Thursday, December 18, 2025
The Triple Tax on U.S. Scientific Research
Science relies on the shared, free flow of information
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What the uproar really revealed, however, was something subtler but just as corrosive: the hidden economics of how science gets published and accessed.
Most Americans don’t realize they are paying not once, not twice, but at least three times for the same body of research.
Inside universities, this academic triple tax, as I think of it, is so normalized that faculty barely notice it, and they feel paralyzed to do anything about it. It’s woven into the daily routines of professors, grant writers, peer reviewers, and librarians. Yet it quietly drains billions of public dollars each year, enriching a handful of for-profit publishers while eroding the budgets of the very institutions that produce the research.
Restaurant angst
If you're looking for a distraction from real problems, here it is
By City St George’s, University of London
Most people recognize the familiar moment at a restaurant or
dinner party when their meal arrives, yet they hesitate to begin eating because
others are still waiting. This long-standing custom was the focus of new
research co-authored by Bayes Business School. The findings show that
individuals tend to worry more about breaking this norm themselves than about
others doing so.
The study, conducted by Irene Scopelliti, Professor of
Marketing and Behavioural Science, and Janina Steinmetz, Professor of Marketing
at Bayes, together with Dr Anna Paley from the Tilburg School of Economics and
Management, explored how people judge their own behavior compared with what
they expect from others in the same situation. Their work drew on six separate
experiments.
Participants were asked to imagine sharing a meal with a
friend. In some scenarios, they received their food first; in others, they
watched their dining partner receive a meal before them. Those who were served
first rated, on a numerical scale, how long they felt they should wait or
whether they should start eating. Those who were still waiting evaluated what
they believed their companion ought to do.
The results showed a clear gap between how people judge
themselves and how they judge others. Individuals served first thought they
should wait significantly longer than their dining partners actually expected
them to.
Trump Economic Approval Hits All-Time Low as White House Official Insists ‘Nothing Bad Is Happening’
Two-thirds of the public don't believe him and he's pissed
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The latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs
Research poll released Thursday found that only 31% of voters approve of Trump’s
handling of the economy, the lowest figure in that survey throughout either of
his two terms in office. Overall, 68% of voters said that the current state of
the economy was “poor.”
What’s more, Trump’s approval rating on the economy among
Republican voters now stands at just 69%, a strikingly low figure for a
president who has consistently commanded loyalty from the GOP base.
Despite the grim numbers, the president and his
administration have continued to say that the US is now in the middle of an
economic boom.
During a Thursday morning interview on CNBC,
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that the US now has “the greatest $30
trillion economy in the world.”
“We are doing great,” Lutnick said. “Nothing bad is
happening. Greatness is happening. We grew at 4% GDP! Come on!”
Lutnick’s message echoes the one Trump delivered earlier
this week during a rally in Pennsylvania, where he
said that voters’ concerns about being able to afford basics such as groceries,
electricity, and healthcare were
a “hoax” concocted by Democrats.
“Prices are coming down very substantially,” Trump falsely
claimed during his speech. “But they have a new word. You know, they always
have a hoax. The new word is affordability.”
Wednesday, December 17, 2025
School shootings dropped in 2025 - but schools are still focusing too much on safety technology instead of prevention
US owns almost half of all the guns in the world, around 500 million
Active shootings represent a very small percentage of on-campus university violence.
Wrong questions. Wrong answers
But among those that do happen, there are patterns. And as law enforcement officials continue to investigate the Dec. 13, 2025, Brown University shooting, similarities can be seen with other active shooter cases on college campuses that scholar James Densley has studied. “They tend to happen inside a classroom, and there tends to be multiple victims,” Densley explains.
The Brown University tragedy, in which a shooter killed two students and injured nine more, marks the fourth deadly shooting at a U.S. university in 2025.
The Department of Education in Rhode Island, where Brown University is located, said on Dec. 16 that it is urging local elementary and secondary schools to review safety protocols.
Amy Lieberman, the education editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with Densley about how schools have been given what he describes as an “impossible mandate” to try to prevent shootings.
What is the overall trajectory of school shootings over the past few years?
