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The New Dark Age

Red, you reside on the east coast, right? I think you could benefit by spending some time out here in the Rocky Mountain west. These people live in a stupor a mass psychosis. And the only way out is pain. They need to feel their poor electoral choices. If the hope stove burns no one then people will keep touching it. And next time it might not be with someone as old, incompetent, or stupid as Trump.
Yeah, I’m in the East Coast megalopolis, Boston to D.C. you know urban America will always be more liberal than conservative rural America. And that’s been a noticeable difference, and divide, for a long time. Love Utah. Would love to get out there again sometime.
 

In particular, Kratsios’ first major initiative — a directive calling on federal agencies to promote ‘gold standard science’ — has attracted widespread criticism for undermining and politicizing science. Most crucially, the guidance expands political power over sensitive science topics and questions of alleged research misconduct. When Kratsios defended the effort in an editorial in the journal Science on 24 June (M. Kratsios Science 389, 7; 2025), one of his predecessors, John Holdren, went so far as to publish a letter in Science accusing Kratsios of deploying Orwellian doublespeak to defend a proposal that will further enable the Trump administration’s attacks on science. “And now the fox in the henhouse overseeing it all is Michael Kratsios?” wrote Holdren, a physicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who served as science adviser to former US president Barack Obama. “What a charade!”

Holdren is not alone. “We were really hopeful that Kratsios would defend science, but it doesn’t look like he is going to do that,” says Kenneth Evans, a science-policy researcher at Rice University in Houston, Texas. The question now, Evans adds, is whether Kratsios and the Trump administration will present a positive agenda for science. “Tearing everything down doesn’t seem like a way forward.”

Kratsios declined multiple interview requests from Nature, and the OSTP declined to comment on the allegations in this article.
 
Crafting and presenting the dictator’s preferred “history”.


The White House plans to conduct a far-reaching review of Smithsonian museum exhibitions, materials and operations ahead of America’s 250th anniversary to ensure the museums align with President Trump’s interpretation of American history.

In a letter sent to Lonnie Bunch, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, three top White House officials said they want to ensure the museums present the “unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story” and reflect the president’s executive order calling for “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”

Areas under scrutiny range from public-facing exhibition text and online content to internal curatorial processes, exhibition planning, the use of collections and artist grants.

“This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the president’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions,” the letter states.

The letter, dated Tuesday, Aug. 12, and viewed by The Wall Street Journal, was signed by White House senior associate Lindsey Halligan, the director of the domestic policy council, Vince Haley, and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought.

“This is about preserving trust in one of our most cherished institutions,” Halligan said in a statement. “The Smithsonian museums and exhibits should be accurate, patriotic, and enlightening—ensuring they remain places of learning, wonder, and national pride for generations to come.”

“The Smithsonian’s work is grounded in a deep commitment to scholarly excellence, rigorous research, and the accurate, factual presentation of history,” the Smithsonian said. “We are reviewing the letter with this commitment in mind and will continue to collaborate constructively with the White House, Congress, and our governing Board of Regents.”

The White House review of the Smithsonian’s extensive collection of art and historical artifacts comes as the president has sought to reorient the country’s cultural institutions, including top universities, and demonstrates Trump’s efforts to recast parts of American history in a more positive light.

The Smithsonian’s Board of Regents agreed to conduct a thorough review of all its museum and zoo content to eliminate political influence and bias, the Journal previously reported.

Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association, said the White House’s effort was an affront to the historians and curators trained to ensure historical accuracy.

“If those things are taken out of the hands of historians, the public stands to lose a great deal in having reliable and engaging content that tells a whole and complex story of the American past,” she said.

The president singled out the Smithsonian Institution in his executive order and said the Smithsonian had recently “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology” that promotes “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.” He directed Vice President JD Vance, a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, and senior officials to work with Congress to block the Smithsonian from receiving appropriations for exhibitions and programs that don’t align with his opposition to initiatives that promote diversity, equity and inclusion.
 
Calls for the removal of RFK Jr. Such an incompetent fool. MAHA will kill more Americans for its views on vaccines alone. Shows us just how little Trump cares about his fellow citizens. RFK Jr. has got to go……


Agrassroots organization of health professionals has released a report outlining major health challenges in the US and calling for the removal of Robert F Kennedy Jr from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The report from Defend Public Health, a new organization of about 3,000 health professionals and allies, is an attempt to get ahead of misinformation and lack of information from health officials.

