Tag: kakistocracy

Published by: NBC News
Published on: March 25, 2025
By Brandy Zadrozny

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is pulling back $11.4 billion in funds allocated in response to the pandemic to state and community health departments, nongovernment organizations and international recipients, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed Tuesday.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” HHS Director of Communications Andrew Nixon said in a statement. “HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.”

HHS oversees 13 agencies, including the CDC, which is tasked with protecting the nation’s health. Notices began going out Monday, and awardees have 30 days to reconcile their expenditures. Figures are subject to change.

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avian flu

Kennedy’s Alarming Prescription for Bird Flu on Poultry Farms

Published March 18, 2025

Published by: The New York Times
Published on: March 18, 2025
By Apoorva Mandavilli

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, has an unorthodox idea for tackling the bird flu bedeviling U.S. poultry farms. Let the virus rip.

Instead of culling birds when the infection is discovered, farmers “should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it,” Mr. Kennedy said recently on Fox News.

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Trump regime

The Trump years will be grim for long Covid sufferers

Published February 27, 2025

Published by: STAT
Published on: February 27, 2025
By Steven Phillips

In December 2020, the U.S. government’s involvement in addressing the pandemic of long Covid officially began when Congress allocated $1.15 billion to the National Institutes of Health for research into the lasting health consequences of Covid-19. For people suffering from long Covid, the move offered hope.

Just over four years later, on Feb. 19, President Trump disbanded the Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Long COVID, as part of an executive order titled “Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy.” After the Biden administration’s tepid involvement and fitful progress in long Covid policy and practice, this decision may signal the end of meaningful federal involvement in mitigating the plight of millions of long Covid sufferers.

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Trump regime

Federal technology staffers resign rather than help Musk and DOGE

Published February 25, 2025

Published by: The Associated Press
Published on: February 25, 2025
By Brian Slodysko, Byron Tau

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”

“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”

The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under President Donald Trump’s administration were political ideologues who did not have the necessary skills or experience for the task ahead of them.

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Trump regime

Trump administration yanks CDC flu vaccine campaign

Published February 20, 2025

Published by: NPR
Published on: February 20, 2025
By Will Stone

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is stopping a successful flu vaccination campaign that juxtaposed images of wild animals, such as a lion, with cute counterparts, like a kitten, as an analogy for how immunization can help tame the flu.

The news was shared with staff during a meeting on Wednesday, according to two CDC staffers who spoke with NPR on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, and a recording reviewed by NPR.

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Trump regime

Watch Out. The Plague Years Start Now

Published February 19, 2025

Published by: The Tyee
Published on: February 19, 2025
By Crawford Kilian

Since the inauguration of Donald Trump on Jan. 20, the greatest health sciences organizations in the world have been first silenced, then frozen or outright destroyed. The scale, speed and stupidity of the destruction have been breathtaking.

The Trump regime is doing this to its own people, especially those in states that voted for Trump, but the shock is being felt around the world.

It is a safe prediction that Trump’s attack on health science will result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. And millions of lives will be diminished.

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rapid tests

U.S. reverses plan to shut down free covid test program

Published February 18, 2025

Published by: The Washington Post
Published on: February 18, 2025
By Lena H. Sun, Carolyn Y. Johnson

The government had been preparing to shut down the program that ships free coronavirus tests to American households and was considering destroying 160 million tests.

The Trump administration reversed a plan to shut down the government website that ships free coronavirus tests to households late Tuesday, after The Washington Post reported that the administration was preparing to end the program and was evaluating the costs of destroying or disposing of tens of millions of tests.

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kakistocracy

CDC cuts expected to devastate Epidemic Intelligence Service, a ‘crown jewel’ of public health

Published February 14, 2025

Published by: STAT
Published on: February 14, 2025
By Helen Branswell

The Trump administration’s campaign to slash the federal civil service hit one of the crown jewels of global public health on Friday. Members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, a legendary training program run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were warned on Friday morning that they were about to be fired, two people with knowledge of the meeting told STAT.

The 135 members of the two-year program were informed that many would be hearing of their dismissals by late in the day. But by late Friday afternoon, none had yet received a notice of their firing, one of the sources said.

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kakistocracy

Scientists React to RFK, Jr.’s Confirmation as HHS Secretary

Published February 13, 2025

Published by: Scientific American / Nature
Published on: February 13, 2025
By Amanda Heidt, Heidi Ledford

The future of America as a superpower in research appears grim. Even on issues he claims he supports, he does not follow scientific evidence. Picking a person like this to lead is like having the wolf guard the sheep.

