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
trump’s fda heroically protects americans from…better flu vaccines
FDA officials bravely shielding Americans from the terrifying threat of improved medicine.
The Trump administration has discovered a bold new frontier in public health: if you can’t kill vaccines outright, just quietly make it impossible to approve new ones. The FDA has refused to even review Moderna’s application for a new mRNA flu shot – a vaccine that produced stronger antibody responses and no safety concerns – because the trials compared it to standard flu shots instead of the suddenly preferred high-risk formulas. Small problem: for people under 65, that high-dose option is not the standard of care. So the agency’s excuse is not just flimsy, it’s factually wrong. Science has been replaced with vibes.
To really sell the farce, the refusal-to-file letter was personally signed by Vinay Prasad, the Trump-appointed head of the FDA’s biologics division, even though this kind of bureaucratic kneecapping is usually done by the review team. No formal rules have changed, but a leaked email shows Prasad promising to “revise” the flu vaccine framework, while HHS has already downgraded routine flu shots for kids to a “shared clinical decision-making” maybe-kinda-sorta recommendation – all without consulting outside experts. The EU, Canada, and Australia are reviewing the same vaccine like normal countries, while the US moves toward a new standard of care: politics first, medicine eventually, if the base allows it.
The message to vaccine makers is clear: invest years and millions into R&D, run trials the FDA helped design, show your product is safe and more effective, and then watch Trump’s health bureaucracy slam the door in your face because it’s busy auditioning for a Tucker Carlson segment. The administration isn’t just undermining public health; it’s methodically turning vaccine approval into a partisan loyalty test, with Americans’ immune systems as collateral damage.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
austria launches refugee program for scientists fleeing american freedom
Brave patriots protest as the Trump administration heroically defends America from the menace of… education and research funding.
America used to run brain drains on other countries; now Trump has managed the speedrun where we are the failed state people escape from to keep doing science. Austria is rolling out the welcome mat for US academics who would prefer their research not be vetted by a Turning Point USA intern with a "no pronouns in my lab" tattoo. Grants at NIH and NSF get yanked midstream if they smell even faintly of race, gender, or reality, so researchers are packing up their pipettes and fleeing to Vienna where the government’s big ideological demand is: "please do actual science".
While Trump and his Department of Grievance Enforcement convert federal research into a taxpayer-funded PragerU syllabus, Austria, France, and Canada are offering scientific asylum like it’s the 1930s and the US is the place you transit through, not the place you stay. Historians of fascism are literally being recruited out of Yale to Toronto, because apparently studying fascism in Trump’s America now requires hazard pay. Meanwhile, foreign-born grad students who criticize US support for Israel or support trans rights get arrested, threatened with deportation, and used as campaign props, then watch masked federal agents scoop up immigrants and citizens off the street for the full authoritarian ambiance.
Vienna is openly thanking Trump for the "brain gain" while the US government methodically shreds its own status as a scientific powerhouse in under six months — a bipartisan, 70‑year investment immolated so Donald can stop hearing the word "equity" in grant abstracts. Austria is marketing itself as a "stable democracy" where research isn’t forced through a Fox News chyron generator, and American academics are suddenly asking whether maybe the country that once needed the Marshall Plan is now the one bailing us out.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
make america wheeze again
Lee Zeldin, RFK Jr., and Linda McMahon sit together, presumably brainstorming exciting new ways to brand deregulation as a wellness program.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is out here promising to “Make America Healthy Again” while Trump’s EPA, under Lee Zeldin, is busy turning the country into a live-action asthma study. The health and human services department pledges to fix our food, air, water, soil, and medicine; the EPA responds by ripping up pollution rules, handing out waivers to toxic emitters, and giving oil, gas, and chemical companies a big sloppy regulatory kiss. Childhood cancers, heart disease, asthma, autism, ADHD? Don’t worry, the administration is bravely tackling them by making sure kids breathe more mercury, benzene, and particulate matter.