In an effort to keep making progress in public health, Defend Public Health’s report was slated to coincide with that of the anticipated second US report to “make America healthy again” (Maha). The first Maha report was released in May, and a second report was expected this week – but amid turmoil at the health agencies, it has reportedly been delayed for several weeks.

“The Maha report is essentially a distraction from the real causes of poor health,” said Elizabeth Jacobs, professor emerita at the University of Arizona and a founding member of Defend Public Health.

“This administration does not want to address things like poverty and education and access to healthcare. Instead, they’re distracting the public with information on solutions to problems that don’t actually exist. When the foundation of your policy is not evidence-based, it will collapse.”

The Defend Public Health report diverges from the previous Maha focus on issues such as processed foods and environmental chemicals, but it covers familiar ground in public health.

The group highlights the importance of food safety, security and access to food, including through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), and improved opportunities for physical activity.

They seek to ensure equitable access to vaccines; expand access to healthcare, including comprehensive sexual and reproductive healthcare access; and build strategies for clean air.

The report also recommends fully funding scientific research and public health systems; combatting scientific misinformation, including from the US government; and strengthening pandemic preparedness. They call for reductions in gun violence, now the number one cause of death for children.

And their last recommendation is to remove Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), from office, calling his removal “the single most important step toward improving the health of Americans”.

The recommendations are exactly what the US needs to address to become healthier, said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association (APHA). If you “look at the things that actually kill people, from the 10 leading causes of death, that is indeed the right list”.
 
MAHA is destined to kill many Americans. mRNA vaccine development may represent an important breakthrough in treating cancer, for instance. But RFK Jr. and the MAHA movement will kill such research. Kennedy has made a decision to kill the most important and encouraging area of cancer research and vaccine development in the United States.

MAHA KILLS…


Perched with his brain worm on top of Health and Human Services, Kennedy probably affects your health more than your family doctor. But unlike your doctor, Kennedy has no medical degree, no hospital privileges, never cared for a patient, never discovered a drug, never published a research paper, and wouldn’t know which end of a stethoscope to use if his life or yours depended on it. Nonetheless he has opinions, and he’s enforcing them on you, on all of us. This makes as much sense as pilots flying airplanes who have never seen a cockpit, or placing the future of the United States in the hands of Donald “Windmills Cause Cancer” Trump.

Many actual medical experts believe vaccines have done more good for humanity than any other public health advance in history. COVID vaccines saved nearly 20 million lives globally in their first year alone. They also reduced the risk of severe, debilitating outcomes and long COVID after infection. But Kennedy knows “for sure” that decades of knowledge accumulated by the entire world’s medical community is wrong, and he’s eager to straighten us out.

Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines have been under development for 30 years. Compared to older technologies they are cheaper, can be mass produced faster, and can be changed more quickly to address inevitable virus mutations like with COVID. This technology also has great promise to treat cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, and diabetes. Two American scientists won the Nobel Prize for their mRNA discoveries. To real scientists, mRNA vaccines are not controversial. Without them COVID would probably still be spreading death and disability across the globe.

In May Kennedy yanked $590 million from developing pandemic flu vaccines such as bird flu. Rick Bright, who led Health and Human Services Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority during Trump 1.0, said,“Disinvesting from mRNA strips us of one of the fastest tools we have to contain the next pandemic.”

But the greatest potential of new mRNA vaccines may be as a monumental breakthrough in cancer treatments. The DNA of cancer cells is as variable as the people who are hosts for the disease. Moreover, cancer cells create unique pieces of protein that are not found in healthy cells. A vaccine that produces those pieces can train the immune system to attack those cells. This technology could offer personalized treatment by training a patient’s immune system to read and then destroy individually unique cancer cells. The vaccines furthest along could treat pancreatic and brain cancers. Over 120 clinical trials on cancer vaccines were underway as of early this year.

But then Kennedy announced last week he will yank another $500 million from vaccines with mRNA technology. This will also discourage private investment, prompt key scientists to leave the country, and set back cancer research for decades.

Kennedy is slamming the door on the survival chances of millions of cancer victims, some of them will be the more than 14,000 Utahns diagnosed with cancer every year. While we don’t know yet who they might be, go find your favorite family pictures. Some will likely be in the photos you have in your hand.
 
