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MSW Media. Hello, and welcome to the Daily beans for Friday, August 29, 2025. Today, the mayors of blue cities are assembling a united front against the Trump regime. Late Wednesday, there was a showdown at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as the director refused to leave her post amid pressure from the president. Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook has sued the Trump government over Trump's unlawful attempt to fire her. ICE deportation flights have hit record highs as airlines paint over their logos to hide their participation. The MAGA Republican running against Jon Ossoff was caught on a hot mic saying Trump is in the Epstein files and sandwich guy's charges have been retained to a misdemeanor. I'm your host, Alison Gill. Hello, everyone. Happy Friday. It's Friday on the Daily Beans, which means it's Fuglsang Friday. So we're gonna talk to John Fugelsang later in the show. Dana's out today. She's traveling, but she's gonna be back in your ears on Monday, I promise. Maybe we can get our producers to throw in a couple of Dana clips while she's out. What the fuck? And also, this is just in. Judge Boasberg has granted our motion to preserve records and documents and communications from Elon Musk's phone in our Doge FOIA lawsuit. If you remember back in February, MSW Media, that's my podcast network, and First Amendment Coalition, a suit filed. It filed a FOIA request, and we didn't get a response, so we filed a lawsuit. And basically what happened the following month was there was a news story that several Republican senators and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy were told after a hearing about Doge, that Musk gave them a phone number, a specific personal phone number to contact him directly over at Doge. And several coalitions, I think American Oversight and the Citizens for Responsibility of Ethics in Washington have filed FOIA lawsuits against Doge and asked for a preservation of records, but it didn't include that specific phone number, that phone that Elon Musk, that number that he gave to Republicans and Sean Duffy. So First Amendment Coalition filed a kind of like an addendum to our FOIA request to preserve the records on that phone. Now, the government was like, oh, no, he's not. He doesn't even work for Doge. He works for the White House. Musk does. He's not the administrator of Doge. And you can't even point to which particular phone this is, and. And et cetera. But Judge Boasberg granted the motion to preserve the records on that phone. I'VE written it up. You can read that ruling@mellisherote.com all right, everybody, we have a lot of news to get to today. Plus John Fugal saying, plus good news. So let's hit the hot notes. Hot notes. All right. First up from the Times, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dissolved into turmoil on Thursday, further turmoil when guards escorted three top officials from the agency's Atlanta headquarters during the continuing standoff with the Trump administration over whether the CDC director would keep her job. The high ranking officials decided to quit as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Was demanding that the CDC director, Susan Manera, either resign or be fired in a dispute largely over vaccine policy. The White House said late Wednesday that Dr. Manera, an infectious disease researcher who was sworn in less than a month ago, had been dismissed. But her lawyers, including Mark Zaid, who said she had chosen protecting the public over serving a political agenda, insisted that she remained the CDC director until Trump fired her personally. The dispute now appears to be in the hands of Donald Trump, who has not weighed in publicly. A spokesman for the White House didn't respond to an inquiry about whether the president would fire Dr. Manera. That's at least as of this recording. In Washington, senators from both parties expressed dismay at the events unfolding at the cdc. The Republican led Senate voted only last month to confirm Dr. Manerz. She is the first CDC director to be subject to Senate confirmation. As such, she works at the pleasure of the president and not RFK Jr. The chairman of the Senate Health Committee, Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and doctor who voted for Kennedy after publicly agonizing over it, said on social media late Wednesday that the high profile departure will require oversight by his panel. He did not elaborate and his spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent ranking member of the panel, called for a hearing with Mr. Kennedy and Dr. Manera and said the attempt to fire her was outrageous. Now Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and former chairwoman of the committee, called for Mr. Kennedy's immediate termination. And the real time collapse of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has picked up the pace following the government's attempted firing and pressuring of several senior CDC officials to step down. The CDC staff staged a dramatic walkout on Thursday afternoon. The staff, which included some remaining senior officials, also performed a clap out for their leaving colleagues. The Associated Press hosted a live stream of the event, and the Washington Post reported in the afternoon that Manera's was being ousted just four weeks into taking over the role, a decision later announced by HHS on Twitter. Over the next few hours, four senior staff members, including