anti-vax admin hits mute when the polls look bad
RFK Jr stares thoughtfully into the distance, presumably searching for the last remaining vaccinated child to blame for everything since 2005.
The Trump–RFK Jr health regime spent a year taking a sledgehammer to the childhood vaccine schedule — killing recommendations for flu, rotavirus, RSV and even hepatitis B at birth — then suddenly discovered the healing power of shutting up once their own pollsters told them that, shockingly, most Americans don’t want their kids catching preventable diseases. One-third of the childhood schedule gets slashed, a federal judge basically nukes the changes, and the same people who bragged about "Make America healthy again" are now treating vaccines like Voldemort: that-which-must-not-be-named before the midterms.
At CPAC, HHS secretary and professional autism-conspiracy enthusiast RFK Jr somehow managed a 30-minute "fireside chat" without saying the v-word once, downgrading his lifelong crusade to some vague rant about cell phones and social media. The man who helped gut vaccine recommendations now talks about flipping the food pyramid and banning food dyes, while his allies outside government keep saying the quiet part extremely loud — from calling for the elimination of the entire childhood vaccine schedule to bragging "we’re winning" as measles and other preventable diseases make a comeback. Inside the administration, it’s all poll-tested euphemisms about "chronic disease"; outside, it’s open season on immunizations.
Meanwhile, actual epidemiologists point out the small downside of turning public health into a campaign strategy: people will die. But the Trump–Maha brain trust has decided that if vaccines are unpopular with swing voters in 35 competitive districts, then the plan is simple — keep wrecking the system, just stop talking about it onstage. It’s not public health, it’s vibes-based biopolitics: sabotage in the agencies, denial at CPAC, and a country quietly marched backwards on infectious disease so the president’s poll numbers don’t catch anything contagious.
#anti-science#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
make america clogged again
Trump’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ food pyramid, which is just a cow wearing an American flag, glaring at a salad.
The American Heart Association has released new nutrition guidance saying the radical, woke, extremist thing that decades of science already said: eat more plants, less red meat, fewer ultraprocessed foods, and maybe don’t chase every meal with a glass of melted cheese. In a plot twist no one saw coming, this happens to conflict with Donald Trump’s government, which has been busy issuing its own “Make America Healthy Again” guidelines that somehow translate to: more animal protein, full‑fat dairy for everyone, and a special shout‑out to beef tallow like it’s a founding father.
While Trump and Health Secretary RFK Jr are out here crusading against seed oils and synthetic dyes like they’re the Sole Root Cause of All American Illness, the AHA is gently pointing out that maybe, just maybe, hosing your arteries with saturated fat and red meat isn’t the road to national vitality. The AHA wants legumes, nuts, seeds, low‑fat dairy, unsaturated fats, low salt, less booze, and heart‑healthy habits starting at age one. The federal line, meanwhile, is veering toward a taxpayer‑funded meat lobby infomercial with a side of pseudoscience.
The FDA, clearly trying to avoid being dragged into the food culture war Thunderdome, quietly notes that it’s actually aligned with the AHA on the major points and is looking forward to working together. So on one side: cardiologists, long‑term data, and public health. On the other: a president who sells red hats and red meat as a lifestyle brand, plus RFK Jr doing wellness cosplay while the administration’s own recommendations undercut the very heart health they claim to be championing. Make America Healthy Again, apparently, means keep the base angry at broccoli while the arteries do the real protesting.
#anti-science#forever-grifting
rfk jr turns hhs into the home shopping network for sketchy peptides
Robert F Kennedy Jr proudly unveiling his new public health strategy: a dartboard, a syringe, and a coupon code for Chinese research chemicals.
US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has discovered a bold new frontier in public health: letting wellness hucksters and Silicon Valley bio-bros run the show while the FDA sits quietly in the corner and thinks about what it’s done. Under his Make America Healthy Again (because of course that’s the name) agenda, boring things like proven vaccines and safety standards are treated as tyrannical oppression, while chugging raw milk and injecting barely-studied peptides you bought off a sketchy website are rebranded as heroic “personal choice”.