— Theodora Hatziioannou, a virologist at the Rockefeller University in New York City

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kakistocracy

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is confirmed as Trump’s health secretary after a close Senate vote

Published February 13, 2025

Published by: The Associated Press
Published on: February 13, 2025
By Amanda Seitz

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate on Thursday confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as President Donald Trump’s health secretary, putting the prominent vaccine skeptic in control of $1.7 trillion in federal spending, vaccine recommendations and food safety as well as health insurance programs for roughly half the country.

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research

Canadian residents are racing to save the data in Trump’s crosshairs

Published February 13, 2025

Published by: CBC News
Published on: February 13, 2025
By Elizabeth Thompson

The call to Angela Rasmussen came out of the blue and posed a troubling question. Had she heard the rumour that key data sets would be removed from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website the next day?

It’s something Rasmussen had thought could never happen.

“It had never really been thought of before that CDC would actually start deleting some of these crucial public health data sets,” said the University of Saskatchewan virologist. “These data are really, really important for everybody’s health — not just in the U.S. but around the world.”

The following day, Jan. 31, Rasmussen started to see data disappear. She knew she needed to take action.

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kakistocracy

Here are all the agencies that Elon Musk and DOGE have been trying to dismantle so far

Published February 11, 2025

Published by: ABC News
Published on: February 11, 2025
By Ivan Pereira, Emily Chang

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency group has made swift work of the billionaire’s goal to scale back or dismantle much of the federal government, end diversity policies and otherwise further President Donald Trump’s agenda.

DOGE employees, many of whom have no government experience, have been going through data systems, shutting down DEI programs and in some cases, whole agencies.

As of Feb. 10, ABC has tracked Musk and his DOGE team gaining access to at least 15 federal agencies.

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kakistocracy

Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump Cuts to Medical Research Funding

Published February 10, 2025

Published by: The New York Times
Published on: February 10, 2025
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Christina Jewett

A coalition of 22 attorneys general sued the federal government, claiming that the $4 billion in cuts would “grind to a halt” studies on cancer, heart disease and other conditions.

A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked the National Institutes of Health from cutting research funding in 22 states that filed suit earlier in the day arguing that the plan would eviscerate studies into treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease and a host of other ailments.

The funding cuts, announced late Friday, were to take effect on Monday. But the attorneys general of Massachusetts and 21 other states sued. They argued that the Trump administration’s plan to slash $4 billion in overhead costs — known as “indirect costs” — violated a 79-year-old law that governs how administrative agencies establish and administer regulations.

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kakistocracy

Five Former Treasury Secretaries: Our Democracy Is Under Siege

Published February 10, 2025

Published by: The New York Times
Published on: February 10, 2025
By Robert E. Rubin, Lawrence H. Summers, Timothy F. Geithner, Jacob J. Lew, Janet L. Yellen

When we had the honor of being sworn in as the 70th, 71st, 75th, 76th and 78th secretaries of the Treasury, we took an oath to support and defend the United States Constitution.

Our roles were multifaceted. We sought to develop sound policy to advance the president’s agenda and represent the economic interests of the United States on the world stage. But in doing that, we recognized that our most fundamental responsibility was the faithful execution of the laws and Constitution of the United States.

We were fortunate that during our tenures in office no effort was made to unlawfully undermine the nation’s financial commitments. Regrettably, recent reporting gives substantial cause for concern that such efforts are underway today.

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kakistocracy

NIH cuts billions of dollars in biomedical funding, effective immediately

Published February 8, 2025

Published by: The Washington Post
Published on: February 8, 2025
By Dan Diamond, Carolyn Y. Johnson, Lena H. Sun

The Trump administration is cutting billions of dollars in biomedical research funding, alarming academic leaders who said it would imperil their universities and medical centers and drawing swift rebukes from Democrats who predicted dire consequences for scientific research.

The move, announced Friday night by the National Institutes of Health, drastically cuts NIH’s funding for “indirect” costs related to research. These are the administrative requirements, facilities and other operations that many scientists say are essential but that some Republicans have claimed are superfluous.

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Tag: kakistocracy

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The government had been preparing to shut down the program that ships free coronavirus tests to American households and was considering destroying 160 million tests.

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

A coalition of 22 attorneys general sued the federal government, claiming that the $4 billion in cuts would “grind to a halt” studies on cancer, heart disease and other conditions.

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Still COVIDing Canada Posts