This.

So much of the rot in this country stems from our failure to fund public goods and regulate private wealth. In that context, people who need your money won't care how terrible you are. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/n...

The @washingtonpost.com layoffs disproportionately affected union members of color, per data from the @postguild.bsky.social. 50% of Hispanic/Latino guild members,​ 45% of Black members, and​ 43% of Asian members were laid off, compared to 37% of white members. www.niemanlab.org/2026/02/wash...

Reuters Exclusive: The White House budget office is using millions of dollars from USAID, the former U.S. foreign aid agency, to pay for the security detail of Russell Vought, Trump's budget chief and an architect of the government overhaul cut thousands of federal jobs.

After more than 1.2 Americans lost their lives to Covid, NIH director Jay Bhattacharya orders the agency to deprioritize pandemic preparedness & biodefense. Make it make sense. Scoop from @maxkozlov.bsky.social @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I have heard (not from @melodyschreiber.com ) that the anonymous officer was FDA commissioner Makary. To reiterate: not identifying yourself says you can't stand behind the decision. You're a government official: face the public. Be transparent. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026... @theguardian.com

was trying to do some work while sick preschooler slept next to me and then she woke up and demanded one of my hands. one-handed computing is hard.

Job Alert: Public Citizen has an opening for a research director in their Health Research Group. Health journalists, ex-health journalists encouraged to apply. Happy to chat if you are interested. publiccitizen.applytojob.com/apply/z0vA8w...

This is the second account - the first being in Chicago - of DHS agents mass detaining people and then *sorting them by race*.

"Adopting this resolution would make us agents of chaos," concludes Alsobrooks. "And we would be breaking decades of precedent to do it." She points out that D.C. only decoupled from 13 of 84 federal tax changes in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and other states also decoupled.

"This resolution would cause significant uncertainty and chaos, but not for the federal government. The chaos would all be placed on D.C. It would change the rules in the middle of the game," says @alsobrooks.senate.gov. "It would [also] have a damaging effect on D.C.’s bond rating."

@wyden.senate.gov is now speaking against the MAGA plan: "It's going to mess up the tax filing season for thousands and thousands of residents. DC is going to have to spend millions fixing this mess. It's undemocratic and wasteful." "It would throw out two anti-poverty programs."

Was debating whether to post about this and let the internet judge my youthful choices... but there's an access to medicines angle. www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/...

high speed chases endanger everyone!!!!

Another instance of a center director acting unilaterally to overrule other staff (which here also involved ignoring FDA's previous statements to the company). As @reshmagar.bsky.social and I have argued, the bar should be much higher for such unilateral action: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A @lizzylawrence.bsky.social scoop: Vinay Prasad overruled FDA staff to reject Moderna’s flu vaccine application. www.statnews.com/2026/02/11/m...

good to see they are pushing back but still wonder if companies had pushed back on fda covid changes it might have helped stop fda earlier in this Trump RFK anti-vax era?

NEW: The FDA just shot down Moderna's new flu shot. From me: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

From a pharma exec!!: "Prices in US are not going to go down. The MFN policies will cause prices to go up because you will have to make up for lost revenue in Europe and Japan due to the need to raise prices there.'” via @zacharybrennan.bsky.social endpoints.news/with-scant-d...

"Raising prices abroad will do nothing to lower prices for patients in the United States. It is contradictory to ask other countries to increase their prices while planning to use international referencing pricing at the same time." tacd.org/tacd-raises-...

“They’re pretending they just rolled out the best thing ever to save Americans on drug prices, and in reality, many Americans, if they use this website, probably would actually spend more money on drugs than they needed to.” said I.

additional context: because of multi year funding policy, the payline at NCI fell from an already dismal 9% to 4% those unfunded grants are fully vetted by peer reviewers and 1000 times more deserving of our $$$ than this snake oil swindle

Holy shit—a terrible waste of $$ Bhattacharya is so kooky “If lots of people believe it & it’s moving public health, we as NIH have an obligation, again, to treat it seriously,” Bhattacharya said at a MAHA event Great reporting by @rachanadpradhan.bsky.social kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

"At the turn of the 20th century, when our great-great-grandparents had no choice but to eat 'real food,' malnutrition was rampant." www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/o...

that last sentence.

