According to the New York Times, “More than 8,000 web pages across more than a dozen U.S. government websites have been taken down.
On February 2, 2025, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported the takedown of many public health data and informational sources:
No longer available on federal government Web sites:

• CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS),
• CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS)
• CDC AtlasPlus
• CDC HIV surveillance reports
• PEPFAR Data Dashboards
• Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) databases
• entire website for USAID
• foreignassistance.gov
• Area Health Resource Files
• Social Vulnerability Index
• Environmental Justice Index
• Health Disparities Among LQBTQ Youth,
• Interim Clinical Considerations for Use of Vaccine for Mpox Prevention,
• Fast Facts: HIV and Transgender People.

There are many more, see the KFF link below for full description. These resources may return, but there is no guarantee the data will be the same as before the pause as extensive revisions and editing are taking place to existing sources to comply with political changes that are not necessarily fact-based.

Dr. Katelyn Jetelina February 4, 2025 "Your Local Epidemiologist" newsletter:
After pushback, limited updates resumed:

• Allowed: H5N1 data, select partner updates on Ebola, weekly high-level respiratory illness updates, and FDA food recalls (though not actively communicated).
• Restricted: MMWR publication halted for the first time in 70 years, no routine disease surveillance updates (e.g., FluView), outbreak dashboards (measles, tuberculosis) frozen, and CDC staff barred from communicating with WHO or state health departments.

Scientists remain in limbo - unsure of who they can talk to, what they can say, or who is in charge. This lack of clarity is dangerous, especially during emerging threats.

Sources:

• A Look at Federal Health Data Taken Offline
• Elon Musk and DOGE are hacking the government
• Elon Musk May Have Your Social Security Number
• Removal of pages from CDC website brings confusion, dismay
• Thousands of U.S. Government Web Pages Have Been Taken Down Since Friday Sandi Bachom @sandibachom video-journalist

February 14, 2025 Part 1: Archived sources of federal government data and eliminated webpages.

According to my 2/7/2025 posting, I tried to give an overview of the federal government's information disarray that is impacting Public Health. While some HHS, CDC and FDA webpages have been reposted, per 2/11/2025 court order, the People's CDC Report newsletter notes:
The January 21 pause on public health communications has not yet been formally lifted. We can only expect that the administration is sanitizing and altering reports, censoring scientific consensus.

During the past couple of weeks I have been searching for other ways to access missing federal government webpages and uncovered other sources that may be useful for your work. Too much information for one posting, I have split the resources into two postings:
Part 1 posting (this week) includes alternative sources of federal government data and eliminated Webpages.
Part 2 posting (~next week): Specific public health program sources; new sources of health and public health data that you may find useful to support our data needs and analyses.

CDC datasets uploaded before January 28th, 2025
List of files you can download
Downloadable Torrent File

End of Term Web Archive (to the end of the Biden Administration)
All U.S. federal government websites are already archived by the End of Term Web Archive
Official website

Wikipedia-Explanation
Internet Archive blog post about the 2024 archive
GitHub

Links to archived versions of every CDC.gov page available pre-purge (15 parts)
Thanks to Dr. Angela Rasmussen @angie_rasmussen for posting links to the 15 parts on X that was saved by Charles Gaba @charles_gaba
CDC.gov archive index now available w/alphabetical drop-down menu
Dr. Angela Rasmussen's Threadreader's listing of the 15 parts
Dr. Angela Rasmussen's Threadreader's listing of the 15 parts PDF Format

Sources:

• All U.S. federal government websites are already archived by the End of Term Web Archive
• Judge orders HHS, CDC and FDA to restore deleted webpages with health information (2/11/2025)

February 21, 2025 Part 2: Sources of useful health and public health data

Note: 2/7, 2/14, 2/21 postings - permanent home on my U.S. Federal Government & Other National Statistics Sites webpage. Should be ready by 2/28/2025, at: https://www.bettycjung.net/Govstats.htm

Dr. Katelyn Jetelina: Data are back up on CDC website but with a banner

Doctors For America sued the administration after removing important health data and guidance from government health websites. The judge ruled in favor. Can we trust this data? I know columns were being rearranged and variables being renamed. It's possible data was messed up-either by accident or on purpose. Confirmation analysis needed to ensure the data integrity.

USAspending.gov USAspending is official open data source of federal spending: Contracts, grants, & loans.

AskJan Long Covid Accommodation and Compliance

Americans with Disabilities Act & Long Covid

County Health Rankings & Roadmaps (CHR&R) Summary data related to health, free & public.
2024 Measures
Health Data The annual data release provides a revealing snapshot of how health is influenced by where we live, learn, work, and play. The snapshots provide communities a starting point to investigate where to make change.
Data & Documentation Find national statistics, state-level data and technical documentation including changes to our measures, guidelines for comparing data across states, information about data years and sources and more.

Harvard Dataverse Academic free, online repository. Researchers can use site to share & upload data & access what other researchers shared

Internet Archive collection page https://archive.org/details/EndofTermWebCrawls - cut and paste the URL to access if the direct link doesn't work.

BlueSky Updates

Library of Congress Blog - End of Term Archive Information

National Archives Blog - End of Term Archive Information

World Health Organization - U.S. data

U.S. state health departments data sources Dr. Caitlin Rivers @caitlinrivers Google spreadsheet with links to all state health departments, all in one place.

Sources:

• As the Trump admin deletes online data, scientists and digital librarians rush to save it. The race is on to save public information about health and science before Trump makes it disappear
• Letter from a federal worker
• Preserving Public U.S. Federal data
• PRESS RELEASE: Doctors for America Sues Over Removal of Health Information From HHS, CDC, FDA Websites

February 28, 2025 Federal government climate change and transgender data have been compromised

CDC will stop processing transgender data

The CDC will no longer process transgender identity data to comply with Trump's executive orders. This will likely affect federal health surveillance systems: National HIV Behavioral Surveillance Among Transgender Women; Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. There is a major dearth of data on trans and nonbinary people in U.S.

USDA removed climate change data and online tools

A filed lawsuit regarding USDA Web site removal of climate change information. USDA's decision to purge climate change info from its websites harms organic farmers.
Trump repeatedly called climate change a "hoax" and abandoned US efforts to limit the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels causing climate change. There is overwhelming scientific consensus pollution from fossil fuels raise global average temperatures and driving more extreme weather.

Two online tools are no longer available
"Climate Risk Viewer" used to show impacts of climate change on rivers and water sheds, and how that might affect future water supplies.
"Farmer Helpline" to access funding for "climate-smart farming," loan program that supports reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

USDA's removal of all these resources violate 3 federal laws: Information Act (FOIA) that gives public the right to access key records from any federal agency, the Paperwork Reduction Act stipulating adequate notice before changing access to information, and Administrative Procedure Act that governs the way federal agencies develop regulations.

This posting will be added to https://www.bettycjung.net/Govstats.htm which now includes the previous 3 postings about changes to public health and related data on federal government websites.

Sources:

• 21 U.S. DOGE Service staffers resign over a refusal to 'jeopardize Americans' sensitive data,' letter says
• CDC will no longer process transgender data
• Donald Trump broke the law by removing climate change references from USDA websites, lawsuit alleges
• Federal Court Finds Firing of Probationary Federal Employees Illegal
• Federal technology staffers resign rather than help Musk and DOGE
• Judge orders Trump admin to rescind memo directing mass firing of federal workers

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March, 2025

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March 7, 2025 Federal government data issues

This will be my final weekly update about the changes to the availability of public health and health-related data of federal government websites, not because the changes have stopped, but because they will probably continue. So, I will, however, note changes at https://www.bettycjung.net/Govstats.htm

Sad to say, many sources have been compromised, and I am not sure how reliable the available data are. Email me at: bcjungmph@yahoo.com with suggested sources and data verification studies, and I will add them to the more permanent location on the govstats page. Thanks.

IRS's Internal Revenue Manual is missing pages

Internal Revenue Manual, which outlines its policies and procedures, which could prevent taxpayers from fully complying with their fine obligations.
Michael Kaercher, Deputy Director of the Tax Law Center at NYU Law notes that changes will not simply affect this tax season, but could have long-term effects on the work of the tax agency.

National Law Enforcement Accountability Database gone

The National Law Enforcement Accountability Database (NLEAD), a centralized repository of official records documenting instances of misconduct and commendations for federal law enforcement officers, was established under Executive Order 14074 and was deactivated by President Trump on January 20, 2025.

The Trump administration decommissioned the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database, which documented law enforcement misconduct across the country, according to the Citizens for Ethics.org, violates federal recordkeeping law.

Read NY Times editorial: The MAGA war on speech

Officials in Washington have spent the past month stripping federal websites of any hint of undesirable words and thoughts, disciplining news organizations that refuse to parrot the president's language and threatening to punish those who have voiced criticism of investigations and prosecutions.

More than 8,000 federal websites, in fact, have been taken down or altered to remove concepts derided by the MAGA movement. These include thousands of pages about vaccine research and S.T.D. prevention guidelines, efforts to prevent hate crimes, prevention of racial discrimination in drug trials and disbursement of federal grants and details of environmental policies to slow climate change.

Sources:

• How Mass Layoffs at the IRS Will Affect Tax Season
• National Law Enforcement Accountability Database, 2018-2023
• Shutting down the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database appears to violate records law
• The New York Times Editorial Board: The MAGA War on Speech

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Archivists Recreate Pre-Trump CDC Website, Are Hosting It in Europe March 9, 2025

As we have been following since the beginning of Trump's second term, websites across the entire federal government have been altered and taken offline under this administration's war on science, health, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Critical information promoting vaccines, HIV care, reproductive health options including abortion, and trans and gender confirmation healthcare have been purged from the CDC's live website under Trump. Disease surveillance data about bird flu and other concerns have either been delayed or have stopped being updated entirely. Some deleted pages across the government have at least temporarily been restored thanks to a court order, but the Trump administration has added a note rejecting "gender ideology" to some of them.

Restored CDC isn't going to have continuous updates on this type of healthcare and disease guidance, but it has brought back all of the critical data that was purged in an easy to use, easy to navigate, and fast website. Other critical archiving projects, including the End of Term Archive, have saved government websites more broadly, but many website archives are slow to use and difficult to navigate because things like interactive elements and internal linking can sometimes be wonky. Some archives require users to download files to navigate them on their own computers, for example. Archives on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine are a great public service, but depending on the snapshot, they can be slow to load and some elements may be broken. Using RestoredCDC.org, meanwhile, is like using any other website, and the team hopes that the pages will be indexed by Google so they will be easily discoverable on search engines.

"Therefore, we will re-build the links between the pages, to create a site that can be navigated the same way as the pre-January 21, 2025 CDC site," they wrote. "The only changes we will make on these pages is to add a header that indicates that this site is not a CDC website. Because of the complex navigation between pages, we will also include a button to report problems in this header. Our goal is to provide a mirror site that provides the same information and user experience as the previous CDC website."

"Our goal is to provide a resource that includes the information and data previously available," the team wrote. "We are committed to providing the previously available webpages and data, from before the potential tampering occurred. Our approach is to be as transparent as possible about our process. We plan to gather archival data and then remove CDC logos and branding, using GitHub to host our code to create the site."

Continuing Federal government data issues

Graphic source: https://gizmodo.com/here-are-some-images-the-pentagon-thought-were-too-woke-for-you-to-see-2000573226

Graphic source: https://apnews.com/article/dei-purge-images-pentagon-diversity-women-black-8efcfaec909954f4a24bad0d49c78074

Graphic source: https://apnews.com/article/dei-purge-images-pentagon-diversity-women-black-8efcfaec909954f4a24bad0d49c78074

War heroes and military firsts are among 26,000 images flagged for removal in Pentagon's DEI purge March 7, 2025

The purge could delete as many as 100,000 images or posts in total, when considering social media pages and other websites that are also being culled for DEI content.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had given the military until Wednesday to remove content that highlights diversity efforts in its ranks following President Donald Trump's executive order ending those programs across the federal government.

The vast majority of the Pentagon purge targets women and minorities, including notable milestones made in the military. And it also removes a large number of posts that mention various commemorative months - such as those for Black and Hispanic people and women.

In some cases, photos seemed to be flagged for removal simply because their file included the word "gay," including service members with that last name and an image of the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II.

He noted that Hegseth has declared that "DEI is dead" and that efforts to put one group ahead of another through DEI programs erodes camaraderie and threatens mission execution.

Yes, DOD removed pages about Native American Iwo Jima veteran Ira Hayes. In 1945, Hayes was one of six men famously photographed raising an American flag on Iwo Jima. 3/2025

'Most Transparent Administration in History' Is Shredding Documents and Ignoring FOIA. USAID ordered to destory classified records while DOGE has tried to operate in secret. 3/11/2025

Graphic source: https://gizmodo.com/most-transparent-administration-in-history-is-shredding-documents-and-ignoring-foia-2000574561

The shred and burn initiative may violate federal law. The American Foreign Service Association, a union that represents diplomats, warned that the destruction of documents may violate the Federal Records Act, which requires agencies to abide by certain document retention requirements. Under the law, printed documents are required to be saved in a digital format before being destroyed-and it's not clear that there has been any effort to digitize the documents that are getting put through the shredder or into the burn bags.

USAID isn't alone in its apparent efforts to obfuscate access to documents. DOGE, which is responsible in large part for gutting USAID, has been trying to operate in secrecy as much as possible. Elon Musk has thrown hissy fits over members of his staff being named in public-a thing that would be standard for basically any other government agency. And for the entirety of its operation thus far, DOGE has ignored Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by claiming that it is immune from the process by arguing that it is a 'presidential records entity' that serves as a shield against public disclosure.

