Susan Monarez’s 28-day tenure as the nation’s top public-health official was doomed from the start. Her boss, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., wanted her to do two things: champion his dubious anti-vaccine agenda and uphold “gold-standard science” at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Recognizing the conflict, Monarez chose the latter and was fired last month.

Monarez’s departure from the CDC highlights a dilemma that any successor will face: Under Kennedy, no serious scientist can hold the job. The risk this vacuum of expertise could pose to Americans’ health and safety is significant.

Kennedy has been a vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist for decades. Public frustration with pandemic-era mask and vaccine mandates helped catapult him to popularity and may have led to his appointment as health secretary. Although the White House gave Kennedy permission to “go wild” on health, lawmakers were given assurances that he wouldn’t do much to change vaccine policy.

So much for that. Since assuming his post, Kennedy has taken steps to restrict availability of the COVID-19 shot, which he once falsely called “the deadliest vaccine ever made.” He also purged the panel of experts that offers recommendations about vaccine use, cut critical vaccine research, and plans to publish a report “within a month” that aims to identify the heretofore elusive causes of autism, which he strongly suggests is caused by vaccines. (There’s no evidence to support this.)

In a hearing this month, Kennedy defended these measures as a “once-in-a-generation” effort to remake the CDC and restore “gold-standard science.” They’re nothing of the sort. Rather, the secretary appears intent on clearing room for more pliable subordinates, including his handpicked vaccine panel. Monarez says Kennedy asked her to preapprove this group’s recommendations, which are due later this month. When she refused, she was given the choice to resign or lose her job. Kennedy refutes this account.

It’s unclear whether Monarez was terminated legally. An acting director nonetheless already has been named: a close Kennedy aide and former biotech investor who has been known to peddle vaccine misinformation.

Monarez’s departure itself isn’t a crisis. More troubling is the exodus of top-level experts behind her — to say nothing of the hundreds of staff who’ve already been let go. A carousel of amateurish acting directors would only make things worse.

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The prospect of a CDC hollowed of expertise should alarm lawmakers. When an outbreak hits, seasoned leaders are needed to work across agencies, coordinate with state and local health officials, field calls from governors and foreign ministries of health, and communicate with the public. Staffing the agency with inexperienced loyalists will waste time and resources, increase the chances of costly mistakes, and put American lives at risk.

Almost a dozen Democratic senators have demanded Kennedy’s resignation, while influential Republicans including Bill Cassidy and Lisa Murkowski have called for oversight of Monarez’s firing. An investigation is likely in order. Although lawmakers pressed Kennedy to explain his actions in last week’s hearing, they failed to set a deadline for filling Monarez’s role with a qualified replacement. It isn’t too late: Concerns that the secretary might keep the job open — granting himself more authority in the interim — are mounting.

The countless public-health threats that the CDC regularly contains are invisible to most Americans. Lawmakers ought to know better.

— The Bloomberg Opinion Editorial Board

BOOZY BOOK FAIR: Second annual event features local authors, games and brews, presented by Valley Bookseller and Literature Lover’s Night Out. Free. 2 p.m. Sept. 21, River Siren Brewing Co., 225 Main St., Stillwater.

KARLEIGH FRISBIE BROGAN: Discusses “Holding: A Memoir About Mothers, Drugs, and Other Comforts” in conversation with Kathryn Savage. 7 p.m. Wednesday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

ANIKA FAJARDO: Presents “The Many Mothers of Dolores Moore.” 7 p.m. Tuesday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

JAMES KAKALIOS: Launches “The Physics of Superheroes Goes Hollywood.” 7 p.m. Thursday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

ONE BOOK/ONE MINNESOTA: Statewide book club presents free virtual conversation with Sheila O’Connor, author of “Evidence of V,” the program’s fall 2025 title. 7 p.m. Wednesday. To register: thefriends.org/onebook. (There is access to a free e-book until Sept. 28.)

READINGS BY WRITERS: With guest host Danny Klecko and readers Dralandra Larkins, Scott Vetsch and Jim Moore. 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, University Club, 420 Summit Ave., St. Paul.

