Fight-Back
Luís Filipe Gomes
All posts and archives will always be free to all subscribers. But if you'd like to support me, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription… If you arrive at wording that says [Message clipped], make sure you click on “View entire message.” Fight-BackJob cuts at HHS and elsewhere, axed agencies, firings, resistance, tariffs, deportations, racism, COVID-19 and other health miscellany.
The 20,000 jobs cut at HHS include 40% of Administration for Community Living staff, helping the aged, and the entire Energy Assistance Program, which helped 5.9 million low-income households pay heat and cooling bills. Pediatrician Paul Offit: “I feel like we've been invaded by a foreign nation ... [whose] interest ... is to destroy public health agencies.” Other laid-off employees worked on preventing drowning, gun violence and smoking; scientists studied asthma, climate change and worker safety. Harm to cancer research. More cuts coming. Data taken offline. Some employees have been rehired. Hardest hit: agencies combating infectious disease, injuries, women’s and global health, chronic disease, unsafe workplaces, contraception, health promotion, smoking, STDs, HIV, bird flu, bird flu vaccines, gun violence, opioid addiction, and family planning, despite a major measles outbreak (by July 29 in Texas 762 cases, 99 hospitalizations, 2 deaths), and RFK Jr’s claimed focus on chronic disease. Texas is establishing religion; Oklahoma goes beyond. Economic harm from cuts. China tariffs will raise prices, further divide the US from its allies, and risk tanking global and US economies. A judge blocked the $11.4 billion Trump cuts from state programs related to COVID-19, infectious diseases, and addiction. Snake-oil peddler and TV charlatan Mehmet Oz, who could profit from his position, now leads CMS. NPR on Oz. The American Public Health Association demands RFK Jr quit or be fired. The CDC has lost 30% of its staff, with more cuts forthcoming. DOGE has taken control over healthcare/research grants. Medical journals are under attack and antiscience regulators nominated. First 100 days, again. Medicaid battles. Trump/Bondi have legalized machine guns. National Parks and public libraries.are at risk. What MAHA really means. More RFK Jr lies, hedging, antiscience theories, and threats to vaccines. His ally has been named Surgeon General. A person fired employees were told to complain to was dead. USAID workers can keep their devices, stripped of data. The GOP passed Medicaid cuts that could strip 17 million, and 3.1 million ACA Marketplace users, of coverage. RFK Jr wants US scientists to stop publishing in top medical journals. Trump blames Europe for high US drug prices. His last try at lowering prices was a loser. The head of the Smithsonian’s African American Museum has been forced out, and its Chief is under pressure. Doug Emhoff’s firm has joined many others agreeing to work free for Trump. The Justice Dept dropped corruption chargesagainst Eric Adams, drawing more resignations. After FEMA stole $80 million in migrant relief funds from NYC, it’s blocking $188 million more. Trump’s cuts will slash basic science research by one-third. Axed: the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Humanities, a mortgage-rescue program that saved 17,000 vets’ homes, the CBP phone app, the Coal Workers' Health Surveillance Program, a program helping disabled youth, safety enforcement, Divisions of Energy Assistance and Violence Prevention. FEMA’s preventive branch, sponsoring teachers for green cards, Power Africa (electrifying Africa), Head Start, AmeriCorps, SAMHSA, Job Corps, CDC’s Population Health Office, infection control divisions, and STD lab, Meals On Wheels, Crime Victims Hotline, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, school mental health programs, crime-fighting programs, The Joint Office of Energy and Technology, air traffic oversight, Energy Star certification, Safe To Sleep. The CFPB, Head Start, and PEPFAR may survive, barely. FEMA may be next. Lawsuits are winning; Trump hopes on SCOTUS. He’s pulled out of UNESCO, again. Fired: Inspectors General; NSA/Cyber Command Chief Timothy Haugh, urged by a 9/11 conspiracy theorist; the chief of a domestic violence prevention agency, Immigration judges, AIDS-prevention experts, the Black Librarian of Congress, most of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Copyright Office chief, FEMA’s director, NSA’s top lawyer, the National Portrait Gallery director, the Black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Trump and Kash Patelare attacking perceived foes. The acting IRS chief has quit on principle. More on the Trump/Musk chainsaw, and what’s in Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” Medicaid work requirements flopped in Arkansas and Georgia. The parliamentarian nixed some cuts. Trump’s put his abusive, corrupt, lying defense lawyer on an appeals court. Resistance
