Saturday, June 14, 2025
How Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill will raise household energy costs
Green energy saves money AND the planet
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That’s because the legislation, which Donald Trump has dubbed the One Big, Beautiful Bill, will repeal the vast majority of clean energy provisions contained in the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, which a Democrat-controlled Congress passed in 2022. That earlier law provided a wide array of financial incentives for the deployment of electricity sources like solar, wind, battery storage, and nuclear power, as well as support for consumers looking to buy zero- and low-emissions products like electric vehicles.
Choking off support for those measures not only hobbles U.S. efforts to fight climate change — the IRA, if left intact, could single-handedly reduce the country’s carbon emissions by 40 percent — but it also means there are fewer new sources of energy for a country that has started to need more and more of it. And reduced supply coupled with increased demand means higher prices.
That’s the virtually unanimous conclusion of the academics and policy experts who have been trying to understand the likely effects of the rollback for the past few months, though each group of experts used different assumptions about the full extent of IRA repeal, given that the legislation is still being revised by the Senate. Part of the reason for this unanimity is that, once constructed, many newer energy sources like wind and solar don’t have substantial operating costs compared to traditional power plants that must be continuously supplied with fuel.
What happens when you eat plastic
Plastic is NOT one of the four basic food groups
By American Society for Nutrition
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As plastic breaks down, it creates microplastics (smaller
than 5 millimeters) and nanoplastics (smaller than 100 nanometers), which can
enter the food chain and accumulate in seafood and other commonly consumed
foods. Estimates suggest that people may ingest between 40,000 and 50,000
microplastic particles each year, with some projections reaching up to 10
million particles annually.
Studying the health effects of polystyrene nanoparticles
“With the growing concern around micro- and nanoplastic
exposure, we wanted to evaluate the impact of this exposure on health,” said
Amy Parkhurst, a doctoral candidate in the laboratory of Fawaz George Haj, PhD,
at the University of California, Davis. “Our observations that oral ingestion
of polystyrene nanoplastics contributes to glucose intolerance and signs of
liver injury, confirm and extend what has been recently reported on the effects
of nanoplastics in animal models.”
New mRNA vaccine is more effective and less costly to develop
Source of life-saving COVID vaccine could do more...if Republicans don't ban it
University of Pittsburgh
Though highly effective at inducing an immune response,
current mRNA vaccines, such as those used to prevent COVID-19, present two
significant challenges: the high amount of mRNA needed to produce them and the
constantly evolving nature of the pathogen.
"The virus changes, moving the goal post, and updating
the vaccine takes some time," said senior author Suresh Kuchipudi, Ph.D.,
chair of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology at Pitt Public Health.
To address these challenges, the researchers created a proof-of-concept COVID-19 vaccine using what's known as a "trans-amplifying" mRNA platform. EDITOR'S NOTE: Could this be the reason why MAGAs hate mRNA vaccines? - W. Collette
Friday, June 13, 2025
Trump’s justifications for the latest travel ban aren’t supported by the data on immigration and terrorism
It's not about national security - it's racism
The Trump administration on June 4, 2025, announced travel restrictions targeting 19 countries in Africa and Asia, including many of the world’s poorest nations. All travel is banned from 12 of these countries, with partial restrictions on travel from the rest.
Trump says "Stay out!"
The presidential proclamation, entitled “Restricting the Entry of Foreign Nationals to Protect the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats,” is aimed at “countries throughout the world for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a full or partial suspension on the entry or admission of nationals from those countries.”
In a video that accompanied the proclamation, Donald Trump said: “The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado, has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted.”
Trump says "Come on in"
The latest travel ban reimposes restrictions on many of the countries that were included on travel bans in Trump’s first term, along with several new countries.
But this travel ban, like the earlier ones, will not significantly improve national security and public safety in the United States. That’s because migrants account for a minuscule portion of violence in the U.S. And migrants from the latest travel ban countries account for an even smaller portion, according to data that I have collected. The suspect in Colorado, for example, is from Egypt, which is not on the travel ban list.
