I cannot overstate how remarkable it is that under GOP rule, US federal health regulations have been captured by fringe crackpots who espouse views that the vast majority of the US public—and nearly 100% of health professionals—reject. Gift link:

Trying to explain why international trade is good to an American: okay so imagine a burger (yes this is a real ad on the Canadian embassy in DC)

Florida moves to end vaccine mandates to attend school, the first state to do so. So many own goals across America right now. www.miamiherald.com/news/politic...

Because of Florida's decision to phase out childhood vaccine mandates, many will die of preventable diseases like measles, chickenpox, tetanus, and diphtheria. This is regressive, bringing us back to the early 1950s when parents had to worry that their kids might die from diseases like polio.

Nine former CDC directors, from Bill Foege onward, speak out about the incalculable harm that RFK, Jr. is doing to public health in the US and around the world. Gift link.

Football pundits agree! The only thing worse than VAR is not having VAR. ( see Rayo Vallecano vs Barcelona)

Back-to-school reminder: The market rewards education Average earnings: High school dropout | ### ($35k) High school grad | ##### ($47k) College degree | ######### ($87k) Masters degree | ########### ($106k) Professional degree | ##################($184k)

Doesn't everyone feel overburdened with mitochondrial challenges at the airport though? Those TSA procedures are tough these days.

Firing RFK Jr would unburden a lot of overworked mitochondria in this country

I’m sorry to say but the claim that the US under Trump is going to provide Ukraine with militarily enforced security guarantees, is simply the newest version of the Trump will hit Russia hard with sanctions delusion. Neither will ever happen, but if it makes you feel better….

"Arm Ukraine, expand sanctions, stop the lethal drone swarms, break the Russian economy, and win the war. Then there will be peace."

"It was determined by all..."

The Trump 2 cabinet has so many weirdos

The US Constitution forbids export taxes but I guess this payment isn't a "tax" but a payout....🤔 www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/t...

most anti-nuclear arguments are unpersuasive (where to put the waste? what about Chernobyl?) but the high cost issue is harder to dismiss www.ft.com/content/5f54...

Lemme just say if President Bernie Sanders had unilaterally imposed, by executive fiat, hundreds of billions of new taxes, personally browbeat executives about job cuts and investments and then fired the head of BLS, the Chamber of Commerce and the business orgs would not be sitting idly by.

Only a flop nation fails to support its brilliant, world-leading mathematicians.

I'm mostly trying to tune out the outside world. (I gave birth a week ago.) But between Trump firing BLS commissioner & suddenly finding an opening on the Fed board, today seems like a dark turning point for the US economy. I fear we've just met 2 horsemen of the turning-into-Venezuela-pocalypse

Economist at right-leaning American Enterprise Institute bsky.app/profile/mich...

My @nytopinion.nytimes.com blog on Trump's egregious and senseless order to fire the BLS Commissioner. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/08...

Here's what Trump's new tariff hikes look like—another 5% on major allies like the EU, Japan, & South Korea. Another 10% on large trading partners like India, Vietnam, & Canada. Some rather insane choices like 39% tariffs on Switzerland, 41% on Syria, and of course 50% on Brazil.

some (myopic) people might say trade policy ought not to be made in a random way. but those people don't realize how hard it is to get an estimate of the tariff elasticity we can agree on.

Motherfucking wind farms…

I consider it a good sign for mental health (and international trade as a field) that people care more about tariffs than Epstein. Journalists take note!

If this is accurate, then unless the EU eliminates all tariffs on industrial imports from all its WTO partners, it will be joining Trump in destroying the international trade rules that have applied since WW2. The difference being that while Trump hates the rule-based order the EU claims to value it

Did the two parties even attend the same meeting? The White House: "The EU will remove significant tariffs, including the elimination of all EU tariffs on U.S. industrial goods exported to the EU" The EC: "Today we have also agreed on zero-for-zero tariffs on a number of strategic products."

Here we make the case against "deals" with the US in favour of counter-tariffs. www.ifw-kiel.de/publications...

This, tragically, is the right away to report on Trump’s moves on Monday which were supposed to be great for Ukraine. Russia now has 50 days impunity to hammer Ukrainian civilians. And there is no guarantee Trump will do anything after that as well.

No, it's not the case that only China is responsible for the large decline in extreme poverty over the past decades. We wrote about it recently: ourworldindata.org/data-insights/was-the-global-decline-of-extreme-poverty-only-due-to-china

As we wake up this morning, Trump is now threatening 30% tariffs on Mexico & the EU. Complete insanity.

It is now clear that average tariffs on August 1 are set to be higher than they were on "Liberation Day." Only a fool would look back to the chaos of early April and conclude that the problem was that the announced tariffs were too small. If you're not worried, you're not paying attention.

two striking things about the rise of PSG to best in world: 1. core players like Hakimi, Vitinha, and Kvaratskelia are barely known by people who don't watch the game closely, 2. at the end of the league phase in 2024, they were ranked 15th in Europe.

There is absolutely no law that allows the President of the United States to unilaterally impose a tariff to interfere with a criminal case in another country.

"the administration is increasingly targeting non-criminals. And when non-criminals are improperly removed, the administration response isn’t to fix its error but instead to insist that the noncriminal has been a criminal all along"

He never tells us what the plan is on anything because there is no plan. But two things we know for sure: 1. Whatever happens that is good news will always be a result of the master plan we were not told about. 2. Whatever happens that is bad news will be Biden’s fault.

If you have 10 minutes to read about trade policy, read the chapter on 7 questions by Andres and Arnaud. If you 20 minutes, also read my chapter (with Thierry, Pauline, and Vincent) on Auto tariffs. @cepr.org

Helen Chu is one of the ousted #ACIP members. She spoke to me today about her grave concerns for future vaccination policy and vaccine access in the United States. www.statnews.com/2025/06/10/c...

The Problems Democrats Don’t Like to See www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/o...

Real Capitalism™ is the President telling an individual corporation how to set its prices.

I appreciate that the Tufts University School of Arts and Sciences has this prominently placed at the top of their main webpage right now. as.tufts.edu

Amid all the other news, it's easy to become inured to the basic facts here. Öztürk: -Is not accused of committing any crime -Is nonviolent -Was in this country legally -Merely engaged in speech that the administration objects to -Has been locked up for six weeks

I just got the official email from the NSF about the drastic cuts and I think the correct translation is "if you are a young researcher who still wants to do science strongly consider leaving the United States if you can." which, really, is not an ideal message to be sending.

this is really cool: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

"I'm going to govern in econometrics" is a winning campaign slogan for the ages.

Now it's nearly 270 university presidents who have signed onto this "unprecedented government overreach" public letter. It was less than 180 this morning. www.aacu.org/newsroom/a-c... Universities, and judges, taking the lead in standing up.

@pkrugman.bsky.social echoes Bard today: "For a while after the election investors loved Trump, not wisely but too well."

There is only one way to end the war: put pressure on the Russians. The Trump people did the opposite: put pressure on Ukraine, and relieved pressure on Russia. They have made the war worse while talking of "peace."

This is an obvious point, but cannot overstated. There is an enormous difference between deporting someone - where they get off a plane as a free citizen in their home country AND FUNNELING THEM INTO A BRUTAL PRISON FROM WHICH THEY HAVE NO CHANCE OF EVER EMERGING!!!