Dem
47
GOP
53
The rumors have been swirling for weeks, and now they have been proven correct: After a contentious 13 months in office, the head of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary has rolled. His "resignation" is effective immediately.
Makary has been making the wrong kinds of headlines through virtually his entire time in office. There has been all kinds of churn among the senior leadership of his department, suggesting strongly that he's a terrible boss. He's butted heads with Congress many times. His positions on several issues do not please much of the MAGA base. This entire paragraph could describe any of half a dozen high-profile members of the administration; it's hard to know why some people like this get canned, and others keep on keepin' on. Like, for example, how is Kashyap Patel still employed? That said, we're still in prime "firing" season, so Patel and some of the other problematic folks might ultimately join Makary in the unemployment line.
That trendline—heads have started rolling at a rapid pace, after about a year of very limited high-level turnover—is the primary reason we are writing about Makary. We don't think that he himself is all that important; as long as Robert Kennedy is Secretary of Health and Human Services, that department is not going to be in the actual business of protecting public health.
Following Makary's fall, the satirical newspaper The Onion had an item headlined "Authorities Unearth Mass Grave Of Trump Advisors":
WASHINGTON—Authorities in the nation's capital reportedly unearthed the bodies of more than 150 former Trump advisors Thursday after a worker stumbled upon what appeared to be a mass grave on the grounds of the White House.
Investigators were called to the scene after a groundskeeper performing routine landscaping around the North Lawn's fountain noticed a lifeless arm protruding from a recently overturned patch of soil. Further excavation revealed a 100-foot-long grave stretching nearly to the Executive Residence and containing what experts concluded was almost a decade's worth of decayed flesh, bone, and high-level security clearance tags belonging to former senior staffers of President Donald Trump.
"Preliminary analysis suggests most of these deaths date back to around 2017, with another massive spike in volume occurring throughout 2025," said D.C. chief medical examiner Heather Jefferson...
That's another way of saying "Trump is back to his old tricks."
With this said, while the White House lawn is (apparently) full of the carcasses of those who have been cast aside, there are some folks who somehow receive Trump's grace. Just this week, for example, he nominated Kari Lake, who has failed in several runs for office, and has failed as leader of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, to be ambassador to Jamaica. And he nominated Doug Mastriano, who has also failed in several runs for office, to be ambassador to Slovakia.
As with "Who gets fired and who doesn't?", the question of "Who gets a second chance and who doesn't?" is a tricky one to answer. Actually with Mastriano, it's fairly plain: He was being bandied about as a write-in candidate for governor in next week's primary in Pennsylvania, and that could have derailed state Treasurer Stacy Garrity, who is Trump's preferred pick. Now, that problem is solved. As to Lake, who knows what her special power is. Trump consistently holds her at arm's length, and consistently denies her the jobs she really wants, but he also doesn't cut her loose. Maybe she has copies of the peepee video or something. In any case, it's hard to imagine the Senate holding the line on an ambassadorship to a small, poor island nation, so it appears Lake is going to fall upwards, once again. We'll see how she manages to screw this one up. (Z)