Trump administration continues to tear down the VA

His main goal is faster privatization of the nation’s largest public healthcare system.

Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon for Common Dreams

If any Trump appointees lose their posts, as part of a midterm cabinet reshuffling, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins is not likely to be among them.

Unlike controversial former colleagues, already sacked as the heads of the Homeland Security, Justice, and Labor Departments—or Pete Hegseth, the next to go?—Collins keeps his own head down. He does the president’s bidding, without personal drama or political scandal.

This low-profile Air Force Reserve chaplain is a clean-living Southern Baptist minister, small-town lawyer, and former congressman from Georgia. When the Senate confirmed him last year, there was no need for a tie-breaking vote like the one JD Vance cast to push Pete across the finish line as secretary of defense.

VA defenders, inside and outside the Beltway, need a damage control agenda that will restrain—rather than enable—further White House attempts to defund and dismantle our best working model of socialized medicine.

The far more affable Collins won Senate approval with the bipartisan support of 22 Democrats! They included Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a military veteran whose own son is a VA patient and, sadly, were joined by Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), former chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee (SVAC).

Expanded Outsourcing

Collins has proved to be Donald Trump’s worst VA Secretary ever; his main goal is faster privatization of the nation’s largest public healthcare system. The likelihood that he will control the third largest federal agency budget and second largest departmental workforce, for another two years, is not good news for 9 million VA patients.

By the time any Democrat replaces Trump in January, 2029, Collins will have diverted far more than $46 billion annually from the VA’s direct-care budget to a network of 1.7 million private sector providers and four healthcare companies who administer it.

Just two months ago, he awarded new contracts to the latter worth $1 trillion, over the next decade (if not cancelled or curtailed by a future administration). As a result, industry giants like United Healthcare and Humana will be profiting from further outsourcing of VA care that is costly, unnecessary, and not favored by veterans themselves.

VA defenders, inside and outside the Beltway, need a damage control agenda that will restrain—rather than enable—further White House attempts to defund and dismantle our best working model of socialized medicine. Otherwise, more VA staffing and budget cuts, plus facility closings, in the VA’s own system of 1,380 public hospitals and clinics around the country will be happening soon.

Marking November 11

In the United States:

In Canada...

And the United Kingdom...

COVID-19 vaccines generated trillions in benefits, far exceeding their estimated costs

Vaccination made good financial sense in addition to saving lives. 

Still does.

By New York University

Edited by Swati Mestri, reviewed by Robert Egan

Dr. Fauci was right

Every dollar spent on COVID-19 vaccine development and distribution generated an estimated $81 to $810 in economic value during the first year that vaccines were given, according to new research published in the journal PLOS Medicine.

The study—the first global analysis of the return on investment for COVID-19 vaccines—shows that vaccines not only averted severe illness and saved lives but were also a sound investment.

"Our study provides evidence that the unprecedented, rapid investments made into COVID-19 vaccines early in the pandemic paid off massively both in health and economic benefits," said study author Mark Jit, professor of global health at NYU School of Global Public Health. "Vaccine development, as well as equitable vaccine distribution globally, should be prioritized before and during global health crises."

Counting costs beyond vaccine purchases

Vaccines played a critical role during the COVID-19 pandemic, but their development required extraordinary effort—and spending—among governments, pharmaceutical companies and nonprofit organizations. The resulting vaccines were highly effective at preventing severe illness and death, with one study estimating that between 14 million and 20 million deaths were averted in the first year that vaccines were available.

Despite their health impact, the economic value of these vaccines has not been examined on a global scale. Moreover, most analyses of the cost-effectiveness of immunization look at the cost of purchasing the vaccine itself from its manufacturer, not the cost of developing it.

"With other vaccines, a company takes on the risk by investing its own money to develop a vaccine. But the COVID vaccine was not purely a private sector decision—the U.S., the European Union and other countries like China poured substantial funding into this to reduce the risk for vaccine companies," said Jit. "We wanted to understand how these costs compared to health and economic outcomes."