His latest brainstorm: opening up the sale of “about 14” injectable peptide drugs that the FDA restricted in 2023 for “potential significant safety risks” and zero demonstrated benefit. Some peptides are medicines, some are basically snake venom that melts your cells, but RFK Jr’s plan is to blur that line and call it freedom. Who needs rigorous clinical trials when you’ve got anecdotes, biohacking podcasts, and a booming market for vials labeled “for research use only” being mainlined in Silicon Valley bathrooms?
The Maha project doesn’t just tolerate the peptide grey market; it wants to make the grey market the market. The goal isn’t to prove these drugs safe or effective, it’s to dismantle the FDA’s ability to say no so pharmacies, enhancement-obsessed sports outfits, and assorted wellness profiteers can cash in. Generations of public health policy built on the precautionary principle are being swapped out for a national experiment in crowd-sourced medicine where the control group is ‘other countries that don’t let their health minister legislate off Reddit threads’.
So while normal governments are still insisting on things like evidence and regulation, RFK Jr is happily turning federal health policy into a libertarian theme park where every American can be their own underfunded clinical trial. The administration calls it autonomy. The peptide sellers call it a business opportunity. The rest of us can call it what it is: public health by huckster, with the Health and Human Services seal slapped on the bottle for decoration.
#anti-science#forever-grifting
america’s leading artisanal disease factory still open for business
Pictured: a proud American entrepreneur standing between his cows and the concept of basic public health.
Raw Farm in Fresno, the nation’s premier boutique supplier of pathogens with a side of protein, has now been linked to an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak from raw cheddar cheese that’s sickened nine people across three states, more than half of them kids under five. One child has already developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, the kind that can lead to kidney failure, but don’t worry, the free market is on the case.
This is the same Raw Farm that was previously connected to H5N1 bird flu in cats in 2024, and also to the largest salmonella outbreak in more than a decade — at least 165 people sickened. So naturally, instead of being shut down or hit with a mandatory recall, the company’s president, Aaron McAfee, is out here telling NBC he won’t voluntarily recall anything without "direct proof" while boasting that 81 retail samples tested negative. Meanwhile, the FDA, mighty guardian of the food supply, has heroically recommended a voluntary recall and issued an "outbreak advisory" asking people to consider not eating the cheese.
Regulators are "investigating" and the CDC is politely suggesting you maybe avoid the product that keeps ending up in outbreak reports and scrub your kitchen like a crime scene if it touched this stuff. Raw Farm keeps operating, kids keep landing in hospitals, and the federal government’s response is essentially: "We asked nicely." America: where corporations get infinite do-overs and toddlers get kidney damage.
#anti-science#healthcare#forever-grifting
trump, rfk jr, and the miracle b vitamin that cures science
Trump and RFK Jr announcing that autism can be fixed with a B vitamin, while evidence, ethics, and basic neurology are escorted out of the building by security.
Trump and RFK Jr decided to cosplay as neurologists and announced that leucovorin, a folinic acid (read: fancy B vitamin), was basically the first FDA-recognized treatment for autism and that autism might be "entirely preventable". The FDA commissioner Marty Makary happily joined the magic show, bragging on C‑SPAN and podcasts that 50–60% of autistic kids could see clinical improvement and that "hundreds of thousands" would benefit. Parents, understandably desperate and misled by their own government, rushed to doctors, and leucovorin prescriptions for kids 5–17 promptly jumped 71%.
Then reality, like a very boring but necessary friend, showed up. The biggest leucovorin-for-autism study (a grand total of 77 kids) was retracted in January when re-analysis couldn't reproduce the results. Other studies were tiny and badly blinded. The American Academy of Pediatrics publicly said the evidence is too thin to recommend it. Even Richard Frye, the doctor whose work inspired the idea, was stunned the administration basically greenlit it "without more studies or anything". Meanwhile, neurodevelopmental specialists were left debating whether they should start doing spinal taps on kids to chase a rare folate deficiency that merely resembles autism.
So on 10 March, the FDA quietly backed away from the cliff and approved leucovorin only for cerebral folate deficiency – a very rare condition that can have "autistic features" – while pretending that months of hype about an autism breakthrough never happened. Doctors like William Graf and Leon Epstein are now saying the quiet part out loud: giving treatments without evidence is unethical, this was "almost like public deception", and the real result is that people learn they can't trust public health officials who treat science like a campaign prop. Also helpful: at the same time this crowd is selling vitamin-based miracle cures, they're slashing Medicaid and autism services and pulling FDA warnings about dangerous bogus autism therapies. Why fund real support when you can just announce that autism is optional now?
