VALCYSKI starts now.

Good morning. It is Saturday, August the 30th. I'm Ali Velshi.

We begin this morning with Donald Trump's tightening authoritarian grip in evidence this week as he undertook a legally dubious firing spree,

attempting to oust the Federal Reserve

Governor Lisa Cook, sacking the CDC director, Susan Monares, and removing the railroad

regulator Robert Primus. These are officials chosen precisely to provide independent judgment

insulated from political whims. All three have vowed to remain in their positions, calling their

firings illegal. At the EPA, at least seven employees were fired Friday for signing a letter

two months ago criticizing the agency's leadership, that's according to union officials.

At the time, hundreds of engineers, researchers, even emergency responders were suspended for warning that

Donald Trump's policies undermine human health and the environment. The firings this week mark a new

escalation, what appears to be an open campaign to crush dissent inside the federal bureaucracy.

Over at the CDC, the gold standard of public health for generations, Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are remaking the agency into a megaphone for anti-vaccine and anti-science propaganda.

According to her attorneys, Mark Zaid and Abby Lowell, Manarez, Susan Menares, was forced out after refusing to rubber-stamp reckless directives.

Dr. Richard Besser, a former acting CDC director who spoke with Monares, said she told him

she had two lines she would not cross.

She wouldn't do anything illegal, and she wouldn't defy science.

Besser says she was asked to do both. Behind the scenes, four senior CDC officials

resign in protest. Chief medical officer Dr. Deborah Hoary, who worked at the CDC for over a decade,

wrote in her resignation letter, quote, for the good of the nation and the world, the science at CDC

should never be censored or subject to political pauses or interpretations.

Vaccines save lives. This is an indisputable, well-established scientific fact, end quote.

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