Restoredcdc.org/www.cdc.gov/ Hosted by Europe

Federal agencies are still firing probationary employees—most recently the Navy 3/2025

How to Track the Flood of Bullshit Coming From Trump's White House 3/12/2025

Musk Watch/DOGETracker

Project 2025 Tracker

RIF watch: See which agencies are laying off federal workers. Here are the agencies where we have confirmed layoffs have taken or are about to take place. We will update as we learn more. 3/2025

Here are all the ways people are disappearing from government websites 3/19/2025

Fake CDC vaccine site linked to anti-vax nonprofit once headed by RFK 3/24/2025

Here Are Some Images the Pentagon Thought Were Too 'Woke' for You to See March 7, 2025

The DoD has purged 26,000 images from its public database as part of a "digital content refresh." The photo purge is the result of Donald Trump's executive order ordering the end of "radical and wasteful government DEI programs." After Trump signed the order, the Pentagon announced the purge of woke images from its databases and started removing stuff from the internet.

The goal, it said, was to take down all DEI-related imagery and articles on its various websites as part of a "digital content refresh" that more closely aligns with the Trump administration and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseht's views of the American military.The purge has been slipshod and imprecise. It's unclear why this picture of The Enola Gay was removed from an Air Force page, but I would guess it's because the URL ends in "deiatomic-exposure" and triggered an automatic system looking for the letters "DEI." As with so many other things in the Trump administration, the facts are slippery and seem to change moment to moment.

But the Pentagon has still removed a lot of content, mostly related to Black and female servicemembers and various diversity and inclusion initiatives. A 15-year-old article on the Air Force website about an all-female crew of AF support staff is gone. A lecture from a Tuskegee Airman about integration is gone. Photos of a multicultural celebration at a Marine Corps base are gone. The disappeared content is overwhelmingly stuff that featured women and non-white service members.

Much of the world, including U.S. citizens, view the American military as a group of bullies and thugs. The Pentagon has worked hard to shift that perception. The images and videos it is scrubbing from the internet are part of a concerted campaign to show America and the world that it was more than just killers. Trump and Hegseth have decided that's all the Pentagon is and all it can ever be.

Jackie Robinson's Army career wiped from military website in DEI purge. At least one website about Robinson, who trained as an officer and was assigned to a tank regiment during World War II, was reinstated Wednesday afternoon. 3/19/2025

Maya Angelou memoir, Holocaust book are among those pulled from Naval Academy library in DEI purge 4/4/2025

A fake CDC page went up then down this weekend (Stat Morning Rounds. March 24, 2025)

A website looking just like one run by the CDC, but featuring anti-vaccine propaganda, seemed to have been launched on Friday by a group formerly run by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The brazenness of the move was stunning, with the website using the CDC's official logo, as well as the same font, color scheme, and page layout as used by the agency's website. Anyone who stumbled across the faux page could have been forgiven for thinking the page was legitimate and left puzzled by the questions it raised about the safety of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, the chief target of vaccine opponents.

By Saturday evening, the site was dark. The New York Times reported that Kennedy had instructed the Children's Health Defense, which appeared to be responsible, to take it down. But questions remain about why the organization, which has not publicly claimed credit for the work, went to the effort involved in mounting the page, and why it appeared to think it could use the trademarks of a government agency. The Internet Archive captured images of the page on Friday and Saturday. - Helen Branswell

CDC Clone Site, Rife with False Vaccine Claims, Hosted by Group Previously Led by HHS Secretary. A CDC clone site with false vaccine claims is hosted by an NGO once led by the current HHS Secretary. With CDC logos, real social media links, and a near-identical design, it may violate federal laws. 3/22/2025

Imposter Uncovered

Graphic Source: https://infoepi.substack.com/p/cdc-clone-site-rife-with-false-vaccine

As the Trump administration purges web pages, this group is rushing to save them 3/23/2025

NASA Wipes Graphic Novels About Women Astronauts From Its Websites. The Trump administration's chilling effect on science agencies affects more than just funding. 3/30/2025

Signal Group Chat Transcription 3/26/2025

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April, 2025

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• Here is the entire transcript of messages from the Signal group chat just released by Jeffrey Goldberg and The Atlantic:
  byu/nnhuyhuy inFauxmoi

• (HHS RIF (Reduction in Force) running list 4/2025 - continuously updated
• The Homegrowns are next (April 16, 2025)
  Source: https://x.com/maddenifico/status/1975930002425483565

• 'Lab Leak,' a flashy page on the virus' origins, replaces government COVID sites 4/2025
• Experts Say Abrupt and 'Staggering' CDC Cuts Will Cost Lives 4/18/2025
• Trump Turns Covid.gov Into a Lab Leak Theory Fan Page. The president will never take responsibility for his failures in 2020. Gizmodo.com 4/18/2025
• Trump's War on Measurement Means Losing Data on Drug Use, Maternal Mortality, Climate Change and More 4/18/2025
• US to Stop Reporting Majority of Climate Emissions 4/2025
• FDA appears to be slow-walking vaccine approvals. The Covid vaccine from Novavax was expected to be approved earlier this month. Now, the FDA is requiring the company to complete a new clinical trial. April 28, 2025
• NCI Changes: May 8, 2025; May 14, 2025
  

  

• A VIEW FROM 100 DAYS: PUBLIC EXPECTATIONS ABOUT THE CHANGING PUBLIC HEALTH LANDSCAPE 4/2025
• Poll: Many Americans say they will lose trust in public health recommendations under federal leadership changes 4/29/2025
• Americans losing trust after public health leadership shakeups 4/29/2025
• FEMA-and the Nation's Disaster Safety Net-Gets Cut Adrift. As the Trump administration targets the Federal Emergency Management Agency for "reforms," states and communities lose the support they depend on to make it through climate-influenced disasters. 5/15/2025
• Comment Summary: Request for Public Input on Experiences with FEMA Disaster Responses (DHS-2025-0013) 5/2025
• Most books pulled from Naval Academy library are back on the shelves in latest DEI turn 5/21/2025
• Diseases are spreading. The CDC isn't warning the public like it was months ago 5/21/2025 NPR.org

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June, 2025

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• Organic Pet Food Regulations to be Cut Due to Deregulation Initiative. Organic Cat and Dog Food will be regulated "as livestock feed' instead of "pet food". 6/3/2025

  Significantly, the December 2024 organic pet food rule assured pet owners that slaughter by-products (used in organic pet foods) were sourced from inspected and passed animals. Quoting USDA:
  "The term organic slaughter by-products refers to the parts of organic animals that humans do not typically eat, such as offal, gristle, and bone. It does not refer to substandard animal products from diseased animals, uninspected animals, condemned animals, or animals deemed unfit for human consumption."

  The USDA itself admitted that the rules approved in December 2024 resolved "problems by, first, establishing that organic pet food is regulated as a processed product rather than as livestock feed." But, if these regulations are cut – organic pet food will again be faced with problems. Organic pet food will return to being regulated as livestock feed. If these regulations are cut, there would be nothing in place to prevent an organic feed grade pet food from sourcing "substandard animal products from diseased animals, uninspected animals, condemned animals, or animals deemed unfit for human consumption."

• RIP to These NASA X Accounts, as U.S. Science Falls Off a Cliff. While some welcome the change, other experts warn that this move could make it even harder to access scientific information in Trump's America. 6/11/2025
• Elon Musk's Demolition Crew 6/10/2025
• The DOGE 100: Musk Is Out, but More Than 100 of His Followers Remain to Implement Trump's Blueprint 6/10/2025
• 'Extremely disturbing and unethical': new rules allow VA doctors to refuse to treat Democrats, unmarried veterans Department of Veterans Affairs says the changes come in response to a Trump executive order 'defending women' 6/16/2025

  Until the recent changes, VA hospitals' bylaws said that medical staff could not discriminate against patients "on the basis of race, age, color, sex, religion, national origin, politics, marital status or disability in any employment matter". Now, several of those items - including "national origin," "politics" and "marital status" - have been removed from that list.

  Similarly, the bylaw on "decisions regarding medical staff membership" no longer forbids VA hospitals from discriminating against candidates for staff positions based on national origin, sexual orientation, marital status, membership in a labor organization or "lawful political party affiliation".

• CDC Data Project6/2025



The CDC Data Project was developed by Fired But Fighting, a network of former CDC employees, to summarize publicly available federal agency and budget data to show the impact of the proposed FY26 budget on efforts to help Americans live safer, healthier and longer lives. Take a moment to review the site, educate yourself on the budget cuts proposed to public health and share this with your contacts. This is a great resource for advocacy to support public health. (APHA)

• New signs at national parks and historic sites around Bay Area, NorCal drawing concerns: Here's why 6/17/2025
• New signs at incarceration camps raise historical erasure concerns 6/19/2025
• Vaccine RCT spreadsheet aims to show the data, dispel myths about vaccines 6/18/2025
• Vaccine RCT Spreadsheet 6/2025

Graphic Source: May 21, 2025 Your Local Epidemiologist Newsletter - Dr. Katelyn Jetelina


Graphic source: https://thesicktimes.org/2025/06/19/the-federal-government-is-restricting-covid-19-vaccine-access-heres-what-that-means-for-the-ongoing-pandemic-and-people-with-long-covid/

• The federal government is restricting COVID-19 vaccine access. Here's what that means for the ongoing pandemic and people with Long COVID. 6/19/2025

TEC Briefs TEC Briefs are focused, actionable documents that synthesize critical information on time-sensitive public health topics. They deliver multidisciplinary perspectives to public health leaders when rapid, evidence-based decision-making is essential. 6/2025

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July 2025

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The White House took down the nation's top climate report. You can still find it here 7/1/2025

Fifth National Climate Assessment 2023 7/1/2025. The NOAA IR serves as an archival repository of NOAA-published products including scientific findings, journal articles, guidelines, recommendations, or other information authored or co-authored by NOAA or funded partners. As a repository, the NOAA IR retains documents in their original published format to ensure public access to scientific information.

U.S. Global Change Research Program Releases Fifth National Climate Assessment. The Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) is the preeminent source of authoritative information on the risks, impacts, and responses to climate change in the United States. 7/1/2025

ATLAS of the 5th National Climate Assessment 7/2025

Nowcast Variant Reporting less frequent 7/2025

Bird Flu Human Cases Reporting - USDA HPAI reporting moved to USDA site; Monitoring and Testing reduced to monthly reporting

DOGE keeps gaining access to sensitive data. Now, it can cut off billions to farmers 7/11/2025

NASA Website Will Not Provide Previous National Climate Reports. An agency spokeswoman had initially stated that NASA would retain earlier assessments online for continuity. 7/13/2025

Employees at the nation's consumer financial watchdog say it's become toothless under Trump AP news 7/15/2025

CDC streamlines H5N1 avian flu reporting 7/8/2025

As Trump Scrubs Climate Reports, NASA Breaks Its Promise to Save Them. Under the second Trump administration, it's becoming increasingly harder to access information about the climate crisis. Gizmodo.com 7/14/2025

NOAA Library Can still access Climate Change Assessment Reports

Interactive Atlas Can still access Climate Change Assessment Reports

Fifth National Climate Assessment 2023 (Most recent) 7/18/2025

Trump Environmental Protection Agency moves to repeal finding that allows climate regulation 7/29/2025

August, 2025

August 4, 2025

Graphic source: https://www.statista.com/chart/34931/difference-between-preliminary-and-final-data-for-additions-losses-to-nonfarm-payroll-employment/?lid=d8s00pudgiuo

August 4, 2025

Graphic source:https://www.statista.com/chart/34932/experts-on-the-quality-of-official-us-economic-statistics/?lid=mm9pbu20sngk&utm_source=braze

Notation on top of webpage about data issues

Krassenstein - Before removal of Sections 9 and 10

Source: https://x.com/krassenstein/status/1953098870289748373

Krassentstin - After removal

Source: https://x.com/krassenstein/status/1953098870289748373 Success!

Impact of changes to Vaccine Policy and Recommendations that are impacting Fall Vaccine Schedules August 6, 2025 (Your Local Epidemiologist Newsletter)
Source: What's the plan for fall vaccines? If you're confused, you're not alone. August 6, 2025

Pre-January 20, 2025 Vaccine Policy Process

As of August 6, 2025 Vaccine Policy Process

New York Times August 13, 2025 The Morning, by Evan Gorelick (Inconvenient facts)

It's hard to get bad news - so the administration is trying not to. When the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that hiring this year was more sluggish than it had previously reported (revisions like that are normal), the president said without evidence that the new figures were "rigged" to make him look bad. Economists across the political spectrum worry that his nominee will proffer friendlier data.

Trump has previously canned scientists, closed databases and otherwise fettered the delivery of inconvenient facts.

No thanks
Expertise and data can pose problems for any president's agenda, but Trump has done more than his predecessors to erase the inconvenient facts.

Climate science. In the name of deregulation, the Trump administration rejected the scientific consensus that greenhouse gases threaten public health. Trump’s budget eliminates funding for a Hawaii lab that has collected climate data for 70 years. The administration is shuttering the E.P.A.'s scientific research arm. It also retired an extreme-weather project that tracked the costs of natural disasters and said it would stop updating a database that companies use to calculate their emissions.

The census. Trump has ordered a new population count that excludes illegal immigrants; his allies hope it will lift their allotment of seats in Congress. It may not have that result - and Trump may not have the authority to call a mid-decade recount - but the census affects federal funding and tells us who we are as a nation. The administration also ended several Census Bureau surveys, disbanded expert advisory committees and pushed out 1,300 employees.

Gender and D.E.I. The government scrubbed more than 8,000 web pages after Trump signed executive orders targeting diversity initiatives and what he calls "gender ideology." In one instance, the administration tried to delete a federal database that included information on whether teens identified as transgender. When a court required that the government keep it online, the C.D.C. added a note: "This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department rejects it."

Be quiet
The president also seems not to like the bearers of bad news. He has intimidated some officials and sacked others. In addition to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Trump administration has targeted:

Inspectors general. The president has fired or demoted more than 20 people in independent offices responsible for making sure the government works properly. The remaining employees told Luke Broadwater, one of our White House correspondents, that they are now reluctant to pursue investigations that could elicit political blowback.

The Fed. Trump has repeatedly threatened to oust Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, for refusing to lower interest rates. The independence of central bankers is protected by law, and White House meddling can boost inflation and hurt growth in the long run, writes Colby Smith, who covers the Fed.