Remember last week how Dr. Oz called AI the best solution for rural healthcare shortages? Well, a new study finds that when patients turn to chatbots for health advice, they end up taking the wrong steps and getting the wrong diagnosis more than half the time. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/w...

FYI: The little boy in Bad Bunny's #SuperBowl halftime show wasn't Liam Ramos as some have said, it was a child actor: Lincoln Fox www.instagram.com/the_lincfox/...

who was the little boy Bad Bunny handed the grammy to?

@apnews.com: Hard Hats and Dummy Plates: Reports of ICE Ruses Add to Fears in Minnesota By Jake Offenhartz "Legal observers and officials say they have received a growing number of reports of federal agents impersonating construction workers, delivery drivers and in some cases anti-ICE activists."

There are so many reasons to hate the Patriots. But for me, it starts and ends with the ICE collaborators they're enriching. gillianbrockell.ghost.io/the-truth-ab...

AWFUL news tonight. This blesses the “mandatory” detention in the 5th Circuit without bond (and little chance at habeas) of every undocumented immigrant who originally entered across the border, no matter how many decades in the past. It will fuel ICE’s push to transfer people to Texas immediately.

True love for your child is making pasta on a Friday night so they can put raw onions and melted cheese and garlic powder on it for breakfast. How child came up with this I really don't know. But I'm not a huge fan of the smell of raw onions at dawn.

Wanted to note that the Pfizer drug I flagged as no longer being made is actually made still in one of its versions.

UPDATE - I found 20 or close to HALF of the drugs up there have generic options available. There are 43 drugs up on the site. One of the 43 is no longer made by Pfizer.

Here's a problem with TrumpRx I'm looking at now. Some of these drugs have generic equivalents which means getting the generic w/ insurance or via cash pay w/ something like cost plus drugs should be cheaper even with a brand discount. So far I've found 6 drugs but am still going through the list.

if you’re wondering what “unauthorized gray market” means, it means we literally don’t know what goes into those drugs other than the very limited information that companies disclose

Here's @publiccitizen.bsky.social's statement on TrumpRx: www.citizen.org/news/trumprx... #healthpolicy

Context: "The real winners in this arrangement are the pharmaceutical manufacturers. ... By routing patients away from insurance to a cash market, the manufacturers preserve their ability to maintain higher prices while appearing magnanimous through selective discounting."

Interesting admissions from both Novo & Lilly on their obesity drugs and recent US pricing deals: both say they'll ultimately increase demand and sales. #healthpolicy www.statnews.com/2026/02/05/b...

Bro, where are the calls to IMPEACH Kristi Noem, FIRE Stephen Miller, CANCEL the astronomical DHS funding in the OBBBA, and RELEASE the thousands of innocent people, including hundreds of children, currently housed in inhumane conditions?

I am not exaggerating: Removing this webpage warning against fake autism "treatments" will kill autistic people. www.medpagetoday.com/neurology/au...

INBOX: Washington Post Ukraine Correspondent Lizzie Johnson announces that she has been laid off in the middle of a below-freezing war zone without power, heat, or running water.

The White House has to approve all voucher recipients, and Trump officials have used the promise of speedier reviews to reward companies that help them advance political priorities. The episode involving Compass underscores the ways in which political pressure has shaped the voucher program.

NEW: NEW: HHS is working on an AI tool to analyze VAERS—a database of vaccine injury claims to which anyone can make submissions—and "generate hypotheses." This is from @emilymullin.bsky.social:

THREAD

Forget ‘give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses' Donald Trump's maxim is 'give us your money, your oligarchs & your privileged few' We're not having it Proud to stand w/ @publiccitizen.bsky.social in the fight against Trump's illegal Gold Card scheme 👇-TN

““They’re both sick right now,” Gutierrez said. “She has no access to any medical care.” Elizabeth has flu-like symptoms, while her mom has broken out in hives, Gutierrez said. Neither has been given any medicine or testing — a particular concern given the measles cases in the facility.” She is 10

You cannot do "commonsense reform" for a secret police force that's declared itself exempt from constitutional requirements. You cannot reform ultraviolent agencies that have been corrupt for decades and now have accountability only to the president's goons and lackeys.

Four Senate Democrats voted to advance the latest of Trump's judicial nominees today: Durbin Hassan Shaheen Whitehouse Just wedded to a bygone era of bipartisanship disconnected from reality