An EPA spokesperson called a Center for American Progress report on all this “fake news” and insisted the agency is in “lock-step” with the MAHA agenda. Which, depressingly, is true if the agenda is actually maximizing shareholder value for polluters. Zeldin’s EPA is moving to repeal strengthened mercury and air toxics standards, delay methane rules so the fossil fuel industry can keep belching away, narrow risk assessments so fewer chemicals count as dangerous, and even roll back the 2009 endangerment finding — the legal backbone of federal climate regulation — though that last bit is reportedly so shoddy it might not survive a court.
While experts say the U.S. needs far deeper emissions cuts, the EPA is bragging that America’s air is the “cleanest in decades” and that CO₂ emissions might drop a smidge, as if that cancels out dismantling the safeguards that actually keep kids from getting sick. The agency has even invited polluters to apply for air emission exemptions and two-year waivers from toxic standards specifically designed to protect children and communities. So yes, MAHA is technically on track — just not for the people breathing the air. For the industries selling it back to us in a can.
#anti-science#healthcare#forever-grifting
trump takes a chainsaw to science, hits federal courts instead
NWS launches another weather balloon to see if facts can still reach the upper atmosphere without prior approval from a Trump political appointee.
The Trump administration spent the last year trying to turn American science into a partisan loyalty program. They gutted thousands of jobs at NASA, NOAA and other agencies, tried to kneecap elite universities over trumped-up antisemitism crusades, yanked grants that smelled like "DEI" and proposed hacking NIH funding by more than 40%. For dessert, they tried to blow up the entire post–World War II model of federally funded university research by capping "indirect costs" — you know, frivolous luxuries like buildings, electricity and lab equipment.
The plan was simple: starve the research you don’t like, then call it fiscal responsibility. Instead, an alphabet soup of people who can read the Constitution — ACLU, AAAS, APHA, AAU — dragged the administration into court and won key rulings blocking the indirect cost cap and forcing NIH to restart grant reviews it had frozen in its little ideological temper tantrum. Meanwhile, Congress looked at Trump’s slash-and-burn budget and said, absolutely not, keeping funding roughly flat and even giving NIH a modest bump.
Of course, "not as bad as Trump wanted" still means NOAA and NASA lost thousands of employees, NIH leadership got purged, climate reports were quietly buried and the National Weather Service is flying fewer weather balloons because apparently forecasting storms is woke now. The White House, naturally, praised the final bill as "fiscally responsible" while courts and Congress shoveled billions of dollars back into the science it tried to suffocate. American research is "enduring as best it can" — which is Washington-speak for "survived an Elon-and-Donald science policy cosplay session by hiding behind the judiciary."
#anti-science#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump administration unveils coalie, the black lung death greeter
Donald Trump and Doug Burgum, moments before deciding that what coal really needs isn’t regulation or cleanup funds, but a cursed cartoon hype man.
The Trump administration has apparently decided that if you can’t make coal clean, you can at least make it creepy. Interior secretary Doug Burgum debuted "Coalie," a cartoon lump of coal in yellow mining gear with huge AI-anime eyes, as the new "spokesperson" for Trump’s "American Energy Dominance Agenda." Yes, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement — the agency that’s supposed to regulate coal mines and clean up their mess — now has a mascot whose job is to sell the very industry it’s meant to police. Regulatory capture, but make it kawaii.
OSMRE’s website features Coalie cheerfully posing with what looks like AI-generated Stepford families, winking from conference tables, and proudly showing off an abandoned coal mine that’s been transformed into a pastoral picnic spot — presumably located just out of frame from the toxic runoff and collapsing mine shafts. Meanwhile, Trump is still insisting on the phrase "clean, beautiful coal" while backing it up with an executive order to revive coal, adding it to a list of "critical" minerals, halting plant closures, and shredding environmental rules that mildly inconvenienced industry donors.
