Look at it this way, did the CDC ever openly contradict Trump? They had private disagreements behind closed doors according to a lot of anonymous media reporting, but since the CDC falls under the jurisdiction of HHS the civil service employees fall under the management of political appointees. In contrast, the Fed are a more independent agency designed to be more insulated from politicians and they had no trouble publicly saying no to a president.

I feel like people didn’t learn about this in school or remember it, so let me give a brief summary. Government agencies are staffed from the bottom up by civil service employees. They are hired and promoted based on their technical competence and expertise and can offer expert opinion and manage regulations. They are apolitical and keep their jobs in between presidential administrations. The very top and highest level jobs are politically appointed jobs by the White House and they change when administrations change. Their job is to set the policies for their respective departments and carry them out in accordance with the president’s wishes. If you’d like another example, the civil servants at the department of labor compile statistics on employment and unemployment rates and the president’s Secretary of Labor manages the department at the top and helps set departmental agenda.

My point is that the departments and agencies are not purely independent bodies and by design they are under the control of politicians. We have accountability by both electing a president who controls the staffing and high level decisions and Congress who oversees the functioning and results of each agency. I never said all presidents were equal on this but each one has a lot of control over what each agency PUBLICLY says. Biden essentially controls what ICE or CIA says to the press even if they privately warn him about changes in migrant numbers or WMD programs abroad.