Yiannas served under both Trump's first FDA and Biden's, so "catastrophic" carries some weight here, it's not a partisan label. Worth spelling out what he's actually pointing at. The company at the center of this donated a million dollars to a pro-Trump super PAC, got a meeting with the White House and FDA the day before its own recall, then went public claiming the agency apologized to it over a disputed test result. HHS says that apology never happened. Meanwhile the outbreak keeps growing, and the same health department is simultaneously overseeing the worst measles year in thirty five years, almost entirely among unvaccinated Americans. Yiannas isn't describing one bad week. He's describing a health department that can't get its own story straight on a lettuce recall while a preventable childhood disease it should be stamping out keeps climbing instead.