CDC Head Blocks Release of Findings Showing Strong COVID Vax Effectiveness

The report detailed how adults receiving COVID-19 vaccines saw hospitalization rates drop by 55 percent.

By Chris Walker

This article was originally published by Truthout

Acting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Jay Bhattacharya, who also leads the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is reportedly delaying the publication of new findings within the health agency showcasing the strong effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines to prevent emergency room visits and hospitalizations. 

According to a report from The Washington Post, which cites two scientists with knowledge of Bhattacharya’s actions, the unpublished report examined adults who had been vaccinated between the months of September and December last year, and compared their health results to adults who didn’t get vaccinated. Among those who received vaccinations, ER and urgent care visits dropped by 50 percent, while hospitalizations overall saw a 55 percent decline. 

The report has cleared the CDC’s scientific-review process, but Bhattacharya is blocking its publication over supposed concerns over its methodology, the scientists said, demanding further scrutiny. However, the report used methods that are regularly utilized by the national health agency, and a report on flu vaccines, using the same methodology as this blocked report, was published just last week. 

The revelation of the delay of the report and the questionable rationale for delaying its release is raising concerns among members of the scientific community that the agency is shaping its policy due to the anti-vaccine attitudes of Bhattacharya and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The Government May Be Spying on Your Phone

The rapid erosion of privacy

By Don Bell

...And everything else

Our smart phones reveal a lot about us.

In order to function, they connect with communications networks and geolocation services, creating detailed maps of our daily lives. If you knew how to read them, you’d know someone’s favorite coffee shop, the person they’re dating, where they go to school or church, and more.

Would you want the government to have this information at its fingertips? Most of us wouldn’t — but that’s what’s happening. FBI Director Kash Patel recently admitted that the agency is buying up our personal information — including movement and location data — without a warrant.

If this concerns you, it should. It’s a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. And it’s one reason why privacy and civil liberties advocates have been demanding Congress close a loophole that essentially allows the government to purchase our data without a warrant.

The Fourth Amendment exists to prevent the government from conducting unreasonable searches and seizures. So normally, if law enforcement officers want to access a person’s cell phone location data in the United States, they need a warrant. However, because Congress hasn’t updated laws to address technological advancements, government agencies can instead pay third party data brokers to access this data for them — no warrant needed.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing in the law that explicitly outlaws buying information from third parties. This loophole is the equivalent of the police handing your landlord an envelope of cash in order to enter your apartment without a warrant, with the police arguing that they didn’t technically break and enter.

He is Seriously, Frighteningly, Utterly, and Completely Losing His Mind

We are in great danger

Robert Reich

It’s a catastrophe on the way to becoming a cataclysm.

Trump is rapidly going stark-raving mad. He’s a clear and present danger to the United States and the world.

He lashed out at The New York Times after its chief White House correspondent questioned his mental health and stability and pointed to his “erratic behavior and extreme comments.”

“HAVE THEY NO SHAME? HAVE THEY NO SENSE OF DECENCY?” Trump posted in CAPITAL LETTERS about the Times, inadvertently echoing the famous words of Joseph Welch when standing up to Joseph McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954. Trump went on to take issue with the Times’s coverage of his war in Iran rather than his mental state, as if to prove the Times’s point.

He keeps saying he’s “won” the war with Iran, although he’s never said what “winning” means. At one moment his goal is to free Iran’s people. At another, it’s to end Iran’s capacity to produce a nuclear weapon. At another, to destroy Iran’s missiles. At another, to achieve “regime change.” At another, to open the Strait of Hormuz (which was open before Trump started his war). At another, he says he’ll know the U.S. military operation in Iran is over when he feels it "[in] my bones.”

He can’t even stay on the same subject for more than a few minutes. In the middle of a high-level Cabinet meeting about the war, he spends five minutes talking about his preference for Sharpie pens. He interrupts another Iran war update to praise the White House drapes.

He threatens that if Iran doesn’t reopen the strait, “a whole civilization will die tonight.” Then he says America doesn’t need the strait reopened. Then he says: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

He calls the Pope “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” because the Pope wants peace. He posts an AI-generated picture of himself as Jesus, then says he was only depicting himself as a physician.

He won’t give up on his illegal and dangerous (for the economy) criminal investigation of Fed Chief Jerome Powell, claiming it’s not just about Powell’s renovations at the Fed but also a “probe on incompetence,” adding he’ll fire Powell if he doesn’t resign after his term as chair ends.

He claims that the United States “needs” Greenland. He confuses Greenland with Iceland. He says whales are being killed by windmills. He claims that he won all 50 states in 2020. That he defeated Barack Obama in 2016. He says the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be executed. He goes on an eight-minute ramble about poisonous snakes in Peru. He boasts of ending a fictional war between Cambodia and Armenia.

After Robert Mueller’s death, he says, “Good, I’m glad he’s dead.” He blames the murders of Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle on “the anger [Rob Reiner] caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.” After Joe Biden is diagnosed with an aggressive form of Stage 4 prostate cancer, Trump says, “I’m surprised that the public wasn’t notified a long time ago because to get to Stage 9, that’s a long time” (there is no Stage 9 cancer).