#anti-science#healthcare#killing-democracy
trump’s ambassador watches rfk jr play measles roulette in samoa
Donald Trump and Ivanka politely endure Scott Brown’s remarks, presumably unaware that a few years later he’ll be the Trump-era ambassador quietly adjacent to an RFK Jr anti-vax tour that precedes a lethal measles outbreak. Presidential personnel office really nailed this one.
Trump’s former New Zealand/Samoa ambassador Scott Brown – the guy who turned his New Hampshire backyard into a GOP petting zoo – turns out to have been well-briefed that Robert F Kennedy Jr’s 2019 Samoa trip was all about his anti-vaccine crusade. State department emails show Brown was alerted that Kennedy was heading into a country where vaccination rates had cratered, two babies had just died from a botched MMR shot, and public trust was hanging by a thread. Perfect time to fly in America’s leading anti-vax conspiracy salesman for a little informal diplomacy.
While the deputy chief of mission scrambled to keep the embassy’s fingerprints off the visit, Brown stayed in the loop as Kennedy’s presence helped validate local anti-vaxxers. Months later, Samoa was slammed by a measles outbreak that killed 83 people, mostly children under five. Kennedy has since claimed he had “nothing to do with people not vaccinating” and that the trip had “nothing to do with vaccines” – testimony that newly released emails now suggest was, at best, creative writing and, at worst, lying to the Senate by the sitting US health secretary.
The punchline: Brown later boasts about helping Kennedy prep for those same confirmation hearings, while running for Senate himself in a cycle where Republicans are suddenly terrified that the anti-vax monster they fed might eat their midterms. The Trump administration’s legacy lives on: a health secretary accused of misleading Congress about a trip that helped supercharge a deadly outbreak, and a Trump ambassador who watched the whole thing unfold from the diplomatic balcony and now wants a promotion.
#anti-science#lawlessness#forever-grifting
trump tries to shiv colorado by smashing its climate lab
The National Center for Atmospheric Research, seen here moments before the administration decides weather forecasting is too woke and should be replaced with Trump’s gut instinct and a Magic 8-Ball.
The Trump administration has apparently decided that if it can’t stop wildfires, hurricanes, and extreme weather, it can at least defund the people who study them. A new lawsuit from the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) says the White House is trying to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) — the country’s largest federal climate and weather research lab — as collateral damage in Trump’s personal feud with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. Because nothing says serious national leadership like using hurricane modeling and wildfire forecasting as hostages in your anti-mail-voting revenge tour.
According to the complaint, Trump got mad that Colorado wouldn’t ban mail-in voting or spring a convicted election-tampering county clerk from prison, so the administration allegedly launched a “campaign of punishment and coercion” against the state. That includes trying to break up NCAR, slapping gag orders on scientists so they can’t talk to the public, canceling multimillion-dollar climate adaptation grants, and yanking NCAR’s supercomputing facility out of UCAR’s control. The National Science Foundation even put out a notice basically asking, "Hey, anyone want Boulder’s premier climate campus for some other use?" — as if it’s a strip mall, not critical weather infrastructure.
This is all part of a bigger tantrum, per related lawsuits: moving U.S. Space Command out of Colorado, axing $109 million in transportation funds, and slapping extra SNAP requirements on low-income residents, ostensibly over “fraud” but actually, the state argues, to punish them for not playing along with election denial cosplay. A federal judge already called BS on the SNAP stunt and blocked it. Now UCAR is asking the court to stop the administration from gutting NCAR’s funding, supercomputers, and staff — you know, the 1,400 people who do things like hurricane forecasting, wildfire monitoring, and space weather modeling that protect lives and infrastructure.
UCAR warns that this politically motivated wrecking ball “poses a direct threat to national security, public safety, and economic prosperity,” which is a very polite way of saying: Trump is so obsessed with punishing a blue state over mail ballots and an election-crimes conviction that he’s willing to kneecap America’s top climate and weather lab during an era of historic climate disasters. The message from the administration is clear: fall in line with the Big Lie, or we’ll turn your climate research center into a parking lot and sell the supercomputer for parts.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
health secretary rfk jr helps america catch freedom, e coli
Health Secretary RFK Jr bravely defends Americans’ right to wash down their conspiracy theories with a tall glass of E. coli.