Health officials. Trump's health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., fired all 17 experts from the C.D.C.'s vaccine advisory committee. They held that vaccines, including Covid shots, were safe and effective. Kennedy disagrees. Courts. Judges are supposed to interpret laws impartially, away from political pressures. But Trump has attacked judges who have scuttled his agenda. Last month, the Justice Department filed a misconduct complaint against one who ruled against Trump's deportation plans.

The payoff
Now there are fewer people in a position to challenge the White House. Trump has fired Justice Department lawyers whom he found too deferential to court orders. He has also axed Democratic members of independent bodies like the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. He filled top posts in the F.B.I. and the Pentagon with MAGA stalwarts who screen for loyalty within their agencies.

Trump's allies say the president is doing what every leader does: surrounding himself with people he trusts to implement his vision. But as government records and independent officials vanish, it is becoming more difficult to track key data points in American life - H.I.V. infections, school performance and more.

That leaves politicians to find their own data. It's easy to do when a cherry-picked statistic can prove virtually any point. At a press conference last week, Trump furnished new jobs numbers from a right-wing economist. He said that they proved his economy was better than Joe Biden's. Trump finally found the data he wanted.

September, 2025

• Trump Orders Have Stripped Nearly Half a Million Federal Workers of Union Rights (New York Times, September 2, 2025)
  The president, who has targeted collective bargaining contracts for nearly one million government employees, has said their functions touch on national security.

  Trump's L.A. deployment ruled illegal (New York Times, September 2, 2025)
  A federal judge accused President Trump of effectively turning nearly 5,000 Marines and National Guard soldiers into a "national police force" in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. Judge Charles R. Breyer ruled that Trump exceeded the limits of federal laws that generally prohibit the use of the military for domestic law enforcement. He was appointed by President Bill Clinton and is the brother of former Justice Stephen Breyer of the Supreme Court. Our legal expert says the decision could make it harder for Trump to send troops to other cities. But Trump said today that "we're going in" to Chicago, offering no details.

• Dozens of scientists find errors in a new Energy Department climate report September 2, 2025 NPR.org

  Climate Experts' Review of the DOE Climate Working Group Report
  A group of more than 85 scientists have issued a joint rebuttal to a recent U.S. Department of Energy report about climate change, finding it full of errors and misrepresenting climate science.
  This comes weeks after the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Environmental Defense Fund filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration that alleges that Energy Secretary Chris Wright "quietly arranged for five hand-picked skeptics of the effects of climate change" to compile the government's climate report and violated the law by creating the report in secret with authors "of only one point of view."
  Dessler argues that this DOE report, released in late July, is important to pay attention to, because of what he and other scientists identify as problems with the science, and because of how the report is being used by the Trump administration to roll back the endangerment finding. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin has said the goal of the administration is "driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion."
  Our review reveals that the DOE report's key assertions-including claims of no trends in extreme weather and the supposed broad benefits of carbon dioxide-are either misleading or fundamentally incorrect. The authors reached these flawed conclusions through selective filtering of evidence ('cherry picking'), overemphasis of uncertainties, misquoting peer-reviewed research, and a general dismissal of the vast majority of decades of peer-reviewed research.

• Judge orders Trump administration to unfreeze nearly $2.2 billion in federal grants to Harvard. "There is, in reality, little connection between the research affected by the grant terminations and antisemitism," U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs said in a ruling Wednesday. September 3, 2025

  A federal judge in Boston ordered the Trump administration on Wednesday to unfreeze nearly $2.2 billion in federal grants to Harvard.
  "All freezes and terminations of funding to Harvard made pursuant to the Freeze Orders and Termination Letters on or after April 14, 2025 are vacated and set aside," U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs said in the order.
  The 84-page order conceded that Harvard has been "plagued by antisemitism" in recent years and should "have done a better job of dealing with the issue," but it said that "there is, in reality, little connection between the research affected by the grant terminations and antisemitism."
  She cited the April letter in which the Trump administration conditioned funding on agreeing to those 10 terms, "only one of which related to antisemitism," she said. She said the six other terms were "related to ideological and pedagogical concerns, including who may lead and teach at Harvard, who may be admitted, and what may be taught."

• Dozens Of Scientists Call DOE Climate Report 'Fundamentally Incorrect'. The review comes as the Trump administration is leaning on the report as part of its justification to end EPA regulation of greenhouse gases. CT Junkie News, September 3, 2025
• Washington, Oregon and California governors form alliance in rebuke of Trump administration September 3, 2025

  The Democratic governors of Washington state, Oregon and California announced Wednesday that they have created an alliance to establish their own recommendations for who should receive vaccines because they believe the Trump administration is putting Americans' health at risk by politicizing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  The differing responses come as COVID-19 cases rise and as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has restructured and downsized the CDC and attempted to advance anti-vaccine policies that are contradicted by decades of scientific research. Concerns about staffing and budget cuts were heightened after the White House sought to oust the agency's director and some top CDC leaders resigned in protest.

  "The CDC has become a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences," the governors said in a joint statement.

  "The dismantling of public health and dismissal of experienced and respected health leaders and advisers, along with the lack of using science, data, and evidence to improve our nation's health are placing lives at risk," California State Health Officer Erica Pan said in the news release.

  In the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, states formed regional alliances to gain buying power for respirators, gloves and other personal protective equipment for frontline workers and to coordinate reopening their largely shuttered economies.

  Governors in the Northeast and West Coast — all but one of them Democrats — announced separate regional groups in 2020 hours after Trump said on social media that it would be his decision when to ''open up the states.''

• Florida looks to end all vaccine mandates, including those deemed routine September 3, 2025

  AMA condemns 'unprecedented rollback' The American Medical Association (AMA) was quick to release a response, expressing its opposition to Ladapo's proposed end to mandates.

  "The American Medical Association strongly opposes Florida’s plan to end all vaccine mandates, including those required for school attendance. This unprecedented rollback would undermine decades of public health progress and place children and communities at increased risk for diseases such as measles, mumps, polio and chickenpox resulting in serious illness, disability and even death," Sandra Adamson Fryhofer, MD, trustee with the AMA, said in a statement. "While there is still time, we urge Florida to reconsider this change to help prevent a rise of infectious disease outbreaks that put health and lives at risk."

  According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 89% of all Florida students entering kindergarten receive routine immunizations, as do 92% of students nationwide.

• Trump's war on his perceived enemies is escalating: faster, broader, harsher. Trump is weaponising the presidency to punish critics, silence dissent, and brand whole states as 'the enemy. September 3, 2025


Graphic source: https://christinapagel.substack.com/p/trumps-war-on-his-perceived-enemies


Graphic source: https://christinapagel.substack.com/p/trumps-war-on-his-perceived-enemies

• Republicans are preparing to change Senate rules to speed Trump's nominees September 3, 2025

  Democrats have blocked nearly every single one of Trump's nominees, forcing majority Republicans to spend valuable floor time on procedural votes and leaving many positions in the executive branch unfilled.

  GOP senators discussed one proposal in a private meeting on Wednesday that would enable them to confirm large tranches of nominees "en bloc," or several at once, if a majority of senators agree, according to multiple senators who attended the meeting.

  Currently, the objection of a single senator forces multiple votes on most nominations. The rules change would likely only apply to executive branch nominations, not lifetime judicial appointments, and would exclude many of the most high-profile positions, such as Cabinet nominees, that require a longer debate time.

  Schumer said in a Wednesday statement that Republicans' proposed plan "guts the Senate's constitutional role of advice and consent, weakens our checks and balances, and guarantees that historically bad nominees will only get worse with even less oversight."

• HHS restoring deleted health information following legal challenge September 4, 2025

  The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has agreed to restore webpages with pertinent health and science information that it deleted in order to comply with an executive order from President Donald Trump. Specifically, content deemed to have any link to "diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)" was removed from websites operated by the federal government.

  The Washington State Medical Association (WSMA), which acted as the plaintiff alongside the state chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, announced the settlement on Thursday—which is tantamount to a victory, as restoring the deleted information was the purpose of the lawsuit.

  At the behest of Trump, HHS hastily purged all “DEI” public health information from agency websites, including facts on birth control, maternal health, opioid addiction, AIDS and more.

  WSMA sued, arguing that physicians and patients rely on official government websites for accurate, timely health information. Public health would suffer as a result of such data being suddenly out of reach, the group maintained. The federal government began the deletion process in January, days after Trump took office.

  "As the leading voice for physicians in Washington state, the WSMA engaged in this legal effort to resist interference into the physician-patient relationship and to show patients and communities that regardless of the whims of governments or politics, physicians are committed to providing accurate, evidence-based care to patients and we will fight any intrusion into our ability to do so," WSMA President John Bramhall, MD, PhD said in a statement.

  Per the agreement, HHS will restore the deleted webpages, studies and other documents—more than 100 in total—over the next few weeks.

  In response to the settlement, an HHS official said the agency “remains committed to its mission of removing radical gender and DEI ideology from federal programs, subject to applicable law, to ensure taxpayer dollars deliver meaningful results for the American people.”

  The WSMA said it was “thrilled” by the outcome of its lawsuit, adding that "critical resources are once again available to physicians, scientists, medical professionals and the American public." Another similar case, brought by Doctors of America, is still pending in federal court. While the two overlap, its outcome remains unknown and could result in even more public information being recovered.

• Kennedy says CDC turnover was justified because of its COVID-19 response September 4, 2025

  Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told a Senate committee on Thursday that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention leaders who left the agency last week deserved to be fired. He criticized CDC recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic tied to lockdowns and masking policies, and claimed - wrongly - that they 'failed to do anything about the disease itself.'

  "The people who at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving," Kennedy said. He later said they deserved to be fired for not doing enough to control chronic disease.

  The Senate Finance Committee called Kennedy to a hearing about his plans to "Make America Healthy Again," but Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden said Kennedy was lying when he said he had the support of U.S. doctors. He said Kennedy had "stacked the deck" of a vaccines committee, replacing scientists with "skeptics and conspiracy theorists."

  In May, Kennedy - a longtime leader in the anti-vaccine movement - announced COVID-19 vaccines would no longer be recommended for healthy children and pregnant women, a move opposed by medical and public health groups. In June, he abruptly a panel of experts that had been advising the government on vaccine policy. He replaced them with a handpicked group that included several vaccine skeptics, and then shut the door to several doctors groups that had long helped form the committee's recommendations.

  A number of medical groups say Kennedy can't be counted on to make decisions based on robust medical evidence. In a statement Wednesday, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and 20 other medical and public health organizations issued a joint statement calling on Kennedy to resign. "Our country needs leadership that will promote open, honest dialogue, not disregard decades of lifesaving science, spread misinformation, reverse medical progress and decimate programs that keep us safe," the statement said.

  Many of the nation's leading public health and medical societies, including the American Medical Association, American Public Health Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have decried Kennedy's policies and warn they will drive up rates of vaccine-preventable diseases.

• DC lawsuit challenges Trump's National Guard deployment as a forced 'military occupation' The District of Columbia on Thursday challenged President Donald Trump's use of the National Guard in Washington, asking a federal court to intervene even as he plans to send troops to other cities in the name of driving down crime.

  Brian Schwalb, the district's elected attorney general, said in a lawsuit that the deployment, which now involves more than 1,000 troops, is an illegal use of the military for domestic law enforcement.

  "No American jurisdiction should be involuntarily subjected to military occupation," Schwalb wrote.

• Tracking the lawsuits against the Trump administration 9-3-2025

  
  Graphic source: https://apnews.com/article/washington-dc-trump-federal-takeover-national-guard-lawsuit-f2f76ef685676ee0d3bbd81496c74f2e

September 4, 2025


Source: https://bsky.app/profile/luckytran.com/post/3ly27h7sni222

• In rare interviews, federal judges criticize Supreme Court's handling of Trump cases. Ten judges tell NBC News the Supreme Court needs to explain its rulings better, with some urging Chief Justice John Roberts to do more to defend the judiciary against external criticism. September 4, 2025
• A plan to require airlines to compensate passengers for delays was canceled. (Washington Post, September 5, 2025)
  Yesterday: A Biden-era plan that would have required airlines to pay passenger expenses brought on by disruptions under the carrier’s control was scrapped.
  Why: Department of Transportation officials said the proposal was withdrawn because it was not "consistent with Department and administration priorities."
• Whistleblowers alleged a key NIH leader questioned vaccines. (Washington Post, Steptember 5, 2025)
  The allegations: Whistleblowers at the National Institutes of Health say they were retaliated against for being pro-vaccine.
  More: The whistleblowers, Jeanne Marrazzo and Kathleen Neuzil, claim that former acting NIH director Matthew Memoli questioned vaccinations for children.
• Former CDC director Walensky warns RFK Jr. moving toward 'complete vaccine takedown'. Sen. Ed Markey calls for Kennedy's resignation September 5, 2025
• Exclusive: Inside the CDC Exodus and RFK Jr.'s Anti-Vaccine Crusade September 5, 2025
• HHS responds to report about autism and acetaminophen September 6, 2025

  Acetaminophen - ASD-ADHD Products Liability Litigation 12/2023

  Acetaminophen Use During Pregnancy and Children's Risk of Autism, ADHD, and Intellectual Disability 9/4/2024 JAMANetwork

• New York governor issues order to bypass Trump administration's COVID vaccine limits September 5, 2025
• Former NIH officials file whistleblower complaint September 5, 2025
• New York Times, September 6, 2025
  President Trump announced that next year's Group of 20 summit would be held at Trump Doral, a resort he owns near Miami. He dropped a similar plan during his first term because of ethical concerns.
• Assoicated Press, September 7, 2025
  Trump threatens Chicago with apocalyptic force and Pritzker calls him a 'wannabe dictator'

  President Donald Trump on Saturday amplified his promises to send National Guard troops and immigration agents to Chicago by posting a parody image from "Apocalypse Now" featuring a ball of flames as helicopters zoom over the nation's third-largest city. In response to the post, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, called Trump a "wannabe dictator."

• RFK Jr. wants to overhaul the country's 'vaccine court.' Here's what stands in his way. The 40-year-old "vaccine court" relies on scientific evidence to determine whether a person experienced harm from a routine vaccination. September 8, 2025
• Supreme Court allows Trump to fire FTC commissioner. Trump's actions are in direct tension with a 1935 ruling that upheld restrictions on the president's ability to remove FTC commissioners without cause. September 8, 2025

  The Supreme Court on Monday allowed President Donald Trump to fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission despite a federal law that is intended to restrict the White House's power to control the agency.