K-12 school shootings appear to be trending downward, at least in the past two years. But we actually saw the largest jumps in this type of violence in the three to five years leading up to 2024, which trends closely with the broader rise in homicide and violent crime we saw in the pandemic era.
In 2025, there have been 230 school shooting incidents in the U.S. – still a staggeringly high number. This compares with 336 school shootings in 2024, 352 in 2023, 308 in 2022, and 257 in 2021.
How this relates to an increase in schools trying to institute security measures to prevent shootings is an open question. But it’s true that many schools are experimenting with certain solutions, like cameras, drones, AI threat detection, weapons scanners, panic apps and facial recognition, even if there is only weak or emerging evidence about how well they work.
Schools are treated as the front line, because the larger, structural solutions are too difficult to confront. It is much easier to blame schools after a tragedy than to actually address firearm access, grievance pathways – meaning how a person becomes a school shooter – and the other societal problems that are creating these tragedies.
Incentives
An example of truth being stranger than fiction, here is an actual Homeland Security recruitment ad
How To Have a Plastic-Free Holiday Season
Some suggestions
Most Americans are sick of plastic
use, but manufacturers continue to push the product on us. This holiday
season, is it possible to have a plastic-free celebration?
There’s no substitute for systemic policy change to regulate
plastic use, but individual actions on a mass scale can have an impact. They
can also be a dinner table conversation, potentially spurring cultural shifts
and inspiring local activism.
“None of us voted for more plastic,” says
Judith Enck, founder and president of Beyond
Plastics. Enck, who served as regional administrator at the Environmental
Protection Agency in 2009, adds that “the reason we have so much plastic is
because there is a glut of fracked
gas on the market.”
Enck says it’s entirely possible to have a plastic-free
holiday season. She suggests forgoing disposable dinnerware for your Christmas,
Hannukah, or Kwanzaa meal. “You can rent glassware and plates and beautiful
reusable tablecloths and napkins from local vendors,” she says.
Trump Administration asking universities to provide lists of Jews.
This is never a good thing.
So, when the university that granted me my doctorate and
educated four generations of my family was
asked by the Trump administration in July for lists of Jewish faculty
members, I held my breath. Would I be able to continue to be proud of the
University of Pennsylvania, the place I learned so much from?
In the past year, universities have varied widely in their responses to demands from the Trump administration to fall into line on ridding their campuses of wokeness and antisemitism. Columbia University (my undergraduate alma mater) settled with the administration, paying $21 million in return for restoring its federal research grants.
It’s hard to see how cutting basic science research will help reduce
antisemitism. It will likely only cause Jews’ presence at a university to be
seen as somehow disruptive. (See the recent
arguments that women ruined the workplace.)
Other universities have variously complied with
administration demands or resisted, but a few, such as Barnard College
of Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, acquiesced
and shared personal cellphone numbers of Jewish faculty. (Penn
refused, and is now being sued by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission.) Nara Milanich, a Barnard history professor, said it
reminded her of 1930s Italy, when lists of Jews were put together by the local
government. “We’ve seen this movie before, and it ends with yellow stars,” she
said.
It also troubled Milanich that the government appeared to be
“fishing” for reports of antisemitism: According to the Forward,
the University of California, Berkeley said it had provided the names of 160
individuals involved in cases of antisemitism. “Evidently, they don’t
have sufficient people to file lawsuits, so they have to go shake the trees to
find people?” said Milanich.
Lists of Jews are never a good thing. Amanda Shanor, a
professor at the Wharton School and Penn’s law school, told
The Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper: “The history of government
demands for lists of Jewish people is one of the most terrifying in world
history. I hope that students, faculty, and staff — Jewish and non-Jewish alike
— will tell their family and friends about the government’s demand for a list
of Penn’s Jews.”
Five big moments when your brain dramatically changes
Here are the five biggies
University of Cambridge
Neuroscientists at the University of Cambridge report that the human brain moves through five "major epochs" as it rewires itself from early development to late old age.
Each stage reflects a different
way the brain supports thinking, learning, and behavior as we grow, mature, and
eventually experience age-related decline.