The country’s largest raw milk distributor, charmingly named Raw Farm, has been linked by the FDA to a multi-state E. coli O157:H7 outbreak that mostly hit kids three and under, because of course it did. Seven people got sick across California, Florida, and Texas, but the company’s response is to SCREAM IN ALL CAPS that they “100% DISAGREE” with the FDA’s "false possible link" — a phrase that really captures the spiritual core of this administration’s relationship with science. Voluntary recall? That’s for people who don’t believe in rugged individualism and acute kidney failure.
This is the same Raw Farm whose products California had to recall in 2024 after retail samples tested positive for bird flu. So naturally, in the Biden-Trump unity cosplay administration, this is the moment Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr — a man who treats public health like a YouTube comment section — steps in to loudly champion raw milk and pledge support for the farmers selling it. The CEO of Raw Farm, Mark McAfee, proudly notes that RFK Jr is a longtime customer, which is definitely what you want to hear about the cabinet official allegedly in charge of disease prevention, not the hype man for your local pathogen co-op.
The CDC has spent years telling Americans to avoid raw milk because it’s more likely to contain dangerous bacteria. The administration’s response? Put a raw-milk evangelist in charge of federal health policy and let him boost a company already linked to E. coli and bird flu. Regulatory capture used to be about corporations quietly writing the rules behind closed doors; now it’s just the Health Secretary yelling "DRINK UP" while the FDA whispers from the corner that maybe feeding toddlers unpasteurized plague juice is bad.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
trump’s anti-vax clown car loses a wheel. again.
FDA headquarters, where vaccine policy is decided by a fight between biotech lobbyists and Trump’s in-house anti-vax evangelist.
The Trump administration’s vaccine chief, Dr Vinay Prasad, is being launched out of the FDA for the second time in under a year, which is what passes for a stable regulatory environment in Trumpworld. FDA commissioner Marty Makary told staff that Prasad will "return" to his academic job at UCSF, a polite way of saying: congratulations, you’ve been promoted back to a real institution.
Prasad’s brief career as vaccine czar has been one long collision between science, biotech lobbying, and the Trump–RFK Jr anti-vax fanfiction universe. He helped Makary push faster, easier drug reviews for companies, then turned around and slapped extra warnings and study requirements on some biotech drugs and, of course, Covid vaccines — the sacred hate-totem of health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, who spent years attacking vaccines before being put in charge of, checks notes, national health policy.
Last July, Prasad was already forced out once after annoying biotech execs, patient groups, and Trump’s conservative allies, only to be yanked back into the building less than two weeks later with RFK Jr and Makary riding to his rescue. Now he’s out again, leaving behind an FDA where drug approvals are simultaneously sped up for industry and politically kneecapped for vaccines. Regulatory science has been replaced with a choose-your-own-adventure written by lobbyists and anti-vaxxers, and the punchline is public health.
#anti-science#healthcare#killing-democracy
trump takes on big tylenol, pregnant women lose
President Trump, flanked by RFK Jr. and Mehmet Oz, announces that Tylenol is canceled and the new Surgeon General is a YouTube comment section.
President Donald Trump looked at decades of obstetric research and said: "No thanks, I’ll go with vibes." At a Sept. 22 press conference, he told pregnant women to "fight like hell" not to take Tylenol and declared the FDA would warn doctors about a supposed autism risk that robust evidence does not support. The actual FDA letter called the topic an "ongoing area of scientific debate," and a major analysis has since found no link between Tylenol in pregnancy and autism. But Trump’s medical degree from Facebook University was already issued, so here we are.
Researchers from Harvard and Brown then checked what happens when the president freelances as your OB-GYN. Using ER records, they found Tylenol (paracetamol) orders for pregnant patients dropped 10% after Trump’s comments, while non-pregnant women’s orders didn’t budge. One of the few pain and fever meds ACOG says is actually safe in pregnancy suddenly became suspect, in a population where untreated fever itself increases the risk of birth defects. So the self-proclaimed pro-life movement is now… encouraging pregnant women to white-knuckle high fevers because Donald Trump and RFK Jr. got bored one afternoon.
