Today's five.

The CDC has been running without a confirmed director for almost a year, which is a strange condition for the country's top public health agency. The Senate confirmed Dr. Erica Schwartz 51-44 on Wednesday — mostly along party lines, with Tim Kaine the lone Democrat to cross over, citing her qualifications. Axios led with the vacancy finally filled; outlets with a sharper eye on the agency led with whether she can stay independent inside an HHS that has spent the past year making public health feel complicated. She's a physician. She worked HHS during Trump's first term. The job description has not gotten simpler.

There's not enough here to write a card.

The sources are aggregator pages, podcast rundowns, and paywalled content — none of them share a common story, and the excerpts don't contain actual facts to draw from. Writing a card from this would mean inventing the substance, which the grounding rules prohibit.

If you have a specific story — a news event, a policy decision, a development — paste in the actual reporting and I'll write the card.

Todd Blanche held a press conference this week and, when asked whether a U.S. attorney could get fired for following the evidence, basically said: yes, and that's fine, the president can do that. The case in question involved dropped vandalism charges near the Lincoln Memorial — not enough evidence, said D.C.'s top prosecutor. Reason questioned whether Blanche should be attorney general at all, citing his role in what they called a scheme to defraud the court. The New Republic focused on what the statement signals to every federal prosecutor currently weighing a difficult call. Both outlets heard the same message. They just reported different reasons to find it alarming.

The Justice Department ignored a state deadline on Epstein documents, so New Mexico did what you do when a federal agency ghosts you: filed a lawsuit. Attorney General Raúl Torrez set July 31st as his line in the sand; the DOJ apparently didn't check the calendar. The 40-page complaint names acting AG Todd Blanche personally and targets unredacted records tied to Epstein's Zorro Ranch, about 30 miles outside Santa Fe. The DOJ's stated reason for withholding: court orders protecting victim identities. The Guardian called it "stonewalling." The Hill noted it's a state suing to open a federal investigation. Same lawsuit, different frame.

Florida Keeps Its Drag Ban, a Federal Court Has Confirmed

A Florida law restricting children from attending "adult live performances" — including suggestive drag shows — just survived a federal appeals court challenge, which means the legal fight over what counts as a family outing is going to keep going. The law targets performances deemed lewd or sexually suggestive. Breitbart framed it squarely as child protection. What the ruling doesn't settle is where the line sits between protecting kids and deciding which art forms parents are allowed to bring them to — a question courts tend to answer slowly, expensively, and one circuit at a time.