the CDC's chief medical officer, Deborah Howery, turned in their resignation notices. Now, some of the members posted their resignation letters online, including Dr. Demetri Daskalakis. I think I'm saying that right. He's the director of the national center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, and in his letter he stated he was unable, quote, to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than improve public health. He specifically singled out RFK Jr. S unilateral purging of the CDC's vaccine advisory panel and the CDC's revoked endorsement of COVID 19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women as examples of this harm. So big walkout, lots of leaders losing their jobs. And as we know, Mark Zaid and someone else is representing the CDC director. So I'm assuming if Trump does fire her, there will be a lawsuit. And from the Associated Press, immigration advocates gather like clockwork outside Seattle's King County International Airport to witness deportation flights and spread word of where they're going and how many people are aboard. Until recently, they could keep track of these flights using publicly accessible websites. But the monitors and others say airlines are now using dummy call signs for deportation flights and they're blocking the planes tail numbers from tracking websites. Even as the number of deportation flights hits record highs under Trump, the changes forced them to find other ways to track the flights, including by sharing information with other groups and using data from open source exchanges that track aircraft transmissions. Their work helps people locate loved ones who are deported. In the absence of information from ice, which rarely discloses flights, news organizations have used such flight tracking in reporting. Now the faa, Federal Aviation Administration allows carriers to block data like tail numbers from public flight tracking websites under the limiting Aircraft Data displayed program, or LAD. That's what Ian Pechenik, a spokesman for Flight Radar 24, said of the 94 ICE Air contracting planes or, you know, contractor planes that La Resistancia was tracking. Nationwide, 40 have been unlisted. Of 94, 40 have been unlisted. And similar things happened with call signs airlines used to identify flights in the air. I remember when Avelo and Global X changed their call signs to Tyson or something like that. So there's lots of people out there tracking these flights and there are a record number of them. Next up from the Guardian, Senator Patty Murray from Washington has called for the Trump administration to provide immediate answers about the reports that Two firefighters were detained by border agents as they were responding to a wildfire in Washington state. Federal immigration authorities Wednesday staged an operation on the scene of the Bear Gulch fire, a nearly 9,000 acre blaze in the Olympic National Forest, when they arrested two people who were part of a contracted firefighting crew. That's according to the Seattle Times. The fire is the largest currently burning in the state. The identities of the firefighters have not been made public, and federal immigration officials have not said why they were detained. In a statement released Thursday morning, Patty Murray demanded information about the whereabouts of the firefighters and the administration's policy around immigration enforcement during wildfires. Nearly 430 personnel are responding to the Bear Gulch fire on the state's Olympic Peninsula. Firefighters told the Seattle Times that two contract crews had been sent to cut wood and were waiting for a supervisor when federal law enforcement arrived in the area. Authorities made the firefighters line up and show id. One firefighter told the newspaper that they weren't even permitted to say goodbye to their detained colleagues. ICE is detaining firefighters fighting Fires Wow. Next up from the Times, as Trump threatens more federal incursions into American cities in the name of fighting crime, a group of Democratic mayors huddled on a private strategy call Wednesday to discuss their plans to fight back. I love this. The call, hosted by Democratic Mayors association, represented a new effort from Democratic officials to wrest the narrative from Republicans on public safety, an issue that Trump has effectively used as a cudgel. It was also an attempt to coordinate on messaging as national Democrats have strained to mount sustained and unified opposition to the Trump administration. I don't know if that's true. During a call, the mayors in attendance discussed what they saw as an urgent need for Democrats to define themselves as strong stewards of public safety before Republicans brand themselves ahead of a pivotal election. And that's according to a recording obtained by the Times. Mayor Justin Bibb of Cleveland, who leads the association, peppered his remarks with expletives as he urged elected Democrats at all levels of government to seize what he called a unique opportunity to go on the offense with a serious on safety, serious on cost messaging strategy, Quote, if we're passive and hemming and hawing about democracy and all that stuff between now and 2026, we're going to get our asses kicked. We have to now, he said. Again, I'm not sure if I agree with that, but Mr. Bib said he planned to discuss the issue with Governor Andy Bashir of Kentucky, the incoming chair of the Democratic Governors association, later on Wednesday. Quote, they're going to be trying