• You Might Have Already Fallen for MAHA's Conspiracy Theories September 9, 2025
• SCOTUS racial profiling ruling sparks alarm by civil rights groups September 9, 2025

  Asian American and other immigrant organizations warned of grave consequences after Monday's Supreme Court ruling essentially greenlighting racial profiling. The court ruled that federal agents could stop people simply for looking a certain way or speaking a certain language.

  "This ruling is dangerous. It strips away fundamental protections and normalizes harassment of immigrants and U.S. citizens alike," said Aileen Louie, Interim CEO of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California. "It tells our communities that the way you look, the language you speak, or the place you work can now make you a target. That is unconstitutional and unacceptable."

  "This Supreme Court decision upends the U.S. Constitution's guarantee that all Americans will be free from arbitrary targeting by law enforcement," said Ben Johnson in a statement. "It threatens to transform America into a 'show me your papers' nation where Immigration and Customs Enforcement can target and stop people because of the way they look, sound, work, or even where they are standing in public. Every American should be gravely concerned."

• 3 fired FBI officials sue Patel, saying he bowed to Trump administration's 'campaign of retribution' September 10, 2025

  Three high-ranking FBI officials were fired last month in a “campaign of retribution” carried out by a director who knew better but caved to political pressure from the Trump administration so he could keep his own position, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday that seeks reinstatement of the agents.

  The complaint asserts that Director Kash Patel indicated directly to one of the ousted agents, Brian Driscoll, that he knew the firings were "likely illegal" but was powerless to stop them because the White House and the Justice Department were determined to remove all agents who helped investigate President Donald Trump. It quotes Patel as having told Driscoll in a conversation last month "the FBI tried to put the president in jail and he hasn't forgotten it."

  The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Driscoll, Steve Jensen and Spencer Evans, three of five agents known to have been fired last month in a purge that current and former officials say has unnerved the workforce. Fired agents have leveled unflattering allegations of a law enforcement agency whose personnel moves are shaped by the White House and guided more by politics than by public safety. "Patel not only acted unlawfully but deliberately chose to prioritize politicizing the FBI over protecting the American people," the suit says. It adds that "his decision to do so degraded the country's national security by firing three of the FBI's most experienced operational leaders, each of them experts in preventing terrorism and reducing violent crime."

• Programs for Students With Hearing and Vision Loss Harmed by Trump's Anti-Diversity Push September 10, 2025

  

• Just 1 in 4 Americans believe Trump administration vaccine shifts are based on science, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds September 10, 2025 Reuters

  Kennedy, who has long promoted doubts about the safety and efficacy of a range of vaccines contrary to scientific evidence, also fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head Susan Monarez last month. All 17 expert members of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices were fired by Kennedy in June.

  Many Americans, particularly Democrats, worry the Trump administration could pull back federal support for vaccines more broadly. Asked if they were worried that in the future children wouldn't get the vaccines they need, 48% of respondents said they were concerned, compared to 38% who said they were not.

• The New York Times Sep. 11, 2025 BREAKING NEWS

  $10 Million in Contraceptives Have Been Destroyed on Orders From Trump Officials. The pills, intrauterine devices and hormonal implants, valued at about $9.7 million, had been purchased by U.S.A.I.D. for women in low-income countries.

• Trump's 30-day D.C. police takeover ended. (Washington Post, September 11, 2025)

  Yesterday: Trump's emergency takeover of the D.C. police expired, returning the department to local control. But: While the federal government will no longer oversee the local police force, ICE and National Guard troops will remain in the city, with D.C. officials' cooperation.

• Senate Republicans trigger 'nuclear option,' changing rules to speed up Trump nominees. The new rule, established by the GOP on party lines, will enable it to confirm Trump nominees in groups, rather than individually. It's the latest move to erode minority powers. September 11, 2025
• Trump's Policies Are Endangering Your Health September 11, 2025

  As is so often the case with Mr. Trump, however, he has both identified a real problem and enacted a set of policies that will worsen that problem. With public health, the damage could be vast. His administration is rejecting basic medical knowledge and turning back the clock to an era when people were sicker and died sooner.

  The administration's hostility to lifesaving vaccines, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, has already contributed to a rise in measles. Mr. Trump's cuts to scientific research will forestall future treatments of cancer, heart disease and childhood illnesses. His cuts to Medicaid, which pay for tax breaks for the wealthy, will leave millions of Americans without health insurance and, by extension, health care. His rollback of environmental regulations has allowed corporations to pump more pollution into the air and water, which will contribute to lung diseases and other ailments.

  The taming of infectious diseases, including polio, smallpox, measles, mumps, tetanus, influenza and, most recently, Covid-19, has been one of humankind's greatest achievements. These diseases have all been made far less deadly, and in some cases virtually nonexistent, thanks to vaccines. Mr. Trump himself recently said that vaccines work, "pure and simple."

  Yet as his top health official he has appointed a conspiracist, Mr. Kennedy, who exaggerates or outright lies about the risks that come with these vaccines. Mr. Kennedy has filled an important federal panel, which shapes which vaccines are covered by insurers, with other conspiracists. Republican-led states are following the administration's lead; Florida is trying to repeal vaccine mandates for schoolchildren.

• FDA to present data it claims ties Covid shots to child deaths at CDC meeting. The vaccine advisory committee is scheduled to meet next week to review and make recommendations for this fall's updated Covid shots, among others. September 12, 2025

  The FDA is basing its claim on an analysis of data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, a publicly available database maintained by the FDA and the CDC, according to three sources familiar with the plan.

  But, two of the sources said, the agency is misusing the database which allows anyone — including doctors, patients and caregivers — to submit reports to VAERS about adverse events they believe are linked to vaccines. The reports are unverified, but the health agencies use the database as a guide for topics to investigate further.Dorit Reiss, a vaccine policy expert at the Universit y of California Law, San Francisco, said the database reports can't prove a connection between vaccination and children's deaths.

  "To identify causation to a vaccine you need to show that the cause of death was something the vaccine caused, and by itself, a VAERS report would not show that — you need larger studies comparing incidents of the harm with or without the vaccine," she said in an email.

  "We've been looking into the VAERS database of self-reports that there have been children that have died from the Covid vaccine," Makary said. "We're going to release a report in the coming few weeks and we're going to let people know. We're doing an intense investigation."

  The VAERS website warns that reports can contain inaccurate, incomplete or biased information. "As a result, there are limitations on how the data can be used scientifically. Data from VAERS reports should always be interpreted with these limitations in mind."

  The Washington Post reported that Makary's special adviser Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, a sports medicine physician who criticized Covid shots for children during the pandemic, is expected to present the new findings at next week's vaccine committee meeting.

  One former FDA official, who requested anonymity to speak freely, pushed back on the findings. "I can tell you on a stack of Bibles that we looked through all of the autopsy reports and that we didn't find anything," the official said in a text message. "Unless someone was hiding them from us I don’t know what they're referring to."

  Kennedy has already taken steps to limit access to this year’s vaccine: Last month, he announced that the FDA had approved updated Covid shots for the fall for people 65 and up and those with underlying medical conditions. The limited approval has left some patients and pharmacies confused, and some patients report that they haven't been able to get the shots.

• E.P.A. to Stop Collecting Emissions Data From Polluters. The proposal would lift requirements for thousands of coal-fired power plants, oil refineries, steel mills and other industrial facilities across the country. (September 12, 2025 NY Times)
• Trump's Energy Department disbands group that sowed doubt about climate change September 13, 2025

  The decision to disband the CWG came as a hearing was held this week in a lawsuit that the Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists had filed against the Trump administration. As NPR reported previously, the suit alleges that Energy Secretary Chris Wright "quietly arranged for five hand-picked skeptics of the effects of climate change" to compile the government's climate report and violated the law by creating the report in secret with authors "of only one point of view."

  "The Climate Working Group was convened in secrecy, and it created a clandestine report – in brazen violation of federal law – that is being used to weaken protections against the climate pollution that makes life less safe and less affordable for all Americans," Erin Murphy, senior attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund, wrote in a statement.

• Kennedy appoints five new members to US vaccine panel September 15, 2025

  - U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday appointed five new members to the revamped advisory panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine policy, review guidance on shots for hepatitis B, measles-mumps-rubella-varicella and COVID-19, in a closely watched session that could further reshape the federal vaccination policy.

  Kennedy, a longtime vaccine critic, dismissed all 17 members of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in June and installed a new, smaller panel, with members who have questioned aspects of mRNA and childhood vaccination. The committee will now have 12 members.

  Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist who has examined cases of myocarditis related to COVID-19 vaccination. According to a news report from 2022, he backed the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin - both unproven treatments for COVID-19 - to treat the illness during the pandemic.

• The fired head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics is warning about data manipulation Business Insider, September 15, 2025

  The former BLS commissioner warned of political meddling in economic data collection. Erika McEntarfer's ousting followed a jobs report showing 250,000 fewer jobs were added than expected. Economists fear that firing the BLS head harms US economic data integrity and public trust. Erika McEntarfer, the former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, raised the alarm on political meddling in economic data collection. "Economic data must be free from partisan influence," McEntarfer said in her first public remarks since her sudden ousting by President Donald Trump last month.
  "Markets have to trust the data are not manipulated," McEntarfer said. "Firing your chief statisticians for releasing data you do not like, it has serious economic consequences." Last month, Trump fired McEntarfer following a disappointing jobs report. Trump said that the report, which showed the US had added about 250,000 fewer jobs than expected, had been manipulated to hurt him politically. BLS often revises its jobs reports. Economists warned that Trump firing McEntarfer and raising doubts about BLS data could have poor consequences. "Firing the head of the BLS is five-alarm intentional harm to the integrity of US economic data and the entire statistical system," (Jed Kolko).
  William Beach, a Trump-appointed former BLS commissioner, also condemned McEntarfer's firing. He called his successor's firing "a dangerous precedent." Last month, Trump nominated E.J. Antoni, a conservative economist at the Heritage Foundation, to serve as the next BLS commissioner. Antoni, whose appointment requires Senate confirmation, has previously been critical of the BLS and its reports. Antoni has no government experience.

• The Trump administration ordered several National Park Service sites to take down materials related to slavery and Native Americans, including an 1863 photograph of a formerly enslaved man with scars on his back, one of the most powerful images of the Civil War era. nyti.ms/4nyyyaQ (September 16, 2025) (My BlueSky comment: Trying to erase the past is a cowardly way of evading responsibility. https://bsky.app/profile/bettycjung.bsky.social/post/3lyy2vv3jls2o

  

• The Trump administration has justified the military action as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States. But several senators, Democrats and some Republicans, have questioned the legality of Trump’s action. They view it as a potential overreach of executive authority in part because the military was used for law enforcement purposes. (AP, September 16, 2025)
• Exclusive: The fate of the CDC hinges on this new, three-page table.

  
  An Inside Medicine summary of possible CDC funding based on the President’s Budget, the House markup, and the Senate markup. In the Trump column, a color scheme indicates programs Trump wants entirely slashed (red), programs where Trump requested substantial cuts (yellow), and programs where he sought flat or increased funding (blue). Image by Birna Gustafsson for Inside Medicine.

• ABC pulls 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' off air 'indefinitely' over Charlie Kirk comments September 17, 2025

  Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr suggested ABC's broadcast license was at risk from Kimmel's statements about Tyler Robinson, the accused killer of Kirk.

  Jimmy Kimmel, during his opening monologue for Monday night's show, had suggested that Tyler Robinson, the man accused of killing Kirk last week at a Utah university, was aligned with President Donald Trump's MAGA - Make America Great Again - movement.

  "The MAGA Gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it," Kimmel said.

• Congress may block Trump's renaming of military bases. (Washington Post, September 16, 2025)

  What to know: A provision of the National Defense Authorization Act passed by the House would prevent three bases once named after Confederates from being renamed again.
  Context: Nine bases originally named in honor of Confederate leaders were renamed after other military figures following a 2020 initiative.
  Then: Trump sought to restore the base names, but with a twist: the bases were named in honor of military figures who bore the same last name as the original namesake.

• Slavery exhibits are being removed from national parks. (Washington Post, September 16, 2025)

  What happened: Signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks will be taken down to comply with a Trump order to remove "corrosive ideology" from parks.

  More: National Park Service officials are taking a broad interpretation of the order and have asked employees to report any information that may violate it.
• The fired CDC director testified before Congress. (Washington Post, September 17, 2025)

  Today: Former CDC director Susan Monarez told senators that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pressured her to align with his anti-vaccine views.
  More: Monarez said Kennedy told her to fire vaccine scientists and required a political review of every major CDC policy decision.

• Antiscience Is an Existential Threat TIME September 17, 2025
• Kimmel's suspension is the latest display of Trump's growing power over the US media landscape (Associated Press, September 19, 2025)

  President Donald Trump has used threats, lawsuits and government pressure as he remakes the American media landscape, unleashing his long-standing grievances against an industry that has mocked, criticized and scorned him for years.

  Why this matters: He's extracted multimillion-dollar settlements, forced companies into costly litigation and prompted changes to programming that he found objectionable. Now Trump is escalating his campaign of censure and retaliation, invigorated by successful efforts to push ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air for his commentary on conservative activist Charlie Kirk's assassination.

  Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One while returning from Great Britain on Thursday, Trump said federal regulators should consider revoking broadcast licenses for networks that "give me only bad publicity." "All they do is hit Trump," he said.

  Brendan Carr, Trump's handpicked head of the Federal Communications Commission, issued a similar warning the previous day while criticizing Kimmel's remarks. "We can do this the easy way or the hard way," Carr said. "These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead." ABC suspended Kimmel hours later.

• Florida federal judge tosses Trump's $15B defamation lawsuit against The New York Times September 19, 2025

  U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday ruled that Trump's 85-page lawsuit was overly long and full of "tedious and burdensome" language that had no bearing on the legal case.

