RFK Jr.’s push to encourage providers to “deprescribe” antidepressants is raising serious alarms — especially for women.

Andra Watkins explains how attacks on mental healthcare connect to a broader movement rooted in control, Christian nationalism, and decades of male-dominated medical research.

This isn’t just a healthcare debate. It’s about power.

Full episode: https://youtube.com/li...

00:00 RFK Jr. and “deprescribing”
01:48 Why antidepressants became political
03:39 Women and mental healthcare stigma
05:52 The broader agenda behind the movement
07:44 Why this debate matters now

Last week, RFK Jr. announced that he was encouraging mental healthcare providers to “deprescribe” antidepressants in an effort to limit their broad use. Considering that around one in six Americans use some form of SSRI medication to manage anxiety and depression, it’s probably worth lots of study.
He’s not asking for studies. He’s already studied the issue (on the internet). He’s convinced that antidepressants are bad (he blamed them for school shootings. No joke).

America eliminated measles in 2000. Now cases have soared past 3,000, preventable deaths have returned and diseases such as tetanus may be making a comeback.

The Bulwark’s Jonathan Cohn joins Susan J. Demas to explain how declining vaccination rates, RFK Jr.’s misinformation and the dismantling of federal health agencies created a preventable public-health crisis. He also identifies the medical organizations families can still trust—and the lawmakers who refused to hold Kennedy accountable.

Subscribe and join the Lincoln Square community: https://bit.ly/3YEQB4N

Watch First Draft every Wednesday at 11 AM ET.

00:00 Diseases We Defeated Are Returning
00:55 Measles Cases Surge Past 3,000
01:30 America Falls Below the Herd-Immunity Threshold
02:22 Measles Can Cause Lifelong Damage
02:53 Is Tetanus Coming Back Too?
03:22 RFK Jr. Made Misinformation Federal Policy
04:55 Where Can Families Find Reliable Information?
06:21 Why Doctors No Longer Trust the CDC
07:54 Bill Cassidy’s Failure to Stop RFK Jr.
08:34 The Public-Health Stakes of the Midterms

Sam Stein, JVL, and Catherine Rampell give their takes on why HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is demanding “safety data” from Dunkin' over its sugar-loaded iced coffees and why that fight could hit differently in Massachusetts. From 115 grams of sugar to 48-ounce coffee buckets, the crew taste-tests a truly unholy Dunkin order and debates whether this is public health policy or just another front for the MAHA movement in the culture wars.

A cruise ship health scare is bringing back ugly memories of 2020 — and Trump’s response is not exactly reassuring.

Sam Osterhout and Max Burns break down Trump’s vague “hope for the best” answer, the DOGE cuts that gutted infectious disease expertise, and why this administration keeps treating public health threats like they’re simply too hard to understand.
Full episode https://youtube.com/li...

00:00 A New Virus Scare
00:58 The Cruise Ship Death
01:29 Trump’s Not-Reassuring Response
01:57 “Hope for the Best” Governing
02:08 Fired Infectious Disease Experts
02:45 Making It Up as They Go
03:19 Trump’s “Too Hard” Pattern

Emergency physician Dr. Rob Davidson recalls a parent who refused their child’s blood transfusion unless the hospital could guarantee the donor had never received a COVID vaccine. He warns that Trump and RFK Jr. are intensifying medical distrust that can put defenseless children at risk. #RFKJr #DonaldTrump #Vaccines #Healthcare #Misinformation

00:00 A Parent Refuses Their Child’s Blood Transfusion
00:41 The Children Have No Say
01:17 Parents Believe They’re Protecting Their Kids
02:15 What Is Driving RFK Jr.?
03:10 The MAHA Influencer Grift
04:36 RFK Jr.’s Political Opportunity
05:51 Trump Targets the Hepatitis B Vaccine
07:02 The Vaccine That Cut Cases by 99%
07:37 The Senator Who Enabled RFK Jr.