As a scholar of political sociology, I don’t believe Trump’s latest travel ban is about national security. Rather, I’d argue, it’s primarily about using national security as an excuse to deny visas to nonwhite applicants.
The rise and fall – and rise again – of white-tailed deer
Beautiful creatures!
Elic Weitzel, Smithsonian Institution
Given their abundance in American backyards, gardens and highway corridors these days, it may be surprising to learn that white-tailed deer were nearly extinct about a century ago. While they currently number somewhere in the range of 30 million to 35 million, at the turn of the 20th century, there were as few as 300,000 whitetails across the entire continent: just 1% of the current population.
Photo by Will Collette
This near-disappearance of deer was much discussed at the time. In 1854, Henry David Thoreau had written that no deer had been hunted near Concord, Massachusetts, for a generation. In his famous “Walden,” he reported that:
“One man still preserves the horns of the last deer that was killed in this vicinity, and another has told me the particulars of the hunt in which his uncle was engaged. The hunters were formerly a numerous and merry crew here.”
But what happened to white-tailed deer? What drove them nearly to extinction, and then what brought them back from the brink?
As a historical ecologist and environmental archaeologist, I have made it my job to answer these questions. Over the past decade, I’ve studied white-tailed deer bones from archaeological sites across the eastern United States, as well as historical records and ecological data, to help piece together the story of this species.
‘Devastating.’ NIH cancels future funding plans for HIV vaccine consortia
Another senseless attack on public health from RFK Jr. and his "Make America Healthy Again" campaign
By Jon Cohen
The notification, which was communicated verbally by NIAID
program officers, “couldn't have happened at a worse time, because the recent
clinical trial results [for candidate HIV vaccines] are very promising,” says
Dennis Burton of Scripps Research, who heads one of the two Consortia for
HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD).
Although researchers in the field acknowledge a vaccine for
the AIDS-causing virus remains far off, the new leads have brought a fresh
sense of optimism, and many scientists say they demand vigorous follow up.
“This sets us back at a pivotal moment,” says Mitchell Warren, executive
director of AVAC, a nonprofit that advocates for HIV prevention. The consortia
“really have been pioneers in vaccine discovery,” says Warren, who is not
involved in their work.
The consortia, initially formed in 2005, have more than a
dozen institutional partners between them. They have moved what are widely
considered the most cutting-edge, experimental HIV vaccines into clinical
trials. In 2019, NIAID awarded 7-year grants worth $129 million each to two
consortia leaders: Scripps Research and Duke University. Today’s notification
means that they will not have a chance to renew the funding when those grants
end in June 2026.
Burton said he was told NIAID was directed to do this, but
it's unclear whether the decision to stop funding the consortia was made by the
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) or the National Institutes of
Health (NIH), which oversees NIAID. When asked specifically about this, HHS
spokesperson Andrew Nixon did not answer the question but instead emphasized
that the department will continue to fund “critical” HIV/AIDS work. “We must
end this wasteful and inefficient model of health programming in favor of
strategic, coordinated approaches,” Nixon wrote.
Trump Justices rule the DOGE kids can have access to your Social Security files
"This action by six far-right justices is an affront to every principle of government transparency and the rule of law."
Jon Queally for Common Dreams
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| Photo by Steven Chan |
The unsigned emergency order from the court came in response
to an emergency application from the Trump administration defending DOGE's
ability to have access to Social Security databases that two labor unions,
alongside the Alliance for Retired Americans, had file a legal suit to protect.
By its ruling, the Supreme Court stayed a lower federal court's ruling that
said DOGE must
"disgorge" and "delete" any of the data it accessed or
downloaded from the agency files.
While the underlying case plays out, DOGE is now authorized
to retain the data and access to the information, which critics say cannot be
entrusted to the newly-created department and unvetted personnel who control
it.
Thursday, June 12, 2025
A felon in the White House is making crime legal
Who could have foreseen putting a convicted felon in the White House would turn out like this?
In fact, both the scale and audaciousness of Trump’s
corruption, and of his regime’s assault on the criminal justice system, was
eminently predictable.