Out in the non-cartoon world, coal remains the dirtiest fossil fuel, a major driver of the climate crisis, and a reliable source of deadly air pollution. Coal miners are still getting black lung while the administration moves to roll back their safety protections and Republicans in Congress prepare to rip $500 million out of the fund that cleans up abandoned mines. Activists like Junior Walk, who actually live with the fallout of mountaintop removal and poisoned communities, describe Coalie as "sick" and haunting — a smiling, AI-generated demon hovering over a real-time mass extinction event. The message from Trump’s Interior Department is clear: we will give you fewer protections, dirtier air, and gutted cleanup funds, but don’t worry — there’s a mascot now.
#anti-science#forever-grifting
trump's health department discovers the fun of live human experiments
RFK Jr and his vaccine advisory team bravely recreating the 1920s so we can finally settle the question: was polio really that bad, or just bad vibes and poor sanitation?
Robert F Kennedy Jr is running HHS and has decided the best way to prove he was always right about vaccines is to, checks notes, let measles and polio come back and see what happens. His handpicked chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), Kirk Milhoan, is now "reconsidering" all vaccine recommendations and musing on podcasts about how school vaccine requirements are basically "medical battery"—because nothing says "evidence-based public health" like turning a 60-year-old expert committee into a Facebook comments section.
As measles cases spike—416 in the first three weeks of 2026 after the worst year in three decades—Milhoan cheerfully describes it as a "real-world experience" to measure hospitalizations and deaths among unvaccinated kids. Public health experts call this "so dangerous as to approach criminality"; the Trump administration calls it "medical freedom". In other words, your child is now a data point in RFK Jr’s giant natural experiment in how fast we can reverse a century of progress.
To sell this, Milhoan pretends that making recommendations is "authoritarian" and that CDC "has to basically canonize" whatever ACIP says, which is not how any of this works. States actually set school vaccine rules through long, boring, evidence-based processes—at least they did, before Republicans and anti-vax crusaders started gleefully "decoupling" from federal guidance. So now we have a federal vaccines committee that thinks recommending vaccines is tyranny, state lawmakers chasing conspiracy clout, and a measles outbreak being treated as a teaching moment. But sure, tell us more about how masks were the real authoritarian overreach.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
trump turns epa into the environmental pollution agency
A refinery flare stack in New Jersey bravely exercising its newfound freedom to dump more crap into the air, courtesy of the Trump EPA’s ‘pro-life except for lungs’ agenda.
In his triumphant return to the Oval Office, Donald Trump has decided that if you can’t repeal the laws of physics, you can at least pretend they’re optional. His EPA has launched 66 separate actions to kneecap environmental protections in a single year—because nothing says "core mission of protecting human health" like handing out pollution exemptions via email to coal plants and chemical factories.
Former EPA officials describe it as a “war on all fronts” and an attempt to leave only a symbolic husk of the agency. Mission accomplished: the EPA is now openly functioning as the Environmental Pollution Agency, where the main innovation is stopping the calculation of the monetary value of human lives saved and only tallying what regulations cost companies. In other words, if you die from fine particulate matter or ozone, that’s not a "cost" anymore—just a patriotic donation to corporate profits.
Trump’s team is shutting down clean air advisory committees, offering two-year get-out-of-the-Clean-Air-Act-free cards to some of the most toxic facilities in the country, and then insisting America’s air is "the cleanest it’s been in decades" as they rip out the measuring tools. It’s regulatory policy by gaslighting: gut enforcement, erase the science, declare victory. But sure, tell us more about how it’s the "climate zealots" who don’t care about people.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
trump discovers weather, declares climate science illegal
Trump, bravely owning the libs by arguing that if it’s cold in January, 150 years of climate science is canceled.
Donald Trump saw a massive winter storm barreling across half the country and decided it was the perfect time to log on to Truth Social and yell: “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???” Because nothing says serious national leadership like confusing the weather outside your window with global climate trends that every major scientific body on Earth has been screaming about for decades.