KELSEY TIMMERMAN: Discusses “Regenerating Earth: Farmers Working with Nature to Feed Our Future,” the result of his five years documenting regenerative farming practices around the world. 6:30 p.m. Friday, Patagonia, 1648 Grand Ave, St. Paul.

Diane Wilson (Courtesy photo)

WRITERS FOR DEMOCRATIC ACTION: Poets and writers read from works speaking about political, social and cultural occurrences in this country: Diane Wilson (WDA spokesperson), Margaret Hasse, Kathryn Kysar, Michael Kleber-Diggs and Donna Isaac. This free program is part of the Cracked Walnut Poetry Festival. 7 pm. Thursday, East Side Freedom Library, 1195 Greenbrier St., St. Paul.

What else is going on

Courtney Gerber (Courtesy of the Minnesota Center for Book Arts)

The Minnesota Center for Book Arts has named Courtney Gerber as executive director, replacing Elysa Voshell, who has relocated to Los Angeles. According to the organization’s announcement, Gerber brings more than 20 years of nonprofit arts leadership experience and a passion for book arts to her new role. She has held senior leadership roles at some of the Twin Cities’ most respected cultural organizations, including the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, Minnesota Museum of American Art and Walker Art Center. She has academic training in medieval manuscripts and contemporary art history, as well as personal practice in poetry and visual journaling. She takes the reins Oct. 14. (MCBA is in the Open Book building, 1011 Washington Ave. S., Mpls.)

The George Latimer St. Paul public library is among more than 15 libraries across the state participating in The Great North Star Read Together from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, when book lovers are invited to drop into their local libraries to read quietly for a few minutes or for the entire two hours to show support for libraries.

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This week in Skywatch I want you to go sky high to dig for some of the great visual treasures waiting for your eyes. And now that it gets darker a lot sooner in the evening, it’s easier to get out there and stargaze before the sandman starts working on your eyelids. You can spend a lot more time with your telescope and even just a nice pair of binoculars. There are a lot of celestial treasures among the constellations in the late summer sky. Star clusters, nebulae, double stars, and even whole other galaxies outside our Milky Way are buried to the naked eye, but with a little patience and optical aid you can dig them out.

I also want to put in another word about smart photographic telescopes, which came out about three years ago. They are fantastic! I believe that in time, they’ll be much more popular than conventional visual telescopes. You can easily operate them with a smartphone, iPad or tablet. In a matter of minutes, they’ll point themselves to any celestial object you want and take images of it that will blow you away, in color. They also work well even in areas of moderate to heavy light pollution. Best of all, the most expensive ones are less than $600. I highly recommend either the ZWO SeeStar S50 and the ZWO SeeStar S30. Find out more at starizona.com.

(Mike Lynch)

Three of the nicest jewels of the heavens right now are nearly overhead at the end of evening twilight around 9 p.m. The easiest one to see is the star Albireo, the second-brightest star in the constellation Cygnus the Swan. Within Cygnus is the easy-to-see pattern of the “Northern Cross.” Albireo marks the foot of the cross. The best way to find it is to face south and look directly overhead. The brightest star you see is Vega, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra the Lyre. Make a fist and extend your clenched fist at arm’s length. About two fists at arm’s length to the left of Vega, look for the Northern Cross and Albireo.

To the naked eye, Albireo looks like any other star in the sky, but with even a pair of binoculars, you can see that not only is Albireo a double star, but also a colorful pair. One star has a golden hue and the other is distinctly blue. The double stars of Albireo are considered a binary star system, just over 400 light-years away, with just one light-year equaling nearly 6 trillion miles. There’s debate among astronomers as to whether the two stars are gravitationally bound and are rotating around each other. It’s extremely difficult to tell exactly but it’s estimated that the two stars are separated by about 20 light-years. If the two stars are rotating around each other, it’s thought that their orbital period is about 100,000 years. Don’t wait up for that because that’s well past your bedtime.

