Opinion
By Jeff Childers
8/30/25
Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday! The gusher of news slowed a tiny bit yesterday, allowing us time to catch up on some great sleeper stories. The Weekend Edition roundup —August’s last— includes: corporate media sneers at Kennedy’s new acting CDC director and continues crying, for the fourth day, about agency reorganization; a provocative suggestion for the nation’s top governor; Trump nixes Kamala’s overextended secret service detail and progressives melt down; and a quiet revolution in Florida schools paves the way.
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Yesterday, Axios ran a story headlined, “What to know about Jim O’Neill, new acting CDC director.” The leftwing paper warned, “O’Neill, who is not a physician, is an ally of Health Secretary Kennedy and could help him enact the Make America Health Again agenda.” Not that!
“O’Neill publicly criticized the CDC during the COVID pandemic,” Axios added, “and has pushed treatments that are not supported by scientific research, like ivermectin.”
As did most corporate media, Axios sneered at Mr. Kennedy’s transgression of the CDC’s “traditional institutional independence.” But the CDC has no legal “independence” like the Fed or the judiciary does. So the complaints are just more whining about “norms and customs.”
During the pandemic, the CDC traded away its carefully cultivated aura of scientific neutrality in exchange for short-term political utility, carrying water for mandates, school closures, and shifting narratives. That credibility capital was burned like dry tinder, on purpose, to achieve short-term political objectives.
Now they don’t want to pay the bill.
That’s why RFK can install someone like Mr. O’Neill, who is not a doctor, and is openly critical of the agency’s pandemic conduct. The CDC has lost whatever reserve of public trust that could have successfully insulated it. It can no longer plead that it’s “above politics”— after having played politics.
Question asked (New York Times, this morning):
It’s a fair question. The CDC attended too many European leather festivals (literally) and now it has an uncomfortable rash that is quickly spreading. Will it survive? A majority of pandemic-fatigued Americans hope someone will take it out back and put it out of its misery. We can tell the kids it went to live on a farm.
The CDC’s director is appointed by the President, but until this year, did not require Senate confirmation (unlike, e.g., the FBI director or Attorney General). In fact, when Biden appointed goofy Rochelle Walensky during covid, she just took the job without any Senate vote.
But in January, a new law (passed by Biden) required all future CDC nominees to be confirmed. Undoubtedly, this was done to frustrate President Trump, helped by Republicans furious about Biden’s CDC directors. Susan Monarez was the first who required confirmation.
Under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, an acting CDC director can serve for up to 210 days from the date of the vacancy, unless a nomination for a permanent director is submitted to the Senate, which can extend the acting service period while the nomination is pending, or if confirmation is attempted but fails. So O’Neill could be sticking around for a while, which is why progressive medical fetishists are freaking out.
One possibility for a permanent CDC Director making the gossip rounds this week is standout Florida Surgeon General Joe Ladapo, who’s packed to the gills with both Ivy League credentials and MAHA bona fides. While serving here, he’s beaten back mandates, nixed flouride, withered covid shots, assaulted mercury fillings, and advocated for raw milk.
Governor DeSantis lobbied hard for Dr. Ladapo after Trump’s election, but Kennedy was politically boxed into hiring Susan Monarez instead.
💉 While we’re talking about provocative appointments, I have an even more radical suggestion that would be more distressing to the Democrats than a treatment-resistant case of long Monkeypox.
Governor DeSantis’ second and final term expires next year. If President Trump really wanted to rattle the rafters of the marble palace, he could nominate Ron DeSantis to SCOTUS.
DeSantis is a Harvard-trained lawyer and former Navy JAG. He has spent his career navigating the intersection of law, politics, and executive power. Unlike most justices, he’s lived the consequences of constitutional theory in the political Thunderdome: governing one of the nation’s most complex and combative states through hurricane seasons, pandemics, and pitched cultural battles.
That kind of trial by fire could be exactly what the Court lacks— someone who knows how the text of the law lands on the lives of real people.
Detractors would howl about “broken norms,” complaining that DeSantis has never been a judge. But the Constitution doesn’t require judicial seasoning; only judgment. Some of the Court’s most influential members, like Earl Warren and William Rehnquist, came to the bench without ever donning a robe.
You heard it here first: DeSantis for Supreme Court.
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What would we do without judges? Yesterday, Axios ran a story headlined, “Federal appellate court upholds ruling striking down Trump’s tariffs.” The court of appeals disagreed with President Trump’s rationale for the emergency, and struck nearly all of them.
In late May, the Court of International Trade ruled that the President lacked authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose the tariffs. But then, in late July, a federal appellate court stayed that ruling. Late yesterday, in a 7-4 ruling, the same appellate court stated that, although it did not reach a conclusion on whether a president could authorize tariffs under IEEPA’s emergency powers, President Trump’s reasoning did not constitute an actual emergency and thus exceeded his authority.
In other words, they’re in his head now. Although “emergency” is undefined by statute, and, given the pandemic experience, emergencies can last forever, the appellate judges substituted their own assessments of whether our $32 trillion debt and the money flowing like greased water to most other countries constitutes a “real” emergency.
The four dissenting judges, including circuit chief judge Kimberly Moore, disagreed. They would have held that the plaintiffs had failed to state a legal case, and argued that IEEPA did permit tariffs and that the president did have appropriate legal authority to order them.
The order is stayed for two weeks to allow the Administration time to appeal to the Supreme Court, which is practically certain. Here we go again.