  "A complaint is not a megaphone for public relations or a podium for a passionate oration at a political rally," Merryday wrote in a four-page order. "This action will begin, will continue, and will end in accord with the rules of procedure and in a professional and dignified manner."

  The Times had said it was meritless and an attempt to discourage independent reporting. "We welcome the judge's quick ruling, which recognized that the complaint was a political document rather than a serious legal filing," spokesman Charlie Stadtlander said Friday.

• Kennedy's vaccine advisers decline to recommend COVID-19 shot for all Americans September 19, 2025
• RFK Jr.’s dismantling of the vaccine schedule has only just begun. Why it matters that the CDC is altering the childhood immunization schedule. Washington Post, September 19, 2025

  The potential for harm is even clearer when it comes to delaying the hepatitis B vaccine. As CDC experts emphasized in their presentation to the panel, up to 85 percent of infants born to infected mothers contract the virus, and about 90 percent of those children go on to develop chronic hepatitis B, a lifelong condition that can lead to cirrhosis, liver cancer and premature death.

  Second, these vaccines have no record of serious safety issues. Hepatitis B vaccines have been in use since the 1980s, with at least 20 studies confirming their safety. None suggest that a birth dose is unsafe or that waiting a month provides any benefit. The MMRV vaccine does have a slightly elevated risk of high fevers resulting in seizures compared to the two separate shots, but the danger of families forgoing the additional immunization could outweigh that risk.

  In other words, the anti-vaccine fringe is now setting CDC’s agenda. If someone somewhere has a “concern,” no matter how unfounded, that’s apparently reason enough to question decades of settled science.

• BREAKING NEWS: Censorship returns to the CDC. At least 22 websites are down. September 20, 2025

  

• Trump Administration Stopping Efforts to Collect Scientific Data NY Times September 21, 2025

  A pattern of getting rid of statistics has emerged that echoes the president’s first term, when he suggested ifthe nation stopped testing for Covid, it would have few cases.

  When the Trump administration said last week that it would stop requiring thousands of industrial facilities to report their planet-warming pollution, the move fit a growing pattern: If data points to a problem, stop collecting the data.

  At the E.P.A., Trump officials said on Friday that they would end the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, the country's most comprehensive way to track the heat-trapping greenhouse gases that are dangerously warming the planet. Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, said in a statement that the program was "nothing more than bureaucratic red tape."

  For the past 15 years, the program has collected data from roughly 8,000 industrial facilities nationwide,including coal-burning power plants, oil refineries and steel mills. The publication of this data has resulted in many companies reducing their emissions, most likely because the firms tried to become greener than their competitors, according to 2023 research.

  In the United States, the Trump administration's efforts to end emissions measurements extend even to space, where officials want to decommission and possibly destroy two NASA satellites that monitor greenhouse gases and cost more than $800 million to launch. These satellites have provided highly precise measurements of carbon dioxide, one of the most prevalent greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere. At the same time, the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund recently lost contact with another satellite that had monitored methane emissions from oil and gas sites worldwide. Methane is an even more powerful greenhouse gas that is roughly 80 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere in the short term.

• Trump Is Shutting Down the War on Cancer New York Times, September 21, 2025

  In the mid-1970s, America's five-year cancer-survival rate sat at 49 percent; today, it is 68 percent. You can also correlate America's sustained investment in cancer research directly with these returns: According to a recent study in The Journal of Clinical Oncology, every $326 that our government spends researching cancer extends a human life by one year. Now an extraordinarily successful scientific research system - one that took decades to build, has saved millions of lives and generated billions of dollars in profits for American companies and investors - is being dismantled before our eyes.

  In a matter of months, the Trump administration has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in cancer-related research grants and contracts, arguing that they were part of politically driven D.E.I. initiatives, and suspended or delayed payments for hundreds of millions more. It is trying to sharply reduce the percentage of expenses that the government will cover for federally funded cancer-research labs. It has terminated hundreds of government employees who helped lead the country's cancer-research system and ensured that new discoveries reached clinicians, cancer patients and the American public. And the president's proposed budget for the next fiscal year calls for a more-than-37-percent cut to the National Cancer Institute - the N.I.H. agency that leads most of the nation's cancer research - reducing it to $4.5 billion from $7.2 billion. Adjusting for inflation, you have to go back more than 30 years to find a comparably sized federal cancer-research budget.

  But a very different attitude toward American science now prevails on the right wing of American politics. The Covid epidemic is largely responsible. Caught between a deadly pandemic and the government’s oppressive countermeasures, many Americans sought someone to blame. A variety of vaccine skeptics, antigovernment MAGA types and wellness influencers and a discrete cohort of doctors and medical experts offered them acandidate: the scientific establishment. Their collective disaffection soon congealed into a powerful political force of its own, and a fringe movement to undermine the credibility of America’s scientists went mainstream.

  This force has become institutionalized in Trump's second administration. Defending the government's ongoing cuts to scientific research last May, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent vaccine skeptic who now leads the Department of Health and Human Services, told Congress that the N.I.H. was plagued by "corruption." Trump's N.I.H. director, Jay Bhattacharya, a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, a scientific treatise assailing America's Covid policies, made his name attacking the agency that he is now running.

  In the absence of any such plan, it's hard not to see the ongoing dismantling of the cancer research system as collateral damage in a larger, partisan war against both the predominantly Democratic scientific establishment and the predominantly Democratic academic institutions where much of the country's biomedical research takes place.

  It's perhaps no surprise that the Trump administration's attack on America's biomedical research system has been embraced by the disruption-addicted tech right. A government-run research system of sustained investment, collaboration and incremental progress no doubt looks anachronistic to a culture of individual visions, competitive silos and overnight growth - and all the more so with the leaders of various generative-A.I. companies making far-fetched promises to cure cancer in a matter of years.

  It's too early to predict what the ongoing dismantling of America's cancer-research system is going to cost us- what lifesaving, life-extending or life-improving treatments will be slower to develop, if they develop at all.The White House's proposed budget, with its 37-percent cut to the N.C.I., is still awaiting congressional debate, and various court battles are still playing out. In June, a Reagan-appointed federal judge in Boston, William G. Young, reversed some of the Trump administration's grant terminations in a stinging decision, writing that in his 40 years on the bench, he had "never seen government racial discrimination like this." But the administration appealed, and in late August, a 5-to-4 majority of Supreme Court justices upheld the cancellations, while leaving the door open for individual grantees to bring their own challenges.

  The cancer-research system may be big and sprawling, but its wholesale dependence on government funding also makes it almost uniquely precarious. It doesn't take much to disrupt its normal functioning, and in the realm of science, any sort of disruption can be devastating. "Running a lab isnot like running a clothing store, where if your sales are down you can bounce back," Harold Varmus, a former N.I.H. director and Nobel Prize-winning cancer researcher, told me. "You are dealing with highly trained people and projects which, when stopped for a short time, are ruined."

• The Supreme Court allowed Trump to fire a leader of the F.T.C., and the justices said they would shortly consider overturning the precedent that has prevented presidents from removing independent regulators. (NY Times, September 22, 2025)

  The Supreme Court allowed President Trump to fire one of the leaders of the Federal Trade Commission for now, and said it would consider in December the broader question whether to overturn a 90-year-old precedent that has prevented presidents from removing independent regulators solely over policy disagreements. (NY Times, September 22, 2025).

• A White House aide with no prosecutorial experience replaced Erik Siebert, the U.S. attorney who resigned under pressure after he suggested he was unlikely to bring charges against two of Trump's political enemies. NY Tiems, September 22, 2025
• Trump and RFK Jr. Blame Tylenol For Autism in New Report, but Experts Push Back "They are reviewing existing literature, and they're doing it badly." Gizmodo, September 22, 2025
• The Trump administration declared a connection between Tylenol and autism Washington Post, September 22, 2025

  Breaking: President Donald Trump unveiled medical recommendations today that call for women to not take Tylenol while pregnant and to space out child vaccines.
  Why: Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have suggested childhood vaccines and Tylenol during pregnancy could cause autism.
  Controversy: Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb said the relationship between Tylenol and autism is “worthy of further study,” but that there is no current evidence of a connection.

• Feds Suspiciously Revive the Name 'Monkeypox' After Dropping It in 2022 Gizmodo, September 22, 2025
• Trump makes unfounded claims about Tylenol and repeats discredited link between vaccines and autism Associated Press, September 23, 2025

  "Don't take Tylenol," Trump instructed pregnant women around a dozen times during the White House news conference. He also urged mothers not to give their infants the drug, known by the generic name acetaminophen in the U.S. or paracetamol in most other countries.

  Medical experts said Trump's remarks were irresponsible. New York University bioethicist Art Caplan said it was "the saddest display of a lack of evidence, rumors, recycling old myths, lousy advice, outright lies, and dangerous advice I have ever witnessed by anyone in authority."

  Autism is not a disease but a complex developmental condition that affects different people in different ways. The disorder affects 1 in 31 U.S. children today, a sharp rise from just a few years ago, according to the CDC. Experts say the increase is mainly due to a new definition for the disorder that now includes mild cases on a "spectrum" and better diagnoses. They say there is no single cause to the disorder and say the rhetoric appears to ignore and undermine decades of science into the genetic and environmental factors that can play a role.

Holding the Line, Today's Toons, September 25, 2025


Graphic source: Credit: Adam Zyglis / CTNewsJunkie via Cagle Cartoons / ALL RIGHTS RESERVED https://ctnewsjunkie.com/2025/09/25/todays-toons-65/

• After cutting SNAP benefits, Trump admin cancels federal food insecurity survey (Stat, Morning Rounds, September 23, 2025)

  The Trump administration's cuts to the food benefits program SNAP have critics worried that more people are going hungry. Now the Department of Agriculture is also canceling the annual food insecurity survey that tracks how many Americans are struggling to put enough food on the table, calling the 30-year program "redundant, costly, politicized and extraneous."

  Research shows food insecurity is linked with a number of chronic diseases, including heart disease and diabetes. The timing of the survey's cancellation means that the government won't have a way to assess the impact of eliminating food benefits for an estimated 2.4 million Americans, or of other policies.

  The most recent data, from 2023, shows that food insecurity is rising, affecting 13.8% of people in the U.S. compared to 12.8% the previous year. The food insecurity survey has been lauded for using language that helps researchers identify experiences of deprivation even when people might not self-identify as hungry - for example, asking whether they'd skipped meals or eaten fewer foods because of money concerns.

• Fact-check: Donald Trump's false and misleading claims during his UN address. The US president made at least five spurious claims ranging from the climate crisis and immigration to ending wars The Guardian, September 23, 2025
• Trump to World: Green Energy Is a Scam and Climate Science Is From 'Stupid People' In a remarkable United Nations address, the president lashed out at wind turbines, environmentalists and allies around the world while dismissing the dangers of climate change. New York Times, September 23, 2025

  It added up to an extraordinary diatribe that ignored the human suffering exacted by the heat waves, wildfires and deadly floods that are aggravated by the burning of fossil fuels and, at the same time, stood at odds with the rapid expansion of renewable energy all over the world.

  He chose his two targets, demonizing immigrants and green energy, and called them a "double-tailed monster" that he claimed, without evidence, are "destroying" Europe. Both subjects play well to his base in the Republican Party. But it was remarkable that he said all this to a global audience.

  "Trump continues to embarrass the U.S. on the global stage and undermine the interests of Americans at home," Gina McCarthy, who served as the United States climate policy director in the Biden administration, said in a statement. "He's rejecting our government's responsibility to protect Americans from the increasingly intense and frequent disasters linked to climate change that unleash havoc on our country."

• Why Trump is so focused on getting a Nobel Peace Prize Yahoo! News, September 25, 2025

  But there is also another reason for Trump's wish, analysts say, as his "public jockeying for the prize reflects his focus on accolades, praise and acceptance — and a burning desire to best his predecessors," said The New York Times. Former President Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize nine months into his first term, and Obama himself "noted that his 'accomplishments are slight' compared with those of other winners." Trump has "repeatedly invoked Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, complaining that he did not deserve the award."

• Hegseth said soldiers who participated in a massacre will keep their medals. (Washington Post, September 26, 2025)

  What happened: Yesterday, Hegseth announced soldiers who won the Medal of Honor for their role in the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre will be allowed to keep their honor.
  Background: Under President Joe Biden, a review of 20 medals given to soldiers in the massacre of Native Americans was launched. Hegseth accused Biden officials of being "politically correct."
  The history: The U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry killed an estimated 350 Lakota people in South Dakota in the massacre.

• Oregon sues Trump administration over deployment of National Guard troops to Portland. The suit comes a day after Trump announced he was authorizing the guard to use "full force" in Portland. NBC News September 28, 2025

  The state of Oregon and the city of Portland have sued the Trump administration to stop it from deploying National Guard troops to Portland. The suit names President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Defense Department, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and the Department of Homeland Security as defendants. It asks a federal court in Portland to stop the Trump administration from deploying troops and declare the deployment unlawful.

  "When the president and I spoke yesterday, I told him in plain language that there is no insurrection or threat to public safety that necessitates military intervention in Portland or any other city in our state," Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek said in a news release Sunday. "Despite this — and all evidence to the contrary - he has chosen to disregard Oregonians’ safety and ability to govern ourselves. This is not necessary. And it is unlawful. And it will make Oregonians less safe."

  The plaintiffs claim that the administration's move to federalize the guard violated the 10th Amendment of the Constitution, saying police power lies with the states. A federal judge in California ruled earlier this month that the administration illegally deployed the guard and the Marines to Los Angeles in June. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said the administration violated a 19th century law called the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits using the armed forces for domestic law enforcement.

• FBI fires agents photographed kneeling during 2020 racial justice protest, AP sources say AP, September 27, 2025
• National park sign referencing Japanese incarceration removed ASAMNews, September 27, 2025

  An organization called Save Our Signs stated on its website that it had confirmed the signage was removed. Save Our Signs was created in response to Trump's Executive Order 14253, which seeks to erase "negative" stories from public view by doing things like removing signage.