The next celestial treasure to search for is more elusive and you’ll need at least a small to moderate telescope. It’s the Ring Nebula. more formally known as Messier object 57, or M57. It really looks like a ring, and with its slightly bluish tint reminds me of a little cosmic smoke ring. The Ring Nebula lies in the constellation Lyra the Lyre (or Harp), between two of the four stars that make a little parallelogram allegedly outlining the little celestial harp. Just keep scanning between the two stars that make up the end of the parallelogram opposite the bright star Vega. At first, the Ring Nebula looks like a faint, blurry star, but if your scope is powerful enough, you may be able to resolve the ring.

M57 is what astronomers call a planetary nebula, a dying star shedding off the last of its hydrogen, helium, and other gases as it collapses into a white dwarf star, about the size of our Earth. Our own sun is headed for this fate in about 5 to 6 billion years.

The final celestial treasure I have for you is also in the high south sky. It’s Messier object 13, better known as the great Hercules Cluster, one of the sky’s true wonders, residing in the faint constellation Hercules the Hero.  The best way to find that is to face south once again and find the bright star Vega. Look just to its lower right for a trapezoid of four moderately bright stars you should be able to see with the naked eye, unless you really have a lot of light pollution. That trapezoid is pretty much the center of the Hercules constellation.

About a third of the way from the upper right to the lower right side of the trapezoid you’ll find the Hercules cluster. You won’t see it with the naked eye but with a good pair of binoculars or even better, a telescope, you’ll see what at first looks like a spherical fuzzball. If you have powerful enough optics, and especially if you can see it from darker countryside skies, you’ll see that it’s a cluster of many, many stars, known as a globular cluster. This is one of the best clusters in the skies. Astronomers figure it’s about 25,000 light-years away, which equals about 145,000 trillion miles. There may be up to a million stars crammed in an area a little over 800 trillion miles wide. Through even a moderate telescope you can see some individual stars at the edge. As it is with all telescopic objects, look at the cluster for extended periods through the eyepiece of your scope to let your eyes get used to the darkness of the eyepiece field. I absolutely love showing off the great Hercules cluster with giant telescopes at my star party programs.

Celestial happening this week

(Mike Lynch)

Set your alarm for this coming Friday morning, Sept. 19, to see a spectacular conjunction between Venus, a very thin waning crescent moon, and the bright star Regulus in a very tight triangle. It’ll be a sight to behold! Venus and the moon will be practically touching each other, only about a quarter degree apart. This is the closest Venus and the moon will be to each other this year. To make it even sweeter, you can see the moon’s disk not lit up directly by the sun, in ghostly earthshine

Starwatch programs

Thursday, Sept. 18, 8-10 p.m., at Folwell Park In Minneapolis. For more information and reservations, call 612-370-4917 or visit www.minneapolisparks.org.

Saturday, Sept. 20, 8-10 p.m., through the City of Ramsey Parks and Recreation. For more information, location and reservations, call 763-443-9883 or visit www.ci.ramsey.mn.us/269/Parks-and-Recreation.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and retired broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is the author of “Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and adventurepublications.net. Mike is available for private star parties. You can contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.

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The morning of the second annual Funniest Person in St. Paul contest finals on Sept. 2, Jethro Trogo was in the emergency room.

He was having chest pains he was concerned were signs of a heart attack, which — fortunately! — was not the case. Also fortunate, though perhaps less existentially so, was that he was discharged in time to make it to Gambit Brewing in Lowertown for the competition, which he won, earning him the “funniest person” title and $1,000.

“Only in America can you win $1,000 and still end up in the red at the end of the day because the hospital fees are so expensive,” joked Trogo, an Eagan-based Filipino comedian and software engineer, in an interview a few days later. “People are like, ‘You should treat us to a round of drinks!’ No, I’m still in debt, man.”

The contest finale was the culmination of 10 Tuesday-night preliminary rounds throughout the summer. Each week, a lineup of comedians had five minutes apiece at the mic, and audience members awarded points to each set via a QR code ballot. The night’s winner earned one of 10 spots in the final round, where competitors had seven minutes to once again win the vote of a sold-out audience.

