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Bed Bugs Are Evolving: Researchers Uncover Alarming Insecticide Resistance

Rumors are that some are being considered for Trump Cabinet positions

By Virginia Tech

Following World War II, a global bed bug infestation was nearly eliminated during the 1950s, primarily through the widespread use of the pesticide DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane). However, DDT has since been banned due to its environmental and health risks. 

In the decades since, bed bugs have made a significant comeback worldwide and have increasingly developed resistance to many of the insecticides used to control them.

A study published in the Journal of Medical Entomology highlights research conducted by a team at Virginia Tech, led by urban entomologist Warren Booth. The team identified a gene mutation that may play a key role in the bed bugs’ resistance to insecticides.

How Trump solves food safety problems: ignore them

Silence on E. Coli Outbreak Highlights How Trump Team’s Changes Undermine Food Safety

Stephanie Armour

Colton George felt sick. The 9-year-old Indiana boy told his parents his stomach hurt. He kept running to the bathroom and felt too ill to finish a basketball game.

Days later, he lay in a hospital bed, fighting for his life. He had eaten tainted salad, according to a lawsuit against the lettuce grower filed by his parents on April 17 in federal court for the Southern District of Indiana.

The E. coli bacteria that ravaged Colton’s kidneys was a genetic match to the strain that killed one person and sickened nearly 90 people in 15 states last fall. Federal health agencies investigated the cases and linked them to a farm that grew romaine lettuce.

But most people have never heard about this outbreak, which a Feb. 11 internal FDA memo linked to a single lettuce processor and ranch as the source of the contamination. In what many experts said was a break with common practice, officials never issued public communications after the investigation or identified the grower who produced the lettuce.

From failing to publicize a major outbreak to scaling back safety alert specialists and rules, the Trump administration’s anti-regulatory and cost-cutting push risks unraveling a critical system that helps ensure the safety of the U.S. food supply, according to consumer advocates, researchers and former employees at the FDA and U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The investigation into the illnesses began near the end of the Biden administration but work on the lettuce outbreak wasn’t completed until Feb. 11. At that time, the decision was made by the Trump administration not to release the names of the grower and processor because the FDA said no product remained on the market.

UPDATED: Dept. of Homeland Security puts R.I. on notice as a ‘sanctuary jurisdiction.’

It’s unclear why Trump is targeting us

By Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current

Yet another bizarre AI-image posted by Trump

UPDATE: In another classic TACO move, Homeland Security Barbie Secretary Kristin Noem pulled this list off the DHS website after protests from a conservative national sheriffs' association. The sheriffs said the list was compiled with no input from them and “violated the core principles of trust, cooperation, and partnership with fellow law enforcement”. TACO, which stands for "Trump Always Chickens Out," is becoming a more frequent occurrence as Trump and his minions continue to do stupid things they are then forced to withdraw.  - W. Collette

Exactly what court order the Trump administration is using to base its declaration that Rhode Island is defying federal immigration policy remains a mystery. But the head of the state’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has a theory.

The state as well as Providence and Central Falls are on a list of 500 “sanctuary jurisdictions” that may lose federal funding released Thursday night by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 

The list was compiled based on factors like noncompliance with federal law enforcement, information-sharing restrictions, and giving legal protections to undocumented immigrants, the department’s website stated.

Federal fallout

The website also states that Rhode Island made the list because of a “Court Order Requiring State Sanctuary Requirements.” Rhode Island Current reached out to Homeland Security for specific details and received a statement reiterating the designation factors on the department’s website. 

Steven Brown, executive director of the ACLU of Rhode Island, hypothesized that the federal government may be citing a 2014 federal court order that ruled police officers in Rhode Island cannot hold a person in custody based upon an U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer alone for more than 48 hours.

RI Republicans think the way to cut electricity bills is to curb renewable energy

To prove they are mega MAGA macho, they've dumped a symbolic package of bills to wipe out green energy

By Will Collette

Is that Mike Chippendale heading down from Foster
to his news conference? 

Not to be outdone by their lord and master Donald Trump, his hatred of “windmills” and love of coal, Republican General Assembly members led by House Minority leader Mike Chippendale just announced a collection of bills to promote fossil fuels at the expense of energy efficiency.

These bills have NO chance of passage, not just because they have no merit, but because they are being introduced at the end of the General Assembly session. Apparently Chippendale et al. are sending some symbolic message to somebody – maybe King Donald – that they are as MAGA-maniacal as anybody.

Like most energy conversations, they begin with the largely true, widely held belief that electricity bills are too high. But from there, it’s all downhill.

I live in Charlestown, one of Rhode Island’s most vulnerable communities to the effects of climate change. Storms are worse and more frequent even trashing the Charlestown Breachway. Our beaches are eroding. The sea level is rising. Seawater is infiltrating groundwater. It’s very hard to get homeowner’s insurance at any price.

Over the past 25 years, Cathy and I have taken action to increase our energy efficiency by getting an energy audit, adding insulation, putting on a light-colored steel roof and, through the much missed Solarize Charlestown program, installed an array of solar panels in 2017. We’ve also replaced our appliances with the most energy efficient available and added heat pumps.

I would love to add residential sized vertical axis wind turbines, but Charlestown’s town ordinance makes it impossible to do so (click HERE to see why). This is a legacy of the NIMBY faction of the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA), and I hope to see that ordinance repealed soon.

Every change we made cost money upfront but was made easier through state and federal rebates and tax credits and, in the case of our solar panels, being able to sell our excess power back into the grid. Every energy investment we have made has paid us back through lower electricity usage.

Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans want to end all of that and now we’ve heard from state Republicans that they want to do the same here in Rhode Island.

