The revolving door spins again
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The Trump administration is replacing IRS Commissioner Billy Long, less than two months after the former Missouri Congressman took over at the agency. It's the latest in a string of IRS management shakeups.
A White House spokesman confirmed Long's ouster, which was first reported by the New York Times. The administration did not offer an immediate explanation for the move, which took IRS staffers by surprise.
For the time being, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will serve as acting commissioner. The IRS churned through four acting commissioners in the early months of the Trump administration before Long was confirmed to the post in mid-June.
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/08/nx-s1-5496549/irs-billy-long-trump
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Pentagon fires heads of Navy Reserve, Naval Special Warfare Command
Their firing comes the same day that Hegseth fired Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Kruse was dismissed for a “loss of confidence,” the Washington Post first reported, the usual term used by the military to cover a variety of reasons for a relief of command. The Department of Defense’s official comment was a terse statement that Kruse “will no longer serve as DIA Director.” Kruse was the second senior Air Force general to be fired or announce they were leaving their post this week; Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin announced he would retire, although several outlets reported he was being forced out.
Along with Allvin and the firings this week, several top military officers were removed from their positions once the Trump administration began. In February, Trump and Hegseth fired several of the top military leaders, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown Jr., Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, and the Air Force’s second in command, Gen. James Slife. Additional firings since have included the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard and the head of U.S. Cyber Command.
The chief of naval operations position sat vacant for almost half a year until Adm. Daryl Caudle was confirmed by the Senate at the end of July. It is not immediately clear who will take over for Lacore or Sands.
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/navy-fires-reserve-special-warfare-command/
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Adios, Lisa Cook.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/25/trump-fires-lisa-cook-fed-powell.html
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NPR angled the headline slightly differently
Trump seeks to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook -
Yikes.
Centers for Disease Control Director Susan Monarez has abruptly left the post just weeks after being sworn in, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed on Wednesday.
Why it matters: The career government scientist's departure was part of an apparent wave of high-level exits — the latest sign of upheaval within the Trump administration's health bureaucracy.
The CDC's chief medical officer Debra Houry also resigned her position, according to internal emails viewed by Axios.
Daniel Jernigan, CDC's director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases and the CDC's director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Demetre Daskalakis, also resigned their posts on Wednesday, according to the emails.
https://www.axios.com/2025/08/27/susan-monarez-cdc-director-ousted
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From Mark Zaid on Bluesky:
Abbe Lowell and I represent CDC Director #SusanMonarez. Contrary to govt statements, Dr. Monarez has neither resigned nor yet been fired. She will not resign.) -
Scathing resignation letter from Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Demetre C. Daskalakis MD MPH (he/his/him)
https://x.com/dr_demetre/status/1960843433473376602
Better link for those who won't do Twitter, also includes other resignation letters from the exodus at CDC today
https://open.substack.com/pub/insidemedicine/p/breaking-news-read-three-top-cdc?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email -
The White House on Thursday selected a top deputy of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as acting head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after a clash over vaccine policy ended in the departure of several agency leaders, according to two people familiar with the decision.
The selection of Jim O’Neill, currently the deputy secretary of HHS, as interim leader of the CDC, potentially clears a path for Kennedy to continue his efforts to overhaul federal vaccine policy after the agency’s previous leader, Susan Monarez, balked at his requests.
O’Neill, who served in the George W. Bush administration as a senior health official before becoming a close ally of investor Peter Thiel, was confirmed by the Senate in June to serve as HHS deputy secretary. As acting CDC director, O’Neill is set to play a key role in the agency’s efforts to revise vaccine recommendations, with the CDC scheduled to hold a meeting of its vaccine advisers next month. That process, overseen by Kennedy, is expected to lead to narrower CDC guidance on which Americans should receive coronavirus vaccines.
O’Neill was a frequent critic of the CDC during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, arguing on social media that the agency had botched data collection, poorly communicated with the public and had too much influence.
WaPo:
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Wish Cassidy had thought about this more before voting to confirm RFK Jr.
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Charles Borges, the chief data officer at the Social Security Administration, resigned Friday — days after filing a whistleblower complaint about Department of Government Efficiency employees at the SSA.
He said in the complaint that the DOGE employees had uploaded a copy of the entire country's Social Security information to a "vulnerable cloud environment." Borges' resignation from the SSA was confirmed by the Government Accountability Project, which is providing his legal representation.