• Why We Should Be Concerned About an Autism Registry JAMA Pediatrics, September 29, 2025

  Despite the utility of these data in answering important questions related to autism, there are at least 4 major reasons why Kennedy’s announcement of the formation of this registry created such distress. First, the language Kennedy has used to describe autistic people suggests that they have no societal value. He described autism as an individual tragedy and stated that autism destroys families and that autistic people "will never pay taxes, they'll never hold a job, they'll never play baseball, they'll never write a poem, they'll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted." This language is consistent with the eugenics language of the early and mid-20th century, ignores the range of abilities that comprise the spectrum, and raises concerns about the motivation for identifying autistic individuals. Past registries of people with disabilities have led to discrimination, institutionalization, and eugenic practices. Some forms of discrimination that seem quite possible in today’s climate include employers and insurers using the data to make hiring and health care coverage decisions.

  Second, Kennedy has stated strongly his belief that postnatal exposure to environmental toxins causes autism. Despite the huge bolus of evidence to the contrary, he has continued to espouse debunked theories that, for example, vaccines and fluoride cause autism. Scientists and advocates have expressed concern that this registry would be used in misleading ways to find supposed environmental risk factors, which could lead to contraindicated health practices and a diversion of resources from where they are needed most.

  Finally, families have significant concerns about privacy and data security. The current administration has acted in ways that reduce confidence in their ability to handle sensitive information. There have been several published instances of data breaches and ongoing related lawsuits against the Department of Government Efficiency. If autism registry data were leaked or stolen, they could be used for fraud or to discriminate against autistic people and their families. The lack of detail regarding what data will be used, how they will be stored, and who will have access, combined with the speed with which registry-related activities are moving forward, does not inspire confidence in data safety.

• Reconsidering Off-Label Pediatric COVID-19 Vaccination JAMA Pediatrics September 29, 2025

  New evidence since 2021 suggests that COVID-19 vaccination for children is both effective and safe.6 Numerous studies, including in children, showed the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination for preventing hospitalization and severe disease and documented the burdens of COVID-19 disease, especially in very young children, including those without underlying health conditions. Data show that infants and children aged 0 to 4 years are the group hospitalized for COVID-19 at the highest rates after adults older than 65 years.7 There is also increased understanding of long COVID, that it can impact those who do not have other risk factors for COVID-19 complications, and that vaccines are effective in its prevention.

  Administering approved versions of COVID-19 vaccines to children off-label is not without risks. If physicians and primary care clinics cannot obtain the FDA-approved pediatric formulation indicated for young children at high risk of severe COVID-19, risks related to accurate administration of pediatric doses from vaccines manufactured for adults may persist. There is also the possibility that previously approved COVID-19 vaccines may not match current or future viral strains, lessening the anticipated benefits of the vaccine. These are drawbacks that patients and their trusted pediatricians will need to evaluate along with the risks of COVID-19.

  There are also costs associated with off-label vaccination. While reliance on health insurers to cover vaccination removed the CDC’s prohibition on off-label vaccination, it created new financial barriers to access. Off-label treatments are not always covered by health insurance. However, if COVID-19 vaccines are no longer recommended as part of the CDC vaccine schedule, they may not be covered by Medicaid and insurers will not be obligated to pay for them, also exacerbating problems for vaccine equity and access. Other equity concerns raised by off-label use in 2021 no longer pertain to 2025. Demand for COVID-19 vaccines is relatively low across all age groups, such that off-label vaccination would not likely take away a dose from someone using it on-label.

  Public health-promoting alternatives to off-label vaccination may be burdensome or inaccessible. The US now favors individual risk mitigation through personal choices to mask or be vaccinated instead of evidence-based preventive measures like improved ventilation in schools or testing and quarantine protocols to curb COVID-19. Enrolling in future clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines may not be geographically or practically accessible, and it may result in receiving a placebo instead of a vaccine. Moreover, trials for pediatric COVID-19 vaccines may not continue if manufacturers cannot anticipate regulatory approval that would justify the investment in such research.

  Off-label vaccination is not a widespread public health strategy. Structural responses are also necessary, like the American Academy of Pediatrics publishing its own vaccine schedule and filing a lawsuit against HHS challenging the legality of the Secretary's decision to remove healthy children and pregnant people from the CDC immunization schedules.

• Deja Flu All Over Again: The Risk for Overwhelm of the U.S. Health Care System by Vaccine-Preventable and Modifiable Diseases Annals of Internal Medicine, September 30, 2025

  A storm is brewing and when it hits, the U.S. health care system will be ill prepared given the recent evisceration of public health infrastructure and reduced veracity of data at multiple levels, compounded by withdrawal of the United States from the World Health Organization. Although viruses have always been part of the human condition, we have developed protections to combat the consequences with lifesaving vaccines. Erosion of the data-reporting process from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) impairs early warning systems that indicate the emergence of an influenza and other pandemics and threats from other omnipresent potential spillover pathogens. This scenario, compounded by lowered confidence in vaccines due to conflicting information and misinformation, continuing diminution of health care capacity and staffing in U.S. health care facilities, and the serial evisceration of the public health infrastructure, signals that disaster is looming.

• CDC website switches back to 'monkeypox' STAT, September 30, 2025

  In late 2022, the WHO announced that it would phase out the disease name "monkeypox," replacing it with "mpox" - something it has the authority to do under the International Classification of Diseases, which STAT's Helen Branswell has called "the global bible of diseases." The name was seen by scientists across the globe as discriminatory and stigmatizing. But now, if you look at the CDC's website, it appears that the Trump administration is in the midst of transitioning back to the old name.
  "Monkeypox is the name of the viral disease caused by the monkeypox virus," an HHS spokesperson said over email. The rep did not answer follow-up questions why the agency made the switch or how else the website text may be changing. It's the same statement the agency provided to NPR earlier this month. "This is a simple provocation," physician and infectious disease professor Joseph Cherabie said to NPR. "It just falls in line with the playbook of this administration to go back to controversial terms."

October, 2025

• Before the government shutdown began Wednesday, many agencies published contingency plans. The documents reveal, to some extent, how much President Trump has slashed the federal work force. The New York Times, October 1, 2025

  

• A judge ruled a Trump U.S. attorney pick was unlawfully appointed. Washington Post, October 1, 2025
  Yesterday: District Judge David G. Campbell ruled that Trump's pick for U.S. attorney in Nevada has unlawfully served past the 120 days allowed for an interim U.S. attorney.
  Context: The White House has tried to get around the limit by reappointing interim picks as deputy U.S. attorneys and leaving the top spot vacant — effectively keeping them in charge of their office.
  The ruling: Campbell said that this maneuver was "never intended by Congress" and violated the law.
• The White House fired most of the National Council on the Humanities. Washington Post, October 1, 2025

  Breaking: Most of the advisory council for the National Endowment for the Humanities was abruptly fired today, leaving only four Trump appointees to guide the group.
  Related: Earlier this year, Trump fired the entire Kennedy Center board, replacing them with loyalists who then elected him chairman of the board.

• This US government shutdown is different: what it means for science. President Trump's budget office lays out guidelines for mass lay-offs across the federal government. Nature October 1, 2025

  Threats of federal shutdowns have become routine in the past decade, but this closure could be different: US President Donald Trump’s administration has encouraged mass firings of federal workers - a group that includes tens of thousands of scientists — during the lapse in funding.
  If the shutdown lasts more than a few days, it will directly affect non-government researchers: both the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would stop awarding new grants.
  It's unclear how long the shutdown could last. The first Trump administration (2017-21) featured a 35-day closure, the longest in US history, that cost roughly US$5 billion and led to disruptions across most US science agencies. There is no set date for the parties to meet for negotiations.
  According to plans disseminated before the government closed, the NSF intended to furlough roughly 75% of its staff. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was expecting to furlough 54% of its personnel, halting "most research activities". At NASA, in which 83% of staffers were furloughed, a skeleton crew will keep active satellites operational.At the EPA, 86% of the staff are to be furloughed, but ongoing experiments will be preserved. A contingency plan for the NIH specified a furlough of 78% of workers, preserving only crucial functions such as care for existing patients. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will furlough 64% of its staff.

• Autism researchers 'pleasantly surprised' by list of NIH data project grantees, despite initial concerns. An atypical funding mechanism, truncated application timeline and opaque review process had generated concern over the quality of projects that would be selected for the Autism Data Science Initiative. The Transmitter, October 2, 2025

  Despite the optimism, Lord and others say they are worried that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) might prevent the funded scientists from publishing certain findings or use the work to assert a narrative about autism that is not supported by data. They say their concerns stem from the program's atypical funding mechanism and review process and from previous actions and comments by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

  "This administration has done things that we just couldn't believe anyone would do. And so that does make me nervous," Lord says. In particular, she says she worries that the HHS will pick out a single factor correlated with receiving an autism diagnosis and do a "media blast about it" to scare people-like what has happened with acetaminophen. "You can do almost anything with data. If you don’t control for other factors, you can find anything you want. And so it's not at all that I mistrust the PIs," Lord says, but rather that other parties could make "weird interpretations."

  The program also sidestepped the NIH's standard study section review process, in which subject-matter experts individually score applications and then meet as a group to discuss the lot of them. The membership of study sections is publicly available; applicants do not know specifically who scores their grant, but they know the pool of potential reviewers. Instead, the ADSI application review involved "both internal and external subject-matter experts," according to the funding announcement. The names of those experts were never shared publicly.

  The review process was "very unusual," says an autism researcher who signed up to serve as a reviewer but then backed out because of their concerns. The researcher spoke anonymously out of fear of retaliation. Reviewers applied via a publicly available webform rather than the standard NIH review portal, which was a "red flag," the researcher says. Potential reviewers selected their relevant expertise from a checklist of options, one of which was "lived experience."

  "I think the question now is, what happens in the future? What happens when these grantees start coming to conclusions?" Amaral says. "I hope that, just like any other grantee from the NIH, they're going to be able to freely publish their results, regardless of what they show. The Coalition of Autism Scientists will be watching and listening to ensure that we can report if there's any sign that data is being misrepresented that is coming out of this initiative."

• E.J. Antoni's failed nomination makes the White House look even more incompetent It's not often that Senate Republicans muster the courage to tell Donald Trump and his team, "Whoa, hold on, we can't go that far." MSNBC MaddowBlog, October 1, 2025
• The federal shutdown will cut off vital economic data, including Friday's jobs report AP, October 2, 2025
• We asked 1,000 Americans who they blame for the shutdown Washington Post, October 2, 2025

  

• Education Department employees surprised to find their email automatically changed to blame Democrats for shutdown. Five furloughed employees told NBC News they had put up nonpartisan out-of-office messages, only to see they were changed - without their permission - to partisan ones. NBC News, October 2, 2025

  
  BlueSky Post (https://bsky.app/profile/moreperfectunion.bsky.social/post/3m2a6jrpbvc2n) October 2, 2025

• Message posted on https://www.cdc.gov/forecast-outbreak-analytics/about/ October 3, 2025

  

• Trump Posts Bizarre AI Video of Project 2025 Architect as the Grim Reaper. It used to be considered unusual for a U.S. president to do things like this.Gizmodo, October 3, 2025
• Michael de Adder, October 4, 2025

  

• Trump administration taps Army Reserve and National Guard for temporary immigration judges AP, October 3, 2025

  The Trump administration is tapping National Guard and Army Reserve lawyers to be temporary immigration judges after firing dozens of existing judges, the latest step in a broader plan that experts warn could harm immigration courts and the military justice system.

  Why this matters: Training for the first group of Army lawyers begins Monday and training for the second group is expected to start in the spring, several former and current military reserve lawyers said they were told.

  Some immigration and military law experts are concerned the reservists will be put in the job without enough training or experience after more than 100 immigration judges were fired or left. Of particular concern, the administration is not requiring experience as an administrative law judge or in immigration law as in the past, said Margaret Stock, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and immigration lawyer.

• There are now two CDC's. Can the agency survive? Inside Medicine, October 6, 2025

  CDC priorities statement CDC is now unrecognizable

  

• The Trump administration is preparing to restrict disability benefits for older Americans. Washington Post, October 6, 2025

  Exclusive: The Trump administration is looking into eliminating age as a factor considered in disability claims, which could limit disability benefits for Americans over 50.
  Currently: At present, older age is considered a limitation to adapt to a new job, making older applicants, typically those over 50, more likely to receive benefits.

• The Trump administration appointed an IRS "CEO." Washington Post, October 6, 2025

  New: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced today that Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano will also serve as the IRS "chief executive officer," a new role within the agency.
  Why it matters: The IRS is run by a commissioner, which is a Senate-confirmed position. As an entirely new role, being IRS "CEO" could allow Bisignano to lead the agency while avoiding Senate confirmation.
  More: The IRS oversight board would need to approve any changes to senior IRS leadership, but the board has lacked a quorum for years and is thus inactive.

• FACT-CHECK: Republicans Falsely Tie Shutdown To Democrats' Alleged Drive To Give All Immigrants Health Care CT News Junkie, October 6, 2025
• Associated Press disputes Trump's false characterization of its legal fight over access AP, October 6, 2025

  The Associated Press is objecting to Donald Trump's false claims about its ongoing legal dispute over access after the president incorrectly characterized the case in a public forum - a situation that goes back to the news service's decision last winter not to follow the president's executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico.
  Trump, speaking Sunday on an aircraft carrier while marking the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Navy, said that "we got sued by The Associated Press and they lost." The president said the "liberal" AP "got thrown out of court” and that "they're almost not allowed to cover me anymore."
  In fact, the AP won its case against Trump, but the president successfully earned a delay in getting the ruling enforced before the U.S. Court of Appeals considers the issue. Arguments on the president's appeal are scheduled for November.
  "The court ruled in AP's favor - in a strong opinion in support of free speech - and the government is appealing," AP spokesman Patrick Maks said. "As we've said throughout, the press and the public have a fundamental right to speak freely without government retaliation." The AP sued, arguing that the government was unlawfully punishing the organization for its point of view. U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden, a Trump appointee, agreed that the White House — once it had decided to invite reporters - could not "shut those doors" on those reporters because of what they've said or written.
  The president has applied pressure against news organizations on several fronts, with ABC News and CBS News settling lawsuits related to their coverage. Trump has also filed lawsuits against The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. The president has also moved to choke off funding for government-run services like the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

• Sending in the troops New York Times, The Morning, October 7, 2025

  Over the weekend, Trump sent National Guard troops from Texas to Chicago, against the wishes of the Illinois governor, a Democrat. The president also ordered hundreds of out-of-state National Guard troops into Portland, Ore., setting off a showdown with a federal judge who blocked the administration's moves on Sunday night. Judge Karin Immergut (who was appointed by Trump) wrote in her ruling:
  This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: This is a nation of constitutional law, not martial law. Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power - to the detriment of this nation.
  Trump says there are national security reasons for these deployments - they protect federal buildings or immigration agents from protesters who would hurt them. As he put it to the sailors on Sunday: "We send in whatever is necessary. People don't care. They don't want crime in their cities." He has also sent troops to Memphis and Los Angeles. But judges so far have said police can handle the problems. Trump said yesterday that he might use the Insurrection Act - an 1807 law that gives the president emergency powers to deploy troops on U.S. soil - to bypass rulings that block him.
  His national security rationale can be at odds with the nakedly political way he sometimes explains his decisions. He slams elected Democratic officials in the cities where he has deployed the National Guard. "The ones that are run by the radical left Democrats," he said last week, are "very unsafe places, and we're going to straighten them out one by one." In this way, the troops end up looking to some like a cudgel for his political agenda.