As House Speaker Mike Johnson recently pointed out, Trump’s
corruption is “out in the open.” The same is true of his use of criminal
justice system and other levers of government as weapons against his
ever-growing list of enemies.
But even the most cynical have been surprised by the
Trumpist effort to portray the provision of healthcare to children, veterans,
and the elderly as “waste” and “fraud,” as well as Trump’s effort to render
those who follow the laws into criminals.
The most vulnerable among us, including immigrants and the
sick, are currently among Trump’s primary victims. But the entire nation will
soon pay a heavy price for his systematic assault on the rule of law in service
of his bottomless desire for corrupt wealth and self-aggrandizement.
Retroactive criminalization
During the campaign, Trump and his cronies declared they
would deport the allegedly massive numbers of “criminal aliens.” When Trump
came into office, however, he faced a problem: The vast majority of
undocumented immigrants are law abiding.
Trumpists, however, came up with an answer: Create fake
crimes and thereby turn the law abiding into criminals.
Trump announced the US is “under invasion” by a foreign
power in order to invoke the rarely used Alien Enemies Act and justify the
summary deportation of supposed gang members to foreign prisons, this despite a
US intelligence
report concluding there is no such invasion. Then, when courts caught
the administration deporting migrants who are not gang members, or in violation
of existing immigration laws, Trumpists have prevaricated and outright lied,
transforming their purported law enforcement initiative into a fraud.
The administration has also attacked judges and elected
officials who have the temerity to question their illegal conduct.
Alina Habba (the parking garage lawyer Trump installed as
New Jersey’s acting US attorney) ordered the arrest of Ras Baraka, the Mayor of
Newark, on bogus charges arising from his participation in a protest at a
private DHS jail, leading to what a federal magistrate judge called an “embarrassing
retraction.” After that gambit failed, Habba brought equally flimsy charges
against a member of Congress who accompanied Baraka at the protest, asserting
that she “assaulted” armed ICE thugs.
Similarly, last month in New York City, an ICE gangster
terrorized and handcuffed
a crying staffer of Rep. Jerry Nadler after armed agents invaded his
office without a warrant.
Trumpists have resorted to inventing new offenses so as to
transform law-abiding immigrants into criminals. For example, Trump has
declared slivers of land along the border to be “military zones” for the sole
purpose of charging migrants with trespassing.
The administration has also declared that undocumented immigrants have an
obligation to “register”
with the government so they can be indicted for failing to do so. They’re
jailing immigrants who legally entered the United States under a Biden-era
asylum law by retroactively
declaring the program to be “illegal.”
Most tellingly, and insidiously, ICE agents desperate to
meet the increasing quotas the White House has set for deporting “illegals”
have taken to targeting the most vulnerable immigrants: Those intent on
following the law and engaging in productive work.
As Sen. Markwayne Mullin put it on CNN yesterday,
“regardless of what they may be doing right now” — including whether they are
abiding by the law and are gainfully employed — undocumented persons “are
illegal and they are criminals.”
In one recent case, armed thugs dragged into
an elevator an immigrant who had fainted after they had swooped in to grab her
while her attorney was in the restroom.
State courts have also become favored hunting zones for ICE.
Judges who have the temerity to point out that this tactic discourages
immigrants from complying with court orders, and thus the law, are being
threatened. Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan, for example, was jailed and indicted
on the flimsiest of criminal charges for allegedly helping a man evade ICE. Her
indictment has been decried
by other jurists as a "threat [to] public trust in the judicial
system and the ability of the public to avail themselves of courthouses without
fear of reprisal.”
ICE gangs are also now routinely assembling in restaurants
and other places of work, often bearing submachine guns, cuffing everyone in
sight, and jailing some, simply on suspicion of being “illegals.” Recently, a
gang of armed and masked ICE officers terrified patrons and workers in a San
Diego restaurant, and even
cuffed the manager. The rifle-toting “law enforcement” officers retreated
from the scene by shooting flash bang grenades into a crowd of citizens
distressed by their misconduct. (They only managed to arrest two “illegals.”)