Scientists, who tragically still think facts matter, point out that this very storm is linked to a disrupted polar vortex and an Arctic that’s heating up to four times faster than the rest of the planet. In other words, the thing Trump is using to mock climate science is being made worse by the climate crisis he insists is a hoax. Winters in the US are warming faster than other seasons, cold snaps are getting shorter, record hot days are crushing cold ones, glaciers are disappearing, ski resorts are dying—but sure, one big blizzard totally cancels out physics, decades of data, and basic literacy.
So while 230 million Americans brace for freezing temperatures, icy roads, and power outages, the guy who was president and wants the job back is publicly insisting that reality doesn’t exist if it’s snowing. Fossil fuels keep burning, the planet keeps heating, and Trump keeps doing what he does best: weaponizing full-stupid anti-science nonsense to give polluters cover, because nothing screams “America First” like making sure your grandkids inherit a climate that wants them dead.
#anti-science#full-stupid
trump turns cdc into fox news, ob‑gyns forced to be the adults
Steven Fleischman, apparently the last guy in Washington still reading actual medical studies instead of Trump’s Truth Social feed.
The Trump administration has finally done it: they’ve made OB‑GYNs tell patients, “Yeah, maybe don’t trust the CDC.” Because nothing says functioning democracy like turning the nation’s top public health agency into a crank Facebook group and forcing the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) to become the resistance.
Trump’s “guerrilla war on science” now includes casually suggesting Tylenol in pregnancy causes autism, fearmongering about antidepressants, and getting the CDC to pull Covid vaccine recommendations for pregnant women — all without credible evidence, but with lots of vibes and culture-war talk. ACOG’s president Steven Fleischman is left publicly explaining that, no, the data still says vaccines and SSRIs save moms’ lives, and yes, it’s very bad when the government just makes stuff up about medicine.
Meanwhile, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — because of course it has that name — is set to strip insurance from an estimated 10 million people and push hundreds of hospitals toward cuts or closure. The administration is also dangling federal money to bully institutions into dropping DEI and gender‑affirming care, with marquee hospitals and elite universities quietly cutting services and writing checks to Trump’s government like it’s a protection racket. ACOG, to its credit, has told Trump to keep his blood money, rejecting federal funding outright so they can keep doing research that isn’t pre-approved by Steve Bannon’s Telegram channel.
In other words: major medical institutions are folding, the federal health apparatus is being turned into a political weapon, and the people trying to deliver babies safely now have to run a parallel truth infrastructure just to counter their own government. But sure, tell us again how this is all about “protecting women and children.”
#anti-science#healthcare#killing-democracy
rfk jr ends war on saturated fat, opens new front against the amazon
RFK Jr’s revolutionary new food pyramid, scientifically optimized to maximize saturated fat, methane emissions, and donor satisfaction.
The Trump administration’s health department has released a new "inverted" food pyramid that looks less like nutrition guidance and more like a Golden Corral vision board. Under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the official US dietary guidelines now urge Americans to eat way more meat and dairy, nearly doubling protein intake and proudly "ending the war on saturated fats"—because nothing says "public health" like state-sponsored clogged arteries and a side of methane.
Experts point out that even a 25% bump in meat-based protein would require about 100 million extra acres of agricultural land—roughly the size of California—plus hundreds of millions of tons of additional climate pollution. That land has to come from somewhere, which in practice means more forests razed, more pressure on the Amazon, and more rivers and groundwater marinated in manure, hormones, and nitrates. In other words, the administration has managed to turn the food pyramid into a deforestation plan.
The fun twist: RFK Jr himself used to warn that factory meat production was a bigger threat than Osama bin Laden and had "polluted thousands of miles" of rivers and "sickened and killed thousands" of Americans. Now, as Trump’s health secretary, he’s ignoring an independent scientific panel that recommended emphasizing plant-based proteins and instead is boosting the very industry he once called an environmental menace. So the new message from the guy who used to sue polluters is: eat more beef, burn more forests, and don’t worry, the planet was overrated anyway.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
trump cures autism (by terrifying pregnant women about tylenol)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explains cutting-edge fetal medicine to Donald Trump, who nods along like a man who just discovered the word ‘acetaminophen’ this week.