While he was scaring pregnant women off a safe drug, Trump was also upselling leucovorin, a chemotherapy-adjacent folate drug he hyped as an autism treatment. New leucovorin prescriptions for kids 5–17 jumped 71% after his little infomercial, despite the American Academy of Pediatrics saying the evidence is nowhere near ready for prime time. It’s typically used with cancer patients and for a rare condition called cerebral folate deficiency, but sure, let’s toss it at autistic kids because the president heard about a couple of small overseas trials. Evidence-based medicine is for losers; real patriots chase unproven cures while making proven ones politically radioactive.
So the administration’s health policy continues its core philosophy: ignore experts, terrify vulnerable people, juice demand for speculative treatments, and call it freedom. Pregnant women are now stuck choosing between a fever that can harm their baby and defying the president’s medical fan fiction. Meanwhile, the FDA is left updating labels and cleaning up the mess from yet another Trump press conference that turned into a live-action experiment in how fast you can erode public trust in science.
#anti-science#healthcare#killing-democracy
trump admin discovers herd immunity, forgets the 'immunity' part
CDC headquarters, now specializing in vibes-based epidemiology and post-hoc thoughts and prayers.
The Trump administration has apparently decided that measles is just America’s new roommate. A senior CDC official, Dr Ralph Abraham, helpfully described the surge in cases and child deaths as the “cost of doing business”, which is a bold way to talk about a disease we basically eradicated before MAGA discovered YouTube wellness influencers. Abraham then resigned, presumably to spend more time with his talking points about how we “can’t rely exclusively on vaccination” while 94% of cases are in the unvaccinated or mystery-status crowd.
Meanwhile, CDC social media has gone from public health watchdog to witness protection program. Instead of clear outbreak alerts, they managed a rare post scolding people for calling this an American policy failure, then put out a vaccine video that somehow forgot to mention the word "vaccine" in the text. That’s not messaging, that’s performance art. Experts say the real story is the administration’s massive cuts to CDC funding and disease surveillance, which have slowed reporting, crippled outbreak tracking, and left the country flying blind while case counts blow past 1,000 and fatalities quietly stack up.
Congress finally tried to patch the holes by restoring much of the CDC’s money, so the White House responded by looking for other ways to yank hundreds of millions from state and local health departments. Also on the chopping block: wastewater surveillance, which is one of the cheapest, most effective early-warning systems we have. The administration wants to slash that from $125m to $25m, because why invest in detecting measles when you can just call deaths a rounding error? As one expert put it, if we just vaccinated kids, we wouldn’t need all this extra surveillance. But that would require a government that prefers science over Facebook grifters and doesn’t treat child mortality as a line item.
#anti-science#healthcare#killing-democracy
trump, rfk jr, and the great measles comeback tour
Surgeon General tries to explain basic vaccines on live TV while the administration’s anti-vax arsonists hose the CDC down with gasoline just off-camera.
The Trump administration handed the CDC’s vaccine program to RFK Jr., an anti-vaccine crusader whose medical expertise begins and ends with YouTube comments. He promptly fired all 17 members of the agency’s vaccine advisory committee and replaced them with vaccine skeptics, then helped the CDC quietly drop recommendations that babies be protected against hepatitis A, hepatitis B, RSV, dengue and multiple forms of meningitis. Because if there’s one thing America needed in 2026, it’s more viruses and fewer scientists.
Now states are sprinting away from the federal government like it’s coughing on them in a crowded elevator. At least 28 states have broken from the new CDC guidance, with places like Colorado, Alaska, California, Illinois, Maryland and Vermont trying to keep childhood shots free and protect doctors from being sued into oblivion by anti-vax lawfare groups. Colorado’s bill would even let providers follow the American Academy of Pediatrics instead of RFK Jr.’s Science Denial Fan Club, while expanding liability protections so health workers aren’t punished for giving, you know, proven vaccines.
