#Letter to the CDC

[coastalcreatureworks]

A letter to the CDC… I am still mad. I’m still mad that the CDC director thought it was ok to throw disabled under the bus. I’m still angry at how society threats us as disposable and a burden. We’ve lost so many that didn’t have to go. Our Suffering Is Not Your Silverlining. I was inspired by WolfskullJack’s artwork and a lot of the protest art others have created that is made up of heavy sketchy blackwork. Using a bat seemed fitting as well as a under appreciated, misunderstood bit of wild life. I apologize for the somber note but, this is why disabled joy matters. This is why disability pride month needs to be celebrated loud and showing what good is possible.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Barbara Rogan

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 1, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Feb 02, 2025

Throughout now-president Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, it was clear that his support was coming from three very different factions whose only shared ideology was a determination to destroy the federal government. Now we are watching them do it.

The group that serves President Donald Trump is gutting the government both to get revenge against those who tried to hold him accountable before the law and to make sure he and his cronies will never again have to worry about legality.

Last night, officials in the Trump administration purged the Federal Bureau of Investigation of all six of its top executives and, according to NBC’s Ken Dilanian, more than 20 heads of FBI field offices, including those in Washington, D.C., and Miami, where officials pursued cases against now-president Trump. Acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove, who represented Trump in a number of his criminal cases, asked acting FBI director Brian J. Driscoll Jr. for a list of FBI agents who had worked on January 6 cases to “determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.”

Clarissa-Jan Lim of MSNBC reported that Trump denied knowing about the dismissals but said the firings were “a good thing” because “[t]hey were very corrupt people, very corrupt, and they hurt our country very badly with the weaponization.”

Officials also fired 25 to 30 federal prosecutors who had worked on cases involving the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and reassigned others. Bove ordered the firings. Career civil servants can’t be fired without cause, and these purges come on top of the apparently illegal firing of 18 inspectors general across federal agencies and a purge of the Department of Justice of those who had worked on cases involving Trump.

Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5 in Nashville, Tennessee, reported on Friday that federal prosecutors were withdrawn from a criminal investigation of Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN) for election fraud; Ogles recently filed a House resolution to enable Trump to run for a third term and another supporting Trump’s designs on Greenland. On Wednesday, federal prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss an election fraud case against former representative Jeffrey Fortenberry (R-NE). Trump called Fortenberry’s case an illustration of “the illegal Weaponization of our Justice System by the Radical Left Democrats.”

That impulse to protect Trump showed yesterday in what a local water manager said was an “extremely unprecedented” release of water from two dams in California apparently to provide evidence of his social media post that the U.S. military had gone into California and “TURNED ON THE WATER.” In fact, water was released from two reservoirs that hold water to supply farmland in the summer. They are about 500 miles (800 km) from Los Angeles, where the fires were earlier this year, and the water did not go to Southern California. “This is going to hurt farmers,” a water manager said, “This takes water out of the summer irrigation portfolio.” But Trump posted that if California officials had listened to him six years ago, there would have been no fires. Shashank Joshi of The Economist called it “real ‘mad king’ stuff.”

Trump’s loyalists overlap with the MAGA crew that embraces Project 2025, a plan that mirrors the one used by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán to overthrow democracy in Hungary. Operating from the position that modern democracy destroys a country by treating everyone equally before the law and welcoming immigrants, it calls for discrimination against women and gender, racial, and religious minorities; rejection of immigrants; and the imposition of religious laws to restore a white Christian patriarchy.

Former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson has been a vocal proponent of Orbán’s ideology, and J.D. Vance this week hired Carlson’s son, 28-year-old Buckley, as his deputy press secretary. Although Trump claimed during the campaign he didn't know anything about Project 2025, Steve Contorno and Casey Tolan of CNN estimate that more than two thirds of Trump’s executive orders mirror Project 2025.

You can see the influence of this faction in the indiscriminate immigration sweeps the administration has launched, Trump’s announcement that he is opening a 30,000-bed migrant detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and officials’ revocation of protection for more than 600,000 Venezuelans legally in the U.S. and possibly also for Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans. You can see it in the administration’s attempt to end the birthright citizenship written into the U.S. Constitution in 1868.