Barack Obama, Joe Biden, J.B. Pritzker, and Kamala Harris call strongly for resistance. Millions attended 1400 “Hands Off” demonstrations on April 5th and 19th, and five million on No Kings Day, while red states passed anti-protest bills. NYC and Nashville are defying DEI/ICE orders, with Maine’s governor also standing strong. On Presidents Day and before his speech to Congress thousands turned out to call Trump a tyrant. There were 150 Stand Up for Science protests. On International Women’s Day thousands protested; vast crowds of San Diegans, New Yorkers, and Angelinos protested ICE, and thousands protested VA cuts on the National Mall and elsewhere.Democrats Abroad held a demo in Rome (pix above); Congressional Dems may wake up. Trump froze $2.2 billion in grants after Harvard mostly resisted, though it dismantled diversity programs and threatens international students. Columbia, U. Penn, maybe even Harvard, are giving in. Harvard fired leaders at its Center for Middle Eastern Studies and suspended ties with a top West Bank university, drawing lawsuits. Who thinks Trump opposes antisemitism when Nazis are “very fine people” and he hires antisemites? After threatening universities he’s moving on to K-12 schools; he’s far underwater on polls; prominent Republicans liken him to “a royal despot.” He’s attacked public broadcasting and arrested judges! And he lies endlessly. The Times calls opposing Trump “patriotic.” Bill Gates on Elon Musk. After the first round of buyout offers flopped, another one's here, more successful. SCOTUS: Trump can suspend teacher-training grants, fire probationary workers, fire members of independent agency boards, remove Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, cancel Protective Status, deport 530,000 legal immigrants, and deport migrants to third countries, but can use the Alien Enemies Act against “gang members” only if deportees have due process. He returned a wrongly deported man from El Salvador but indicted himon trumped-up charges. DOGE can access your medical and mental health records. They’re split on birthright citizenship; an appeals court is not. More on the courts, and a case tracker; he’s lost 96%. Half his SCOTUS lawyers have left. Legal experts agree he’s lawless. Trump’s tariffs, none on Russia, maybe, but 10% on countries without exports to the US, are tanking stock marketsand harming our alliances, Paul Krugman calls him a “con man president.” Tariff calculations are a sham. Chaos attacks both prices and retirement savings. JP Morgan puts recession risk at 60%. He considered exemptingsmartphones, but changed his mind, adding an insane 50% tariff on goods from the EU, now down to 15%. Nobel Peace Prize winner Óscar Arias Sánchez had his visa revoked. Green card and visa holders are being harassed on reentering the US. The leading Jewish antisemitism battler (ADL) and other Jewish groups have condemned the deportations of pro-Palestine demonstrators. Trump is trying again to deport Ukrainian war refugees. US citizens have been caught in the dragnet. SSA has knowingly called living immigrants dead; a senior executive who objected was put on leave. A judge said Trump could deport green card holder Mahmoud Khalil – he’s home now. He will deportAfghan women and US military aides to Taliban Afghanistan. A Russian dissident scientist doing research at Harvard for 20 years may be deported. After disastrously withdrawing from WHO, Trump may defund the UN altogether (shrinking its budget by 22%). Kilmar Abrego Garcia is back in the US but faces absurd federal charges. Experts thinkTrump can’t reach his deportation goals. “Human rights” are now redefined, for the worse. Bill Gates’ work is threatened. The State Dept will largely withdraw from Africa and stop addressing climate change, refugees, human rights, Russian war crimes, and democracy. Student visas remain at risk. Libya has perhaps joined El Salvador in accepting third-country deportees; Trump even tried with war-torn Ukraine. Trump on French politics. Over a million immigrants work in healthcare, with an estimated 366,000 undocumented ones at risk for deportation. Musk’s waste and abuse. Trump’s travel ban threatens hospital care. RFK Jr has finalized the GAVI pullback. In other high-income countries, higher healthcare spending improves outcomes. Not in the US. Even $30 billion can'tfix our medical debt problem. House and Senate passed the awful budget bill. Paul Krugman’s thoughts. It eliminatesthe National Endowment for the Arts, the CDC’s Global Health and Chronic Disease centers, and the NSF, drawing resistance, and slashes funding for CDC, NASA, State, EPA, HUD, NOAA, Labor, Interior, SNAP, NIH, NIOSH,Medicaid, Medicare, Obamacare, and CIA. Gay-bashing is prioritized, climate research is slashed, and the IRA is moribund. It cut food and healthcare, to help the rich. NIH scientists protested. Few Republicans balked. All NIH grants were briefly blocked. Racism: Senators confirmed Harmeet Dhillon – election denier, promoter of voting rights restrictions, and enemy of the Voting Rights Act, to head the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, with predictable consequences, multiple, more, more, and more, including resignations. The IRS will eliminate its Civil Rights Office and cut up to 50% of its workforce, drastically reducing detection of fraud. Trump’s National Park Service made a horrifying rewrite of history, now reversed. He’s ended disparate-impact liability, attacked medical training accreditors over “DEI,” restored Confederate base names, promoted Confederate monuments, and more, while Florida’s social studies curriculum says slavery benefitted slaves, and Mississippi ordered deletion of a race relations research collection. School desegregation lags in both North and South. The Naval Academy purged books by Blacks and Jews, keeping Mein Kampf and The Bell Curve, while West Point agreed to Trumpist indoctrination of cadets. Hegseth’s approach. The only refugees for Trump, who never opposed apartheid and hated Mandela: Afrikaners. Vicious backlash to a Black woman’s statue. Five years after the murder of George Floyd, white grievance rules. For Trump White men's civil rights need protecting. If you’re Black, Uncle Sam doesn’t want you. NIH gender and race