Donald Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told pregnant women to "fight like hell" not to take Tylenol, because nothing says sound medical practice like a twice-impeached game show host and America’s most famous antivax crank freelancing as fetal medicine experts. They loudly implied a link between acetaminophen and autism that, at the time, wasn’t backed by strong evidence. Actual scientists then did what this administration treats as a hate crime: a rigorous, large, gold-standard evidence review. Their conclusion? No link between Tylenol use in pregnancy and autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability.
The researchers specifically said they launched the review to clean up the confusion and panic caused by Trump’s statements, which had pregnant women flooding clinics with calls because they were suddenly afraid to treat fevers — which actually do endanger mothers and babies. After sifting thousands of studies, tossing the junk, and focusing on high-quality data (including sibling comparison studies), they landed on the same answer every time: acetaminophen doesn’t cause the neurodevelopmental disorders Trump and RFK Jr. have been fear-mongering about. In other words, the science is fine. The politics are the disease.
Naturally, the Trump HHS response was to accuse the Lancet team of bias and "engineering" the result by insisting on basic scientific standards, which is now apparently suspicious behavior in Trump’s America. They clung to an older, thinner review they liked better because it supported their narrative, while ignoring the far more comprehensive analysis that demolished it. Trump, undeterred, is still on Truth Social warning pregnant women about Tylenol like it’s asbestos in a bottle, while the FDA’s own written advisory quietly admits acetaminophen remains the safest OTC option and calls the supposed link an "ongoing area of scientific debate" that autism researchers now say is basically settled. But sure, let’s keep rewriting federal health guidance around whatever Donald Trump thinks he heard on a podcast.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
trump tries to defund the weather, congress grudgingly chooses reality
Trump stares at a weather map he tried to defund, while Congress begrudgingly pays for the satellites that prove him wrong.
Congress just told the Trump White House that, no, we actually do like knowing when hurricanes are coming. In an 82-15 vote in the Senate and a 397-28 vote in the House, lawmakers passed a spending bill that gives billions more to NOAA, NASA, and the National Science Foundation than Trump asked for. The administration wanted to slash NSF by 57%, cut NASA’s science budget almost in half, and take a chainsaw to NOAA — including the National Weather Service — because nothing says "energy dominance" like flying blind into the next climate disaster.
Instead, Congress decided to preserve basic civilization and even boost a few programs Trump tried to kill outright, like NOAA’s satellite program and staffing for the National Weather Service — the same service the administration has been hollowing out with buyouts and firings. Sen. Patty Murray bragged that they rejected Trump’s plan to "devastate NOAA and climate research," while Sen. Susan Collins did her usual "I’m very concerned" routine but this time attached it to actually restoring funding.
The bill also blocks the administration’s little side hustle of quietly capping "indirect research costs" — you know, boring items like equipment, operations, and personnel that make science physically possible. And in the most on-brand twist, the White House is now pretending this is a win for them too, with OMB saying Trump’s advisors would recommend he sign it because it still reduces overall spending and allegedly helps with "energy dominance." In other words: Trump tried to kneecap science, Congress said "absolutely not," and now the White House is claiming credit for not getting everything it wanted. But sure, stable genius.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
trump’s epa solves air pollution by deleting the column where people die
EPA economists heroically protect industry from the crippling burden of acknowledging that dead people are a cost.
The Trump EPA has discovered a bold new way to make deadly air pollution look less bad: just stop counting the money and lives saved by rules that reduce it. The agency announced it will no longer monetize the health benefits of curbing fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone, but will still carefully tally the costs to industry—because nothing says “protecting human health” like only counting the part where corporations have to spend money.
Under Biden, EPA estimated up to 4,500 premature deaths prevented and a 77-to-1 health benefit payoff for every dollar spent cutting soot. Under Trump’s Lee Zeldin–run EPA, those benefits are now too “uncertain” to count, but the asthma attacks, heart disease, and premature deaths are still very real. Environmental and health groups are calling the move “reckless, dangerous and illegal,” which in this administration is less a criticism and more of a mission statement.