It shows in the new administration's persecution of transgender Americans, including Trump’s executive order purging trans service members from the military, another limiting access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth, and yet another ordering trans federal prisoners to be medically detransitioned and then moved to facilities that correspond to their sex at birth, an outcome that a trans woman suing the administration calls “humiliating, terrifying, and dangerous.”

The administration has ordered that federal employees must remove all pronouns from their email signatures and, as Jeremy Faust reported in Inside Medicine, that researchers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must scrub from their work any references to “[g]ender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female.” Faust notes that the requirements are vague and that because “most manuscripts include demographic information about the populations or patients studied,” the order potentially affects “just about any major study…including studies on Covid-19, cancer, heart disease, or anything else.”

Those embracing this ideology are also isolationist. As soon as he took office, Trump imposed a freeze on foreign aid except for military aid to Israel and Egypt, abruptly cutting off about $60 billion in funding—less than 1% of the U.S. budget—to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides humanitarian assistance to fight starvation and provide basic medical care for the globe’s most vulnerable and desperate populations. The outcry, both from those appalled that the U.S. would renege on its promises to provide food for children in war-torn countries and from those who recognize that the U.S. withdrawal from these popular programs would create a vacuum China is eager to fill, made Trump’s new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, say that “humanitarian programs” would be exempted from the freeze, but that appears either untrue or so complicated to negotiate that programs are shutting down anyway.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) appears to be beside himself over this destruction. “Let me explain why the total destruction of USAID…matters so much,” he posted on social media. “China—where Musk makes his money—wants USAID destroyed. So does Russia. Trump and Musk are doing the bidding of Beijing and Moscow. Why?” “The U.S. is in full retreat from the world,” he wrote, and there is “[n]o good reason for it. The immediate consequences of this are cataclysmic. Malnourished babies who depend on U.S. aid will die. Anti-terrorism programs will shut down and our most deadly enemies will get stronger. Diseases that threaten the U.S. will go unabated and reach our shores faster. And China will fill the void. As developing countries will now ONLY be able to rely on China for help, they will cut more deals with Beijing to give them control of ports, critical mineral deposits, etc. U.S. power will shrink. U.S. jobs will be lost.” Murphy speculated that “billionaires like Musk who make $ in China” or “someone buying all that secret Trump meme coin” would benefit from deliberately sabotaging eighty years of U.S. goodwill on the international stage.

And that brings us to the third faction: that of the tech bros, led by billionaire Elon Musk, who according to year-end Federal Election Commission filings spent more than $290 million supporting Trump and the Republicans in 2024. Musk appears to consider colonizing space imperative for the survival of humanity, and part of that goal requires slashing government regulations, as well as receiving government contracts that help to fund his space program.

Before he took office, Trump named Musk and another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy, to an extra-governmental group called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but Musk has assumed full control of the group, whose mission is to cut the federal budget by as much as $2 trillion.

Musk is interested in the government for future contracts, although a report from January 30, when Musk’s Tesla company filed its annual financial report, showed that the company, which is valued at more than $1 trillion and which made $2.3 billion in 2024, paid $0 in federal income tax. Today, Musk’s X social media company became a form of state media when the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it would no longer email updates about this week’s two plane crashes—one in Washington, D.C., and one in Philadelphia—and that reporters would have to get their information through X.

Musk’s goal might well be the crux of the drastic cuts to federal aid, as well as the attempt last week from the Office of Management and Budget to “pause” federal funding and grants to make sure funding reflected Trump’s goals. After a public outcry over the loss of payments to local law enforcement, Meals on Wheels for shut-ins, supplemental nutrition programs, and so on, the OMB rescinded its first memo, but then White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately contradicted the new memo, saying the cuts were still in effect.

The chaos surrounding the cuts could have been designed to make it difficult for opponents to sue over them. This method of changing government priorities through “impoundment” is illegal. Congress—which is the body that represents the American people—appropriates the money for programs, and the president takes an oath to execute the laws. After President Richard M. Nixon tried it, Congress passed a 1974 law making impoundment expressly illegal. But the on-again-off-again confusion appeared at first to stand a chance of stopping lawsuits. It didn’t work: a federal judge halted the funding freeze, suggesting it was a blatant violation of the Constitution.

