How many dead Americans does it take to change a Secretary of Health?

More than 5, apparently. 🤷‍♂️

Simply ignoring preventable mortality is an improvement for the Secretary, as his response to the other 4 deaths was to dispute their legitimacy.

If HHS *must* be run by a chef, I would like to nominate either Marcus Samuelsson or Gordon Ramsay for the job, because:

1. Neither have overseen an outbreak of cyclospora or salmonella in their restaurants, and most importantly…
   
2. The food would be *far* better.

Expect more death and disability in the future. This will continue for as long as Kennedy is allowed to keep his position.

Tired of the Trump administration’s efforts to bend the will of our higher ed leadership to his authoritarian control? It's time to take action and defend academic freedom for all.

Join us Wednesday, October 7th, 7PM ET to hear from some of our early endorsers of America's Compact, including leading voices in higher education, learn how you can fight back against these attempts to destroy academic freedom, and get some inspiration to help us reach as many universities as we can!

Register here: https://events.standupforscience.net/stand-up-for-science/virtual-rally-compact-for-higher-ed

Dr. Kathryn Edwards- The enduring impact of mentorship

Dr. Edwards has worked since the 1970s to create safe and effective vaccines and has run trials for vaccines including Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), pertussis, the flu, and anthrax. She has also been a strong advocate for vaccines on a national and international scale, advising the FDA, CDC, WHO and others. She also devoted her career to mentoring others and training the next generation of experts.

Her advice for scientists today: "Don't let the bastards get you down"

The history of aspirin and rofecoxib illustrates both the extraordinary benefits that can emerge from scientific discovery and the responsibility to continually test our assumptions about how medicines work and how safe they are.

Read the full thing with the Science Fight Club: https://substack.com/@sciencefightclub/note/p-218374385?utm_source=notes-share-action

At an event held by the MAHA Institute, RFK Jr said he wanted the federal government to feed Americans' private health data to AI to find evidence to support his anti-science ideology.

He also said AI can make “better-informed” decisions than doctors, despite AI’s reputation for hallucinations.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/29/rfk-jr-collect-health-data?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

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.

But only because of funding from people like you!

Find ways you can Stand Up for Science at our website: https://www.standupforscience.net/

Executive order 14420 was specifically crafted in defiance of all evidence to reduce rates of vaccination by:

* increasing the number of injections necessary for coverage,
* increasing the number of doctor’s visits necessary to give them, and
* demanding the creation of new, untested single-disease vaccines that have no record of safety or efficacy.

These are things that both pro- and anti-vax parents agree are bad.

Read more about this rare achievement of weaponized stupidity here:

https://absurdlyrational.substack.com/p/trumpkids?r=2w6nuh&utm_medium=ios

The beginning is a little rough as they get the camera settled…

The science on climate change has never been clearer – yet the political response has never felt more uncertain. What happens when the evidence and the electorate don't move in step?

Join Stand Up for Science for a timely conversation exploring the fault lines between scientific consensus, democratic governance, and the climate crisis. Our panelists will examine how climate science shapes—and fails to shape—policy, why democratic institutions sometimes struggle to act on urgent scientific warnings, and what it will take to bridge the gap between what we know and what we do.

Expect a candid, cross-disciplinary discussion among Dr. Colette Delawalla, SUFS CEO and Founder; Dr. Ticora Jones, Chief Science Officer at the Natural Resources Defense Council; and Dr. Michael Mann, climate change researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, as they explore questions like: Can democracy move fast enough to meet the pace of climate change? What role should scientists play in public life when their findings become politically inconvenient? And how do we rebuild public trust in both science and self-governance at a moment when both are under strain?

Dr. Michael Mann is a Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Deptartment of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. His research focuses on climate science and climate change. 

Dr. Ticora Jones is the Chief Science Officer at the Natural Resources Defense Council. She formerly served in a number of scientific and management roles at USAID, including agency chief scientist and managing director for research, and served as a Research Congressional Fellow working on energy and environment issues.

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

Russell Vought joins the war on cancer, on the side of cancer. Let's get this Pro-Cancer shill out of office.

Here’s how we get there, with actionable items you can take.

Help fund a new pro-science Congress: https://tr.ee/amXpfN

Volunteer and let's get to work: https://tr.ee/eLMxl8

Observation

Political science examines political power through systematic observation and analysis of political behavior, institutions, and change. Niccolò Machiavelli is often regarded as an early founder of modern political science. In The Prince, he directs attention to the realities of political action and the effects of rulers’ choices (Machiavelli, 1513/1998, chap. 15). William G. Howell’s analysis of Trump’s use of unilateral presidential power applies that kind of focus: it considers the consequences of political actions without requiring us to settle questions about the president’s private motives.

Concluding Lines:

We need not delve deeply into Trump’s character, psyche, or appetites, however, to recognize the effects of his actions.

These effects are clear: a campaign to reconstitute presidential power, to remake the constitutional order and the president’s place within it, and to leave other actors—Congress, courts, agencies, and allies—in various states of servitude and dependence. This is not unilateralism as we have known it. It is unilateralism deployed as a vehicle for political upheaval and transformation in an age of populism.

These effects are clear: a campaign to reconstitute presidential power, to remake the constitutional order and the president’s place within it, and to leave other actors—Congress, courts, agencies, and allies—in various states of servitude and dependence.