The White House said Wednesday night that it had fired Centers for Disease Control Director Susan Monarez, just a month after her confirmation by the U.S. Senate. The Washington Post reported that Robert Kennedy Jr., who was a notorious antivaccine activist before his appointment as Health and Human Services secretary, had demanded Monarez’s resignation after she declined to say that she would “support rescinding certain approvals for coronavirus vaccines.” At least three senior CDC officials announced their resignations following her dismissal, including the agency’s chief medical officer and its top scientists overseeing vaccines and emerging infectious diseases.

Kennedy went on Fox Thursday morning, where hosts downplayed the development and doubled down on the network’s support of him. Rather than sounding any alarm about the purge, the hosts treated it as a minor story and even tried to focus the interview elsewhere.

As Matt Gertz notes, it took a while for Fox hosts to even get to the purge at the CDC. When they finally did, the discussion was brief and didn’t really clarify why someone who was confirmed by the Senate less than a month ago was pushed out. (A guest on Steve Bannon’s show on Thursday morning claimed that those who left were “vaccine zealots.”)

Instead, after a few minutes of discussion on that topic, the interview closed with an ominous sign for the future, as Kennedy previewed his promised September report on the purported causes of autism.

As Gertz concludes: “It seems likely that Kennedy will attempt to carry out the anti-vax project to which he’s already dedicated years of his life, using false claims that vaccines cause autism to try to alter the childhood vaccine schedule that reduces pediatric deaths and hospitalizations from infectious diseases. 

After last night, there are fewer senior leaders at CDC to stand up to Kennedy and his conspiracy theories. And after this morning, we can expect Fox to be in his corner."

The following is excerpted from a piece that Jason Campbell wrote before leaving on his vacation. You can find the rest here. You can also find more on this narrative here.

Since its inception, the MAGA movement has focused energy on trying to purge the United States of people who do not have legal status in the country. The Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts accelerated this summer after passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, alongside the opening of new migrant detention centers. Now, MAGA media are extending that hostility toward immigrants to take aim at naturalized and native-born citizens in an assault on American identity itself.

In the MAGA consciousness, America is not a melting pot but a homogenous identity, a MAGA “Volk,” and anyone else’s protections of legal immigration status or even citizenship can be removed at any point. This is why we see growing calls from the right for curtailing dual citizenship and demands to end all immigration into the United States. Charlie Kirk recently said that “America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that."

Manufacturing the friend-enemy distinction through political rhetoric and then enforcing that divide throughout society is an integral aspect of fascism: Those loyal to the regime are considered friends while those opposed are cast into the outer darkness, treated as enemies of the state, traitors, or parasites on the body politic. By calling into question the citizenship of immigrants, Muslims, and anyone who opposes the MAGA ideology, the right’s assault on American identity under the Trump administration is shaping a chilling new reality for our country.

And the MAGA assault on American identity is not just rhetorical — the angry rants on podcasts and social media platforms today could become White House policy tomorrow. Trump has mused about deporting U.S. citizens found guilty of a crime. Right-wing media have likewise campaigned to denaturalize and deport citizens.

“Not everyone in this country is an American,” said Walsh, “even the ones with legal status."

We’re seeing the end result of that mentality now: MAGA media want the Trump administration to target those with legal status next. Charlie Kirk made that clear, connecting all of these threads when he said, “If you're not an American, that's fine. Go back to your place of origin. … Just go back. Hasta la vista. But we have a culture to protect. We have a country to love. No man can serve two masters. Christ our Lord said that. We have a heritage to preserve."

Electricity prices are soaring and are primed to be a key issue in upcoming elections. We’re already seeing a preview of this with how right-wing media are covering the issue in the New Jersey governor’s race for this year.

The New Jersey grid operator points to rising demand, particularly from data centers, which “account for 70 percent of projected increase in demand.” But it’s more complicated than just the data centers. The grid operator has been slow to get new energy projects up and running to meet this increased demand, with many renewable projects sitting around unplugged. Furthermore, some of the natural gas power plants are not as reliable as you might imagine.

There are also additional factors — like the new tariffs on China. Trump’s high tariffs on Chinese goods will impact grid-scale storage, as China manufactures “nearly all battery cells used in US utility-scale storage products."

In short, demand is up and rising even more — outpacing any increase in supply. And reports say similar trends are happening nationwide. Throw in the effects of climate change on top of all of that — severe weather that can damage infrastructure unpredictably — and costs for consumers are going up.

Murdoch media and right-wing media don’t really have an answer to this problem — just someone (or some thing) that they want to blame: renewable energy. Fox News and the New York Post have pointed to renewable energy and concern for global warming in New Jersey alone as causing the spike in prices.

But ultimately, this issue is bigger than just New Jersey. Electricity prices are rising across the country, and the notion that all these price increases are all due to left-wing politicians who are concerned about climate change beggars belief. In truth, soaring electricity prices are a complicated problem that require a complicated, level-headed solution communicated honestly — none of which you are likely to hear about in right-wing media.

The majority of migrants detained and deported in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown have no criminal record, yet Fox News has spent months claiming that raids and arrests are targeting criminals they dub “the worst of the worst."

A Media Matters review of Fox News segments from June and July found that 80% of coverage about Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Department of Homeland Security operations claimed that Trump’s primary targets were criminals while only 14% acknowledged that ICE has been sweeping up noncriminal migrants.

Charlie Kirk has this to say on the pop star’s engagement to the star football player: “Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You're not in charge.”

The crypto business is reportedly creating a staggering amount of money for the president and his family that’s without precedent in American history. A Media Matters review of media coverage of the Trump family's crypto ventures found:

• The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post have published a combined 40 front-page stories about the Trump family's crypto ventures from his inauguration through the end of July and have highlighted the profiteering by the family. 
• Mainstream nightly broadcast news programs have aired at least 17 segments since the inauguration dedicated specifically to crypto-related topics calling attention to the Trump conflicts of interest. 
• Fox News rarely commented on the Trump family's alleged corruption and frequently praised or defended the family's business dealings. 
• Fox News has aired only three segments mentioning the Trumps' crypto business, World Liberty Financial, two of which were in interviews with Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. 
• Some right-leaning podcasters have defended Donald Trump's involvement in crypto investments. This review found only a few right-wing podcasters who have voiced any kind of objection to this profiteering.
• MAGA television network Newsmax has also strongly defended the Trump family for its crypto dealings.

Read the entire report here.