The Midterms Were a Populist Blowout

The miracle win

By Peter Certo

For years, Americans have been viciously divided according to race, religion, immigration status, and gender identity by politicians dead set on making us fight each other rather than them. In a year where real people’s struggles were impossible to ignore, that effort fell short.

It’s hard to overstate the scale of Democratic victories in this year’s midterm elections.

Voters broke for Democratic candidates by margins scarcely anticipated by even the party’s rosiest polls — often in deep red states and congressional districts that few seriously thought were competitive. Democrats will now control a commanding House majority and hold a significant edge in the Senate as well.

This was a decisive rejection of Trumpism — and it happened on a significantly tilted playing field.

Before the election, Trump-aligned justices on the Supreme Court gutted what remained of the Voting Rights Act, only the latest in a series of rulings limiting fair access to voting and representation. 

At Trump’s urging, Republican-led statehouses unleashed an unprecedented flurry of mid-decade gerrymanders designed to maximize their partisan advantage and disenfranchise their critics. Billionaires poured vast sums into races — and trillionaire Elon Musk spent over $400 million alone, more than George Soros has spent on elections his entire life.

And that’s not even getting into the concerns, often stoked by leading Republicans themselves, that the administration would try to cancel results, deploy National Guard or ICE agents to cities, or otherwise meddle in the election.

None of it was enough for voters who’ve spent years now watching events in their lives spin out of control.

Trump’s tariffs made life miserable for farmers, manufacturers, and consumers while his allies slashed safety net programs to fund tax breaks for billionaires. The war in Iran, which Trump launched shortly after promising no new wars, sent the price of fuel skyrocketing.

Lawless ICE agents terrorized immigrants and citizens alike and shocked the conscience of people across the political spectrum. And a data center boom spiked power bills and disrupted communities across the country, all to power a technology CEOs vowed to use for replacing people’s jobs and surveilling their day to day life.

In the races that mattered most, populist candidates spoke to these concerns directly.

Big mistake

Oh the horror!

The midterms’ most deserving losers

Not to gloat (much) but here are some that really deserved it

Tom Schaller

Donald Trump and his MAGA cult were the biggest losers in Tuesday’s midterm elections. 

The results delivered a stinging rebuke to a wide range of political actors in the conservative Republican universe, including people and institutions who never have and likely never will run for office: Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, Fox News and the so-called “manosphere.”

But a number of notable Republicans — most but not all of them elected officials on the 2026 ballot — suffered epic, overdue, even karmic-level defeats.

The following list is hardly exhaustive. But the eight groups of losers categorized below are best described as the “Comeuppance Caucus”: Republicans who in 2026 got what was coming to them.

1. The Gerrymanderers

In 2025, state Republicans succumbed to Trump’s demands to redistrict US House maps in as many GOP-controlled states as possible. Much of the post-election attention this week has focused on House Republican defeats in the mid-decade redistricted states of Texas and Florida, especially in Latino-heavy districts. Governors Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis deserve the lickings they took Tuesday night.

But North Carolina merits special attention as the Republican Party’s “dummymandering doomsday” state.

Last year, NC state Sen. Ralph Hise led the GOP-controlled legislature’s plan to further tinker with House districts that four years earlier had already been drawn to significantly favor Republicans. The GOP aimed to win 10, maybe 11, of the state’s 14 seats in 2026, specifically targeting for defeat moderate African American Democrat Don Davis’s rural NC-1 district. With NC’s own US Rep. Richard Hudson, chair of the Republican National Congressional Committee, at his side, Hise pushed through the new map.

How badly did this gambit backfire? Democrats so far have captured at least nine seats, including NC-1. They have a razor-thin lead in a tenth district (NC-5) and an outside shot of flipping two more seats once final ballots are tabulated. And — womp, womp — Hudson lost in NC-9 to Democrat Richard Ojeda. Yes, the House Republican chosen by his colleagues to elect or reelect House Republicans for the 2026 cycle lost his seat.

