Incompetence or malevolence? You decide.
Trump appoints RFK Jr. to his Cabinet has scientists fearing a catastrophe for public health
In a tweet he posted shortly before the election, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took arms against the Food and Drug Administration and its scientists.
“The FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” he wrote, decrying the agency’s “aggressive suppression” of such worthless anti-COVID nostrums as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
“If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you,” he continued: “1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”
Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as his secretary of Health and Human Services, which oversees key public health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, would give Kennedy the power to turn his threat into reality.
That has sent a chill through the scientific community. Serious scientists are understandably dismayed about the damage that Kennedy and Trump could do to the nation’s public health infrastructure — indeed, to public health itself.
“Scientists are facing a huge threat and need to respond, if not for their own well-being, but for public health in general,” says Robert Morris, an epidemiologist and former professor of community health at Tufts’ medical school. “Academic scientists need to stand together, or they’ll be picked off individually and science will suffer.”
Kennedy is an overt anti-vaccination agitator, among his many other pet pseudoscientific positions. He has called the COVID vaccines, which have saved millions of lives worldwide, “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”.
He has pushed the long-discredited claim that the MMR (measles/mumps/rubella) vaccine causes autism. A 2005 screed alleging the link, published jointly by Rolling Stone and Salon.com, was so stuffed with falsehoods that it was retracted by both publications.
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Texas measles outbreak grows to over 300 cases in 3 states
Emily Brindley, The Dallas Morning News, 03/18/2025
DALLAS — The measles outbreak that began in West Texas has now grown to more than 300 cases across three states..
The Texas Department of State Health Services reported Tuesday morning that Texas now has 279 confirmed measles cases from the outbreak. That number does not include at least four additional measles cases that have been reported in Texas, but which are not not connected to the outbreak..
Texas’ case count also does not include cases reported in neighboring New Mexico and Oklahoma.
The New Mexico Department of Health on Friday reported 38 measles cases in two counties. The vast majority of those cases are in New Mexico’s Lea County, which directly borders Texas’ Gaines County, where the outbreak originated..
The Oklahoma State Department of Health has reported a total of four probable measles cases, which are all believed to be connected to the Texas and New Mexico outbreak.
In Tuesday’s update, the Texas Department of State Health Services did not report any new counties with cases.
Last week, the state reported five measles cases in northeast Texas. Those cases, in Lamar County, were the first instance of the outbreak spreading outside of West Texas and the Panhandle.
Since the outbreak began, a total of 36 people in Texas have been hospitalized. In Texas, one child, who was not vaccinated, has died. New Mexico has also reported one adult death in connection with the outbreak.
Measles is a highly contagious virus that spreads primarily among unvaccinated people. The disease has been considered eliminated in the U.S. since 2000, but there have been outbreaks across the country in communities with low vaccination rates.
Of the 279 measles cases in Texas, only two were identified in people who have been vaccinated. (State officials previously reported five cases among vaccinated people, but revised the number after learning that two cases were people vaccinated after exposure to the virus, and a third case was a measles vaccine reaction as opposed to a measles infection.)
The remaining 277 cases in Texas were among people who were either unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown, according to the state.
The two-dose measles-mumps-rubella vaccine is highly effective at preventing measles infection. It’s recommended for children beginning at about 12 months old and for all adults, with the exception of people who are pregnant or severely immunocompromised.
Local health authorities across Texas are offering the vaccine at clinics. People can also contact their doctor or pharmacy to ask about the vaccine.
=================================================Conservative economist Michael Strain, who was initially optimistic about the prospects of President Donald Trump’s second term, has now found himself aghast at what he sees as the president’s remarkable economic mismanagement.
In his latest column posted at Project Syndicate, Strain argues that in prior years “it would have been unfathomable for a president — including Trump during his first term — to inflict so much harm on the economy deliberately” as what Trump has been doing in recent weeks.
Strain singles out two initiatives as particularly alarming: Trump’s antagonistic trade wars with Canada and Mexico, and the chaotic Elon Musk-led efforts to slash and burn the federal workforce.