grants were cancelled. Trump didn’t acknowledge Juneteenth, generally cancels Black history, removed MLK’s bust from the Oval Office, and demanded the Washington Commanders revert to the name “Redskins.” He chose Pride Month to target gay America. His anti-DEI crusade has real health risks. His DOJ proposed a one-day sentence for the sole person convicted in Breonna Taylor’s murder, the judge ignored the request, sentencing him to 33 months. Native Americans will suffer greatly under Trump’s budget. DOGE and Trump managed to gut nuclear safety. See this and this summary. US Tesla sales plunged while EV sales rose overall; this continues. Trump swore not to touch Social Security; DOGE created a mess. As his EPA cancels ever more regulations, Trump loves coal, hates wind and solar (with other foolish Republicans), and dislikes hydropower.More on his damage to the climate; NPR and PBS are defunded. After a GOP revolt, pulled his nomination of Nazi-lover Ed Martin for DC US attorney, though he’ll remain in the Justice Department. Proud Boys convicted of sedition are suing the DOJ over their prosecutions, chutzpah Italians call “la faccia come il culo” – your face is like your butt. Musk’s demand that federal workers justify their work is gone, as now is Musk himself, leaving a legacy of death, with Tesla’s profits down 71% and SpaceX in trouble. Elections belong to the states, but Trump’s tried to take them over, risking chaos and breeding lawsuits. 12% of federal jobs have been cut. COVID-19 and health miscellany
As careful blog followers know, I’ve never believed COVID-19 was an airborne aerosol infection. Now a study of human-to-hamster transmission convinces me that aerosol transmission is possible. Next we need some solid evidence in people. One in five COVID-19 patients still have symptoms 3 years later. Headline: “Trump's FDA drops Covid vaccine bombshell as Pfizer and Moderna admit heart damage risk.” Bombshell, my ass. The risk of myocarditis, especially after dose 2 in young males, is well-known; I recommend they get a single dose. The UK, and now the US (per RFK Jr) may not offer boosters to pregnant women, though they risk severe disease and complications, bringing resignations and lawsuits.This fall’s COVID-19 vaccine may keep the same target (JN.1 for Novavax, KP.2 for Moderna and Pfizer) or switch to LP.8.1. On July 19 four states had high SARS-CoV-2 wastewater levels; the summer surge is underway, By that date COVID-19 had already killed 13,597 Americans in 2025. Desperate long COVID patients are increasingly turning to crowdsourced “cures.” Susan Monarez, now confirmed as CDC director, is better than her boss, RFK Jr. A customized version of the amazing CRISPR DNA-editing technology, which can greatly improve sickle-cell anemia patients’ symptoms with a single treatment, has now been used successfully on a baby with a rare genetic disorder. SCOTUS fortunately did not remove some preventive care from ACA coverage. The EPA has stopped studying environmental hazards, and cancelled a landmark ruling. OBBB criticism focused on Medicaid cuts; Obamacare rates will also rise by about 75%. Top researchers examined excess US mortality over other high-income countries, largely due to guns, drugs, and lack of universal healthcare. 15 million excess deaths peaked early in the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-22), especially among people under 65, but persisted in 2023, resembling prepandemic rates. Damage to ER care from the OBBBA. The top Ob-Gyn organization has decided, on principle, to reject all Federal funding (above). The excellent Covid.gov website has been degraded to a lab-leak advert and new COVID-19 vaccines will beapproved only for high-risk people. Should it surprise us that COVID-19 conspiracy theorists overlap with neo-Confederate ideologues and child labor advocates? Lack of cancer screening early in the pandemic didn't bring the feared huge increases in advanced cancers. By 2021 only cervical and prostate cancers had persistently high advanced cancer rates. At current low vaccination ratesmeasles will likely become endemic again; slight drops in rates will bring millions of cases. Whooping cough is surging as well as measles, and RFK Jr’s purge of the CDC’s vaccine committee won’t help. He’s also moving to undercut Obamacare’s preventive care mandate. RFK, Jr. is proposing changes in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and, especially, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, that will undermine their efficacy. He is also undermining the entire vaccine approval system. And he’s firing the entire USPSTF, the board that choose the preventive services covered under Obamacare. Patients often ask about radiation exposure from CAT scans. If CAT scans continue at current rates, they will cause 5% of all cancers in the US. The top cause of death in US doctors-in-training is suicide. “Medicare Advantage” features not just prior authorizations, but kickbacks. A major federal report confirms the UK’s Cass review in condemning “gender-affirming care” for adolescents with gender dysphoria, preferring supportive therapy. After the Alabama Supreme Court called IVF embryos “extrauterine children,” governor Kay Ivey signed a law,apparently badly flawed, protecting IVF providers from prosecution. SCOTUS has basically allowed states to defund Planned Parenthood, as does the OBBBA. All posts and archives will always be free to all subscribers. But if you'd like to support me, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription..
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