The result: the country’s vaccine policy is fracturing because the federal government has decided that decades of evidence-based medicine should take a back seat to Trump’s favorite conspiracy podcaster. Major medical groups are begging people to keep vaccinating their kids against 18 diseases, Mehmet Oz is on CNN pleading “take the vaccine, please,” and states are trying to duct-tape together a functioning public health system while the White House promotes an "Eat Real Food" campaign as if organic broccoli can stop measles. This administration has essentially turned childhood immunization into a 50-state choose-your-own-adventure, except the wrong choice ends with a PICU bed.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
trump makes america great again by poisoning kids for 27 coal plants
Trump, surrounded by coal helmets, proudly accepting an award for "beautiful clean coal" while quietly handing out reply-all pollution waivers like party favors.
Turns out nearly every coal plant in America could meet stricter limits on mercury, lead, and arsenic that literally prevent brain damage in children. So naturally, the Trump administration took one look at that success and decided to torch the standards anyway, because a couple dozen of the dirtiest plants in places like Wyoming, Texas, and West Virginia might have had to install filters. Can’t have kids keeping their IQ points if it inconveniences a few aging smokestacks.
The Environmental Protection Agency, now run by Lee Zeldin, helpfully declared that protecting brains, hearts, and lungs would "destroy reliable American energy" and impose "massive costs"—a fascinating conclusion given the EPA’s own prior analysis showed only 27 plants out of about 219 needed upgrades at all. Instead, Trump’s team offered coal barons the regulatory equivalent of a grocery store loyalty card: just send an email to the president for an "emergency" pollution waiver. All 71 requests were approved, some for longer than operators even asked for, including plants that admitted they already had the tech to comply.
While being ceremonially crowned "undisputed champion of beautiful clean coal" at the White House, Trump forced uneconomic coal plants to stay open, ordered the Pentagon to buy coal power, scrapped a key scientific finding that greenhouse gases harm human health, and then bragged in the State of the Union that his energy policies lowered household costs as electricity prices went up. The administration now claims that gutting Biden’s 2024 mercury rules simply restores the "highly effective" 2012 standards, which is an elegant way of saying: we know how to protect public health better, we just choose not to. Reliable energy, sure—if you don’t mind the side effect of cooked lungs and damaged brains.
#anti-science#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
trump & rfk jr test how many kids can get sick before someone sues
Robert F Kennedy Jr studies a pile of medical research the way a raccoon studies a locked trash can: loudly, confidently, and with no idea how it works.
The Trump administration, led on health policy by America’s favorite YouTube toxicology expert Robert F Kennedy Jr, has decided kids don’t really need vaccines anymore unless they’re special. The CDC abruptly dropped its longstanding recommendation that all children be immunized against flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A and B, certain meningitis strains, and RSV, and downgraded them to "high risk only" or "ask your doctor if you'd like to gamble less with your child’s lungs." More than a dozen states, including California and Arizona, are now suing, on the radical theory that keeping children alive is a legitimate government interest.
This is the same administration that gutted public health agencies, slashed science funding, and let RFK Jr fire every member of a vaccine advisory committee so he could stack it with his own handpicked cranks — a move the lawsuit politely describes as "unlawful" instead of "are you out of your mind." State attorneys general say the rollback ignores decades of medical guidance and will force them to spend more fighting outbreaks that were previously solved by the wild socialist technology known as shots. The HHS press secretary has dismissed the lawsuit as a "publicity stunt," which is bold talk from an administration that treats the CDC like a Telegram channel for anti-vax influencers.
While states technically control school vaccine requirements, federal CDC guidance has always been the baseline. Now, blue states are forming their own vaccine alliances like it’s a post-apocalyptic spin-off series where the federal government is the virus. The Trump–RFK Jr health doctrine is simple: dismantle expertise, politicize science, and then sneer when states sue to stop you from turning kindergarten into a petri dish.
#anti-science#healthcare#killing-democracy
trump fires the cdc, accidentally creates a resistance cdc
Abby Tighe, former CDC staffer, current member of the underground railroad for facts.
The Trump administration has discovered an innovative new public-health strategy: fire more than 4,000 CDC employees, gut a third of the agency, and then act surprised when disease, addiction, and lead poisoning don’t politely go away. Abby Tighe and hundreds of other staffers got Valentine’s Day breakup emails from the government, because nothing says we value your expertise like a form letter telling you you’re fired by an administration that thinks Robert F Kennedy is a health secretary and not a Facebook comments section in human form.
