Trump Administration Moves to Replace FDA Commissioner Marty Makary

President Donald Trump has signed off on a plan to fire Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary. The decision follows months of chaos at one of the country’s most important health agencies and comes after the president clashed with the FDA over vaping, abortion and drug policy. The plan to fire FDA Commissioner Marty Makary was first reported by people familiar with the matter.

In a separate high-profile dispute, lawyers faced off in a Colorado courthouse yesterday over the future of a research centre. The research centre is the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, known as NCAR.

Protesters gathered late last year in Boulder, Colorado, to oppose the dismantling of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research. The battle over the research centre is one of the highest-profile battles yet between the US research community and the administration of President Donald Trump. The research centre has been called the global ‘mothership’ of climate science.

Denver, Colorado, served as the backdrop for the latest legal arguments, which unfolded one day after protests from late last year continued to echo in public debate over federal science funding. The two developments illustrate distinct fronts in tensions between the Trump administration and segments of the scientific and regulatory establishments.

At the FDA, policy disagreements built over months before reaching a decision point.

At NCAR, public opposition in Boulder, Colorado, preceded the courtroom showdown by several months. The FDA matter stems directly from President Trump’s clashes with the agency on three policy areas. Those disagreements contributed to what one person familiar with the matter described as months of chaos at the health agency.

Yesterday’s court session in Colorado marked a formal escalation in the NCAR dispute. Protests in Boulder, Colorado, late last year drew attention to plans that could affect the center’s structure.

Those demonstrations occurred months before lawyers entered the Colorado courthouse to argue the center’s future.