the fact that their own residents are being murdered and carjacked in the streets? It doesn’t make an ounce of sense," he said.
His remarks came after he delivered a speech at Mid-City Steel in La Crosse, Wisconsin, touting the Trump administration's agenda and the massive domestic policy package that GOP lawmakers passed in July.
The Trump administration deployed the National Guard and federal law enforcement officers to Washington, D.C., this month in what it said was an effort to help reduce crime alongside the local Metropolitan Police Department.
And after reports last week that the Defense department was planning a military mobilization in Chicago in a stated effort to combat crime and homelessness, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, both Democrats, blasted the potential move.
Trump signs executive order to end collective bargaining for several government agencies
Trump signed an executive order today taking aim at government unions.
The order aims to end collective bargaining for several government agencies by invoking an exception to a law allowing organizing and collective bargaining for federal employees whose primary work function isn’t tied to national security.
The order named units in the Bureau of Reclamation tasked with operating hydropower facilities, NASA, the Office of the Commissioner of Patents, the Patent and Trademark Office and the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which funds news outlets like Voice of America, that Trump issued in an executive order to gut this year.
The order also aims to end collective bargaining with two agencies that are a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service and the National Weather Service.
The executive order cited authority under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which makes exceptions to organizing and collective bargaining for "agencies or units within an agency which has as a primary function intelligence, investigative, or national security work."
The White House contended that the U.S. Agency for Global Media is an “arm of U.S. public diplomacy; supporting U.S. national security is one of its key functions.”
The order says the agencies will no longer be included in the federal labor-management relations program, which helps resolve unfair labor practice complaints and plays a role in determinations about union representation. The program was administered for 2.1 million non-postal federal employees, according to the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