But then, yesterday, Elon Musk forced the resignation of David A. Lebryk, the highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department. Lebryk had been at Treasury since 1989 and had risen to become the person in charge of the U.S. government payment system that disburses about $6 trillion a year through Social Security benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, contracts, grants, salaries for federal government workers, tax refunds, and so on, essentially managing the nation’s checkbook.

According to Jeff Stein, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post, Musk’s team wanted access to the payment system. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) demanded answers from Trump’s new Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, warning that “these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically-motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy. I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems.”

Now, though, with Musk’s people at the computers that control the nation’s payment system, they can simply stop whatever payments they want to.

Wyden continued by reminding Bessent that the press has reported that Musk has previously been “denied a high-level clearance to access the government’s most sensitive secrets. I am concerned that Musk’s enormous business operation in China—a country whose intelligence agencies have stolen vast amounts of sensitive data about Americans, including U.S. government employee data by hacking U.S. government systems—endangers U.S. cybersecurity and creates conflicts of interest that make his access to these systems a national security risk.”

This afternoon, Wyden posted that he has been told that Bessent has given the Department of Government Efficiency full access to the system. “Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it.”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo posted: “This is more or less like taking the gold from Fort Knox and putting it in Elons basement. Anyone who gets a check from soc sec or anything else[,] he can cut it off or see all y[ou]r personal and financial data.” Pundit Stuart Stevens called it “the most significant data leak in cyber history.”

All three of these factions are focused on destroying the federal government, which, after all, represents the American people through their elected representatives and spends their taxpayer money. Musk, who is an unelected adjunct to Trump, this evening gleefully referred to the civil servants in the government who work for the American people as “the opposing team.”

But something jumps out from the chaos of the past two weeks. Instructions are vague, circumstances are chaotic, and it’s unclear who is making decisions. That confusion makes it hard to enforce laws or sue, although observers note that what’s going on is “illegal and a breach of the constitutional order.”

Our federal government rests on the U.S. Constitution. The three different factions of Trump's MAGA Republicans agree that the government must be destroyed, and they are operating outside the constitutional order, not eager to win legal victories so much as determined to slash and burn down the government without them.

Today, senior Washington Post political reporter Aaron Blake noted that while it is traditional for cabinet nominees to pledge that they will refuse to honor illegal presidential orders, at least seven of Trump’s nominees have sidestepped that question. Attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard, now-confirmed defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, small business administrator nominee Kelly Loeffler, Veterans Affairs secretary nominee Douglas A. Collins, and commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick all avoided the question by saying that Trump would never ask them to do anything illegal. FBI director nominee Kash Patel just said he would “always obey the law.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[pilgrimattinkercreek1974]

Blog as confessional moment look away or dont ^-^

[feminist-space]

Please join us in sending a letter to congress via Resistbot, to maintain masking in healthcare settings.

Please text PRIKQU to 50409 and the Resistbot will take care of getting the letter sent on your behalf.

Demand Masks in Healthcare

As my representatives in Congress, I am asking you to intervene with the CDC and with all levels of the Administration in regards to Covid-19.

We MUST have N95 masks or equivalent worn by all staff with patient contact in healthcare facilities-hospitals, outpatient centers, and nursing homes.

The HICPAC advisory committee to the CDC is proposing to weaken infection control measures. They are incorrectly saying that surgical masks are as protective as N95s, cherry-picked their data, and ignored abundant evidence to the contrary.

Further, some hospitals (like MGH) are not honoring requests from patients that staff wear a mask. This would appear a violation of ADA standards for accommodation and is unconscionable, resulting in patients delaying necessary care because they risk a deadly hospital-acquired Covid infection.

Dr. Cohen like the rest of the Administration is pretending that Covid is over and is focusing on the "urgency of normal." They are pushing people to go back to unmasked offices with inadequate ventilation, when teleworking has worked very well.

On July 20, 900 experts sent a letter to Dr. Cohen asking her and HICPAC to make their processes transparent, to seek the input of a variety of stakeholders, and to listen to experts in ventilation and aerosols. See https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10482911231195898. This has fallen on deaf ears.