Mom who lost young daughter to flu hopes others choose vaccination

Don't let your kids die from preventable diseases

Meghan Holohan

Courtesy Jessica Richman

When Cayden Smith, age 3, developed a low-grade fever and congestion one Thursday evening in December 2014, her family first thought it was a cold. The following day, they visited an urgent-care center. 

“We did let them know that she had been scheduled to get a flu shot a couple weeks before, but she had an ear infection,” Jessica Richman, Cayden’s mom, 41, from Newport News, Virginia, told CIDRAP News. “She had a little fever at the time, so they said we needed to reschedule the flu shot.” 

Urgent care staff didn’t test Cayden for influenza; instead, they treated her cold symptoms and advised the family to return if the toddler didn’t improve. “We actually took her back three different times, because she was getting very progressively worse,” Richman recalled. 

From lack of concern to a 911 call

Cayden was Richman’s first child, born May 18, 2011. The outgoing, bubbly girl, who never met a person who would remain a stranger, loved the color pink and her 130-pound Bernese Mountain dog. “It was cute to see this tiny, small girl and this big, huge dog,” Richman said. “She had a great personality.” 

While Cayden had always received her vaccines, she missed her flu vaccine in 2014 because of that ear infection. At the time, Richman didn’t know how serious flu could be. “I didn’t realize it was super dangerous, so I didn’t urgently reschedule her flu shot,” she said. 

Each time the family took Cayden back to urgent care that December, they mentioned she had not received her flu shot. Still, staff never tested her for flu. “They just didn’t seem that concerned that that’s what it was,” Richman said. “I’m not sure why.” 

By Friday evening, Cayden’s breathing had become labored. She’d take deep breaths in but still didn’t seem to get much air. Unlike other times when she was sick, Cayden wasn’t playing with her toys and behaved lethargically. Finally, her dad called 911. 

“She was not moving, wasn’t asking for anything. She didn’t want to eat or drink,” Richman said. “We had first responders show up to the house. Unfortunately, she had passed at the house.” 

Democrats to RFK Jr.: Resign Now or Be Prepared to Testify Before Congress

End this menace to public health

By Mike Ludwig

This article was originally published by Truthout

During the 2024 election, when backlash to pandemic-era safety protocols was still percolating on right-wing and alternative health blogs, the notorious anti-vaccine celebrity Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement were critical to President Donald Trump’s winning coalition.

Now, speculation is swirling about Kennedy’s future as Trump’s health secretary as Democrats prepare to take control of the next Congress and the president and GOP search for scapegoats following heavy losses in this week’s midterm contests. Voters elected multiple doctors and medical professionals who ran both as Democrats and opponents of the Trump-Kennedy approach to public health.

Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive who won a Senate seat in Michigan, is an epidemiologist and served as public health director in both Detroit and Wayne County before running for office on a campaign promoting Medicare for All. In North Carolina, pediatrician Annie Andrews won an upset over Republican scion Darline Graham while campaigning on expanding access to health care, including reproductive care.

In Ohio, Amy Acton infamously overcame a vicious attack ad produced by her opponent’s campaign to become the next governor of Ohio. But before that, the state’s residents got to know Acton from her regular briefings while leading Ohio’s Covid-19 pandemic response. All three have regularly publicly condemned Kennedy’s leadership of U.S. public health infrastructure.

Meanwhile, MAHA is increasingly fractured, and Trump’s alliance with Kennedy is reportedly on the rocks after both men angered the movement’s fans by failing to deliver on key issues such as the regulation of toxic pesticides. As health care costs soar and the public contends with outbreaks of easily preventable diseases including measles and food-borne cyclospora, Democrats are calling on Kennedy to resign from his post or face lawmakers in hearings next year as voters hand them control of Congress.

“The time is now. RFK Jr. must resign or be fired. End of discussion,” said Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Maryland) in a social media post on Monday.

The time is now. RFK Jr. must resign or be fired. End of discussion.