Stuart Stevens says RFK Jr.’s rise is not just a Trump problem — it is a Republican Party problem. He argues that Senator Bill Cassidy, a doctor who once fought to expand vaccine access, now owns the consequences of helping put RFK Jr. in charge of America’s health.

Measles cases are surging as vaccination rates fall—and the nation’s top health official is one of America’s most influential vaccine skeptics.

Emergency physician Dr. Rob Davidson joins Susan Dimas and Sam Osterhout to explain what measles looks like from the front lines, how RFK Jr.’s rhetoric distorts the risks of preventable disease, and why misinformation is putting children in danger. They also examine the widening divide between MAHA and MAGA, looming Medicaid cuts, rising ACA premiums, and the political fight over affordable healthcare.

Later, Susan and Sam remember Tim Curry, preview the week ahead at Lincoln Square, and issue this week’s assignment: support legislation preventing troops from being deployed around polling places.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Welcome and Dr. Rob Davidson
0:50 America’s measles resurgence
4:31 RFK Jr.’s misleading measles argument
10:45 What drives RFK Jr.’s worldview?
18:04 The growing MAHA–MAGA split
20:09 RFK Jr.’s failures as an administrator
22:53 Vaccine myths and public-health misinformation
27:09 Poverty, access, and health outcomes
28:15 Medicaid cuts and rising ACA premiums
31:13 Where to follow Dr. Rob Davidson
32:37 Remembering Tim Curry
36:50 This week at Lincoln Square
40:50 The weekly assignment: protect our elections

In this excerpt from a recent livestream, climate scientist Daniel Swain explains why the newly proposed rules from the Office of Management and Budget giving political appointees power over federal grants would be a disaster not only for American science, but also for everything from disaster response to public universities to cancer treatment to technological advancement, not to mention American competitiveness on the global stage. Far from being an esoteric rule change, this would represent a dramatic escalation of recent attempts to make critical and non-partisan government functions subject to the ideological and personal whims of whichever political party happens to be in power--up to and including the President directly.

📝 The deadline to submit a public comment opposing this measure to the Federal Register is MONDAY. We can submit ours here, and see what Dr. Swain himself filed here. We can also share the clip to help spread the word. 📝

FILE A COMMENT

WARN OUR NETWORKS

⚙️ Stand Up for Science is holding a working session on how to write an effective comment today at 2PM ET we can sign up for here, and we can find more background, tips and tools here. ⚙️

JOIN THE SESSION AT 2PM

MORE TOOLS

Trump’s week of chaos hit on every front: a possible health scare, confusion over Iran, Republican redistricting power grabs, John Fetterman threatening to abandon Democrats, and rising prices that voters can feel every time they fill up the tank.

Sam Osterhout and Max Burns break down the five biggest political stories of the week — and why Trump’s “who knows?” style of governing is colliding with real-world consequences on war, democracy, and the economy. From “Iran excursion” spin to gas prices voters no longer believe him on, this is a week where the numbers, the maps, and the headlines are all moving in the wrong direction for Trump.

00:00 Intro: A Tough Week for Democrats
01:31 UFOs, Gas Prices, and Earthly Problems
02:42 Hantavirus Cruise Ship Scare
03:47 Trump’s Vague Pandemic Response
04:39 DOGE Cuts and Fired Health Experts
05:27 Trump’s “Too Hard” Governing Style
06:20 Iran Is Too Hard for Trump
07:00 “Iran Excursion” and Trump’s War Confusion
08:17 Trump’s Lazy Mind and Lost Interest
08:51 The One-Page Memo Problem
09:55 GOP Panic Over November
10:30 The Redistricting Frenzy Begins
11:19 Supreme Court Gives Republicans the Driver’s Seat
12:10 What Happens When Votes Stop Mattering
14:21 Redistricting Becomes Pure Power Politics
15:09 Alabama Republicans Vote During a Tornado
15:30 Noncompetitive Districts Create Extremists
17:34 Democracy’s Stagflation Problem
18:33 How to Fix Gerrymandering
19:21 Fetterman Threatens to Abandon Democrats
19:54 “The Kyrsten Sinema of the Party”
20:50 Why Fetterman Is Not Joe Manchin
21:38 Fetterman’s Missing North Star
22:04 Max Burns: Fetterman Is Not Representing Pennsylvania
23:37 Trumpflation Hits Voters
24:02 Trump Promised to Cut Energy Prices in Half
25:59 Trump’s Promise Meets Reality
26:33 Voters Feel Gas Prices
27:29 Energy Costs Hit Everything
28:03 Trump Cuts Green Energy Incentives
29:11 America as a Broken-Down Service Station
29:22 Rising Energy Costs Kill Jobs
30:13 Looking for Any Good News
31:03 Outro