• When Trump's Tylenol attacks are good for business STAT, Morning Rounds, October 7, 2025

  When President Trump warned that pregnant women and children should avoid taking Tylenol, the vast majority of medical experts said there's insufficient evidence to support any claims linking the drug to autism. But that didn't stop the wellness industry from pouncing on the pronouncement as a business opportunity.
  "Wellness influencers are well-practiced" at capitalizing on fear, "even if that's fear they helped manufacture," wellness debunker Mallory DeMille noted on Instagram. Medical experts worry about the prospect of kids taking homeopathic products that are neither regulated nor well-researched, and about how the companies and influencers making money off parents' concerns may further erode trust in science-based medicine.

• Federal science and bioethics advisers, cast aside. Stat Morning Rounds, October 7, 2025

  Since January, President Trump's administration has terminated nearly four dozen committees that provide advice to various agencies within HHS. These groups worked on hospital infection control, made recommendations for long Covid research, assessed which genetic conditions newborns should be screened for, and more. More than half of the terminated panels are groups of outside experts assembled by the NIH to review grant applications for specialized topics unique to individual institutes.
  "It's really more about people that measure up to the qualifications by their obedience to a political orthodoxy, rather than based upon science and evidence," said Lawrence Gostin, who was dismissed from a position on an advisory board to the Fogarty International Center. Just weeks before being let go, he met with Bhattacharya at a dinner for the center and tried to make a case for continued funding.

• Past surgeons general warn HHS Secretary Kennedy must go CIDRAP, October 7, 2025

  Today the six surgeons general appointed since George H. W. Bush was president penned an opinion piece in the Washington Post calling for the removal of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
  "We are compelled to speak with one voice to say that the actions of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are endangering the health of the nation," they wrote. "Never before have we issued a joint public warning like this. But the profound, immediate and unprecedented threat that Kennedy's policies and positions pose to the nation's health cannot be ignored."
  The op-ed by Jerome Adams, MD, Richard Carmona, MD, MPH, Joycelyn Elders, MD, Vivek Murthy, MD, Antonia Novello, MD, MPH, and David Satcher, MD, PhD, said Kennedy has created a crisis in the nation's public health system and health agencies, which is resulting in mass resignations, short staffing, a resurgence of infectious diseases, and worsening chronic illnesses.
  As HHS secretary, Kennedy has a $2 trillion budget and helms Medicare, Medicaid, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and other agencies that each American uses, the doctors wrote.
  The opinion piece warns that under Kennedy more childhood vaccines will be in jeopardy, including newborn hepatitis B, which was the subject of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) September meeting. Moreover, they said the three measles deaths the country experienced this year as part of a wider outbreak were preventable. They also said Kennedy has repeated conspiracy theories that contributed to the targeting of the very staff he is charged with protecting in the wake of the attack on the CDC in August.
  "Secretary Kennedy is entitled to his views. But he is not entitled to put people's health at risk. He has rejected science, misled the public and compromised the health of Americans," the opinion piece said.
  Two leading psychiatric organizations also called for the removal of Kennedy today, noting cuts to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the federal agency responsible for supporting states and localities with overdose prevention. The Southern California Psychiatric Society (SCPS) and the Committee to Protect Public Mental Health each issued statements saying Kennedy spouts dangerous ideas, including the idea of putting homeless people on "wellness farms" and saying common antidepressants are more addictive than heroin.
  The SCPS in its statement said Kennedy misrepresented psychotropic medications in the Make America Health Again report. "The report uses these inaccurate statements as a basis for taking action to restrict access to critical services that ease suffering, restore functioning, and prevent suicide," the statement said. "Without these critical services, criminalization and expanded use of civil commitment will curtail the ability of individuals with mental illness to lead productive lives."
  O'Neill calls for monovalent measles, mumps, rubella vaccines. Late yesterday afternoon, Acting Director of the CDC Jim O'Neill announced on X that he is calling for the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to be separated into three monovalent (single-strain) vaccines after President Donald Trump made the suggestion last month.
  "I call on vaccine manufacturers to develop safe monovalent vaccines to replace the combined MMR and "break up the MMR shot into three totally separate shots," O'Neill's post said. The idea to separate the vaccine may be tied to ideas common among anti-vaccine proponents who believe vaccines overwhelm a child's immune system. There is no evidence that monovalent vaccines are more safe or efficacious than the MMR, which has been in use in the United States since 1971.

• Most Americans don't want troops deployed without an external threat, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds Reuters, October 8, 2025

  

  

• Most Americans think Trump is trying to exercise more power than previous presidents PEW Research, October 8, 2025

  

  

  

• Trump offers funds for universities who limit international students AsAmNews October 9, 2025

  Titled "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education," the nine-page document details the demands of the White House and an outlined version asks universities to focus on American students first, limiting international undergrad enrollment to 15% as well as sharing "all known information" about international students to the Department of Homeland Security, according to NBC.
  Additionally, the memo demanded universities disregard race or sex in hiring and admissions, freeze tuition for five years, require that applicants take a standardized test and transform or abolish "institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas."
  The American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and the American Association of University Professors President Todd Wolfson released a joint statement, condemning the letter.
  "The Trump administration's offer to give preferential treatment to colleges and universities that court government favor stinks of favoritism, patronage, and bribery in exchange for allegiance to a partisan ideological agenda," the statement wrote. "It is entirely corrupt."
  Of the universities, USC hosts the most international students, making up about 26% of the student body. Both Brown and Dartmouth follow with 14%, MIT has 12%, UPenn has 11%, Vanderbilt has 10%, University of Virginia with 8%, University of Arizona has 3.3% and University of Texas is last with only 2.8%. California Governor Gavin Newsom responded to the news with a post on X, writing that universities in the state would lose funding if they conceded to the terms.

  

• CIDRAP Op-Ed: Why the CDC director is wrong about the MMR vaccine CIDRAP, October 9, 2025

  Jim O'Neill, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), calling for vaccine manufacturers to develop separate measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines to replace the combined MMR shot. His statement linked to President Trump's similar message but provided no scientific rationale for the proposed change, as Reuters reported. No monovalent (single-strain) vaccines for measles, mumps, or rubella are currently licensed in the United States.
  The head of the federal agency responsible for disease control is advocating for dismantling a vaccination program his own agency credits with eliminating rubella and reducing mumps incidence by 99%. Just this January, the CDC's website celebrated the 20th anniversary of rubella elimination as "one of our greatest public health success stories."
  O'Neill's proposal faces immediate practical obstacles. Merck discontinued its monovalent vaccines in 2009. Creating them would require pharmaceutical companies to conduct new clinical trials, reconfigure production facilities, and secure FDA approval for three separate products. This process would take years, not months.
  Beyond logistics, the medical evidence strongly favors combination vaccines. A 2017 study found that 69% of children who received combination vaccines completed their full vaccination series, compared to 50% of those whose parents chose single vaccines. This completion gap translates directly to disease vulnerability. Separating vaccines would triple the number of medical visits required for full protection, creating barriers particularly for families with limited resources who struggle with transportation, work absence, and healthcare access.
  The CDC explicitly states that giving multiple vaccines simultaneously does not weaken immune responses. The immune system routinely processes thousands of antigens-substances that trigger an immune response-daily through environmental exposures; three weakened viruses present no meaningful challenge. The separation idea originates from Andrew Wakefield's 1998 paper suggesting the MMR vaccine caused autism, even though it was based on a study of only 12 children. The paper was retracted for fraud, and Wakefield lost his medical license. A 2019 Danish study of 657,461 children found no association between MMR vaccination and autism, even among children at higher risk due to family history.
  O'Neill's statement creates immediate risk. Parents hearing the CDC director question vaccine safety may delay or skip vaccination while waiting for alternatives that do not exist and will not exist for years. Historical precedent demonstrates this danger. O'Neill offers no evidence for his proposal, because none exists. No immunologic principle supports separation. No safety data justify abandoning a program that has protected millions of children for more than 50 years. What we have instead is the acting CDC director resurrecting a fraud's discredited theory while measles spreads through American communities at rates not seen in decades.

• KFF Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust: Tylenol-Autism Link and Vaccine Policies KFF.org, October 9, 2025
• People's Trust in the CDC Under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has Cratered, Poll Shows. The poll also found that most respondents don't agree with the Trump administration's assertion that taking Tylenol during pregnancy increases the risk of autism. Gizmodo, October 9, 2025
• Memo to Future Historians: This Is Fascism, and Millions of Us See It. From Chicago to Portland, James Comey to Letitia James, and so much else-this is no longer America. The New Republic (TNR), Octoboer 10, 2025

  Historians sometimes say that when societies are descending into fascism, it can be hard for the people to notice it in real time. Well, historians of the future, I'm here to tell you: We are noticing. Millions of us are noticing. And we are horrified and enraged. We are well aware: We once lived in a country that, for all its frequent imperfections, was a place where the rule of law was a broadly shared value and where leaders acted with democratic restraint. We now live in a country where there is no rule of law; where leaders, especially the president but also others who support him, spit on the idea not only of democratic restraint but of democracy itself; and where the timorous first reflex of nearly every member of one of our two political parties is, at virtually all times, to do precisely what the leader wants.
  That's fascism. It may be-for now-a comparatively mild form of fascism. Political opponents aren't being jailed or shot, opposition media outlets aren’t being shuttered, and books aren't being burned. But a lot of things are happening that are terrifying. Shooting an unarmed and peacefully protesting pastor is by definition an act of state-sponsored mayhem. State-sponsored mayhem starts at the top, with the president's thuggish, lawless threat to imprison the governor of Illinois and the mayor of Chicago.
  Administration officials pile lie upon lie upon lie. With respect to Portland, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt refers preposterously to "the radical leff's reign of terror" there. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declares antifa to be "just as dangerous" as ISIS, which was killing perceived apostates by the thousands at its peak and raping little girls. Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy chief of staff, rants nightly about armed confrontations that either don’t exist or exist solely because the administration creates them so it can have the footage that will air over and over on its propaganda network, Fox News. It's all toward the purpose of erasing dissent, erasing democracy.
  "The president is taking steps to criminalize being anti-Trump in America." When a president and his aides are doing that, it’s no longer America. When masked government thugs take potshots at a priest, it’s no longer America.
  When a handpicked hack prosecutor with no prosecutorial experience indicts two honorable American citizens within a month of the president ordering their prosecutions, and when two real prosecutors quit rather than pursue these obscenely political prosecutions, it's no longer America.
  When the third-ranking official in the country, the speaker of the House of Representatives, delays the swearing-in of a duly elected member of that body because he knows she will vote to release files that potentially may shed light on unsavory behavior by the president, it's no longer America.
  When the presidential administration announces that it’s going after nonprofit charitable groups that have operated unmolested in this country for decades under Democratic and Republican administrations because they donate to causes the president disfavors, it's no longer America.
  When naturalized citizens are canceling overseas trips because they can't be certain they'll be welcomed back to their own country upon return, it's no longer America.
  When the Department of Education is bullying universities into agreeing to a "compact" under which they’ll promise not to "belittle" conservative ideas, it's no longer America. When the Supreme Court of the United States has sold its soul to all this barbarity, it's no longer America.
  When the president and his family have used his office to enrich themselves to the tune of $3.5 billion in nine months, and when the Congress, controlled by the president's party, refuses to do a thing about this rancid, dictator-level corruption, it's no longer America.
  And when this thuggish dictator-wannabe is also a buffoonish man-child who sits there in his breathtakingly tacky Oval Office with his fake face and fake hair next to another head of state (the president of Finland) as he boasts yet again about passing a simple dementia test that a 10-year-old could ace, and we realize that this man-child is the sitting president, it's no longer America, at least for anyone who cares about how we look to the rest of the world.
  Historians of the future: Rest assured, millions of us know all this in real time. We are horrified, shocked, enraged, and ashamed. We are acting, in a thousand ways, to oppose it. This cannot, and will not, be how the United States ends.

• Did Stephen Miller say Trump has 'plenary authority' on CNN? "Plenary authority" refers to full or limitless power over a sphere of government, such as the military. Snopes, October 10, 2025

  
  In October 2025, a rumor spread that Stephen Miller, the White House's deputy chief of staff, said live on television that President Donald Trump has "plenary authority," a phrase that refers to one branch of government having full or limitless power over an area of governance.
  Miller was standing in front of the White House during the interview, while Sanchez was in a CNN studio. Miller cited Title 10 of the U.S. Code, a law that codifies the role of the military, when he claimed Trump has "plenary authority." After he made the comment, he fell silent, mid-sentence, and appeared to have lost the audio connection to Sanchez.