— Senator Angela Alsobrooks (@Sen_Alsobrooks) November 4, 2026

Trump Makes His Chief Bigot His Chief of Staff

Not good news

Robert Reich

Anyone wondering how Trump will respond to the biggest repudiation a modern U.S. president has ever received from American voters need wonder no longer. Trump announced that Stephen Miller would become his chief of staff, replacing Susie Wiles.

In a Truth Social post, Trump called Miller one of his “most trusted” advisers and said he would be starting in the new role Monday.

Miller as chief of staff is not a positive development for anyone interested in mending our government or healing our nation.

As Trump’s attention recedes into his vanity projects — the ballroom, the arch, the heliport, the golf links, the gold-leaf makeovers — Miller is likely to become de facto president, manipulating an increasingly incoherent and cognitively impaired old man.

I expect Miller to conduct a scorched-earth campaign of retribution and legal harassment — a war against all perceived Trump enemies — while burning down everything in his way.

Let’s be clear. Miller is bigoted, xenophobic, and vicious — the architect and chief advocate of Trump’s loathsome immigration policy. He is perhaps the most venal of all the obsequious sycophants surrounding the mad king.

In one of his most bizarre claims, Miller has said immigrants to the United States bring problems that extend through generations. “Not only is the first generation unsuccessful,” Miller asserts. “You see persistent issues in every subsequent generation. So you see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.”

Rubbish. The children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of most immigrants are models of upward mobility in America.

Researchers have found that immigrants today are no slower to move into the middle class than immigrants were a century ago. In fact, no matter when their parents came to the U.S. or what country they came from, children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than their U.S.-born peers.

Post-election reflection

Instead, he did this....

Except he may have gotten his Dana Whites mixed up

December 4: get tickets now for WARM Center's holiday event

Explore GSO app lets users tour URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography from anywhere

Cool tools at your fingertips

Peter J. Hanlon

Users of the Explore GSO app can read or listen to a wealth of information on the Explore GSO app, including historical data about research vessels and the role the military played at the Narragansett Bay Campus. (Explore GSO screenshots)

The University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO) has launched Explore GSO, a free multimedia app that lets anyone tour the school’s campus, research facilities, and history from anywhere in the world.

Located on 153 acres overlooking Narragansett Bay, URI’s Narragansett Bay Campus is home to GSO, the URI Department of Ocean Engineering, and other marine programs and organizations. Explore GSO brings the campus to a wider audience through two tours: one showcasing today’s research and the people behind it, and another tracing the history of the school and the land it occupies.

Because the Bay Campus sits at the far end of South Ferry Road in Narragansett, few people will ever stumble upon it. And for prospective students or ocean science enthusiasts who live far away, visiting GSO in person might not be an option. The app brings the school to them.

Explore GSO highlights the campus with descriptions, photos, audio recordings, and videos of the latest marine research and the people leading it. The app also traces the school’s history and that of the land it occupies, including the early steps that led to an oceanography school at URI through its continued growth today.

The app highlights some of the campus’s lesser-known features including its use as a World War II prisoner-of-war camp for German soldiers, the collection of 66,000 volumes on ocean and coastal research in the Pell Marine Science Laboratory, and Studio Blue, GSO’s own art gallery.

Real men eat tofu

Animal vs. Plant Protein: New Study Reveals Unexpected Testosterone Differences

By University of Eastern Finland

An observational study of middle-aged men links animal protein to lower testosterone and plant protein to higher levels, but the differences are small, and their health effects remain unclear.

A protein-rich meal gives the body amino acids, the building blocks it needs to make and repair tissues, including muscle. Testosterone helps regulate muscle growth and also supports bones and sexual function. Food provides essential materials, while hormones help direct what the body does with them.

That connection makes diet a reasonable place to look when studying testosterone, yet relatively few studies have examined its relationship with protein intake.

Researchers at the University of Eastern Finland found that men who consumed more animal protein tended to have lower total testosterone levels in their blood. Those who consumed more plant protein tended to have higher levels. The findings do not mean that higher testosterone is necessarily healthier or that one protein source improves hormone function.

Dairy and meat show different hormone links

The research, published in the International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition, included 2,546 men aged 42 to 60 living in eastern Finland. 

Does Pete eat enough tofu?

It drew on the university’s ongoing Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study. Researchers assessed the men’s diets using four-day food records collected between 1984 and 1989 and measured total testosterone in blood samples. They also measured sex hormone-binding globulin, or SHBG, a protein that binds to sex hormones and influences total testosterone concentrations in the blood.

Looking at individual foods revealed a distinction that the broad category of animal protein could obscure. Higher dairy protein intake was associated with lower total testosterone and SHBG levels. Meat protein intake was associated with lower SHBG, but it had no association with total testosterone. Among plant foods, higher protein intake from vegetables and sources other than cereal products was associated with higher total testosterone.

To compare the differences, the researchers divided the men into four groups according to their protein intake. Those in the highest animal protein group had total testosterone concentrations averaging 1.2 nanomoles per liter (nmol/L) below those in the lowest group. For plant protein, the highest intake group averaged 1.1 nmol/L above the lowest group. SHBG showed similar opposing associations with animal and plant protein intake.

“Although the observed differences in testosterone concentrations were statistically significant, they were relatively small. Based on this study, it is not possible to infer whether these differences have implications for health,” says Doctoral Researcher Miika Wynne-Ellis from the University of Eastern Finland.

Flu and COVID Are Both Surging Early This Year in Rhode Island and US

Now is the time to take precautions to stay healthy

By Nick Landekic, contributing writer/RINewsToday News Team

As much as we would all like to forget about COVID, it’s still very much with us and will be for a long time. Right now, we are experiencing an atypical COVID surge with outbreaks reported in 47 states. COVID levels (as measured by wastewater monitoring) are Very High in Rhode Island with several areas reporting the highest levels seen all year, including Jamestown and the East Bay communities of Bristol, Warren, and Newport.

The rate of COVID infections right now is higher than it was than at any time during the first two years of the pandemic. Over 1 million people are becoming infected with COVID every day, and increasing. The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative estimates that between 1,900 and 3,300 Americans are dying of COVID every week.

Flu has also come early this year. Every part of the U.S. is showing high flu test positivity which means we are in ‘flu season.’ Flu rates are climbing in almost every state including Rhode Island.

If you haven’t yet gotten COVID and flu vaccine shots, now would be a good time to talk with your doctor or pharmacist.

How serious are COVID and the flu?

COVID and influenza are the only infectious diseases that regularly kill tens of thousands of Americans each year. They are both serious infectious diseases. The severity of infection can be reduced by vaccination.

For both flu and COVID, the most vulnerable people are the very young and the very old. COVID is especially dangerous for seniors, while the flu is more dangerous for infants.

One of the most damaging myths is that COVID has somehow become ‘milder.’ It has not.  If anything some studies have shown it has become worse. It most definitely is not like a cold or even the flu. It’s much more serious.

Repeat COVID infections take an increasing toll on the body. Studies have shown repeat infections have 2 to 3 times the risk of a worse outcome, organ, tissue, and system damage, than the previous infection.

Even if you are lucky enough to have had a relatively mild acute course of infection you can still develop Long COVID. Studies have shown that most Long COVID cases started with initially mild infections. It’s estimated that right now between 389,000 to 1,560,000 people are getting Long COVID every week.

COVID isn’t something your body can handle getting over and over again. Ask someone with Long COVID what it’s like.

What’s happening in Rhode Island?

The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative rates Rhode Island, as well as neighboring Massachusetts and Connecticut, as currently having Very High levels of infection. 26 states currently are at High or Very High levels. They also estimate that 1 out of every 24 people in Rhode Island are actively infectious with COVID. This also means if you are in a room with 10 people, there is a 34% chance someone has COVID – and could infect everyone else in the room.

The Rhode Island Department of Health also rates our current wastewater viral activity level as High.