Yup, it’s VERY frustrating when people say they like RFK Jr cuz “he is waging war on Red 40 food dye” 👀 Indeed, Frederik Schaltz-Buchholzer, the Danish researcher who wrote a piece in praise of RFK Jr, told me he thinks RFK Jr had a great year as he got rid of food dye & the hep B vaxx birth dose 😱

On #DavidRemnick. The @newyorker.com has some great science writers. But there is an affinity high-up for COVID contrarianism: Jessica Winter's piece on school closures, Dan Immerwahr's ode to "In COVID's Wake," & the best of 2025 for that book. 1/

More on the continuing purges at #NIH. Now 13 out of 27 institute directors have been gotten rid of. This is not normal. @jonathanwosen.bsky.social www.statnews.com/2025/12/27/n...

Back in the old days, we used to call this a purge. Firing all your senior leaders at NIH? It's a purge. Just call it what it is.

"Unlike anything ever done or seen before!" Chesterton's Fence strikes again

Nothing to see here Just the NIH Director trashing, um, one of the world’s best respected journals, Science It makes sense really—power-hungry, power-consolidating autocrats love to criticize the media, it’s one of their favorite tactics

The @nytimes.com Lost Science series continues. Here's my Q&A with a scientist who was studying how wildfire smoke threatens human health when the EPA decided that her research was no longer a funding priority. Gift link: nyti.ms/4jhpw14

I remember when she landed! I’d just come from Pilates with Gwyneth and her pal, Rick Caruso, and was in my Tesla having an Erewhon smoothie when Bob at Disney called about a citywide party for Bari because that’s the intentional kindness that all 3.88 million Angelenos show to cast-out New Yorkers!

Stephen Miller is employing state terror in service of the open goal of shifting the ethnic mix of the country. In numerous ways he's doing this at the expense of public safety. We spent weeks reporting on Miller's real aims. Here's the result. We hope you'll read: newrepublic.com/article/2041...

In their willingness to roll up their sleeves-sometimes literally between scenes-I saw a truth we often forget: we are strongest when we take care of one another. And in a year when so much feels uncertain, that simple lesson is worth holding on to. www.statnews.com/2025/12/24/f... via @statnews.com

If this doesn’t hit every single trumpist note. Plumbing, mass slaughter of the subhuman, plague utilitarianism

Thanks to @michaelhobbes.bsky.social for this: a prime example of vibe-based liberal commentary devoid of any scientific grounding which ends up syncing up with far-right agit-prop and the authors have ridden all this nonsense all the way to the bank.

This is genuinely horrifying. Fact-free far-right agitprop given accolades by credible media across the political spectrum.

Rise and Resist is a NONVIOLENT direct action group in NYC, which is committed to opposing, disrupting, and defeating any government act that threatens democracy, equality, and our civil liberties. Click link below to sign up for the RaR General Meeting Zoom link docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

All of these bootlegged copies of the 60 Minutes segment flooding my feed (saying, ‘Watch it quick! Before it disappears!’) makes me feel like I’m in the Soviet Union and just got some black market foreign newspaper I need to hide under a floorboard in my house. This is where America is now

“MAHA works in large part because it promises sweeping change and improved health even when in practice what it delivers is benefit cuts, deregulation, and increased spread of contagious disease.” podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d...

People are angry, and that anger is real. But MAHA redirects it away from the structural forces that create this crisis towards conspiracy and scapegoating.

Here are the numbers. The sick and the dead. All premeditated by #Trump, #Vought, #RFKJr. And the hardest hit--people who live in red states, where their governors will just help the suffering along rather than stand with their own constituents. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/o...

@adamserwer.bsky.social is so good.

Now this thirsty dingbat weighs in: "Katie Miller Gives ‘60 Minutes’ a Bonkers Lecture After Pro-Trump Censorship" www.thedailybeast.com//katie-mille...

Imagine my shock when I found out this guy is one of the Danish investigators doing the unethical trial funded by RFK Jr through a non-competitive grant, in which they'll deliberately withhold the hep B vaccine birth dose from babies in Guinea-Bissau even though it's a proven effective intervention

Thread 👇

🧪 Clinical trials need to be registered publicly Search of international platform for trials in children on hepatitis B & Guinea Bissau doesn’t find any registered trials 🙏 @melodyschreiber.com @gavinyamey.bsky.social @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social @pauloffit.bsky.social www.who.int/tools/clinic...

How is it possible that in the year 2025 a clinical trial is NOT publicly registered?