On 8/25, in "The Check-in with Dr. Cohen," a Q&A session, Dr. Cohen tells people to wash their hands and stresses "it's important to use all the tools we have in our toolbox to protect ourselves." Not once did she mention masks or ventilation, both critically important since we know that Covid is primarily transmitted by aerosols.

The CDC states its mission is Saving Lives, Protecting People.TM They have abdicated in meeting their responsibility.

[wat3rm370n]

People are still being complacent about the anti-vaxxers in positions of authority.

I’m worried about people using this as a reason to “not worry about vaccine access” when “life hacks” and “one neat trick” for vaccine access is not an individualism solution to anything. The current regime’s revoking recommendations and proposing “studies” is a deliberate attempt to death spiral vaccines, and the less people get them the less effective the formula will be, the less updates, the less effective, the less it’s invested in, and then the less they’re available. Death spiral. It was never about personal choice that was always just right-wing propaganda. So I'm really worried about vaccine advocates adopting that phrase in some effort to meet the anti-vaxxers halfway to hell, when we've seen that these right-wingers never compromise, they always keep going. 

I'm shocked at how many people just keep telling each other not to worry. My post on tumblr warning people how many things are considered risk conditions for and with covid went nearly viral with people re-posting it using it to claim don't worry about access to vaccines here's all these reasons you can claim. And that misses the point. Again, it's a death spiral. No new formulas, less uptake, eventually no vaccines at all. I've also heard stories about pharmacies turning people down on self-attestation or having their own lists of approved underlying conditions and some things excluded. One guy's out there assuring people that the anti-vaxxers will like and allow Novavax because it's not MRNA when we already know it's ALL vaccines they hate, it's not just covid vaccines and it's not just MRNA, and they've already restricted the Novavax completely from children, even high risk children.

Just stop that and start writing your representatives in government saying you want vaccines.

My letter to reps:

I want vaccines. I want research on effective vaccines funded, I want covid vaccines, I want vaccines covered by all insurance, and I want free vaccination available to the uninsured. I want you to make sure I’m able to get vaccinated and that we have effective vaccination campaigns.

Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.

Dr. Kaitlin Sundling has a sample letter for talking points on vaccines…

Ask Congress to Reinstate Universal COVID Vaccine Access for All Ages Write your members of congress now to stop dangerous restrictions on COVID vaccines and support vaccine access for all ages; Mark your calendar for CDC public comment open 6/9 through 6/20 Kaitlin Sundling Jun 04, 2025 All of us must have regular access to updated COVID vaccines, which must be made available widely and must be covered by health insurance. Public health officials, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Martin Makary, Jay Bhattacharya, and Vinay Prasad, have severely restricted access to COVID vaccines. They have taken this action without the appropriate expert advisory committee input and without opportunities for public comment.

[ivygorgon]

An open letter to the U.S. Congress

Sponsor the NEWBORN Act to address the infant mortality spike!

42 so far! Help us get to 50 signers!

A new CDC report has found that US infant mortality rates rose by 3% in 2022, with significant increases among Native Americans and white non-Hispanics, and among male babies. This is appalling and worrying. It must be addressed. Leading causes of death were maternal complications and bacterial sepsis of newborns. Health policies that affect mothers and children (or more accurately, lack thereof) are also a significant cause. Could abortion bans also be contributing? We simply don’t know. We do know that infant mortality rose significantly in four states: Georgia, Iowa, Missouri, and Texas. It’s time to find out why. Please co-sponsor the NEWBORN Act (S.2978 and H.R.5789), which, if passed, would “create infant mortality-focused pilot programs in the highest-risk areas of the country.”  In the wealthiest country in the world infant mortality rates should not be increasing. We need to get to the bottom of this immediately. Please support the quick passage of these bills so we can begin to find out what’s gone wrong. Thanks.

▶ Created on November 7, 2023 by Jess Craven

📱 Text SIGN PDOAER to 50409

🤯 Liked it? Text FOLLOW JESSCRAVEN101 to 50409

[lokiinmediasideblog]

PLEASE SPREAD THIS AROUND TO KEEP COVID SHOTS FREE FOR THE UNINSURED IN THE USA

[renthony]

Help keep COVID-19 vaccines free in the United States!