A team from Cambridge's MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences
Unit analyzed MRI diffusion scans from 3,802 individuals ranging from newborns
to 90 years old. These scans track the movement of water through brain tissue,
which helps researchers map the networks that link one region to another.
Their findings, published in Nature Communications,
show that the brain's structure progresses through five broad phases. Four key
"turning points" divide these phases, marking ages when the brain
undergoes meaningful reorganization.
White House Abruptly Cancels Meeting on FEMA’s Future After Leaked Report Revealed Plan to Gut the Agency
Trump continues baffling attack on FEMA. Is it another distraction?
A meeting that was supposed to chart the future of America’s disaster-response agency ended on Thursday before it could even begin.
The final report of a committee tasked by Donald Trump with reviewing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was scheduled to be presented and put to a vote Thursday afternoon. But shortly before 1 p.m., when the FEMA Review Council was scheduled to convene in Washington, a draft of the report was leaked to news outlets and the White House abruptly canceled the session.
The shakeup appeared to surprise even some of the review council’s own members, several of whom were still awaiting instructions outside the meeting’s planned location less than an hour before it was supposed to start, The Washington Post reported. Registered attendees only received notice of the meeting’s postponement after the event was scheduled to conclude. That announcement, a two-sentence email from the council’s designated federal officer, Patrick Ryan Powers, did not provide an explanation for the cancellation or a date for a rescheduled meeting.
The draft of the report signaled the review council’s plan to dramatically cut the agency even as climate change-fueled disasters increase, provoking swift condemnation from advocacy groups and emergency management experts. Critics panned the draft as a blueprint for weakening the nation’s primary emergency-response agency and shifting responsibility onto states unequipped and unprepared to manage crises alone.
Tuesday, December 16, 2025
Human Rights and Democracy Replaced by Profit
Trump’s Distorted World View
Beyond the fallout of defending U.S. strikes on suspected
drug boats, increasing threats of an undeclared war on Venezuela, the excesses
of a mass deportation campaign spiraling out of control, unending tariffs, and
flailing attempts to force Ukraine into a bad deal with Russia, we got a
new National
Security Strategy document that lays out Trump’s values as if they are
ours.
Together, they reflect the clear vision of an autocratic,
power-minded Trump who wants to dictate to Americans and the rest of the world
that they should forego human rights and democracy, recognize a U.S.
hemispheric dominance, and kowtow to us because of our national wealth, not our
ideals.
As
The New York Times concluded in an analysis of the strategic document,
“The world as seen from the White House is a place where America can use its
vast powers to make money” at the expense of support for dictators and caring
about those without wealth.
“Gone is the long-familiar picture of the United States as a
global force for freedom, replaced by a country that is focused on reducing
migration while avoiding passing judgment on authoritarians, instead seeing
them as sources of cash,” The Times analysis said.
King Donald's new scheme to bring in more rich people. What's his cut?
This is a real thing. Not a joke. Not a meme.
Tariffs 101: What they are, who pays them, and why they matter now
Understanding Trump's new national sales tax
Kent Jones, Babson College
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The U.S. Supreme Court is currently reviewing a case to determine whether Donald Trump’s global tariffs are legal.
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Until recently, tariffs rarely made headlines. Yet today, they play a major role in U.S. economic policy, affecting the prices of everything from groceries to autos to holiday gifts, as well as the outlook for unemployment, inflation and even recession.
I’m an economist who studies trade policy, and I’ve found that many people have questions about tariffs. This primer explains what they are, what effects they have, and why governments impose them.
What are tariffs, and who pays them?
Tariffs are taxes on imports of goods, usually for purposes of protecting particular domestic industries from import competition. When an American business imports goods, U.S. Customs and Border Protection sends it a tariff bill that the company must pay before the merchandise can enter the country.
Because tariffs raise costs for U.S. importers, those companies usually pass the expense on to their customers by raising prices. Sometimes, importers choose to absorb part of the tariff’s cost so consumers don’t switch to more affordable competing products. However, firms with low profit margins may risk going out of business if they do that for very long. In general, the longer tariffs are in place, the more likely companies are to pass the costs on to customers.
