The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.