The People's CDC has created a template for sending a letter to Congress about extending the Bridge Access Program, which has been providing free COVID vaccines to uninsured people in the United States. As of time time of this posting (July 19, 2024), the Bridge Access Program will be ending next month.

My family needs the Bridge Access Program! It is the ONLY way for poor households like mine to access COVID vaccines. If this program goes away, a lot of people like my family are going to have even less access to the outside world.

My family has already had difficulty utilizing the Bridge Access Program for our updated boosters, because many vaccination locations are preemptively (and suspiciously) claiming they can't offer the vaccines for free. We tried three different locations for our most recent booster, and we still haven't been able to get it, even though the Bridge Access Program is supposed to still be in effect. We keep getting told there are "none available through the program" by pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens (who will only let us get them if we pay full price for some reason?), and the current wait for an appointment at the sliding-scale clinic is longer than the remainder of the Bridge Access Program. By the time I get in, it won't be free anymore, unless Congress is convinced to extend the program.

Vaccine access cannot be allowed to be taken from us like this. Lack of updated vaccines is why I can barely leave the house.

COVID hasn't gone away, vaccine boosters are vital, and I'm asking US residents to fill out and submit the form. It's a small way to help, but the People's CDC has had success with these campaigns in the past. I choose to cling to what slivers of hope I can right now.

[neontetra]

i hate how often i mispronounce words bc ive only Read them and havent ever Heard them like ik im not dumb or anything for not knowing but my god its frustrating

[reality-detective]

Trump has only been President for five days, and already humiliated the World Economic Forum; released the JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King Assassination Files; fired woke DEI employees; designated the Drug, Gun Running and Human Trafficking Cartels as terrorist organizations; unlocked ICE to remove illegal immigrants; restored Freedom of Speech; revoked security clearances for swamp creatures; removed the United States from the WHO and pardoned the January 6th Political Prisoners.

Among the over 200 Executive Orders Trump signed on his first day in office, was an order to have the US adopt the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The organization was developing a Global Tax Deal, which is suspected to be a Flat Sales Tax on new items only that would replace the heavy taxes on The People on their income and in all other forms.

He has also moved toward taking control of Greenland and the Panama Canal, secured one trillion dollars of Saudi Arabian support for the United States, and is on the verge of ending the wars allowed by Biden.

President Trump has also taken down the CDC, FDA, HHS and NIH, which meant that there would be no Digital ID that would monitor your every move and transaction.

Trump’s release of the JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King Assassination Files was likely to add to evidence that would lead to the fall of the CIA, Three Letter Agencies, United Nations, Globalists, Elites and entire Cabal who together, were believed to have stolen the 2020 Election and conspired to kill Trump. 🤔

[saywhat-politics]

May 6, 2025, 5:31 PM MST

By Aria Bendix

The Trump administration has terminated a federal advisory committee that issued guidance about preventing the spread of infections in health care facilities.

The Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) crafted national standards for hand-washing, mask-wearing and isolating sick patients that most U.S. hospitals follow.

Four committee members said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention delivered the news about HICPAC’s termination to members Friday.

A letter reviewed by NBC News — which members said the CDC sent out after a virtual meeting — says the termination took effect more than a month previously, on March 31. According to the letter, the termination aligns with President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for a reduction of the federal workforce.

Four professional societies previously asked Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a letter on March 26 to preserve the committee amid widespread cuts to federal health agencies. The CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Several of the committee’s web pages have been archived, meaning they are still available to view online but are no longer being updated.

Some members now say they fear that its guidelines will be frozen in time, unable to evolve with new scientific research or the spread of drug-resistant organisms, which are a particular threat to hospitals.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Jesse Duquette

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 18, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Mar 19, 2025

On Saturday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered that the Trump administration stop deporting anyone from the United States under the authority of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act and that the planes carrying individuals to prison in El Salvador be turned around. Despite the order, the administration declined to bring the planes back, and administration officials appeared to mock the order, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio reposting the message of Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele that read, “Oopsie… Too late,” along with a laughing emoji.

On Sunday, lawyers from the Department of Justice suggested that the planes were outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. when Boasberg issued the order, or that the order didn’t take effect until it was entered into the electronic docket, although his verbal order that he said had to be “complied with immediately” came about 45 minutes earlier, before at least one of the planes landed.