“We are witnessing rank incompetence,” he argues. “As has been widely reported, DOGE has charged into federal agencies and fired workers, only to attempt to rehire them days later when it realized how important they were. It is repeatedly posting data with significant errors about its ‘spending cuts.’ Clearly, there is no plan here.”
Incompetence or malevolence? Both.
Musk and Trump are ignorant about what a democratic government should do for the people (incompetence), and they care only for their own wealth and power (malevolence).
What amazes me is the ignorance and malevolence of the right wing American public, who neither have, nor even want, knowledge or compassion, but prefer to be angrily sure about their hatreds.
Trump’s backers are about to receive what they so richly deserve. Then they can go back to blaming Biden.
I feel terrible about the children of those parents.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
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Corruption, plain and simple
U.S. President Donald Trump said he fired the two Democrats on the Federal Trade Commission Tuesday, a move blasted by consumer rights and democracy advocates as yet another illegal abuse of power by the twice-impeached Republican felon.
The White House announced the termination of Commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya from the FTC, a five-member body tasked with enforcing civil antiitrust law and protecting consumers.
“Today the president illegally fired me from my position as a federal trade commissioner, violating the plain language of a statute and clear Supreme Court precedent,” Slaughter said in a statement. “Why? Because I have a voice. And he is afraid of what I’ll tell the American people.”
“The administration clearly fears the accountability that opposition voices would provide if the president orders Chair [Andrew] Ferguson to treat the most powerful corporations and their executives—like those that flanked the president at his inauguration—with kid gloves,” Slaughter continued, referring to multibillionaire tech CEOs Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg.
Last month, Ferguson endorsed the fringe legal theory that the president can terminate commissioners without cause—despite federal legislation against this. Bolstered by obsequious Republicans in his administration and Congress as well as a Supreme Court that critics say has granted the president king-like powers, Trump has moved to assert greater control over the federal government, including agencies meant to be independent.
Bedoya wrote on social media: “The president just illegally fired me. This is corruption, plain and simple.”
“The FTC is an independent agency founded 111 years ago to fight fraudsters and monopolists, our staff is unafraid of the Martin Shkrelis and Jeff Bezos of the world. They take them to court and they win,” Bedoya continued. “Now, the president wants the FTC to be a lap dog for his golfing buddies.”
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It’s very hard to keep up with the speed of the destruction – speed is about the only thing the tag-team of Trump & Musk are good at, because they don’t care who is hurt, even the country itself.
An example if the measles outbreak, which will be basically over half the country by the end of the month and sometime soon, essentially an epidemic among the unvaccinated.
The current measles outbreak has spread to 15 states in the United States, with 301 confirmed cases since January1234
I feel sorry for the innocent children too, but then I remind myself that children of ignorant, selfish, anti-science parents are likely to grow up the same way, unless something happens to firmly steer them to reason.
Hopefully, measles will not leave them too brain-damaged to benefit from that. It’s not just deaths that measles brings. There are far more injuries than deaths:
From the CDC website:
U.S. Hospitalizations in 2025 17%
17% of cases hospitalized (50 of 301).Percent of Age Group Hospitalized
Under 5 years: 27% (28 of 103)
5-19 years: 10% (13 of 126)
20+ years: 13% (8 of 63)
Age unknown: 11% (1 of 9)
No doubt, the CDC will eventually be prevented from displaying anything the Dear Leader finds negative or critical of him.
Noble prize winning economist Paul Krugman writes in his blog that he expects the economic statistics will soon be jiggered to exclude bad statistics, for the first time in modern history.
He also says that the Trump administration is openly saying America “needs” a recession to fix things for the long term – a complete pivot from promising to lower prices and raise employment on Day 1.
Here in NYC, they’re attacking everything they can think of, from congestion pricing, to subways, to funding of every kind to the city and state. It’s not just incompetence or malevolence, it’s vengeance.
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Sad, isn’t it, that the greatest danger to America comes not from an atomic foreign power like China or Russia, but from an ignorant, weak, cowardly, bigoted, immoral, hate-mongering, psychopathic multi-bankrupt, adulterer, pampered “rich-boy.”
Or perhaps the greatest danger to Americans comes from Americans who have assumed the identity of the people who followed Hitler into WWII
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