Trump’s Draconian Border Policies Are Menacing the 2026 World Cup
Trump is banning travel from more than 30 countries
Maybe this is why FIFA gave Trump his phony "peace prize"
By Nora Loreto
This article was originally published by Truthout
In addition to the matches, 84 training sites and 178 practice fields will be spread across Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. Plus, tens of thousands of broadcasters from around the world will cover the games for their home countries.
Holding the games in three countries means that ease of crossing borders is a fundamental part of the World Cup going smoothly. Hundreds of thousands of players, staff, and fans will need to move across the U.S.-Mexico border and the Canada-U.S. border multiple times in order to attend the matches over the course of six weeks in June and July 2026. But already, months before the games begin, concerns are mounting over whether attendees will be able to enter the host countries at all.
Monday, December 15, 2025
Russia’s Most Dangerous Weapon is Donald Trump’s Mind
How did the United States Come to Back a Vicious Dictator against All Its Allies?
Dr. Bandy X. Lee
The disintegration of Donald Trump’s mind—now obvious for everyone to see—is metaphorical of the disintegration of our society. Unfitness means that there is no one in charge of the government; there is no one home. Rather, the appearance of someone being home makes him a prime target for nefarious forces to do their mischief.
I warned in The
Psychology of Trump Contagion, published before the 2024 presidential
election:
Sometimes the greatest threat to national security is
someone who can be leveraged and compromised—so as to parrot our enemies’
propaganda, to destroy American democracy from within, and to assist their rise
in global dominance.
One of these enemies is Vladimir Putin. Russian forces
launched 704 total missiles and drones against Ukraine overnight on December 5
to 6, 2025, heavily targeting railway and energy infrastructure in this proxy
U.S.-Russia war. The goal is to freeze our fellow pro-democracy Europeans, so
as to force them into submission as winter approaches.
So, how did the U.S. come to aid and comfort a hostile
opponent bent on reestablishing the Soviet Union? Astute political
commentator Thom
Hartmann makes a critical observation from the Epstein emails:
The child victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes are
apparently not the only ones who’ve paid the price for Donald Trump’s long
relationship with that notorious pedophile.
Epstein’s “partying” with Trump has apparently also led to
thousands of civilian deaths abroad, the collapse of America’s credibility
around the world, and a serious threat to the future of democracy in Europe….
In Epstein’s emails, he boasts of offering to advise
Russia’s senior-most officials about how to manipulate Trump: “I think you
might suggest to putin that [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] lavrov can
get insight on [Trump by] talking to me…”
Consider Trump’s secretive and beta-submissive behavior
toward Vladimir Putin, especially in Helsinki when he trashed our intelligence
agencies and sucked up to Putin, and more recently with his red carpet in
Alaska, and it’s impossible to ignore what this newest Epstein revelation
implies.
If Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine is a direct or indirect
result of things Trump did with Epstein, it’s naked treachery. Consider the
pattern:… the Russian military targets … are not accidents of war. They’re the
deliberate targeting of civilians, children, doctors, classrooms, apartment
buildings, homes, and hospitals….
And all of this—the horror of what’s happening in plain
sight that’s the clear result of Trump’s repeated and pathetic kowtowing to
Putin—appears, from the Epstein emails, that it may be getting so much worse
over the past 10 months because Putin took Epstein’s advice and threatened
Donald Trump with exposure.
We still don’t know what was said in that room in Helsinki
because Trump covered it up, making sure we’d never know. He ordered his
American interpreter to move away from his private conversation with Putin, and
afterward seized and destroyed her notes.
Similarly and more recently, in Alaska, Trump dismissed his
aides and rode with Putin privately in his car where they engaged in another
lengthy, secretive conversation.
That’s the behavior of a man with something to hide,
who’s terrified by some horrible secret….
Donald Trump's bonkers social media post about the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife.
If his people won't invoke the 25th Amendment, they should at least take away his cell phone
Kash Patel's terrible pre-mature victory lap in the Brown shooting
Eager to show he isn't the total screw-up most non-MAGA feel he is, Patel tweeted this yesterday to claim credit for the capture and arrest of THE WRONG GUY. No thanks to Patel, his false statement interrupted the investigation for the real killer who, at this writing, is still on the loose.