to attack basically every single one of us and use every single city, all of our communities as political pawns. That's what Mayor Brandon Scott of Baltimore said, suggesting Democrats could argue that it was the administration's efforts that are actually undermining public safety. I'm with, I'm with him on that. Mr. Scott outlined several steps he felt mayors could take. Be more visible and communicate what they're doing to improve public safety. Point out successes, but acknowledge there's still work to do and prepare for potential legal action. Involve police chiefs to stress test crime statistics and line up messengers from the community. Local Democrats, he said, could make the case that, quote, if you want to see how to drive down crime, we don't need talking points from congressional folks, senators, we don't need the president, we don't need anybody else. We have the ideas because we're the ones that have been doing it, he added. Now, during the call, there was also a brief discussion of legal issues at play. Though litigation options could depend on Trump's own next moves, the call drew a mix of mayors and staff members. Representatives from the mayor's offices in Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington were on the call. Mayor Eric Adams office cited scheduling issues and explaining why New York City was not represented. So Adams wasn't there. Next up from abc, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook has sued President Donald Trump. She did this on Thursday over his move to fire her, saying she should retain her position as a top policymaker at the central bank. The lawsuit filed in D.C. describes Trump's efforts as illegal and unprecedented, claiming Cook's ouster violates the independence of the Fed, which is a cornerstone of the nation's economy. Trump's actions violate Cook's constitutional right to due process, as well as her right to notice and a hearing under the Federal Reserve Act. That's what the lawsuit says. Hours after Cook filed the suit, a judge granted a hearing for today at 10am Eastern. The case has been assigned to Judge Gia Cobb, who was nominated to the court in 2021 by former President Joe Biden. Actually, I think she was his first nomination. And Politico reminds us that the judge who will immediately weigh President Trump's effort to fire Lisa Cook has already pushed back against one of his other signature efforts to expand presidential power, mass deportation. Cook's lawsuit Thursday was randomly assigned to U.S. district Judge Gia Cobb, who was appointed to the bench in D.C. by Joe Biden. Cobb, a former public defender, yep, was Biden's first appointment to Washington's District court, which has 5015 full time judges. In a ruling earlier this month, Cobb blocked the Trump administration's attempt to rapidly deport hundreds of thousands of immigrants who had fled violence or oppression in their home countries. The immigrants had previously been permitted to enter or remain temporarily in the US Under a program known as parole. She also heard a pair of legal challenges to Trump's Justice Department appointees demand for the names of all the FBI personnel who worked on investigations relating to January 6th. Now Cobb will preside over the first phase of Cook's lawsuit, seeking to remain as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors despite Trump's attempts to fire her. Cobb set a hearing, as I said, for today at 10am to consider Cook's request for an immediate order blocking Trump's ouster. All right, next up, and this is fun. Rep. Mike Collins, Republican from Georgia, said he believes President Donald Trump is mentioned in the Epstein files and wants the case files of the convicted sex offender made public. The Georgia Senate candidate running against Ossoff was pressed by an attendee at an Aug. 13 Muskogee County GOP meeting on whether Trump was in the files. Collins replied that he believed the president was in there, but only because Trump was the one that was telling the FBI about it and had previously barred Jeffrey Epstein from Mar? A Lago, according to an audio recording of the Exchange posted on YouTube. This episode highlights growing tensions within the GOP over transparency around Epstein related documents, which Trump has resisted despite earlier promises. In July, the DOJ announced it had found no client list of Epstein's, contradicting a public statement by Pam Bondi on Fox News in February that there was a client list and it was quote, on my desk. Despite the backlash, Trump has stood by Pam Bondi and urged his supporters to move on and called them stupid too. All right everybody, your good trouble is the first submission that we have in the good news, which we'll get to right after John Fugal sang, who we'll hear from after this quick break. Stick around, we'll be right back. Hey everybody, Wireless bills can be outrageous. 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So I'm being joined by my good friend, host of Tell Me Everything, which you can hear on SiriusXM progress channel 127 weeknights at 9pm Eastern, 6 Pacific. If you don't have that, you can always listen to the John Fugal Saying show podcast. If you don't have that, you can always check out the John Fugal Saying substack. And if you don't have that, there's going to be a book out September 9, just a little over a week from now. Oh, God. And we can talk a little bit about that book. It's called the Separation of Church and Hate. Please welcome John Fugal Saying. Hi.