Chippendale said, “Far too often, the utility is painted as the villain, but many of these cost increases stem from legislative mandates — laws passed by the General Assembly that forced utilities to buy expensive energy or fund inefficient programs…”

He condemned the payback solar panel owners like us get for selling our excess energy: “Right now, solar customers are credited at the full retail rate for energy. They produce up to 125% of their usage. That’s not market-based. It’s an inflated rate that gets passed on to every single ratepayer in this state.”

WTF? “Full retail rate” isn’t “market-based?” As it is, the number of solar panels you can install has to roughly match your usage. Personally, I would have wanted to add more since the marginal increased cost would have meant more generated power. That’s market-based, Mike. And like the energy companies, the utility pays us at the rate called for by law.

The other market-based reality ignored by the MAGA world is the rapid expansion of green energy generation and how through the economies of scale, green energy prices have been consistently dropping. 

All across Red State Middle America, wind and solar power companies have been booming, generating employment booms as well as energy at levels that now surpass fossil fuels. Trying to reverse this market trend makes no economic sense. As Mike would say, not “market-based.”

Even Charlestown’s ex-state Rep. Blake “Flip” Filippi is on board with this regressive approach to energy, shown in this tweet on X (note: Trump is pictured with coal miners, not natural gas drillers):

I do not understand the MAGA obsession with wasting energy. Or hating energy efficiency. Or leaning into increased use of polluting fuels. Who benefits other than the fossil fuel companies?

Is it just about “owning the libs?”

Ever since Jimmy Carter’s sweater and the first Arab oil embargo in 1973, most Americans have come to believe we need to be smarter about energy. Energy efficiency is an unqualified good thing regardless of your location on the political spectrum. Burning less fossil fuels is an unqualified good thing.

We’ve come a long way in 50 years and we still have quite a distance to go. Why Chippendale and MAGA-world want to turn the clock back is baffling and unjustified.

If not in the bus, then under it

The evolution of ethics

Trump perverts whistle-blower law turning it into a weapon to attack his enemies

Weaponizing Regulation

By Philip Mattera, director of the Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First for the Dirt Diggers Digest

Trump is looking for a few good rats to
report employers for DEI

Donald Trump has long presented himself as a foe of regulation, and since taking office for the second time he has gone to great lengths to eliminate existing rules, prevent the adoption of new ones, and dismantle entire agencies.

Yet now it appears he has discovered that regulation can be put to good use—not to control corporate misconduct but rather to advance his administration’s ideological aims and to weaken his perceived enemies.

The False Claims Act (FCA) is one of the primary tools used by the Justice Department to address fraud by federal contractors and healthcare providers. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, previously one of Trump’s criminal lawyers, recently sent a memo to DOJ prosecutors saying they should bring FCA actions against contractors or other recipients of federal funds that have diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

To promote such efforts, Blanche said he is creating a Civil Rights Fraud Initiative with teams of lawyers from the DOJ’s Fraud Division and the Civil Rights Division who would be expected to collaborate with both the U.S. Attorney Offices around the country and other federal agencies.

Blanche’s initiative is an escalation of the Trump Administration’s aggressive moves to depict DEI, which is meant to address racism and sexism, as its own form of discrimination. It is in keeping with a document issued in March by the DOJ and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission warning that DEI could be unlawful. And it goes along with the announcement by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs that it was looking for evidence of supposedly illegal practices in the plans submitted by federal contractors under the Biden Administration to address allegations of discrimination.

Everyday chemicals linked to cognitive decline in older adults, especially men, new study reports

Plastics scramble your brain

Pamela Ferdinand 

Older adults exposed to a mix of chemicals found in everyday products—such as food packaging, cosmetics, and printed receipts—may face a higher risk of memory loss and cognitive decline, according to a study published last month (April 2025) in the Journal of Affective Disorders. 

Using data from nearly 900 U.S. adults with an average age of 69, researchers found that combined exposure to phenols, parabens, and especially phthalates was linked to lower scores on standard tests of brain function, particularly among men.

The more chemicals in participants’ bodies, the worse they performed on tests that measure cognition, such as memory, learning, problem-solving, and attention. But even low levels, as detected in urine samples, were associated with signs of cognitive decline, the researchers say.

Key findings include:

• Men with higher levels of these chemicals in their bodies were nearly 1.8 times more likely to show cognitive difficulties, especially in immediate word recall and processing speed. That means a task that typically takes 5 minutes took 9.
• Phthalates (PAEs), particularly MECP and MEHP, showed the strongest link to impaired brain function, mainly in men. 
• The harmful effects were significantly more pronounced in men, possibly due to biological differences.

Most chemical safety standards still evaluate substances individually, even though people are exposed to mixtures every day. The study warns that these combined exposures may accumulate and interact in the body. 

This could have stronger, more harmful effects on brain health than single chemicals alone—especially in older adults at a time when aging-related Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases are common neurodegenerative disorders. According to a 2022 study, nearly one in 10 U.S. adults ages 65 and older has dementia, while another 22% have mild cognitive impairment. 

NOAA’s 2025 hurricane forecast warns of a busy season

Endangered federal agency issues what could be its last hurricane season forecast

Colin Zarzycki, Penn State

U.S. forecasters are expecting an above-normal 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, with 13 to 19 named storms, and 6 to 10 of those becoming hurricanes.

Every year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other forecasters release preseason outlooks for the Atlantic’s hurricane season, which runs June 1 through Nov. 30.

But, how do they know what’s likely to happen months in the future?

I’m an atmospheric scientist who studies extreme weather. Let’s take a look at what Atlantic hurricane forecasts are based on and why those forecasts can shift during the season.