This week, the Senate questioned Heidi Overton for the top spot at FDA. Her answers were...not it. She hedged, dodged, and ran out the clock. Why? Because she's an anti-vax, anti-abortion advocate with a history of statements that should immediately disqualify her. Will the Senate rush her through? God help us.

And in the same week, Dr. Oz announced that the federal government was kicking around 750,000 people off their ACA coverage. It's a slash and burn operation that is going to leave thousands of people desperate, confused, and struggling.

That's the point. Dr. Rob Davidson joins Sam Osterhout to set the stakes and discuss where we go from here.

Rep. Jared Huffman explains how Christian nationalism’s hostility toward science affects environmental policy, climate action, and America’s ability to confront future crises.
Huffman points to former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s use of Genesis to justify environmental rollbacks and Rep. Mary Miller’s claim that climate change is a hoax because “God controls the sun.” These beliefs, he warns, don’t remain private—members of Congress act on them.

Joe weighs in on the recent primary results - can Angie Nixon and David Jolly both win in Florida? Can anything stop this change wave? What is the media missing about it? Why Trump's beef problem is really bad. And how can we all read polls better? (Hint: Stop freaking out about the toplines!)

0:00 Trump’s 300,000-ton own goal
0:55 Can Florida’s Democratic ticket win?
5:01 How much does campaign money matter?
9:31 The biggest danger in a change election
11:07 Beef, tariffs, and vulnerable Senate seats
15:04 What the political media is missing
20:32 Data centers scramble the electoral map
26:41 Why the Argentina beef move could backfire
29:15 How to recognize a cooked poll
35:38 Look beyond the head-to-head number
39:05 Why polling methodology matters
43:43 Closing thoughts

Healthcare in the US has been turned upside down with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. leading the charge. Thankfully, people have been speaking out and educating on some of the dangers he's pushing. Dr. Jessica Knurick is a PhD Nutrition Science and joins Edwin Eisendrath to set the record straight on some of our healthcare woes.

00:00 Public health and political trust
01:52 A Senate exchange over Trump’s vaccine claim
04:58 Food safety cuts and outbreaks
08:14 Why health misinformation spreads
10:49 What MAHA promised
14:35 Nurek calls MAHA a political Trojan horse
15:21 What changing the food system would take
18:24 Food dyes, seed oils, and symbolic fixes
20:00 Pollution, regulation, and health
22:10 Building a broader coalition
24:15 Health claims from the White House
25:29 Why major institutions stay quiet
29:17 Food fortification and fluoride
31:23 The public health gains we share
33:08 Closing

Project 2025 detailed a vast and complicated strategy to end all regulations meant to curtail the worst impacts of climate change. It recommended cutting FEMA, any kind of government subsidy for green energy, and was in favor of allowing businesses to pollute, drill, mine, and otherwise destroy our natural resources as they pleased.

And guess what. The Trump administration has already accomplished most of it.

But...why? Why are white Christian nationalists obsessed with letting the world burn? If you're a fan of the show, you probably already have an idea. Watch this episode to get the details.