He’s been losing it for a while now, but in the last few months it’s become far worse.

United States of Anxiety

Pick up Charlestown trash on Saturday

Want help with your garden?

URI Master Gardeners awaiting your call (or email)

Kristen Curry

The URI Gardening & Environmental Hotline is now open and in full operation through Nov. 1. (URI Photos / Cooperative Extension)

Have a garden quandary or need some advice before you start planting your 2026 garden? Ready to celebrate spring but don’t know where to start?

The University of Rhode Island Gardening & Environmental Hotline is now open and in full operation through Nov. 1.

Southern New Englanders are welcome to send an email and photos to the University’s Master Gardener volunteer educators or call for science based-answers to their gardening and environmental questions. In-person visits are also available by appointment at URI’s Mallon Outreach Center on the Kingston Campus. Just call 401-874-4836 or email gardener@uri.edu.

Food Companies Backslide on Promises to Reduce Pesticides

Raise your hand if you are surprised

By Lisa Held 

Article Summary

• In an annual report, As You Sow awarded lower scores to 10 out of 17 major food companies on their approach to mitigating pesticide risks.
• Companies are making little progress in reducing the volume of pesticides used in the U.S. food system, despite the increase in public awareness.
• An increase in consumer pressure could push companies to improve; many companies that scored poorly in the report are also seeing their stock prices decrease.

In 2019, food giant General Mills debuted a three-point strategy to reduce synthetic pesticide use within its supply chains. The plan was to implement regenerative agriculture practices on 1 million acres of farmland by 2030, increase the use of integrated pest management (IPM) on farms, and expand organic acreage.

More than six years later, the webpage that outlined that plan redirects visitors to a page on regenerative agriculture, where the word “pesticide” does not appear.

“They are no longer aligning their regenerative agriculture program with pesticide reduction at all, which is obviously concerning, because what the soil science points to is that regenerative without significant pesticide reduction is not regenerating soil health,” said Cailin Dendas, the senior coordinator of As You Sow’s Environmental Health Program.

Dendas is the author of a new report that found General Mills is not alone: It’s one of several food companies moving away from earlier promises to reduce pesticide use.

Thanks to Trump’s Iran War, Big Oil Raking in $30 Million Per Hour in Windfall Profits

Making Trump's friends richer

Brad Reed

Donald Trump’s unprovoked war of choice in Iran has been a goldmine for the fossil fuels industry, which is earning massive windfall profits thanks to the rise in the price of petroleum.

An analysis published by The Guardian estimated that the 100 biggest oil and gas companies have collectively raked in an extra $30 million per hour since Trump launched his war with Iran without any congressional authorization in late February.

In just the first month of the conflict, The Guardian reported, Big Oil made $23 billion in windfall profits, and the industry is projected to haul in an additional $234 billion in windfall profits by the end of the year if the price of oil stays in the $100 range.

The top beneficiaries of the Iran conflict are Saudi Aramco, which is projected to earn $25.5 billion in windfall profits by the end of the year; Kuwait Petroleum Corp., which is projected to earn $12.1 billion; and ExxonMobil, which is projected to earn $11 billion.

Five top psychiatric specialists warn Congress about Trump’s instability and danger

They cite the “Dark Triad” of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. 

Jeffrey D. Sach, sBandy X. Lee, James Gilligan, Prudence L. Gourguechon and James R. Merikangas in Common Dreams

Editor’s note: The following letter was sent to the bipartisan leadership of Congress on Monday, April 13, 2026 in regard to recent rhetoric and actions taken by US President Donald J. Trump.

Senator John Thune
Senate Majority Leader, US Senate

Senator Charles E. Schumer
Senate Minority Leader, US Senate

Representative Mike Johnson
Speaker of the House, US House of Representatives

Representative Hakeem Jeffries
House Minority Leader, US House of Representatives

Dear Senate Majority Leader Thune, Senate Minority Leader Schumer, Speaker Johnson, and House Minority Leader Jeffries:

We write to you today with a sense of urgency that we do not use lightly. The behavior and rhetoric of President Donald Trump have crossed a threshold that demands the immediate and bipartisan attention of Congress. This is not a partisan assessment. It is a judgment grounded in observable fact, consistent professional assessment, and the constitutional responsibilities that your offices carry.

President Trump exhibits what forensic mental health experts have, across dozens of independent assessments, identified as the “Dark Triad” of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Rather than constituting a clinical diagnosis, this trait-based assessment is grounded in behavioral observation and is particularly useful for assessing the level of danger an individual poses in a political leadership position. We do not offer this as a clinical verdict. We offer it as the considered judgment of a substantial body of professional opinion, based on well-researched evidence that is consistent, accumulating, and impossible to dismiss.