Ioannidis may be worse than Bhattacharya. He has used his reputation and influence to lend credibility to bad science. If you look through his publications, he has done almost no original epidemiology. All criticism and meta-analysis. It's like a famous movie critic insisting he's a director.

I will also note I have heard from sources outside NIH, including in Congress, who feel like the renewals are not due to Memoli and/or Bhattacharya 'persuading' anyone -- but instead due to public attention and pressure.

asked RFK Jr a question about them at a Senate hearing and made him look bad, within hours they were renewed. I won't discuss any information that is non-public from the agency, but it is striking that the renewals came after media coverage.

"In particular, they persuaded HHS to renew scientists on term-limited appointments who were to be laid off." This is likely untrue. The major switches about renewals came after media exposure. That includes myself. It also includes the 12+ neuroscience PIs at NINDS. After @durbin.senate.gov ...

"One longtime colleague and friend, [John Ioannidis] who has kept in touch with [Bhattacharya], pleads for scientists—and reporters—to give him a chance. " Ioannidis is part of the COVID contrarian crew. Of course he says that. It's like a Big Oil exec asking to give EPA head Lee Zeldin a chance.

#DavidEllison & #BariWeiss are running cover for this. #Paramount is a Pravda for the 21st century.

The CBS investigation portrays a modern concentration camp, similar to the Soviet GULAG (like CECOT, an acronym): sadistic guards, 24 hour lighting, isolation cells. Americans once opposed this inhumane system. The Trump administration sent innocent people there to suffer.

I know everyone is dunking on #BariWeiss right now, but it is #Paramount CEO #DavidEllison who is her patron. Would love to see some blowback to this billionaire-handmaid to authoritarianism too.

Bari Weiss is killing stories the right way. by Ezra Klein

My god. Well, that seals the deal. If house and senate appropriators agree to this- burn it all down

The Murder of CBS News and The Slow Death of the Trump Administration Bigoted, untalented mediocrities - groomed by billionaires - are dismantling and corrupting America's institutions to become servants of the Trump Administration, racists, & the broligarchy open.substack.com/pub/thelefth...

I wish @p-hunermund.com was joking.

Re-upping the back page of the current @theonion.com print edition in light of Bari’s new explanation below

Best thing about the Bari Weiss disaster is she can’t even try to save face by positioning herself as the voice of reason bringing CBS’ millennial wokes to heel. Scott Pelley is old as hell. Sharyn Alfonsi’s been doing this since the 90s.

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Personally, I am sitting here calling BS on very powerful people in my industry. I work for a place I can be proud of. I don't have much patience for people whose main activity is anonymous posting demanding so much more from others than they do themselves.

Americans having to bootleg broadcast news about our government’s offshored concentration camp is a level of fascism that immediately precedes democratic societies dropping leaflets on us from weather balloons.

One of the most important books I've read this year, from @adambecker.bsky.social. It's a devastating read at times—you'll find yourself shouting at the book "how can they be that goddamn crazy???!!!" But it's critical to realize that they are.

@gorskon.bsky.social on the whole sordid saga of RFK Jr., FDA's sports medicine doc Tracy Beth Hoeg, Bandim Health Project at the University of Southern Denmark, hepatitis and babies in Guinea Bissau. sciencebasedmedicine.org/every-accusa...

All ten parts of our series attempting to put our arms around the ramifications of various cuts and disruptions to the scientific enterprise this year are live, and you can read them here: www.statnews.com/american-sci...

Again, from Michael Grynbaum, here is Sharyn Alfonsi's full email. It must be read:

My god. From Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her ‘60 Minutes’ colleagues, posted by the NYT Michael Grynbaum:

This year, many people resigned their posts at the slightest hint that the Trump regime was displeased with them instead of staying and making someone fire them. Sharyn Alfonsi is showing us why you stay and refuse: you make clear your superiors are wrong and may them pay the costs of firing you.

Knowing that so many other groups have stepped up to meet the moment gives me hope that we can continue to break through... ... and engage with communities throughout the US to share what will happen if America steps away from our investments in science and medical research. scienceimpacts.org /🧵

The #SCIMaP effort is made possible via the combined talents and commitment of @malar0ne.bsky.social, @falklab.bsky.social, @ellenpeters.bsky.social, @angiefagerlin.bsky.social, @cl10.bsky.social, @dcosme.bsky.social, C Cooke, A. Chande + more. bsky.app/profile/josh...

This work has come with broader lessons: 1. Action is the antidote to despair & 2. Collective action is a force multiplier. We simply could not have done the work as individuals.