Doctor groups form united front against RFK Jr’s efforts to limit vaccine access
Doctors stand up to Bobby Jr.'s vaccine insanity
Experts were responding to a vote by members of the Advisory
Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—all handpicked by Health and Human
Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—to
limit the use of hepatitis B vaccines in newborns, in spite of
evidence that the shots prevent
cancer and save lives.
“Children will
acquire hepatitis B and die as a result of these recommendations,”
said Aaron M. Milstone, MD, representing the American Academy of Pediatrics
(AAP). “My colleagues or I, not a committee member, will be the ones supporting
the parents of a dying child and trying to explain how they were let down and
lost a child from a preventable infection.”
The ACIP recommended vaccinating all healthy newborns
against hepatitis B at birth for 34 years, because mothers can pass the virus
to infants during delivery. That recommendation helped
to reduce the number of hepatitis B infections in children by 99%.
But last week, the ACIP voted to recommend a birth dose of
hepatitis B vaccine only for newborns whose mothers test positive for the virus or
whose infection status is unknown. Mothers who aren’t infected with hepatitis B
should discuss the risks and benefits with their health provider, the group
advised. Babies who aren’t vaccinated against hepatitis at birth should wait at
least 2 months for their first dose, the committee decided.
Experts note that blood tests aren’t always accurate,
producing “false negative” results about 5% of the time. About 90% of
infants exposed to hepatitis B at birth develop a chronic, incurable infection
that can lead to liver failure, liver cancer, and early death.
Babies and children also can be exposed after birth by
family members.
Research has shown that postponing an infected baby’s first
dose of hepatitis vaccine by 2 months could could
cause at least 1,400 preventable hepatitis B infections among
children, 300 additional cases of liver cancer, 480 preventable deaths, and
over $222 million in excess health care costs a year.
Amnesty Int'l says ALL deaths from Trump's boat attacks are murder, not just the slaughter of ship-wrecked survivors
‘All of Them Constitute Murder,’ Amnesty Says of Trump Boat Bombings
Brad Reed for Common Dreams
 |
| The Coast Guard demonstrates the correct, legal way to make ocean drug arrests |
Daphne Eviatar, director for security and human rights for
Amnesty International USA, said that it would be a mistake to merely
condemn the Trump
administration for launching a double-tap strike aimed at killing
shipwrecked survivors of an initial attack, because the entire campaign of
bombing vessels based on the suspicion that they are carrying illegal narcotics
is unlawful.
Sunday, December 14, 2025
MIDNIGHT UPDATE on the Brown shooting
Deadly Brown Shooting Spurs Calls for Action on Guns
Jessica
Corbett for Common Dreams
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A suspect ("person of interest") was arrested just before 5 AM at a hotel in Coventry. Shelter in place orders were lifted at 7 AM. Tonight, he was identified as Benjamin Erickson, 24, from Wisconsin. Police say they found two handguns in his hotel room. NEW: Just after 11 PM, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley and police officials held a unscheduled briefing to say that Erickson was being released, noting that it was unfortunate his name was released. That means there is NO suspect in custody and the killer is still on the loose.
“Our hearts are with the victims, survivors, their families,
and the entire community of Brown University and the surrounding Providence
area in this horrific time,” said Brady president Kris Brown in a statement. “As
students prepare for finals and then head home to loved ones for the holidays,
our all-too-American gun violence crisis has shattered their safety.”
“Guns are the leading cause of death for youth in this
nation. Only in America do we live in fear of being shot and killed in our
schools, places of worship, and grocery stores,” she continued. “Now, as
students, faculty, and staff hide and barricade themselves in immense fear, we
once again call on lawmakers in Congress and around the country to take action
against this uniquely American public health crisis.