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Yesterday, CNN ran a non-story that provoked liberal fury, headlined, “Trump cancels Kamala Harris’ Secret Service detail that was extended by undisclosed Biden order.” In other words, the cackling VP has just been unburdened by what has been. You’d think she’d be happy. But she’s probably not laughing this time.
Progressives howled it wasn’t fair. But by law, vice presidents only get six months of Secret Service protection following their terms. For Kamala, it expired back in July, so she already got a full extra month. But that is nowhere close to good enough for Democrats, who seem to think she’s entitled to lifetime protection.
The complication seems to be that, at some unknown time, Biden’s busy autopen signed a secret (“previously undisclosed”) order giving Kamala a year’s extension. Apparently, the memo didn’t say why. The Cabbage isn’t saying. “A Biden spokesperson,” CNN reported, “declined to comment on what led to his signing the order extending Harris’ protection.”
Undaunted, CNN struggled for itself to justify the secret extension, lamely landing on the excuse that “she was the first woman and first Black woman in the role.” That’s it, apparently. Black women are entitled to more.
What CNN didn’t mention, for obvious reasons, is that every successful presidential assassination victim in U.S. history has been a white male. Even every serious assassination attempt against a president in U.S. history has been aimed at a white male. Vice presidents, regardless of race or gender, have faced almost no serious assassination attempts. But never mind.
CNN also forgot to mention that neither Biden nor his Autopen ever gave former Vice President Mike Pence —the subject of death threats from his own side— any “extended” protection beyond the standard six-month period after he left office. According to corporate media reports, Pence’s security detail ended promptly, on time, as required by law, with no discretionary extensions.
None of those facts troubled the progressive hysteria. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (also a black woman) screeched that, “This is another act of revenge following a long list of political retaliation in the form of firings, the revoking of security clearances and more.” Governor Oil Slick hinted that California might pick up the slack, which is fine with me, although Golden State residents might hold varying opinions.
In the fever swamps of liberal media, the headlines were even more off-the-chain. For example, Raw Story, yesterday:
In other words, it’s all just more Democrat two-tiered justice. If it weren’t for double standards … well, you know the rest.
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During the pandemic, Florida led an educational revolution. It passed a first-in-the-nation law shifting money away from public schools to parents who chose alternative educational paths, including homeschooling. It also expedited approvals for new private schools opening in buildings previously used as libraries, museums, performing arts venues, theaters, cinemas, or churches within the past five years. Now, the woke public-school chickens are coming home. The South Florida Sun Sentinel ran a story this week headlined, “Broward School Board takes step toward closing some schools.”
“Efforts to improve marketing, boost student achievement, and overhaul some campuses,” the Sun Sentinel said, “have failed to stop a freefall in Broward school enrollment.”
Located in lush, tropical South Florida, Broward County is one of the biggest blue counties in the Sunshine State, and its primary school registrations are in freefall. Wheeee! Broward isn’t the only one. On the same day, the Orlando Sentinel ran a similarly sad story headlined, “Orange school enrollment drops by nearly 7,000 in new school year.”
For some reason, neither article considered the common factor between Orange and Broward counties: woke school boards. You’d think that fact would deserve some mention, at least in passing, but no. It’s embargoed.
Broward has given up; it blamed high costs of living and one school board member said, “we need to face the reality that those 10,000 students aren’t coming back.” Orange thinks its loss of 7,000 students is related to ICE enforcement.
These numbers aren’t just an inconvenience. Under the state’s new “parent’s rights” laws, when students leave public school, they take their state funding with them. And the pressure is profound: Broward, for instance, is considering closing thirty-four schools.
Until this year, budget gaps created by fleeing students were whitewashed by federal covid funding, which has now mercifully ended. But they remain stubborn. Their current solution is to hire sales consultants to “recruit families back to public schools,” forking over commissions of $1,000 per re-enlisted student. That should tell you something about how financially lucrative each public school student is.
But none of the stories report any success with these panicked sales efforts. One imagines the profanity-laced calls that the poor salespeople probably endure. You’d think the district personnel would be best positioned to make the pitch themselves, but they know better than anyone the kinds of verbal abuse that venting parents have stored up.
In red counties, positive educational news is emerging across the state. Hillsborough County school board members skipped officially recognizing Pride Month this year (and last year), after issuing proclamations recognizing the stupid holiday in 2021, 2022, and 2023. (A district spokesperson “did not explain” why proclamations were discontinued.) The Tampa Bay Times reported that, for the first time in a decade, the Diocese of St. Petersburg is building a brand new parochial school. Miami-Dade is reactivating classroom cameras (just in special-needs classes, for now)— a strong parental preference opposed by teachers’ unions.
The contrast between Florida’s blue-county public schools and private schools could not possibly be more stark. Here’s one example, a story that ran in last week’s Jacksonville Business Journal:
Or, West Palm Beach’s News-34 (headline from May):
Blue public schools are shrinking, red public schools are re-tooling, and private schools are exploding. It is nothing less than a revolution in education. Forcing blue public schools to compete with the alternatives helps every student, despite claims to the contrary. And since red counties aren’t experiencing the same student apocalypse, the politicization of public schools has been exposed.
In short, these school funding gaps aren’t disasters, they’re terrific news. Hopefully, it will spread.
Have a wonderful weekend! I’ll meet you back here next month, as we kick off both September and the new week on Monday, with more delicious and delightful essential news and commentary.
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The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida
