Millions of Americans Ration Medications
Jake Johnson for Common Dreams
An analysis released Thursday by the advocacy group
Protect Our Care estimates that Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, AbbVie, Merck,
Pfizer, and other pharma behemoths collectively reported $298 billion in
revenue in the first half of the year—a $24 billion increase compared to
2025—and distributed $63 billion in benefits to shareholders in the form of
share repurchases and dividends.
This story was originally reported by Jasmine Mithani of The 19th. Meet Jasmine and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.
But there’s been another persistent, unsanctioned use: officers stalking women.
At least 50 law enforcement officers have been accused or charged with the misuse of Flock or similar tools, and over half of the incidents involve surveillance related to romantic partners, per a recent investigation by The Washington Post. The reports include officers of all genders, but many cases involve a uniformed man stalking a civilian woman — or the people close to her. Forty-six of the cases tallied by The Post involved Flock equipment.
But the problem is not only one company. Two law enforcement agencies in Colorado cut ties with Flock, only to shift contracts to Axon, another automatic license plate reader (APLR) vendor. The heart of the matter, advocates say, is this: New surveillance technologies are always appropriated to inflict intimate partner violence. Experts say systems like smart cameras and automated license plate readers are sold to the public as ways to increase safety, but there are few, if any, guardrails to prevent them from becoming tools of domestic violence.
Become a citizen scientist
By Jessica Minker, Rhode Island Current
They include Veronica Berounsky and Elise Torello, whose time and commitment helped researchers at the University of Rhode Island better understand our state’s unique environments.
It wasn't as defined as it is today
By Konstantine Panegyres, University of Western Australia
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| This terracotta depiction of a baker sitting in front of an oven dates from the early 5th century BCE. Credit: Marie-Lan Nguyen/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY |
For Roman emperor Julian (332–363 CE), bread occupied
a central place at the table. He described it as the food that “among us is
thought to be the most nourishing.”
That emphasis reflected everyday eating across much of the
ancient Mediterranean. Bread and other foods made from cereals formed the
foundation of many diets, supplemented by pulses, oil, wine, and whatever
seasonal produce was available.
The result looked quite different from the modern idea of
the “Mediterranean diet,” with its familiar emphasis on vegetables, olive oil,
and grilled fish.
Bread may have been indispensable in Julian’s Roman world,
but not everyone considered it desirable. Ethiopians who relied on meat and
milk regarded bread as poor food with little nutritional value.
They wondered how
Mediterranean peoples could survive on a “diet of dung.”
Judge tells Trump and Bobby Jr. to leave teenage girls alone
Julia Conley for Common Dreams
Despite the best efforts of Donald Trump and Health and
Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy
Jr., a federal judge’s ruling on Wednesday sent the message that the push
to reduce teen pregnancy in the US will continue, with the administration’s
limits on the program’s federal grants paused.
Judge Christopher Cooper of the US District Court for the
District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction in the case of Hennepin
County, Minnesota v. US Department of Health and Human Services, in which
officials joined King County in Washington state, Planned Parenthood of the
Heartland, and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS)
in challenging HHS’s changes to the program’s grant policy. The plaintiffs were
represented by Public
Citizen and Democracy Forward.
The changes, said Cooper, were “likely arbitrary and
capricious.”
Bobby Jr. wants your health records
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The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the federal privacy law that governs health information and is commonly known as HIPAA, is narrower than its reputation suggests. It regulates hospitals, physicians, insurers and their business associates, but not the health data you generate everywhere else: not the period-tracking application on your phone, the internet search you ran about a diagnosis, the DNA you mailed to a genealogy company or the wearable that counts your heartbeats.
Even the records HIPAA does cover can be shared, sold or handed to the government in ways that might surprise you.
This gap in protection matters more than ever because the U.S. government is pushing hard to gather health data domestically and abroad. This is happening even as a growing body of research shows that the safeguard which these efforts to collect data lean on – anonymizing data by removing identifying information to make it difficult to trace back to an individual – is far weaker than officials claim.
As a professor of law at Indiana University, I study health information privacy and medical data regulation, which includes tracing how sensitive health information moves among clinics, government agencies and law enforcement. As a co-investigator on a federally funded study about opioid prescribing, I rely on health data in my own research. I appreciate its value for science, and I also see the danger of collecting it without meaningful safeguards.
All perfectly normal
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| "I don't need no stinking security clearance..." |
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| ...just to change diapers..." |
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| "...or write the boss little notes." |
Can't count on the feds
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| New England’s dense populations amid vast forests mean that even a small, localized wildfire can threaten homes or lives. Credit: Maine Forest Service |
Wildfires in New England rarely make national news. The spotlight is more often on the catastrophic fires of Western states, but the Northeast’s fire season has been quietly heating up.
In 2025, severe drought quadrupled Maine’s late summer fire activity. In 2024, another drought quintupled Connecticut’s fall wildfires, and one firefighter died while controlling a blaze. It was also Massachusetts’ most active fall fire season in 40 years.
Across the border, Nova Scotia saw its largest wildfires in recorded history in 2023, and more than 10 million acres burned in Quebec, creating a smoky haze that spread thousands of miles southward. Canadian wildfires created haze on the East Coast again this July.
It can and does happen here. 2024 wildfire
“We think that the Northeast is an important place to have on the map when we’re talking about fire, and we often get ignored,” said Erin Lane, the director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Northeast Climate Hub.
As forest managers and firefighters stretch their resources to respond to wildfires in a changing climate, they’re also dealing with new uncertainties from the Trump administration’s plans to radically alter the Forest Service and the new Wildland Fire Service.
If you've been wondering "What's wrong with these people?"
Researchers surveyed people in Japan about their beliefs in
COVID-19 conspiracy theories to understand who adheres to such ideas. The findings were published last
week in Scientific Reports.
“When people think about conspiracy beliefs, attention often focuses on highly extreme claims,” lead author Hitoshi Yamamoto, PhD, of Rissho University in Tokyo, said in a university press release. “However, our findings suggest that more common forms of conspiracy-related thinking are associated with the persistent distrust of social institutions and the mainstream media.”
No discrimination based on national origin
Jon Queally for Common Dreams
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| Federal Judge Jeannette Vargas has struck down the Trump administration's suspension of immigrant visas for nationals of 75 countries, ruling the State Department policy violates federal immigration law and exceeds Secretary Marco Rubio's authority. Judge Vargas ruled federal law expressly prohibits nationality discrimination in issuing immigrant visas. |
US District Judge Jeannette Vargas, a Biden appointee, ruled
Friday that the pause in visa applications—which Trump and Secretary of
State Marco Rubio claimed
was necessary to prevent immigrant visitors from freeloading on US taxpayer
dollars—was “contrary to law and in excess of statutory authority.”