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Trump plans on going after many museums, not just the Smithsonian. Trump’s brand of totalitarianism is largely cultural. If Trump could, and I do believe many of us realize this is indeed the case, he would control your thoughts. Only certain thoughts would be allowed in America. He took over Kennedy Center. Why? To control American culture. This is also why he thinks he can eliminate what he decides is “woke” ideology everywhere. Trump will decide how Americans think. Now, of course he won’t really be able to do that, but what we need to understand is that he will never stop trying to excercise total control over our culture, our arts, our minds, our thoughts. He’s trying to attain a degree of totalitarianism that is impossible. Cannot possibly work. But, guaranteed to tear the country apart.

Video:




On his Truth Social platform Tuesday, President Trump called the Smithsonian Institution and other museums "the last remaining segment of 'WOKE.'" He added, "I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities."

The White House started an audit of the Smithsonian earlier this month. But what about other institutions? It is unclear what legal and financial pressures his administration might pursue in trying to align American museums to his vision.

The president's post on Truth Social was not clear: was he referring just to the Smithsonian museums, or to American museums more broadly?

NPR asked the White House to clarify this issue. A White House official, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the specifics of the plan, responded in a statement: "President Trump will explore all options and avenues to get the Woke out of the Smithsonian and hold them accountable. He will start with the Smithsonian and then go from there."

The administration's review could include many institutions: the membership of the American Alliance of Museums includes around 22,000 institutions across the country — everything from the giant, internationally-known art museums, to historic houses, natural history museums, local historical societies and botanical gardens. Many address history, identity, the environment and other subjects that are politically polarized.

Trump expands 'woke' criticism from Smithsonian to other museums

It is unclear what the timeline may be for these reviews, what the metrics might be for success and who would be doing the reviewing.

In a statement to NPR Wednesday, the president and CEO of the American Alliance of Museums, Marilyn Jackson, framed the issue as one of creative and scholarly independence. She wrote:

"The idea of extending federal reviews to the nation's 22,000 museums misunderstands how museums operate. The vast majority are independent nonprofits, guided by professional standards and community trust. Museums cannot and should not be subject to government review of their exhibitions. The integrity of museums depends on their independence, and that's what makes them so valuable to the public."
 
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I haven’t checked yet this morning., but I’m sure the “firing” of the CDC director by RFK Jr. is discussed elsewhere on the forum. Just posting a couple of things here as well, because it so illustrates how we are elevating human ignorance over scientific and medical science expertise. MAGA, and more specifically, Kennedy’s MAHA, is determined to destroy good fact-based science, seemingly in all its branches, not just medical science. But in medical science, Kennedy is pushing misinformation designed to kill Americans.

As ignorant as it gets:


View: https://x.com/acrossthemersey/status/1828602987918372973



The man is a total ignoramus, sick in the head, who has his grandchildren bath in polluted water, straps bear carcasses to the roof of his car, and poses the body in public parks, told the Senate confirmation clearing that he would leave vaccines be, making him a bald face lying sack of s***, and he really needs to go. He’s no better than a witch doctor, and not as accurate as one!



Resignations based on principle and conscience. MAHA is the WORST “health”(?”) Initiative in American history!! WTF is wrong with MAGA! As long as we’re being this incredibly stupid, as if the Age of Science never happened(!), as if we’re still living in the Middle Ages(let’s bring back leeches and bleeding sick people out!), might as well appoint a Flat Earth advocate as director of the National Science Foundation……

Highly educated professionals are resigning, RFK Jr.! You are a moron!



View: https://x.com/Smil3yAngel/status/1961038335536738459
 
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Making human ignorance America’s #1 health priority….The jaw dropping lunacy of hearing RFK Jr. talk about “gold standard science”. He is a proven enemy of science.


“There is really a deeply, deeply embedded — I would say malaise at the agency, and we need strong leadership that will go in there and that will be able to go in there and that will be able to execute on President Trump’s broad ambitions for this agency to [return] to the gold standard science and what it was when we were growing up, which was the most respected health agency in the world.”
 

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member and former chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, released the following statement in response to Director Susan Monarez’s public statement regarding RFK Jr.’s attempts to weaponize public health and put the lives of the American people at risk and the abrupt resignation of senior officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“I had serious doubts about Director Monarez’s willingness to stand up against RFK Jr.’s personal mission to destroy public health in America—I’m glad to say that I was wrong.