Despite the fact that Trump has had to resort to fabricating
new crimes to turn law-abiding immigrants into targets for deportation, the GOP
is now about to make ICE the largest federal law enforcement agency. Trump’s
“Big Beautiful Bill” includes over $150
billion for immigration enforcement and seeks to make ICE the most
highly funded law enforcement agency in the United States.
And as Trump’s threats about a military invasion of Los
Angeles County, which appeared to be commencing through the use of federalized
National Guard units as this piece was being prepared for publication Sunday
evening, demonstrate that his administration is intent on using its growing
immigration “law enforcement” apparatus to wreak havoc in America’s cities, and
to threaten to make peaceful protest a crime.
Redefining fraud
During his last presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly pledged
he would not allow Congress to cut Medicaid or Medicare, a promise that has
been echoed by Speaker Johnson and his other stooges.
But as it turned out, Republicans felt the need to make a
pretense of attacking the “deficit” even as they pursued a budget-busting
package of tax cuts weighed overwhelmingly in favor of the wealthiest
Americans. So of course, Trump and the party he controls decided to harm the
most vulnerable Americans — including children, the elderly, veterans, and the
working poor — by targeting Medicaid for cuts.
Trump’s solemn “pledge” to protect Medicaid proved to be no
barrier at all, given his ever-flexible definition of “crime.” Trump declared
that 10 million or more Americans Republicans will be leaving without
healthcare — resulting in tens
of thousands of avoidable deaths a year — are engaged in “fraud”,
“waste,” or “abuse.” Johnson, meanwhile, falsely announced that the people
Republicans will be cutting off from live saving care are “illegals,” despite the
fact that undocumented immigrants don’t receive federal dollars for coverage.
Trumpists have become so comfortable with their inverted
definition of “fraud” that they are turning it into the subject of morbid
humor. During a town hall, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst replied to a question about the
many people who will die prematurely as a result of the GOP’s massive Medicaid
cuts by declaring with a smirk that “we are all going to die.”
After Ernst was widely criticized for her callousness, she
taped a video in a cemetery in which she offered a sarcastic “apology” and
urged those facing premature death due to her cruelty to find faith in Jesus.
Predictably, Republican senators have indicated they are
planning to add
Medicare to the targets of their “cost cutting” efforts by defining
seniors’ need for healthcare to be a “fraud.”
Even as they have redefined the poor, sick and elderly as
“fraudsters,” Trumpers have embarked on a campaign to make actual fraud and
other financial crimes legal.
The administration is systematically dismantling the
Department of Justice’s mechanisms for preventing, investigating, and
prosecuting securities and other actual crimes. The DOJ has, to date,
terminated over $800
million in grants, including for programs that combat human
trafficking and gun violence and provide support to local police. The DOJ has
also shut down, or crippled, its enforcement of whole categories of the most
serious federal crimes, including those involving
the cryptocurrencies Trump is brazenly using to enrich himself and his
family.
Meanwhile, under the dysfunctional leadership of Kash Patel,
the FBI has been engaged in wholesale firing of career agents, including as
many as 4,000 personnel charged with investigating terrorism threats
inside and outside the United States. Patel appears determined to place Trump’s
goals of rooting out “disloyal” law enforcement personnel — and targeting
immigrants — far above the agency’s statutory mandate to investigate
serious crimes.
And Trump’s first major law enforcement action was to
terminate the strong public corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric
Adams — who has been assiduously stooging for Trump and his immigration
“crackdown” — thereby loudly declaring that the DOJ will be adjusting its
historical focus on combatting public corruption to excuse corruption among
those favored by the Leader.
‘When the president does it, that means it is not
illegal"
It is not mere happenstance that Trump’s DOJ and SEC have
set out to effectively legalize whole categories of financial fraud and
corruption. Trump himself has, very publicly, turned the presidency into what
amounts to a criminal financial enterprise, enriching himself and his family by
billions of dollars through various “business” deals (many of them
transparently corrupt).