What makes this more than an academic matter is what predictably happens when this personality structure collides with immovable obstacles. The clinical literature is clear: individuals with Dark Triad profiles, when confronted with situations they cannot control or escape, do not recalibrate. They escalate. The psychological imperative to relieve narcissistic collapse overrides strategic calculation, concern for consequences, and ordinary self-restraint. Rage surges to domination. Impulsivity overrides caution. The urgent need to extinguish psychological pain eclipses every other consideration.

We are watching this dynamic unfold in real time.

The President’s recent public communications have been, by any normal standard of political discourse, alarming. His posts demanding that Iran “open the fuckin’ strait, you crazy bastards” and his threat to bomb Iran “back to the stone ages,” adding that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” are not the rhetoric of calculated geopolitical pressure. They are the expressions of a man in profound psychological distress who is reaching for the most extreme retaliatory threats available to him. That these statements were addressed to an adversary in the context of an active military confrontation makes them not merely shocking but profoundly dangerous.

President Trump has now ordered a US naval blockade of Iran — an action that has sent world oil prices soaring and placed the United States in direct opposition to the international community. His ongoing actions carry the potential to trigger a global economic catastrophe, draw in regional and great powers, and ignite a wider conflict with consequences that no one can bound. These orders are being issued without adequate deliberation, without congressional authorization, and in a context in which the President’s judgment is, by every visible measure, severely compromised.

We urge three specific actions.

Trump does it again. Can't help himself.

Celebrate diversity, April 18

Make $105 BILLION and pay NO taxes

Two new studies could change critics’ opinions about how many birds die from wind turbines

Trump, wrong again

By Diana Resnik, EuroNews

Critics say wind turbines endanger birds but two new studies have now analysed the risk in more detail. What they have found could change the debate.

The energy company Vattenfall and the tech company Spoor have analyzed the extent to which wind turbines endanger birds at the offshore wind farm in Aberdeen. Over a period of 19 months - from June 2023 to December 2024 - video recordings of a wind turbine were made with the help of AI-supported analyses. A total of 2,007 bird flight paths near the monitored turbine were examined.

"By combining AI-powered detection and detailed expert analysis, we can replace assumptions with concrete observations and measure actual behavior in the immediate vicinity of wind turbines," says Ask Helseth, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Spoor.

The study found that there was not a single collision, "The results from Aberdeen Bay show that modern offshore wind farms can be operated with low risk to wildlife," says Dr Eva Julius-Philipp, Director Environment and Sustainability BU Wind at Vattenfall.

German Offshore Wind Energy Association (BWO) study: Over 99 per cent of migratory birds avoid wind turbines

New Study Reveals a Simple Life Is the Real Secret to Happiness

You don’t need to be rich although poverty is not fun 

Not to mention, life in New Zealand is different than here

By University of Otago

At a time when displays of extreme wealth dominate headlines and social media feeds, a new study suggests that more consumption does not necessarily translate into a better life.

Research from the University of Otago indicates that stepping away from material excess may be linked to greater day-to-day satisfaction and stronger social connections.

The team set out to examine how consumption relates to well-being. Their findings indicate that people report higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction when they adopt more sustainable lifestyles and resist consumer-driven habits.

The researchers analyzed data from a representative sample of more than 1,000 New Zealanders. The group included 51 percent men and 49 percent women, with a median age of 45 and a median annual household income of $50,000.

They found that embracing simple living, formally known as ‘voluntary simplicity,’ supports well-being by creating more opportunities for social interaction and meaningful connection. These benefits often arise in settings such as community gardens, shared resource systems, and peer-to-peer lending platforms, which differ from traditional market exchanges.

Tax the Corporations Cashing in on War

The least war profiteers can do is pay taxes

By Meghan Schneider, Cass DiPaola

Our dependence on fossil fuels does more than pollute our air. It destabilizes the world and empowers the ultra-wealthy to profit off of that volatility, leaving working families to pay the price.

This dynamic has been on full display since Donald Trump’s attack on Iran.

Trump’s invasion of one of the world’s most oil-rich regions jolted energy markets, sending gas prices soaring to the highest level in either of his terms. In 2024 he campaigned on cutting them in half. Instead, Americans are now on track to pay roughly $720 more for gasoline this year.

The full cost to working families will be much steeper as high gas prices drive up prices on consumer goods across the board. We’re already seeing that ripple effect take hold, as the U.S. Postal Service has proposed a temporary 8 percent fuel surcharge on package deliveries to offset rising transportation costs tied directly to the war-driven spike in oil prices.

At the same time, the oil and gas companies that invested at least $75 million in Trump’s reelection are cashing in on this instability. A recent Financial Times analysis estimates that U.S. oil companies could collect an additional $63 billion in revenue this year if crude prices remain at these wartime levels. In March alone, the industry is expected to generate $5 billion in extra cash flow.

This type of windfall isn’t a fluke. We’ve seen this pattern for decades.

Oil has a way of appearing in the background of every chapter of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East and beyond. Iran nationalized its oil industry in the 1950s and a CIA-backed coup followed. Iraq, sitting on some of the world’s largest reserves, was invaded in 2003. And earlier this year, the U.S. invaded Venezuela and immediately began plans for a taxpayer-backed oil industry takeover.