Comedians Jethro Trogo, left, and Jesse the Shrink pose with a $1,000 check after Trogo won the Funniest Person in St. Paul competition on Sept. 2, 2025, at Gambit Brewing. Jesse the Shrink organizes the annual competition, which this year drew about 100 comics to compete across its 10-week run. (Courtesy of Johnny Pickles)

More than 100 comics entered the contest across the whole summer, said comedian Jesse the Shrink (a stage name alluding to his real-life day job as a therapist), who produces the summer contest and hosts the year-round weekly open mic at Gambit.

Other finalists for this year’s competition included Tim Flanagan, Alexis Dunn, Liam Heywood, Tapan Sharma, Jakey Emmert, Shyloh Blake, Matthew Milligan, Alexa Kocinski and Dakota Forness. Last year’s winner, Sam Bondhus, returned during a preliminary round seeking to defend his title but ultimately did not advance to the finals this year.

‘My initial thought … does not translate’

When Trogo was growing up in the Philippines, he said, the format of American-style standup comedy did not exist there. Instead, he said, much of the live comedy entertainment consisted of vaudeville-style variety shows with singing, drag, dancing, skits and insult crowd-work.

It wasn’t until the early 2010s that a small open mic scene developed in Manila, he said — and small might be an understatement. At first, he was among maybe 12 comics in the whole country. Open mics happened once a month, if that.

Trogo moved to Minnesota in 2019 when his job transferred him here, and he started performing in local open mics in earnest in about 2022. Technically yes, by that time, he had some years of stand-up experience under his belt — but it was not the case that he had years’ worth of material to deliver, he said.

Filipino was, and remains, Trogo’s primary language. Back in Manila, about 90 percent of his jokes were completely in Filipino, he said, and most of his remaining English material consisted of set-ups for jokes whose punchlines were delivered in Filipino, with local references that would not land for American audiences.

“I still usually think about my jokes in Filipino and have to digest that and convert it in a way that Americans will, one, understand and, two, find funny,” he said. “A lot of times, my initial thought in Filipino does not translate to something I can say onstage and work.”

‘A grain of truth’

The content of Trogo’s jokes is also different in the U.S. versus the Philippines because, well, his whole life is different. In the Philippines, he said, many of his jokes revolved around “boilerplate experiences,” he said: his marriage, his job.

But here, he’s carved out a more unique niche — and by his estimation, a funnier one, too — by poking fun at the immigrant experience, at his Filipino culture shock, at witnessing America’s quirks as an outsider.

“Every joke that I make as an immigrant, especially in this kind of climate, comes from a grain of truth that I’m living,” he said. “One of the things I talked about during the prelims was being in line in immigration, seeing the anxiety of other immigrants in line, and then looking at the other line for citizens and seeing them as the chillest people ever. It looked like the line for Dippin’ Dots at the Minnesota Zoo.”

He doesn’t say everything. He avoids wading too deeply into politics or social conflicts. Deportation, he said, is a “genuine fear.”

“In the Philippines, I’m just another Filipino,” he said. “I have nothing much to talk about that other comedians cannot. In the U.S., I’m an immigrant, and that’s the story I want to tell onstage. … But at any point in time, if they feel like taking my green card away, I’m back in the Philippines. And all my jokes are useless. Among other issues.”

Earlier this year, an old friend of Trogo’s from the Manila open mic scene, the Filipino standup comedian Gold Dagal, was murdered in Angeles City in the Philippines right before a show, likely due to jokes he’d made about a certain religious sect.

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“I’m not saying that’s where we are at (in the U.S.), but I think it’s an emerging reality for comedians that people are getting more and more emotional about what they hear, and you have to manage it better,” Trogo said. “Or make sure you’re funny enough to get away with things.”

You can see Trogo perform next at the Comedy Free-For-All at the House of Comedy at the Mall of America on Sept. 17, at Jesse the Shrink’s Midlife Crisis Show at the Parkway Theater in Minneapolis on Oct. 15 and during the 10,000 Laughs Comedy Festival later in October.