Trump’s most lucrative “deals” have — surprise, surprise — included cryptocurrency transactions in which he and his own children (as well as the offspring of cronies including Steve Witkoff and Howard Lutnick) have yielded massive profits for themselves while causing huge losses for others.
His inner circle is not just leaping headfirst into the crypto
“business,” but are doing so with many of the sleaziest participants in the
market, some of whom have been the subjects of
investigations and SEC enforcement proceedings. Trump has even welcomed some of
these ripoff artists into the White House, where it is now a matter of near
public record that a large payoff can get nearly anyone an audience with him
regardless of their criminal background.
Trump has also regularized the sale of pardons that began
during his first term, with Trump hangers-on reportedly charging
millions to get wealthy criminals out of jail. Paying third parties is
rapidly becoming an outmoded way of currying favor with Trump, given that there
are now many ways to line his pockets directly for favors. Nonetheless, Trump
recently pardoned a tax
cheat after his mother donated large sums to his campaign.
In a fashion familiar to observers of systemically corrupt
regimes, Trump (sheltered by the Supreme Court’s assurance that he can freely
engage in corruption) has made bribe solicitation an integral element of
governance. For example, the FCC, headed by a notorious Trump stooge, has made
it plain that Paramount’s planned merger transaction will not be
approved until that company pays a huge bribe to Trump, in the form of a
“settlement” payment for a bogus lawsuit Trump brought against 60 Minutes over
the editing of a segment about Kamala Harris.
Despite what Mike Johnson claims, the fact that Trump’s
undermining of the rule of law is being done openly and brazenly does not make
it any less corrosive. In fact, the opposite is true.
There has been much (accurate) discussion of how Trump’s
systemic attacks on the rule of law are destroying our democracy. But the
destruction will not end there. The United States’ longstanding status as a
nation of laws is also a foundation of our economic success. Investors in and
outside the US have long felt confident placing their wealth in this country
because, unlike so many other places in the world, laws are usually enforced
predictably, not according to the wishes of a despotic or authoritarian leader.
Trump’s scheme to upend the rule of law in this country —
and install himself as a quasi-dictator, who gets a “taste” of whatever
business he chooses — is going to induce many investors to look elsewhere to
make their investments. A nation where investors must pay bribes and possibly
risk later being charged with crimes as a routine “cost of doing business”
cannot remain the thriving financial center of the world for long. The question
is whether the United States can rid itself of this budding despotism before
even more grave and irreparable damage is done.
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Pretty but dangerous
URI invasives expert studies a problematic plant
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| While fires can be caused for a variety of reasons, manmade and natural, invasive phragmites, like these in Charlestown, sometimes pose an overlooked risk. (URI Photos / Laura Meyerson) |
Meyerson was observing a beautiful scenic outlook
overlooking cattails. Then her professor made a comment that stopped her in her
tracks. He pointed out that the scene was pretty, but that the nearby invasive
reeds were going to wipe out the native muskrats. The day became a turning
point in her career.
“I knew then I wanted to study this plant species,” Meyerson
recalls.
Meyerson, today a professor of natural resources science at
the University of Rhode Island, would like to see other New Englanders
recognize the ubiquitous plant known as Phragmites australis growing
by roadways and ponds for what it is.
Meyerson’s research on invasive species is global in nature,
taking her to
Iceland this fall. After getting her Ph.D., Meyerson worked in biosecurity
for the Environmental Protection Agency and consulted with Homeland Security on
pathogens that could cripple the U.S. food supply. She has served on the U.S.
National Invasive Species Council Advisory Committee, is co-editor for the
journal Biological Invasions, and has conducted research on invasive species at
the Smithsonian Institution.
Meyerson finds many reasons to be concerned about invasive
species. The fire risk posed by phragmites is just one. She says that while
local fire departments are aware of the plant’s risk, those living or working
near large stands of the plants may not be.
This is real: Trump regime celebrates today as "Russia National Day"
Here is the official State Department statement from Secretary Marco Rubio:
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