We cannot continue to allow politics and special interests to take priority
over our lives and safety.”
 |
| THIS is the misinformation posted by Trump just two hours after the shooting. Local and university officials scrambled to correct this malicious interference. At 6 PM, he posted a retraction that blamed Brown University police for having "reversed their previous statement." There was no such previous statement. |
The law
enforcement response is ongoing and Brown remains in lockdown, according to a 9:29 pm
Eastern update on the university’s website. Everyone is urged to shelter in
place, which “means keeping all doors locked and ensuring no movement across
campus.”
The Ivy League university’s president, Christina H. Paxson,
said in a public message that “this is a deeply tragic day for Brown, our
families, and our local community. There are truly no words that can express
the deep sorrow we are feeling for the victims of the shooting that took place
today at the Barus & Holley engineering and physics building.”
US Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said on social media that
he was “praying for the victims and their families,” and thanked the first
responders who “put themselves in harm’s way to protect all of us.” He also
echoed the city’s mayor, Brett Smiley, “in urging Rhode Islanders to heed only
official updates from Brown University and the Providence Police.”
In a statement, US Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) also acknowledged everyone
impacted by “this horrific, active, and unfolding tragedy,” and stressed the
importance of everyone listening to law enforcement “as they continue working
to ensure the entire campus and surrounding community is safe, and the threat
is neutralized.”
The state’s two Democratic congressmen, Brown alumnus Seth Magaziner and Gabe
Amo, released similar statements. Amo also said that “the scourge of mass shootings is
a horrific stain on our nation. We must seek policies to ensure that these
tragedies do not strike yet another community and no more lives are needlessly
taken from us.”
Elected officials at various levels of government across the country sent their condolences to the Brown community. Some also used the 389th US mass shooting this year and the 230th gun incident on school grounds—according to Brady’s president—to argue that, as US House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (Mass.) put it, “it’s past time for us to act and stop senseless gun violence from happening again.”
New York City’s democratic socialist mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, noted that
this shooting occurred just before the anniversary of the 2012 massacre
at Sandy Hook Elementary
School in Newtown, Connecticut:
This senseless violence—once considered unfathomable—has become nauseatingly normal to all of us across our nation. Tonight, on the eve of the anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting, we find ourselves in mourning once again.
The epidemic of gun violence stretches across America. We reckon with it when we step into our houses of worship and out onto our streets, when we drop our children off at kindergarten and when we fear if those children, now grown, will be safe on campus. But unlike so many other epidemics, we possess the cure. We have the power to eradicate this suffering from our lives if we so choose.
I send my deepest condolences to the families of the victims, and to the Brown and Providence communities, who are wrestling with a grief that will feel familiar to far too many others. May we never allow ourselves to grow numb to this pain, and let us rededicate ourselves to the enduring work of ending the scourge of gun violence in our nation.
Fred Guttenberg has been advocating against gun violence
since his 14-year-old daughter was among those murdered at Marjory Stoneman
Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida nearly eight years ago. He said on
social media that
he knows two current students at Brown and asserted that “IT DOESN’T NEED TO BE
THIS WAY!!!”
Students Demand Action similarly declared: “Make no mistake: We DO NOT have to live and die
like this. Our lawmakers fail us every day that they refuse to take action on
gun violence.”
Gabby Giffords, a former Democratic congresswoman from
Arizona who became an activist after surviving a 2011 assassination
attempt, said that “my heart breaks for Brown University.
Students should only have to worry about studying for finals right now, not
hiding from gunfire. Guns are the leading cause of death for young people in
America—this is a five-alarm fire and our leaders in Washington have
ignored it for too long. Americans are tired of waiting around for Congress to
decide that protecting kids matters.”
John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, warned that “we either take action, or we bury more of
our kids.”
The Associated Press noted that “Rhode Island has some of the strictest gun
laws in the US. Last spring the Democratic-controlled Legislature passed an
assault weapon ban that will prohibit the sale and manufacturing of certain
high-powered firearms, but not their possession, starting next July.”
Gun violence prevention advocates often argue for federal
restrictions, given that, as Everytown’s latest analysis of
state-level policies points out, “even the strongest system can’t protect a
state from its neighbors’ weak laws.”
