RFK Jr. May Be Reaching the Limit of Trump's Patience

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Welcome to this week's edition of the Surge, Slate's politics newsletter that can't recommend the hottest new trend enough: Putting your head in the sand for a few months. If you don't see the news, then it doesn't happen. In any event, does anyone know why these troops keep patrolling the Surge's street?

We'd like to thank Ben Mathis-Lilley for covering over the past few months while your regular author did his part to arrest the global birthrate crisis. Ben said nice things about us last week, so he'll get a good bunk when he returns to the Surge's work camp.

Once again, there was news this week. Congress returned from recess to continue fighting about Jeffrey Epstein. Eric Adams and the Trump team are considering another magnificently corrupt collaboration. And House Republicans suddenly don't know anything about any “One Big Beautiful Bill,” never heard of it.

Let's begin, though, with a Cabinet official who may be reaching the limit of Trump's and Republicans' political patience.

1.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Late last week, the Health and Human Services secretary fired the recently confirmed director of the Centers for Disease Control for refusing to go along with his vaccine plans (fewer vaccines), and a slew of other senior CDC personnel quit because they'd had enough. Unlike most news, this was not immediately forgotten over a long weekend, and Kennedy was torn apart in a Senate hearing this week. The Surge has already written about ever-conflicted Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy's harsh questioning of Kennedy. What's most important, though, is that Cassidy wasn't the only Republican letting his frustration fly this time. North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis also pressed Kennedy and, most surprisingly, so did Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the Republican whip who rarely strays from the party line. Even Trump himself, asked later that night about whether he had “full confidence” in what Kennedy is doing, responded merely that Kennedy “means very well.”

We don't want to make predictions or anything. But this doesn't feel like every other situation in which the Trump administration can do whatever it wants and get away with it. Vaccines are popular, including among Republicans. If people want the COVID vaccine and find that they have a hard time getting it, that criticism won't be easy to contain. And, going forward, if parents find out that they would have to pay out of pocket to vaccinate their children, that criticism really won't be easy to contain. Another thing that won't be easy to contain: measles. The marriage between Trump and RFK Jr. was transactional, a deal to clear Kennedy out of the presidential race. And Trump rarely has a problem ending relationships that aren't working out for him anymore.

2.

Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna

Amid bipartisan concern over the administration continuing to conceal Epstein files it had once promised to release in their entirety, Trump and GOP leaders had a plan: Hope that people would forget about it during August. But that notion was quickly dispelled on Wednesday morning, the first morning that Congress was back in session, when Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie held a press conference with Epstein abuse survivors insisting on the full release.

Khanna and Massie have introduced a bill requiring the administration to make “publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format” all files relating to the Epstein investigation. Now, they're trying to force a vote on it by collecting 218 signatures through a discharge petition. As of this writing, that petition has 215 signatures—including four Republicans—and would be on track to hit 218 after special elections over the next month. But Republicans can also remove their names from the petition, and GOP leaders will apply serious pressure if and when they need to. The White House said that it would view signing the petition as “a very hostile act.” In other words, we've not yet reached the crescendo of this story, which is a real bummer for the politicians inconvenienced by it.

3.

Eric Adams

Most Republicans are ecstatic that a commie might be the next mayor of New York City. It would give Fox News years' worth of material to cover, instead of the news. Trump, however, is not in this camp. Even though he's a proud Floridian now, he has too much New-York-rich-guy DNA to stomach this, and too many remaining New-York-rich-guy friends bugging him to stop the commie from taking over. This week, we learned that Trump advisers have discussed possibly giving two of Zohran Mamdani's challengers—hilarious current Mayor Eric Adams and Republican cat maniac Curtis Sliwa—jobs in the administration to clear the field for a one-on-one race between Mamdani and independent candidate Andrew Cuomo.

For Adams, this played out as usual. He denied anything was going on, and then a day later it was revealed that he had just been in South Florida meeting with Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration utility player who handles everything from tinkering in mayoral races to negotiating with Vladimir Putin to decide the fate of Europe. Adams reiterated Friday that he's not leaving the race, but we wouldn't be surprised if something comes together. Has the cosmos ever pointed more directly to anything than Eric Adams becoming the second Trump administration's ambassador to Saudi Arabia? As for the mayoral race, it's been interesting watching the Democratic establishment and the Trump White House take the same approach to stopping Mamdani's candidacy: By betting it all on the widely loathed, visibly miserable Andrew Cuomo. Maybe it'll work this time?