• BREAKING NEWS: CDC employees terminated in apparent Friday night massacre. The Trump administration is using the shutdown to further weaken the our national public health infrastructure. Inside Medicine, October 10, 2025
• The Death of Public Health. Another Friday night massacre, but this time it's not just an essential federal public health agency that will die Dr. Angela Rasmussen and The Save America Movement, October 11, 2025

  This is the comprehensive dismantling of America's national public health agency. One of my friends texted me last night: "They are eviscerating us. It's surreal."
  These RIFs spanned the US government and were the work of Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought. President Donald Trump and the Republicans forced a government shutdown as a further means of centralizing power within the Executive Branch and cementing Trump's authoritarian rule. Trump is shamelessly spreading propaganda like this "Government Shutdown Clock" on .gov websites blaming the Democrats for the shutdown he and his party engineered. The Democrats aren't capitulating yet, but they aren't really doing much else of note. So Vought is using the ongoing government shutdown as a pretext to continue his premeditated murder spree of the federal workforce.
  More than 4,000 public servants lost their jobs across the government last night. More than 1100 people of those were from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and from what my colleagues in multiple HHS agencies tell me, that was overwhelmingly concentrated at CDC.
  To be very clear, these RIFs are illegal. There is nothing in the US Constitution that gives the President the power to begin culling civil servants because the government is shut down. The entire point of the division of power in American democracy is that the President doesn't have unlimited power over the whole of government, nor is he authorized to just fire entire organizational units of federal employees for political reasons. Trump and Vought are, as usual, trying to see what they can get away with.
  However, if they get away with these lawless RIFs at CDC, the consequences will include a death toll. The people who got RIF notices work on some of our most critical public health functions. Without them, CDC will not be able to provide these services. And without these services, Americans-and people around the world-will die.
  CDC had already been brutalized by the Trump administration. Besides suffering massive cuts on the Valentine's Day and April Fool's Massacres, Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. have defunded critical programs, scaled back essential surveillance, dissolved expert committees, overridden standard evidence-based practices, descheduled critical childhood vaccines, ignored the domestic terror attack in August, purged CDC of its leadership, and installed incompetent, unqualified, ideologically monstrous political appointees like Acting CDC Director Jim O'Neill.

• "It's a massacre": CDC battered by government shutdown firings. Statnews, October 11, 2025

  The White House's mass firing of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff has decimated offices related to injury prevention, respiratory disease surveillance, and chronic disease, according to four people familiar with the cuts.
  Almost the entire staff behind the CDC's flagship publication, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, has been fired. The report is typically one of the first places where information about U.S. disease outbreaks is disseminated before appearing in other journals and publishes information on a wide variety of critical public health issues.

• Proud Navy Veteran @naretevduorp Part of the #Project2025 plan: Overwhelming you with constant chaos until you become numb to it, until after they've stolen your Democracy. #DemVoices October 12, 2025 (https://x.com/naretevduorp/status/1977021176372425079)

  Take the time to read the signs

• Federal employees in mental health and disease control were among targets in weekend firings AP, October 13, 2025

  Of more than 1,300 CDC employees who received reduction-in-force notices Friday, about 700 later received emails revoking their terminations, the union said. The AFGE Local 2883 called the action a “politically-motivated stunt” to illegally fire agency workers.
  Among those targeted for dismissal and then reinstated were the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service officers, the "disease detectives" who are deployed to respond to outbreaks that threaten public health, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, former principal deputy director of the CDC, who said she was in touch with EIS officers in that situation. "These are people who go into really scary places," Schuchat said. "Usually you think it's nature that's going to be giving you a hard time, the viruses, not the government."

• Inside the FDA, political pressure is the new norm. STAT, October 14, 2025

  Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s tenure atop HHS has been marked by increasing tension between career scientists and political leaders at health agencies. That tension is nearing a breaking point at the FDA, according to interviews with more than 20 current and former agency officials, as well as legal experts.
  That breaking point arrived after agency scientists received an unusual inquiry in August from the leader of the center that regulates prescription medicines to learn more about leucovorin as part of Kennedy's bid to identify autism's root cause by September.
  Experts say the push to approve leucovorin, a generic drug that's mainly used to alleviate side effects of cancer treatment, as an autism treatment is a sign that the U.S. is headed toward a new era of drug regulation: one where political decisions lead, and evidence follows.

• Data darkness in US spreads a global shadow Reuters, October 15, 2025

  Summary: Lack of US data a concern abroad as well as in US; Shutdown seen as symptomatic of larger issues; World Bank, IMF cite loss of institutional trust as a downside risk. What happens in America, in other words, doesn't stay in America, and global officials say being left data-blind by the shutdown over time could complicate their own policymaking and boost the risk of a mistake at a moment when countries are already adjusting to the Trump administration's efforts to remake global trade.

• US news outlets reject Pentagon press access policy Reuters, October 15, 2025

  At least 30 news organizations declined to sign a new Pentagon access policy for journalists, warning of the potential for less comprehensive coverage of the world's most powerful military ahead of a Tuesday deadline to accept new restrictions.The policy requires journalists to acknowledge new rules on press access, including that they could be branded security risks and have their Pentagon press badges revoked if they ask department employees to disclose classified and some types of unclassified information.
  Reuters is among the outlets that have refused to sign, citing the threat posed to press freedoms. Others that have announced their refusal to accept the new press access rules in statements or their own news stories are: the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, CBS, NBC, ABC, NPR, Axios, Politico, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Hill, Newsmax, Breaking Defense and Task & Purpose.News organizations have not disputed restrictions on reporters' access to sensitive areas in the Pentagon. Credentialed reporters have historically been limited to unclassified spaces, according to the Pentagon Press Association.
  All five major broadcast networks issued a joint statement on Tuesday, saying: "Today, we join virtually every other news organization in declining to agree to the Pentagon's new requirements, which would restrict journalists' ability to keep the nation and the world informed of important national security issues. The policy is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections. We will continue to cover the U.S. military as each of our organizations has done for many decades, upholding the principles of a free and independent press."
  The Pentagon revised its proposed policy following negotiations between the department and news organizations that came after they widely condemned requirements that barred credentialed reporters from seeking out sensitive information that was not approved for release.
  The revised policy notes that receiving or publishing sensitive information "is generally protected by the First Amendment "but states that soliciting the disclosure of such information "may weigh in the consideration of whether you pose a security or safety risk." The policy adds: "The press's rights are not absolute and do not override the government's compelling interest in maintaining the confidentiality of sensitive information."

• Journalists turn in access badges, exit Pentagon rather than agree to new reporting rules AP, October 15, 2026

  Dozens of reporters turned in access badges and exited the Pentagon on Wednesday rather than agree to government-imposed restrictions on their work, pushing journalists who cover the American military further from the seat of its power. The nation’s leadership called the new rules "common sense" to help regulate a "very disruptive" press.
  News outlets were nearly unanimous in rejecting new rules imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that would leave journalists vulnerable to expulsion if they sought to report on information - classified or otherwise - that had not been approved by Hegseth for release.
  Even before issuing his new press policy, Hegseth, a former Fox News Channel host, has systematically choked off the flow of information. He's held only two formal press briefings, banned reporters from accessing many parts of the sprawling Pentagon without an escort and launched investigations into leaks to the media.

• The Chamber of Commerce sued Trump. Washington Post, October 17, 2025
  Why: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce yesterday filed a lawsuit trying to block a new $100,000 fee for the H-1B visa program, alleging the fee violates immigration law.
  Background: Trump introduced the fee for H-1B visas, used for immigrants hired in the U.S. to work in specialty occupations, in an attempt to deter employment of foreign citizens.
• ICE increased its surveillance capabilities. Washington Post, October 17, 2025.
  What to know: ICE has purchased a large number of surveillance technologies in recent weeks, a Post review of spending disclosures found, including facial and iris recognition tech.
  Context: Documents suggest the technology will be used to track “Antifa” groups, which the Trump administration considers anti-ICE, in addition to undocumented immigrants.
• Judge blocks Trump's shutdown layoffs-1,200 HHS workers spared for now
• Trump is demanding millions from his own administration. New York Times, October 21, 2025

  President Trump is asking the Justice Department to pay him about $230 million in compensation for past investigations into him. The situation, which was revealed today by our Washington reporters Devlin Barrett and Tyler Pager, has no parallel in American history. It is also perhaps the starkest example yet of the president's potential ethical conflicts: His close allies, including one of his former defense lawyers, could be in charge of approving any such payout. When campaigning for president, Trump submitted one complaint in 2023 and another in 2024, both seeking damages from the Justice Department for what he described as violations of his rights during investigations into his conduct. Compensation is typically covered by taxpayers, and there is no requirement that such a payout ever be announced.
  When asked about the potential conflict of interest, the Justice Department said it would follow the guidance of career ethics officials. However, the department’s top ethics adviser was fired three months ago.

• Donald Trump's AI Video Is a Psychosexual Confession Substack, October 21, 2025

  But this time, he outdid himself. On the heels of the second No Kings protest, he released an AI video of himself sitting in a fighter jet, wearing a crown, and dumping shit bombs onto protestors. He imagined himself gleefully defecating on the American people without shame.
  In other words, the country's political and media ecosystem treated a sitting president's fantasy of defecating on citizens as if it were entertainment. The laughter and dismissal were enabling. Every smirk and shrug helped normalize a nasty display that was anything but funny. But we must refuse to see Trump's behavior as "political theater."
  When a powerful, wealthy white man imagines himself shitting on people, it isn't comedy, it's a confession. It's humiliation as arousal and degradation as dominance. It's kink: a degradation fantasy, a control fetish, a way to make pleasure out of someone else's shame. Usually this plays out in private rooms with safe words. But here it's public with the leader of a nation acting out the same psychosexual script men with money and power have used for centuries: reduce the powerless to filth, then call it a joke.
  Trump's fantasy isn't new. It's the fantasy of the plantation owner, the pimp, the colonizer, the man who can pay to make someone else kneel and swallow the mess. The act of shitting on someone isn't just about bodily waste, it's about power and control. It's saying, my disgust is worth more than your dignity. It's the most primal, carnal declaration of supremacy there is.
  When rich white men defecate on others, literally or symbolically, it's about reminding the world that they own the terms of what's clean and what's dirty. They get to desecrate, and you get to smile through it. They get to say it's "satire," and you get called triggered or a snowflake for noticing it's abuse. That's the kink. That's the power rush. Trump is not hiding behind the jet and the crown, he's getting off on them. The crown is the fantasy. The jet is the erection. The waste is the proof that he can do it and still be adored by his base.
  And that's why the video is so disturbing. It's not just crude, it's eroticized punishment. He doesn't dream of governing; he dreams of disciplining. The protestors below him aren't citizens, they're objects, props in his sadistic little fantasy of control. The act of dropping shit is foreplay for conquest. It's the same energy that drives him to demean women, mock the disabled, and sexualize his own daughter. It's pleasure born from power.
  But this is the grammar of white male power through control, degradation, and the pleasure of seeing others dirtied by your hand. Trump's spectacle exposes what American culture has always worshipped: the white man who gets off on control, the patriarch who turns domination into performance and calls it strength. Naming that isn't indecent, it's the only honest thing left to do.
  The video of Trump crowning himself and defecating on protestors is also the mirror image of the leaked GOP chats where party operatives fantasized about gassing Jews, burning Black people, and torturing LGBTQ folks. What those men whisper and masturbate to in private, Trump performs from the cockpit. Both acts announce the same creed: I can terrorize you, shit on you, degrade you, discard you and it's a show. Side by side, the AI video and the leaked chats expose a single pathology: sexualized violence, racialized contempt, class superiority, and the thrill of domination disguised as leadership.
  None of this is political satire. It's porn for fascists. It's a humiliation fantasy where whiteness, wealth, racism, and waste collapse into one ecstatic gesture of control. And maybe Speaker Mike Johnson was right after all when he said Trump uses "satire" to make a point. Because he did make one: that he can shit on the American people, turn cruelty into orgasm, and still have men like Johnson wipe his ass for him and call it leadership.

• Preservationists and politicians came out against the White House demolition. Washington Post, October 22, 2025
  What they're saying: The D.C. Preservation League, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and a number of public figures expressed concern about the demolition of the White House East Wing.
  Background: Much of the East Wing is being torn down as part of President Donald Trump's construction of a ballroom. Trump had said the construction wouldn't "interfere" with the East Wing.
  Polling: A YouGov poll yesterday found 53% of Americans oppose demolishing part of the East Wing.
• The Pentagon accepted a donation to help pay troops. New York Times, October 24, 2025

  The president said today that a donor had given the government $130 million to help pay troops during the government shutdown. He declined to name the donor, but described him as a "patriot" and a personal friend.
  If evenly distributed, the money would pay only about $100 to each service member. But is not yet clear how the money will be used, or whether the donation violates a law prohibiting federal agencies from accepting money in excess of congressional appropriations.

• Trump fights with Canada over an ad featuring Reagan. New York Times, October 24, 2025

  Trump announced late last night that he was cutting off tariff negotiations with Canada — injecting new uncertainty into the U.S.’s relationship with its second-biggest trading partner - because of an advertisement featuring Ronald Reagan.
  Trump declared that the ad, which was paid for by the province of Ontario and shows Reagan speaking negatively about tariffs, was "fraudulent." But while the clips in the ad were edited, they did not alter the substance: Reagan was, in fact, highly critical of tariffs. Ontario said it had paid about $53.5 million to broadcast the ad, which began airing last week in the U.S. during a Blue Jays game against the Seattle Mariners.

  Watch original Reagan broadcast at heart of Trump free trade spat | REUTERS via @YouTube

• White House says October inflation data unlikely to be released next month Reuters, October 24, 2025

  The Bureau of Labor Statistics repeated earlier statements that apart from the recall of some staff to generate the Consumer Price Index for September, which was released earlier on Friday, all data collection and publishing activities have ceased for as long as the shutdown lasts.
  During the December 2018-January 2019 government shutdown, the longest on record, the BLS remained functional, allowing many key reports to still be generated. Some economic data from other agencies, such as the Commerce Department, was delayed. Analysts and former policymakers have become increasingly worried that the wider nature of the current shutdown will result in a bigger impact on surveillance of the economy.

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November, 2025

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December, 2025

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PUBLISHED ON THE WEB: August 6, 2025
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