On Monday the Justice Department unsuccessfully asked a federal appeals court to remove Boasberg from the case. In a hearing, Boasberg asked the administration to clarify its actions after it appeared to defy the court by rushing the planes off the ground and to El Salvador. In response to the Justice Department’s claim that the judge’s orders had no authority over the flights once they left U.S. airspace, the judge noted that the power of the federal courts does not end at the end of U.S. airspace. Boasberg also appeared to reject the claim of the DOJ lawyers that there is no judicial order until it is published in a written filing. The DOJ also refused to tell Boasberg anything about the flights, saying that even their number was a question of national security, although the administration had talked extensively about them on public media.

Boasberg scheduled another hearing today to get the DOJ lawyers to answer the questions they had refused to address.

This morning, President Donald Trump took to social media to call Boasberg a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President—He didn’t WIN the popular VOTE (by a lot!), he didn’t WIN ALL SEVEN SWING STATES, he didn’t WIN 2,750 to 525 Counties, HE DIDN’T WIN ANYTHING! I WON FOR MANY REASONS, IN AN OVERWHELMING MANDATE, BUT FIGHTING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION MAY HAVE BEEN THE NUMBER ONE REASON FOR THIS HISTORIC VICTORY. I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do. This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”

Trump’s post sounds as if he is nervous about the increasing unrest over his policies and is trying to convince people that he has a mandate although in fact more people voted for other candidates in the 2024 election than voted for him. But it was his suggestion that any judge with whom he disagrees should be removed that sparked pushback from Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts, who issued a statement saying: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

Roberts wrote the Trump v. United States decision of July 1, 2024, establishing that presidents cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of their official presidential duties, and it seems likely that Trump did not expect a rebuke from him.

U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang also sought to stop the administration’s power grab. In a scathing 68-page decision, Chuang found that the actions of Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency” to destroy the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, “likely violated the United States Constitution in multiple ways.” Chuang explained that the destruction of USAID hurt not only the 26 current or recently fired employees and contractors of USAID who had filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency.” That destruction also hurt “the public interest, because they deprived the public’s elected representatives in Congress of their constitutional authority to decide whether, when, and how to close down an agency created by Congress.”

While the question of who is in charge of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency is such a mystery that it has spawned its own social media hashtag—WITAOD, for “Who is the administrator of DOGE?”—Chuang clearly identified Elon Musk as the person in charge. Trump “identified Musk as the leader of DOGE,” he notes, and “Trump and Musk held a joint press conference in the Oval Office to answer reporters’ questions about DOGE.” Chuang noted the many, many times when Trump called Musk DOGE’s leader.

In the lawsuit, USAID employees argued that Musk has acted as an officer of the United States without having been duly appointed to such a role. The Constitution provides that the president can appoint such officers, who exercise “significant authority,” but that they must be confirmed with the advice and consent of the Senate. Musk, quite obviously, was not. The White House has tried to get around this issue by claiming that Musk is only an advisor to the president, but Chuang wasn’t buying it. “[B]ased on the present record,” he wrote, “the only individuals known to be associated with the decisions to initiate a shutdown of USAID…are Musk and DOGE team Members.” Musk therefore “exercises actual authority in ways that an advisor to the President does not.”

Chuang ordered that parts of USAID must be restored, although what effect that will have is unclear since the agency has been destroyed.

Trump continued his attack on the rule of law today when he fired the two Democratic commissioners at the Federal Trade Commission, which protects consumers from collusion and anti-consumer practices. The firings leave only two Republicans on the commission and leave it without a quorum to do business. Beginning with the 1935 case of Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the courts have established that the president cannot fire officials in agencies created by Congress without a serious reason like neglect of duties. Legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern wrote: “Trump’s action here is brazenly illegal under any interpretation of the law as it stands.”

