Former CDC Leaders Say RFK Jr. Is Endangering Americans; Trump’s War on Labor Unions–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Sept. 1, 2025

Indy Digest: Sept. 1, 2025

A number of people in the Trump administration are doing significant damage to our country. To name just two, Stephen Miller is pushing white-supremacist-tinged immigration policies, while Pete Hegseth seems to want a military made up only of straight men, qualifications and experience be damned.

But the most dangerous of all may very well be Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose anti-science, conspiracy-theory beliefs are now guiding the Health and Human Services Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

He is the subject of a stunning piece in The New York Times today, co-authored by nine former directors or acting directors of the CDC, under Democrats and Republicans alike. The headline: “We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health.”

It’s a must read. The co-authors call out Kennedy’s actions as “unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our country had ever experienced.” They write:

Mr. Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he’s focused on unproven treatments while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements. And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage. Firing Dr. (Susan) Monarez (as CDC director)—which led to the resignations of top C.D.C. officials—adds considerable fuel to this raging fire.

We are worried about the wide-ranging impact that all these decisions will have on America’s health security. Residents of rural communities and people with disabilities will have even more limited access to health care. Families with low incomes who rely most heavily on community health clinics and support from state and local health departments will have fewer resources available to them. Children risk losing access to lifesaving vaccines because of the cost.

This is unacceptable, and it should alarm every American, regardless of political leanings.

Seriously: Read the piece. Then ask yourself: Why would ANYONE in their right mind support what Kennedy is doing?

—Jimmy Boegle

Schedule Note

I will be attending a journalism conference this week—and the main day of conference programming is Thursday. As a result, this week’s second Indy Digest will be sent/published on Friday.

Thanks for your understanding!

More News

• On this Labor Day, The New York Times reports that the president’s orders have stripped almost a half-million federal employees of union protection. Details: “More than 445,000 federal employees saw their union protections disappear in August, as agencies moved to comply with an executive order President Trump signed earlier this year that called for ignoring collective bargaining contracts with nearly one million workers. The termination of protections followed an Aug. 1 appeals court ruling on legal challenges to Mr. Trump’s directive. The order, signed in late March, directed 22 agencies to ignore contracts for employees in specific unions. Last Thursday, Mr. Trump signed a second executive order stripping union rights from thousands of other employees at six additional agencies. … Federal labor unions targeted in the executive orders have repeatedly sued the Trump administration, and in some cases forced the administration to temporarily pause the president’s efforts to shrink the federal work force and reshape the government. The American Federation of Government Employees has filed more than a dozen lawsuits related to the federal work force. The White House has likened this to a declaration of ‘war.’”

• Efforts in the California Legislature to keep businesses from using artificial intelligence to maximize prices have largely failed. Our partners at Calmatters say: “A crackdown on predictive software that sets prices and can rip you off seemed to be brewing in the California Legislature earlier this year, but (on Friday) lawmakers eased up, voting to kill bills that would have kept software from setting the price of apartment rentals and other goods and services. Another bill, which sought to bar the use of personal information to set prices, was reined in to apply only to grocery stores. Lawmakers also killed a bill that aimed to protect electric utility customers from bearing higher costs associated with data center proliferation, which has been driven in part by energy-hungry artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT. The measure would have required data centers to publicly disclose how much energy they use. … Legislators also delayed to next year decisions on bills that would require independent AI auditors to register with the state and mandate human oversight of AI used at places deemed critical infrastructure, like dams and wastewater systems.”

• Related to the RFK Jr. vaccine idiocy mentioned above: The Los Angeles Times sets out to answer the question: “Can I still get a COVID shot?” The answer, at least for Californians, seems to be … probably? The details: “This year …  under the leadership of the vaccine skeptic Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Food and Drug Administration only ‘approved’ the updated vaccines for people age 65 and up, as well as younger people with at least one health condition that puts them at high risk for severe COVID should they get infected. That means, for the first time ever, it’s possible that younger, healthier people will need to consult with a healthcare provider to get an updated COVID vaccine. … So how hard might it be for a younger, healthy person to get the vaccine? It might depend on what state you live in. Whether your state considers pharmacists ‘healthcare providers’—and how much latitude those pharmacists have to authorize the shots ‘off-label’—are key. CVS, for instance, said it can offer FDA-authorized vaccinations in the following states: Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.”

• If you get health insurance through Covered California or another marketplace, brace yourself for a big premium increase. Time magazine reports: “People who buy health care on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace are about to be in for some sticker shock. Monthly out-of-pocket costs are set to jump as much as 75% for 2026 because of the disappearance of federal subsidies and higher rates from insurers. ‘Most enrollees are going to be facing a double whammy of both higher insurance bills and losing the subsidies that lower much of the cost,’ says Matt McGough, a policy analyst at KFF for the Program on the ACA and the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker. KFF recently calculated that the median rate increase proposed by insurers is 18%, more than double last year’s 7% median proposed increase. But the actual blow to patients is going to be much higher. That’s because enhancements to premium tax credits are set to expire at the end of 2025 that greatly subsidized prices for people of many different income levels. Around 93% of marketplace enrollees—19.3 million people—received the enhanced premium tax credits, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, saving them $700 yearly on average.”

• Have you ever heard of Chagas disease? If the answer is “no,” or even if it’s “yes,” as a Southern Californian, you should probably read this Los Angeles Times piece: “It’s one of the most insidious diseases you’ve never heard of, but Chagas is here in California and 29 other states across the U.S. It kills more people in Latin America than malaria each year, and researchers think roughly 300,000 people in the U.S. currently have it but are unaware. That’s because the illness tends to lie dormant for years, only making itself known when its victim keels over via heart attack, stroke or death. Chagas disease is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, which lives in a bloodsucking insect called the kissing bug. There are roughly a dozen species of kissing bugs in the U.S. and four in California known to carry the parasite. Research has shown that in some places, such as Los Angeles’ Griffith Park, about a third of all kissing bugs harbor the Chagas parasite. It’s why a team of epidemiologists, researchers and medical doctors are calling on the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to label the disease as endemic, meaning consistently present, in the U.S. They hope that will bring awareness, education, dialogue and potentially public health investment to a disease that has long carried a stigma, falsely associated with poor, rural migrants from bug-infected homes in far-off tropical nations.”

• And finally … today’s recall news involves … salad kits! This one doesn’t have to do with contamination or disease, but a mislabeling/allergy problem. USA Today says: “A California-based food processor issued a recall on Tuesday, Aug. 26, for salad kits sold in 25 states (including California) due to the presence of undeclared ingredients, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced. According to an FDA news release, Taylor Fresh Foods, whose brand name is Taylor Farms, voluntarily recalled its Honey Balsamic Salad Kit due to the inclusion of an incorrect dressing and topping. Taylor Farms’ 8.3-ounce Honey Balsamic Salad Kit is supposed to include a Honey Balsamic Vinaigrette dressing. Instead, it came with an Asian Sesame Ginger dressing. The Asian Sesame Ginger dressing includes sesame and soy, two major allergens, according to the release.”

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