Instead of quietly disappearing, the fired staff built a mutual aid network called "Fired But Fighting" and then rebranded into the far more Capitol-friendly National Public Health Coalition, after Jerome Adams — yes, Trump’s first-term surgeon general turned public-health conscience — gently explained that Republicans get hives when they see the word "fighting" unless it’s followed by "drag queen story hour." Now these ex-CDC pros are running a "CDC Data Project" to track the administration’s budget cuts, lobbying Congress with actual evidence, and tipping off reporters when, say, Milwaukee discovers its entire childhood lead prevention program has been deleted like an inconvenient tweet. Only after public embarrassment did the administration scramble to reinstall the team, proving that the only contagion they care about controlling is bad headlines.
What’s emerging is a "shadow CDC" made up of fired civil servants, medical associations, and academic institutions trying to do the job the real CDC used to do before it was converted into a vibes-based wellness ministry. While Trump and RFK Jr treat public health like a culture-war prop, the people who used to protect Americans from outbreaks, addiction, and environmental hazards are now doing it from the outside, unpaid and unfunded, because someone has to. We’ve reached the part of the movie where the scientists go underground to keep working while the government insists gravity is woke.
#anti-science#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
trump declares energy emergency, waives kids’ brains
Trump-era EPA officials standing proudly in front of a coal plant, explaining that the real hazard is regulatory overreach, not the visible cloud of brain-damaging neurotoxins behind them.
The Trump EPA has decided that mercury — a neurotoxin that harms babies’ brain development — is just another pesky regulation standing between America and the God-given right to run 40-year-old coal plants so AI servers can keep hallucinating cat photos. At an event in Kentucky (of course), the administration announced it will roll back Biden-era Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that were set to slash mercury pollution by 70% and toxic metals like nickel, arsenic, and lead by two-thirds. Health benefits through 2037 were estimated at $420m, but the EPA now claims the old 2012 rule is good enough and anything more is just too expensive for the poor, struggling utility companies.
This isn’t a one-off dumb idea; it’s a coordinated campaign of policy arson. Trump previously declared an “energy emergency” so he could keep decrepit coal plants open and exempt them from key air rules, then literally invited coal plants to email the government for two-year get-out-of-MATS-free cards — 68 plants happily signed up to keep spewing neurotoxins. Last week, the EPA helpfully repealed the “endangerment finding” that gave it authority to regulate greenhouse gases at all, and the White House ordered the Pentagon to buy coal power like it’s war bonds for black lung. All this to prop up an industry that now supplies less than 20% of U.S. electricity, but 100% of the administration’s nostalgia for when men were men and air was chunky.
So yes, coal plants remain among the largest sources of mercury, lead, arsenic, acid gases, benzene, formaldehyde, and dioxins — but on the bright side, some aging coal executives might squeeze out a few more quarters of profit before the planet finishes baking. The message from Trump’s EPA is clear: if you’re a fetus, a kid, or someone living downwind of a plant, your health is a rounding error in the great crusade to keep obsolete coal burners on life support for the glory of AI and campaign donors.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
trump cures science by killing all the scientists
Scientists rally in DC to beg the government not to defund the people trying to stop superbugs from killing everyone, which the administration finds very unreasonable.
The Trump administration looked at superbugs killing tens of thousands of Americans a year and decided the real threat was … NIH postdocs with pipettes. So billions vanish from research budgets, nearly 8,000 grants are torched at NIH and NSF, over 1,000 NIH staff are fired, and there's a hiring freeze so total that early-career scientists can't even apply to start labs. If bacteria could vote, this would be their Super PAC.
The federal government has now managed to lose more than 10,000 STEM PhDs from its workforce in a single year, with departures outpacing new hires 11 to 1. Labs are choosing between paying extortion-level maintenance fees or just turning off the machines and hoping antibiotic resistance takes a sabbatical. Young researchers like Ian Morgan are unionizing under the UAW just to slow the demolition of American science, while Trump & Co. proudly convert the world's leading biomedical engine into a very expensive mausoleum. America used to export vaccines and breakthroughs; under Trump, it exports its scientists and imports drug-resistant infections. Mission accomplished.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
rfk jr discovers fda is supposed to approve vaccines, briefly panics
RFK Jr and Marty Makary bravely shielding America’s immune systems from the dangers of modern medicine.