Under Former Chemical Industry Insiders, Trump EPA Nearly Doubles Amount of Formaldehyde Considered Safe to Inhale
Your lungs are the cost of corruption
Industry lobbyists have long pushed the federal government to adopt a less stringent approach to gauging the cancer risk from chemicals, one that would help ease regulations on companies that make or use them.
Last week, in a highly unusual move, the Environmental Protection Agency embraced that approach in announcing that it is revising an assessment of the health dangers posed by formaldehyde, a widespread pollutant that causes far more cancer than any other chemical in the air. Working on that effort were two of those former industry insiders, who are now top EPA officials.
The proposed revisions to the assessment, released Wednesday, nearly double the amount of formaldehyde considered safe to inhale compared with the version that was finalized in the last weeks of the Biden administration. Even that older assessment significantly underestimated the dangers posed by formaldehyde, a ProPublica investigation published last year found.
Under previous Republican and Democratic administrations, EPA scientists were instructed to assume that chemicals that cause cancer by damaging DNA — the largest group of carcinogens, which includes formaldehyde — pose a “linear” risk, meaning that even small exposures can be dangerous. The agency adopted the approach almost 40 years ago to protect against the multitude of low-level cancer threats the public faces daily. But the industry’s favored method assumes that certain carcinogens pose no risk at lower levels and that the danger should only be considered once exposure reaches a certain threshold.
The Trump administration has already criticized the use of the linear model for calculating the risk of cancer from radiation and could scrap its use in examining other chemicals.
The EPA’s adoption of this threshold model for formaldehyde might come as little surprise given that some of the scientists who have promoted the approach on behalf of companies are now running the agency.
While Scientists Race To Study Spread of Measles in US, Kennedy Unravels Hard-Won Gains
Trump and Bobby Jr. end US's measle-free status
More children would be hospitalized because of this preventable disease. Some would lose their hearing. Some would die. Measles is also expensive. A new study — not yet published in a scientific journal — estimates that the public health response to outbreaks with only a couple of cases costs about $244,000. When a patient requires hospital care, costs average $58,600 per case. The study’s estimates suggest that an outbreak the size of the one in West Texas earlier this year, with 762 cases and 99 hospitalizations, costs about $12.6 million.
America’s status hinges on whether the country’s main outbreaks this year stemmed from the big one in West Texas that officially began Jan. 20. If these outbreaks are linked, and go on through Jan. 20 of next year, the U.S. will no longer be among nations that have banished the disease.
Even Fox News gets it
“A lot of people worked very hard for a very long time to achieve elimination — years of figuring out how to make vaccines available, get good vaccine coverage, and have a rapid response to outbreaks to limit their spread,” said Paul Rota, a microbiologist who recently retired from a nearly 40-year career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Instead of acting fast to prevent a measles comeback, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a lawyer who founded an anti-vaccine organization before taking the helm at the Department of Health and Human Services, has undermined the ability of public health officials to prevent and contain outbreaks by eroding trust in vaccines. The measles vaccine is safe and effective: Only 4% of nearly 1,800 confirmed U.S. cases of measles this year have been in people who had received two doses.
Kennedy has fired experts on the vaccine advisory committee to the CDC and has said, without evidence, that vaccines may cause autism, brain swelling, and death. On Nov. 19, scientific information on a CDC webpage about vaccines and autism was replaced with false claims. Kennedy told The New York Times that he ordered the change.
“Do we want to go back into a pre-vaccine era where 500 kids die of measles each year?” asked Demetre Daskalakis, a former director of the CDC’s national immunization center, who resigned in protest of Kennedy’s actions in August. He and other scientists said the Trump administration appears to be occupied more with downplaying the resurgence of measles than with curbing the disease.
Nine Rhode Island State Senators want to decide where and how you may protest
“Public expression and demonstration are fundamental rights, but…”
“Street take-overs and protesters blocking roadways are both
extremely dangerous for our communities and have no place in our state,” said
Senator Leonidas Raptakis (Democrat, District 33, Coventry,
West Greenwich). “Whether it’s protesters keeping people from getting to work
or going to the hospital for an emergency, and other duties of first
responders, or these outrageous street takeovers that block the use of and
vandalize our roadways, these troubling behaviors need to have consequences for
those who disregard others’ safety and time. Public safety needs to be
protected and upheld.”