To showcase this new math, EPA rolled out a weaker rule for nitrogen oxide pollution from gas-burning turbines—actually loosening protections that have been in place for two decades for some plants—and then proudly declined to estimate the economic value of the health benefits it’s sacrificing. In other words, the agency created to stop companies from poisoning people is now arguing that the problem isn’t the pollution, it’s the spreadsheets that make it look bad. But sure, they “absolutely remain committed” to protecting human health—just not in any way you can measure, compare, or use to stop them.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
trump deregulates your lunch, hopes you survive
FDA headquarters, where America once regulated food safety instead of crowdsourcing it to listeria.
The Trump administration has discovered a bold new frontier in deregulation: your dinner plate. After firing and driving out thousands of FDA staff and hacking away at CDC surveillance, former agency scientists are now warning that food safety lapses are basically the new house special. We already got a preview course in 2025, when a listeria outbreak tied to prepared pasta meals killed six people and sickened 27 across 18 states — because nothing says "pro-life" like turning fettuccine alfredo into Russian roulette.
Foreign and domestic food inspections have cratered to historic lows, CDC’s FoodNet surveillance has been gutted from tracking eight pathogens down to two, and food recalls are on the rise. Inside the agencies, the professionals who used to quietly keep people from dying are being replaced by chaos, temps, and podcasts: policy rolled out via media appearances instead of formal guidance and public comment. Meanwhile, Trump’s budget hatchet-man Russell Vought brags that "we want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected", while rightwing media calls them "worthless parasites" — a bold take about the people standing between you and botulism.
At the top of this food safety Jenga tower, Trump installed FDA chief Martin Makary and HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, both of whom treat conspiracy theories like they’re peer-reviewed science. Makary is out pushing HIV and Lyme lab-leak musings on podcasts, RFK Jr is busy mainstreaming chemtrail brainworms, and veteran FDA leaders are either pushed out or fleeing because scientific integrity has been torched. The official line from HHS: nothing to see here, inspectors weren’t impacted, everything is fine. In other words: the US just voluntarily gave up being a world leader in public health so Trump and RFK Jr could own the libs by making your lunch less regulated than a Telegram group.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
trump and rfk jr heroically protect babies from… not getting hospitalized
Robert F Kennedy Jr heroically saving babies from effective medicine so they can experience the full, authentic American emergency room.
The Trump administration, led on health policy by noted vaccine expert Robert F Kennedy Jr, has decided that since RSV shots dramatically reduce infant hospitalizations, the obvious move is to restrict them. Because nothing says "pro-life" like deliberately making it harder for babies to breathe. Previously recommended for all infants, RSV protection is now limited to "high-risk" babies—an inspired choice in a country where only about a third of pregnant people get the maternal shot and universal healthcare is a Republican ghost story.
Meanwhile, four new JAMA studies show the RSV shots are very effective and very safe: up to 81% reduction in hospitalizations, protection against other lower-respiratory infections, and no safety signal in millions of infants. Doctors who remember winters of hospitals overflowing with gasping toddlers are, strangely, not thrilled about bringing that back for the sake of RFK Jr’s brand and Tracy Beth Høeg’s statistical fan fiction. Høeg, now running the FDA’s drug regulation, is hyping a non–statistically significant blip in trial deaths (from things like dehydration) as a pretext for an FDA "investigation" that magically lines up with the political agenda.
Experts describe the decision as made "by political appointees without a scientific basis", which is a polite way of saying the nation’s vaccine policy is now being set by YouTube comments. The result: fragmentation, confusion, and clinics likely not stocking the shots even for high‑risk babies, right as RSV season ramps up. In other words, the administration is actively engineering a preventable surge in infant hospitalizations—and possibly deaths—while calling it "safety" and "parental choice". But sure, tell us more about how this is all about protecting children.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
trump epa to science: you had your turn, now die quietly
The Trump EPA, bravely defending Americans from the grave threat of updated carcinogen data.
