...But I thought the NIH had an increase in their budget this year??? That was supposed to fix everything!

(sarcasm)

BENNET: Do you agree that 89% of children who died from flu were unvaccinated?

RFK Jr: I don't know the exact number

BENNET: That is the exact number, Secretary Kennedy

RFK Jr: *death growls*

BENNET: You took down the HHS communications promoting the flu vaccine. Do you regret that?

CDC won’t publish report showing covid shots cut likelihood of hospital visits The report, which had cleared the agency’s scientific-review process, had been delayed. It now won’t be published at all, people familiar with the decision told The Post.

The #CDC report that showed the #Covid vaccine halved the risk of a recipient needing emergency care or hospitalization has been shelved by HHS, @lenasun.bsky.social reports. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/...

Eugenics

“I Have Lost Everything”: The Toll of Cities’ Homeless Sweeps Cities often take belongings — including important documents and irreplaceable mementos — when they conduct sweeps of homeless encampments. ProPublica gave notecards to people across the country so th...

We asked people who lived in homeless encampments that were cleared out in city “sweeps” to write about what object was the hardest for them to lose.

“They took my baby pictures and my moms obituaries,” a man in California wrote.

(Published Dec. 2024)

Hegseth made ending facial hair waivers his all-consuming mission in the first months of the admin. Making it more difficult for (mostly POC) service members to receive exemptions to policy for medical and religious reasons. He also end travel allowance for abortions.

also while webpages with existing data may have been restored, the government is likely not collecting new data on gender. this is one of the surveys the admin has since quietly removed gender identity questions from www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

This messaging really is hostile to people with chronic pain who need comfortable, quality shoes but may not be able to run.

It is clear that many cis people are not aware just how up to her neck Rowling is in funding and driving anti trans sentiment in the UK.

She's not just a person with a vile opinion.

Extremely normal and fine for a company to put this in a public statement

Look, for my money the absolute game changer technologies right now are batteries and biosciences, not statistically modeling a mid conversation, but you do you.

I'm not joking when I say mRNA technology is more important than "AI" and it's a tragedy we're throwing billions into one while our government is aggressively defunding the other.

This is a genius bit of engineering and the sort of thing a country serious about assisting farmers and tackling energy shortages would be working to put over every canal

Don’t believe headlines saying that vaccine skepticism is widespread Despite some headlines, a new poll does not show that most Americans no longer trust vaccines.

A badly worded poll is making vaccine skepticism look more common than it is. www.statnews.com/2026/04/17/v...

A New Law Voids IDs of Transgender Kansans. It Also Threatens Their Voting Access. Kansas Republicans barred trans residents from getting licenses that reflect their gender identity and canceled existing IDs. The move also risks blocking their access to the polls.

“I have to be able to vote to get my rights back,” says Matthew Neumann, a trans man who directs the LGBTQ Foundation of Kansas. “Even if I have to get something that misgenders me so I can legally vote them out, I’m going to have to do that now.”

Living in the Sprawl - bioGraphic As housing developments devour open space in the western United States, can local governments stave off habitat loss?

"Across the West, farsighted local governments have begun preserving & connecting habitats through unsexy regulatory tools such as zoning, land-use codes, & comprehensive plans."

For @biographic.bsky.social, I wrote about planning (don't yawn!) for conservation.

www.biographic.com/living-in-th...

We already KNOW how to make super babies, you eugenicist creeps! And it's all the things you fucking fucks are fucking up! THREAD!

America's next moon mission depends on Elon Musk, for better or worse The US government, unwisely, has "concentrated immense power in the hands of a single individual.”

"NASA helped build out SpaceX," and now America's space agency is utterly dependent on the richest man alive.

When I think about public engagement & science communication, *this* is the kind of work I most admire.

You misspelled “Desire to control their spouse”

America's next moon mission depends on Elon Musk, for better or worse The US government, unwisely, has "concentrated immense power in the hands of a single individual.”

Like it or not, the next Artemis missions depend on this guy. Gov contracting has concentrated so much money and power in SpaceX that this one company “now facilitates US access to space”

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Former molecular biology grad student here! This is mad hubris. These rich "geniuses" have no clue how to engineer human intelligence—not to mention that AI is advancing so much faster than our knowledge of how genes affect complex traits that we'll all probably die soonish. Worth a read, though.

Maine said no to new data centers. Other states are racing to follow. At least 12 more legislatures are weighing bills to halt grid-killing AI development.

NEW: Maine’s legislature passed the nation’s first state-level hyperscale data center moratorium, freezing construction approvals for data centers requiring more than 20 megawatts of power for the next year and a half.

Creating baby geniuses to thwart the AI threat? (Yes, really.) The new wave of Silicon Valley–backed gene-editing startups is straight out of “Brave New World.”

After advancements in gene editing led to the successful treatment of life-threatening health conditions, some tech bros are considering a new application for the controversial science: making super-smart babies to save the world from dangerously capable AI. ow.ly/Lrli50YKp8u

Government Workers Say They’re Getting Inundated With Religion “This has never happened before,” one government employee tells WIRED. “I have never gotten a message like this from anyone.”

Important article: “Government Workers Say They’re Getting Inundated With Religion *** ‘This has never happened before,’ one government employee tells WIRED. ‘I have never gotten a message like this from anyone.’” 4/14/26 … 1/

The US Government to Ask Data Centers How Much Power They Use In a letter obtained by WIRED, the Energy Information Administration tells two senators that it plans to develop a mandatory assessment of data centers' energy use.

EXCLUSIVE: the US's energy information agency is planning to implement a nationwide survey of data centers to collect information on energy use, infrastructure, cooling techniques, and other info

would be the first such survey of data centers of its kind

NSF awards record number of coveted PhD fellowships in surprise move Quantum science and AI research are big winners just a year after the US funding giant slashed its Graduate Research Fellowship Program awards in half.

Last year the GRFP was initially cut in half, to 1,000 awards, amid rumors of a massive cut. This year the agency is facing a similar, 55% cut from the White House and headwinds in awarding grants. Despite that, on Sunday, it offered a record 2,599 GRFP awards.

My story on the surprising news:

Trump is about to drop a “nuclear weapon” on trans youth health care How a report led by a right-wing pundit laid the groundwork for upending gender-affirming treatment

If you want to understand the last year and a half of Trump's attacks on trans people and the "science" behind it, read this excellent reporting by @msjpauly.bsky.social

‘It’s just madness’: Trump administration to close three-quarters of Forest Service research stations Between funding cuts, facility closures, and the inevitable resignations that will follow, there’s virtually no way for the Forest Service to continue to do research at its current level or quality, w...

“A lot of people say that the national forest system itself is where the real meat and potatoes is, and I think that’s a misrepresentation...You can’t manage wildfire, whether it’s fuel reductions or climate, weather, invasive species, if you don’t know what changes are occurring in those dynamics.”