Donald Trump Is Destroying the CDC

Inch by inch, since the start of the pandemic, the White House has sought to sabotage the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the political benefit of President Donald Trump. To an alarming extent, it has succeeded. Once globally recognized as “the best science-based, data-driven agency in the world,” in the words of its current director, the CDC is now in danger of losing the public’s trust entirely.

The most glaring problem has been communication. Against the best judgment of its own staffers, the agency has said that reopening schools is crucial even if doing so increases the spread of the coronavirus. It has failed to caution churches to suspend or limit the use of choirs, which have been associated with outbreaks. It has even discouraged testing asymptomatic people, against the advice of nearly all experts — though it eventually reversed itself under a barrage of criticism. In each case, the agency’s scientific staff were ignored or overruled under pressure from the White House or from Trump himself.