The EPA once did a wild, radical thing called "reading science and updating rules accordingly." That’s how we got stricter limits on ethylene oxide after the agency figured out in 2016 that the stuff is about 30 times more carcinogenic than previously thought, causing lymphoma and breast cancer for the unlucky people living next to chemical plants and sterilizer facilities. In 2024, updated rules were set to slash cancer risk for tens of thousands of people — cutting the number of residents facing "unacceptable" cancer risks from 90,000 to 3,000. You know, actual lives saved.
Naturally, the chemical industry hated this. The American Chemistry Council and Louisiana Chemical Association suddenly discovered a deep, spiritual devotion to the "plain text" of the Clean Air Act, arguing that once EPA does its first risk review, that’s it — no do-overs, even if new data shows a chemical is way more lethal than anyone realized. In other words: we got our weak rule in 2003, you don’t get to fix it just because we’re poisoning half a million people.
Enter Trump’s EPA, which is now "reconsidering" whether the agency even has the legal authority to tighten hazardous air pollution standards after the first review. This is despite the Bush EPA saying it did have that authority, and even Trump’s own inspector general telling the agency to use its discretion to do new reviews when fresh science shows greater toxicity. But sure, when the choice is between updated cancer data and the profit margins of petrochemical giants, guess which one Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator and former oil and gas lobbyist Abigale Tardif is going to lean toward.
So the agency in charge of protecting people from hazardous air pollutants is flirting with the idea that it should stop considering new evidence that those pollutants are killing people. The EPA claims it’s still committed to the "gold standard of science" while quietly entertaining an interpretation of the law that would lock in outdated, industry-friendly rules forever. Because nothing says "clean air for all Americans" like deciding you’re legally not allowed to notice when the air is giving them cancer.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
administration discovers exciting new way to own the libs: childhood disease
RFK Jr patiently explaining that if we just believe hard enough, measles will respect parental choice.
The Trump–RFK Jr. dream team at HHS has decided the real problem with America isn't measles outbreaks or dead kids from flu – it's that children are getting too many life-saving vaccines. In the biggest rollback yet under longtime anti-vaccine crusader Robert F Kennedy Jr, the administration is slashing routine childhood vaccine recommendations from 17 jabs down to 11, because nothing says "pro-life" like making whooping cough a growth industry again.
Experts like Paul Offit and Peter Hotez, who have spent their careers trying to keep children alive, describe the move as a "systematic attempt" to erode public confidence in vaccines and ultimately make them unavailable. The plan: shove shots like flu, rotavirus, and RSV out of the core schedule, rebrand others as "shared clinical decision-making" so you need a gatekeeping doctor to get them, and saddle manufacturers with impossible demands like splitting MMR into separate shots while fearmongering about safe ingredients like aluminum adjuvants. Regulatory harassment as public health policy – what could go wrong?
This is all happening while the US teeters on the edge of losing its measles elimination status, sees the biggest measles outbreak in three decades, more tetanus cases than in over ten years, and a spike in pertussis deaths. Nearly 300 children died of flu last year, and RFK Jr responds by weakening flu shot recommendations in the middle of a severe flu season – a bold new strategy of "if we stop counting the corpses as preventable, the policy is working." Trump helpfully wrapped it in a December order to "align" with "peer, developed countries" – cherry-picking a Danish-style schedule while ignoring the part where those countries actually believe in vaccines and maintain high coverage.
In other words, the federal government is now officially in the business of turning settled public health into a culture war stunt. HHS tells parents these shots are maybe not such a big deal after all, making it more burdensome to vaccinate and easier to skip, and then waits for the inevitable outbreaks to prove that, yes, if you sabotage the system hard enough, you can make modern medicine look optional. But sure, tell us again how this is all about "science" and "best practices" while you reenact the 19th century in real time.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