RI DINOs need to reacquaint themselves with the Constitution
Because nothing can be better than politicians legislating
punishments for protests they dislike, Senators Raptakis and Patalano will
introduce two bills in January to keep roadways clear and safe for motorists
and pedestrians. They highlight the need for legislation due to protesters
blocking highways and the recent phenomenon of “street takeovers.”
Senators David Tikoian, Peter Appollonio Jr., Brian
Thompson, Andrew Dimitri, Robert Britto, John
Burke, and Stefano Famiglietti will cosponsor the
legislative package.
“As both a State Senator and a Major with the Cranston Police Department, I have seen firsthand the catastrophic consequences that occur when our roadways are turned into staging grounds for reckless stunts or obstructed by individuals who believe they can shut down highways without regard for the safety of others,” said Senator Todd Patalano (Democrat, District 26, Cranston). “We have already witnessed incidents across the country where blocked roadways delayed emergency medical care with tragic outcomes. Rhode Island cannot afford to wait until a family in our state suffers that same loss. Passing these bills is not about politics; it is about protecting the innocent and preventing the avoidable.”
“The ACLU will vigorously oppose this proposed legislation
because it is unnecessary and unconstitutionally overbroad,” commented Steven
Brown, Executive Director of the ACLU of Rhode Island. “It is
unnecessary because Rhode Island laws already impose criminal penalties for
obstructing a roadway, and there is no need for another law that is clearly
designed simply to be more punitive. It is overly broad because it could
criminalize a wide variety of innocuous activities and conduct protected by the
First Amendment, including that of panhandlers or activists standing on a
highway median to direct attention to a cause.
Saturday, December 13, 2025
CRMC must enforce its own rulings
From a Save The Bay press release:
Today marks two years since the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC)
issued a cease and desist order requiring Quidnessett Country Club to
remove the illegal rock wall they erected without permission
on Narragansett Bay. Since the issuance of that order, CRMC’s
politically-appointed Council has allowed Quidnessett to retain the unlawful
wall, allowing numerous extensions, at the cost of Rhode Islanders’ access to
the natural shoreline and local habitats like the beach and salt marsh near the
shores of the country club.
“CRMC’s Council is complicit in maintaining this illegal
rock wall on the shores of Narragansett Bay,” said Jed Thorp,
Director of Advocacy for Save The Bay. “First, the Council entertained a
water-type change that would have allowed the Club to keep a massive structure
built on the coast without any permits. Then, when that avenue failed, the
Council gave the Club multiple extensions to deliver restoration plans that
would properly restore the ecosystem to its previous state. Now, a recent
appeal filed by Quidnessett in Superior Court will, in effect, grant the Club
more time to keep the unpermitted and illegal rock wall. The wall has stood for
over two years, constructed by the Club in violation of state and federal law,
and to date, with no consequences. It’s time for the Council to stop protecting
this private golf course and treat it like any other willful violator of the
law–order the Club to rectify the violation, remove the wall, and fully restore
the shoreline.”
Save The Bay staff recently visited the illegally erected
rock wall site on Narragansett Bay. While there, staff observed local wildlife
such as horseshoe crabs and birds that depend on the local habitat for
survival, a habitat that has been partially buried under a 20-foot-tall pile of
rocks on the shoreline. CRMC’s staff stated in its evaluation of the violation
that the massive stone structure could also affect the nesting of the eastern diamondback
terrapin, an endangered species. Additionally, the wall deflects wave
energy along the wall to neighboring properties–in this case, the salt marsh
and sandy beaches–which will increase erosion in those habitats.
Save The Bay continues to advocate for comprehensive CRMC
reform, including removing the Council, leaving coastal decision-making to
CRMC’s expert staff, and putting a full-time staff attorney in place to ensure
that law and science, not politics, guide regulatory decisions.
“We need a coastal agency that will defend our local
habitats and natural resources, not violators of the law,” Thorp said. “By
maintaining this illegal wall in place, the Council is sending the wrong
message to coastal developers that you can build without permits or impunity.”
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