4.

Muriel Bowser

Earlier this week, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser signed an executive order establishing the “Safe and Beautiful Emergency Operations Center” (SBEOC) that would serve as the center for continued coordination between the DC government and the feds once Trump's 30-day crime emergency expires. Trump's takeover of DC law enforcement was exceptionally unpopular among city residents, and Bowser's cooperative posture has earned her plenty of pushback.

She won't get it from the Surge. DC is federal turf, not a state, and it has no leverage. Perhaps something should be done about that , but for now, DC has to grind through to the end of Trump's term with Home Rule still intact. Bowser's order offering continued cooperation with certain federal law enforcement—but importantly, not ICE, the agency that has most terrorized the city since Trump's emergency declaration federalizing DC law enforcement last month—reads like a deal with the White House not to declare a new 30-day emergency. It has also satisfied Congress, which doesn't plan to vote to extend the current emergency. The emergency now is on a path to ending Sept. 10. In other words, Bowser is on the cusp of securing an exit from the takeover, something we are not sure would've been the case had she chosen the path of Resistance herodom.

5.

Tony Fabrizio

Why was the One Big Beautiful Bill Act named that, anyway? The genesis came at the beginning of the year, when congressional Republicans were torn between jamming their legislative agenda into one reconciliation bill or splitting it across two. Trump resolved the dispute in February by saying he preferred “ ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL .” With the package encompassing such a vast array of policy, the shorthand stuck, all the way to the point that Trump and legislators thought it would be fun to make that the official name of the act.

Well, who's having fun now? Not Republicans trying to sell an unpopular bill that Democrats have spent the summer hammering in paid media across the country. So this week, House Republicans gathered to hear a presentation from Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio that the OBBB was due for a rebrand, and that they should all now refer to it as the “Working Families Tax Cut.” Only Republican leaders don't like the term “rebrand,” as that would be an admission that the original branding was a major tactical screwup. They think of the “WFTC” more like a second name, with Speaker Mike Johnson saying that the OBBBA “has also become known as the 'Working Families Tax Cut Act,' because that's what it principally represents.” In the opinion of the Working Families & War Surge, it's been a big week for secondary titles all around.

6.

Jerry Nadler

More and more elected Democrats ( not all! ) are coming to terms with the fact that their primary voters, following the nightmare of the 2024 election, want the old people to go away. This week, one of the titans of the House Democratic old guard, 78-year-old New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, announced that he wouldn't run for re-election. Nadler has been... sluggish, let's say... for years. But prior to the Biden debacle, someone like Nadler would have tried to serve until he was 104. Things have changed.

Time for some fresh blood, with the opportunity to take over a prime piece of congressional real estate smack in the heart of Manhattan. Which young go-getter is going to take command? Well, we're afraid there's an opportunity for the funniest possible thing to happen. Former Upper East Side Rep. Carolyn Maloney, 79, whom Nadler beat in a member-on-member primary in 2022, says, “I'm going to keep my options open and my eyes open,” and that “people have been calling me, from Washington, elected officials and constituents, and others, urging me to run.” The new era begins now.

7.

Joni Ernst

In continuing retirement news: The two-term Iowa senator also made it official this week that she wouldn't run in 2026. She said that she wanted to spend more time with her family, but she didn't specify which lobbying firm she meant.

There's been some talk about if she was in real trouble —either from the right, for daring (briefly) to question whether a weekend Fox News morning host whose top management skill was day-drinking should run the Defense Department, or from Democrats, for her infamous “Well, we're all going to die” line when challenged on Medicaid cuts. Eh. Incumbents have a way of figuring it out. Instead, this seems like a straightforward decision of a senator seeing the light and recognizing that serving in the Senate sucks. You fly in to stinky DC for a few days a week and do what Trump tells you to do. Then you go home and people yell at you because of something they say ChatGPT told them, even though ChatGPT told them no such thing. It's a bum gig, reader. Or is it OK? We don't know.