After spending a week LARPing as the Department of Essential Oils, the FDA has abruptly remembered that its job is to, checks notes, review vaccines. The agency has now reversed course and agreed to consider Moderna’s mRNA-based flu shot after initially refusing to even look at the application — a snub that set off alarms across the medical community and delighted the "Make America Healthy Again" anti-vax fan club.
The original rejection landed right after Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr — yes, the guy whose brand is yelling about vaccines on podcasts — helped kill a $500m federal contract for developing mRNA vaccines against bird flu and other nasty strains. FDA commissioner Dr Marty Makary dutifully claimed Moderna just didn’t follow guidance, while a senior FDA official called the trial a “brazen failure” at a press conference, because nothing says sober, science-based regulation like talk-radio adjectives.
Now, under heavy fire from health experts who see this as part of Trumpworld’s broader anti-vaccine crusade, the FDA has agreed to review Moderna’s updated filing, with a target decision date of 5 August. If approved, seniors might get access to a new flu shot before next season — assuming the administration doesn’t decide that preventing disease is too "woke" and replace the vaccine with a Maha-branded immunity prayer candle instead.
#anti-science#healthcare#killing-democracy
epa discovers new science: pollution not dangerous if you close your eyes
Lee Zeldin’s EPA hard at work redefining ‘endangerment’ as ‘excellent for quarterly earnings.’
The Trump EPA, now apparently sponsored by the fossil fuel lobby’s wish list, has revoked the landmark "endangerment finding" — the legal backbone that let the government treat climate pollution as something other than a patriotic air freshener. This finding, on the books since 2009, is what allowed EPA to regulate heat‑trapping emissions from cars, power plants, and other industrial smokestacks masquerading as job creators. Administrator Lee Zeldin dutifully yanked it so Trump could brag that he’d just pulled off “the single largest deregulatory action in American history,” which is one way to describe torching the fire alarm while the house is already burning.
More than a dozen health and environmental groups — including the American Lung Association, American Public Health Association, NRDC, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, and Union of Concerned Scientists — have now hauled Zeldin and the agency into the DC Circuit, pointing out that this stunt is both a "complete dereliction" of EPA’s mission and wildly unlawful under the Clean Air Act. The administration’s defense so far is a mix of "climate science is fake" and "regulation hurts donors"; an EPA spokesperson insisted they’re just "following the law" and ending "bogus overreach" by "agenda-driven climate zealots" — otherwise known as doctors, scientists, and people who like breathing.
Asked about concerns that dismantling the core legal finding on climate might affect public health, Trump helpfully clarified: "don’t worry about it because it has nothing to do with public health." Bold strategy: argue that a determination literally called an endangerment finding is unrelated to danger. As courts prepare to decide whether the executive branch can simply declare science illegal and call it a day, the rest of the country gets a front-row seat to the new governing philosophy: if reality is inconvenient for industry, the EPA will just regulate reality instead.
#anti-science#killing-democracy#lawlessness
rfk jr. promises to protect kids, protects measles instead
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. raises his hand to swear he supports vaccines, then immediately treats that oath like a CDC guideline under his tenure: optional and subject to deletion.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got the Health and Human Services job by swearing up and down to the Senate that he totally loves vaccines, supports the childhood schedule, and would keep the CDC’s expert panel and recommendations intact. Sen. Bill Cassidy even vouched for him on the floor, assuring everyone that RFK Jr. would maintain the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommendations “without changes.” So naturally, once confirmed, Kennedy did what every Trump-world appointee does: he fired the entire vaccine advisory panel and replaced them with fellow anti-vaxx cranks, then watched as the recommendations were promptly shredded.
Under Kennedy’s new, improved, and scientifically downgraded regime, the CDC has now pulled universal recommendations for seven childhood vaccines — RSV, meningococcal, flu, COVID-19, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and rotavirus. These are the shots that have prevented thousands of deaths and millions of illnesses, but the White House sent over a memo to "cull" the schedule and RFK Jr. dutifully obliged. Sen. Elizabeth Warren warned during confirmation that Kennedy could "kill off access to vaccines and make millions" from the resulting lawsuits. Trump’s HHS secretary appears to be testing that theory in real time, turning federal health policy into a live-fire experiment in how fast you can roll back modern medicine before the outbreaks start.
#anti-science#healthcare#killing-democracy