“Susan Monarez’s willingness to stand up for science and protect the integrity of the CDC is commendable and deeply important—however, it only further underscores the reality at HHS: Director Monarez is not the problem, RFK Jr. is. If there are any adults left in the White House, it’s well past time they face reality and fire RFK Jr. He is a dangerous man who is determined to abuse his authority to act on truly terrifying conspiracy theories and disinformation—leaving us unprepared for the next deadly pandemic and snuffing out potential cures while he’s at it. He has already taken utterly reckless steps to dismantle our public health infrastructure, and he has even undermined President Trump’s own legacy of helping establish access to lifesaving vaccines through groundbreaking mRNA research.

“Further we should all be deeply disturbed by the resignation of highly qualified CDC officials whose work quite literally saves lives. It will be an extremely frightening world if the CDC is hollowed out and its ranks filled only by conspiracy theorists that RFK Jr. agrees with. RFK Jr. comes into conflict with every credible researcher, scientist, or doctor because he lives in his own unhinged world of anti-vaccine disinformation—our current trajectory is not tenable. We need serious people working at CDC and across HHS.

“We cannot let RFK Jr. burn what’s left of the CDC and our other critical health agencies to the ground—he must be fired. I hope my Republican colleagues who have come to regret their vote to confirm RFK Jr. will join me in calling for his immediate termination from office.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is coming undone. The White House announced last night that it had ousted the agency’s newly sworn-in director, Susan Monarez, whose lawyers insist that she still has her job because only President Donald Trump himself can fire her. (Yes, it’s a mess.) Four top officials resigned yesterday. Two of them—Demetre Daskalakis, who was the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, and Debra Houry, who was the chief medical officer—told me that the group quit together to signal that they believe science is being ignored and that public health is in danger.

The departures leave a leadership void that, according to current and former CDC officials, has demoralized the agency’s staff and will further undermine its ability to provide reliable guidance to Americans. As Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, who resigned from the agency in June as co-leader of a group that advises outside experts on COVID vaccines, told me, “It feels like the CDC is over.”

I spoke with Daskalakis this morning just before he and Houry were escorted from the CDC’s Atlanta headquarters. He told me that his decision to resign was prompted by a number of factors, including “the replacement of science with ideology” and “the sidelining of scientists so that their data cannot be seen.” He also fears that important information isn’t finding its way to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. According to Daskalakis, no one from his center had been allowed to brief Kennedy directly on any of the issues that it covers, including polio, measles, COVID-19, and various vaccines. “I’m not sure where he’s getting his information other than Substacks that are erroneous,” he said.

A spokesperson for Health and Human Services did not respond to requests for comment. In an interview with Fox & Friends this morning, Kennedy declined to comment on personnel matters. “CDC has problems,” he said, accusing the agency of spreading “misinformation” during the coronavirus pandemic. “We need to look at the priorities of the agency, if there’s really a deeply, deeply embedded—I would say—malaise at the agency, and we need strong leadership that will go in there and that will be able to execute on President Trump’s broad ambitions.”

THIS:

Yesterday’s attempt to remove Monarez as director was the last straw in the four officials’ decision to resign, Houry said. (Along with Houry and Daskalakis, the resignees include Daniel Jernigan, the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, and Jennifer Layden, who oversaw the agency’s Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology.) Houry told me that officials across the CDC were excited for Monarez to take the helm when she was confirmed last month. At the time, Kennedy praised her as a “public health expert with unimpeachable scientific credentials” and a “longtime champion of MAHA values.” (She was apparently not the administration’s first choice for the position: Before nominating Monarez, the White House withdrew the nomination of David Weldon, a physician and former congressman, over concerns that his anti-vaccine views would undermine his Senate confirmation.) Then, just weeks later, Monarez was shown the door. “When we knew that her job was in jeopardy, that we weren’t going to have scientific leadership anymore, that was the final tipping point for us,” Houry told me. “We could not stay if there was not a scientific leader at CDC.”
 
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Has anyone kept number about highly educated people moving out from America to elsewhere? If so, is it how much higher than in more normal timelines?
There are major recruiting efforts from foreign nations seeking to attract American scientists. And many American scientists are at least contemplating relocating elsewhere.


Boosting recruitment of American scientists:



No surprise to see academics who specialize in the study of fascism leaving:

 
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Has anyone kept number about highly educated people moving out from America to elsewhere? If so, is it how much higher than in more normal timelines?
A couple of more perspectives:


 
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