Trump held a phone conversation today with Russian president Vladimir Putin, allegedly about a proposed ceasefire in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump boasted that he would end Russia’s war against Ukraine in a day, and he is now eager for any end to the hostilities. But Putin seems less eager to reach a solution than to demonstrate his dominance over Trump. Today, when the phone call was scheduled, Putin was on stage at an event. When his interviewer asked if he needed to go because he would be late for the call, Putin dismissed the question and laughter broke out. Brett Bruen, president of the Global Situation Room public relations firm wrote: “Making leaders wait is an old Putin power play. But, this is pretty brutal. Putin is publicly mocking Trump.”

While Trump’s team portrayed the conversation as productive, Putin maintained that Ukraine was the aggressor in the war, although it was Russia that invaded Ukraine. Putin also demanded that the U.S. and allies must stop all military aid and the sharing of intelligence with Ukraine, conditions that would hamstring Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion.

Finally today, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has proposed addressing the H5N1 bird flu that is decimating U.S. poultry and cattle farms by simply letting the disease run rampant. He suggests such a course would permit scientists to discover birds that are immune to the disease.

But veterinary scientists say that letting the virus sweep through flocks is “a really terrible idea, for any one of a number of reasons,” as Dr. Gail Hansen, a former state veterinarian for Kansas, told Apoorva Mandavilli of the New York Times. Chickens and turkeys don’t have the genes to resist the virus, and every infection is a chance for the virus to mutate into a more virulent form, one of which could mutate so it could spread among humans. If H5N1 were permitted to infect 5 million birds, “that’s literally five million chances for that virus to replicate or to mutate,” Hansen told Mandavilli.

The danger of this shoot first, ask questions later attitude of administration officials was on display today in articles about the men deported to El Salvador. A Washington Post article by Silvia Foster-Frau followed the story of four Venezuelan friends who had come to the U.S. illegally. They shared a townhouse in Dallas, where immigration officials picked them up last Thursday. The men signed deportation papers, expecting to return to Venezuela, but although there is no record that the men committed crimes in the U.S. and their families insist they are not affiliated with the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang whose members White House officials claim were on the weekend’s deportation flights, the men are shown in the videos of those deported to prison in El Salvador.

A Reuters story by Sarah Kinosian and Kristina Cooke reported that family members who suspect their loved ones have been sent to El Salvador have launched a WhatsApp helpline.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[howi99]

Ashen Knight 15

(around a year after working for the Schnee family)

9yo Cinder: *surprised* We are going to Menagerie?

9yo Weiss: *excited* Yep! My father is going to attend some boring meetings about the dust trade there. Boring stuff, but think about the beach! And the food!

Cinder: *perplexed* That's nice and all, but wouldn't it be dangerous for your family to go there? You know, with the white fang and all?

Weiss: I... Uh... Hm... *Pensively* Well, the working conditions are improving a lot recently and the wage gaps are slowly but noticeably getting better between the workers, so i don't think they would hate us as much? I think? *Shaking her head dismissively* Your dad's going to be there, so nothing bad should happen. He's the Rusted Knight!

Cinder: *smirk* WAS the Rusted Knight. We can't call him that now that his armor's all pristine and shiny, right?

Weiss: So what, he's just the knight now? *Looking skeptical* That doesn't sound badass.

Cinder: *shrug* I don't have that problem, i can just call him dad.

Weiss: *pouting* I wish he was my dad. He always has time for you, while mine is never available. *Looking sad* He couldn't even come to the recital last week...

Cinder: ... *giving her friend a hug with a slight blush* You were the best... And i'm sure he wanted to be there.

Weiss: *reciprocating the hug, with a little smile* I know... And it's not like i can really blame him. *Sigh* But it's frustrating...

_ Meanwhile _

Jacques: *rolling his eyes, putting the letter in the fireplace* I can't leave Atlas soon enough.

RK: Another complaint from the council?

Jacques: *sigh* Indeed. *Smiling* Selling the CDC the rights to some of the mines gave me just enough to buy back the shares owned by the council. And with that out of the way, i can finally reopen trades with Menagerie! That should boost our profits AND help ease tension between humans and faunus. More profits mean i'll be able to give better working conditions to my workers which will diminish unhappiness, reducing the number of Grimm attacks and so on.

RK: *sigh* It's a shame you had to renounce having a seat at the council.

Jacques: Bha! To the devil with them! A bunch of corrupted assholes is what they are! *Sigh* And if it hadn't been of you, i'd probably be the same as them... *Shaking his head* Not probably... Certainly is more accurate.

[feminist-space]

"What we have done is take something that should never have established itself in human communities in the first place and have built a public health consensus around the concept of repeated mass infection.

So, yes, this is what failure looks like. And that sort of normalization of infectious disease is something that we are facing the consequences of now, societally, because those attitudes have crept into other aspects of our society as well. This idea that vaccines are bad, and infections are good. Conflating the idea of coexistence with nature with coexistence with pathogens is a dangerous mess—it will take years to undo this. Honestly, we haven’t had attitudes like this about infections since before biblical times.

There really is no historical precedent for this. No society in the world ever said, “Oh, you’re infected? Let’s let it spread.” This whole concept of pox parties being a thing is ludicrous. But that’s exactly where we are today. Quarantines used to happen in the 14th century with plague. This uncritical acceptance of infectious disease as a sort of lord and savior is brand new.

And it couldn’t happen at a worse time. We’re now extremely interconnected. There are more people on the planet than ever before, and diseases can spread rapidly. And the only people that you can really lay this at the door of is public health. Where public health should have been out there saying, “These are the risks of getting COVID. These are the repeated risks of COVID,” for which the science is extremely unambiguous. (There are tens of thousands of papers on these topics).

Instead, Public Health was saying, “Masks are the scarlet letter of the pandemic,” in the words of former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. Or “If you have been vaccinated, the pandemic is over for you,” which is what Biden said. Trump and his people based their playbook on the phrase, “The cure cannot be worse than the disease.” I’m using the US as an example, but you can do the same thing with other countries like Britain, Canada or pretty much any other country in the world. And every single time both public health and politicians have served as cheerleaders for an infectious disease that has clear-cut long-term consequences. None of this was necessary."

[wat3rm370n]

Petition: Tell the White House, people need to be able to stay home and isolate when sick.

The CDC floated the idea in WaPo, and to state health officials, of removing the guidelines workers and doctors rely upon, that allow people to recover and safely isolate themselves with C-19 to protect others. Without this guideline, as a government watchdog group has explained in a press release, it will “signal to healthcare providers that a serious approach is not needed, though all the evidence shows that it is dangerous” and will “put the entire burden on the average worker to find a way to negotiate sick time to recover and try to not infect other people” - and so it will exacerbate further outbreaks, and will especially be a threat to high risk elderly and disabled.

This appears to be another case of catering to business interests like the CDC caving to Delta Airlines in 2021 on isolation guidelines, and buckling to a fringe but loud minority of right-wing science deniers who have been misled by politicized disinformation and in some shocking cases have made innuendo that there should be violence in opposition to public health measures. President Biden campaigned in 2020 on stopping the spread, and we believe he has a mandate to steer public health back in that direction, not continuing toward the kind of total "let it rip" promotion of disease spread pushed by the Trump administration.

We ask that the President of the United States do right by we the people, ensuring the ability of patients and workers to self-isolate and recover when stricken with the respiratory virus that continues to cause so many deaths. We also ask that there be scrutiny of any "burrowed in" Trump appointees that might be steering the CDC toward endangering public safety. We need to at least keep the safety guidelines we have until we figure out what’s going on at the CDC. Ideally, the government ought to be strengthening public health protections.

[thoughtportal]

Join us in urging Congress to fund free COVID vaccines for underinsured and uninsured adults. The CDC’s Bridge Access Program, which provides COVID vaccines to uninsured and underinsured adults, is ending prematurely in August 2024 due to a loss of congressional funding.

Thanks to our community’s advocacy, the CDC voted to recommend the upcoming 2024-2025 vaccine formulations for all ages, 6 months and up. All of us need access to the latest vaccines to reduce the risk of severe disease, reduce the risk of Long COVID, better match currently circulating variants, and combat waning immunity. Now, we need your help again to demand congressional funding for vaccine access for uninsured and underinsured adults.

You can submit a letter as seen below via our Action Network campaign, keeping our letter in full or editing it as you wish. Letters to elected officials are most effective when they start with a brief personal comment (a sentence or two) about why vaccine access for uninsured people matters to you, your loved ones, and your community.