We begin tonight with Trump’s scum-spray of executive orders, because they are not only in the news but indicative of everything he and his followers get so wrong about this country.
As always Lucian, you bring a fresh perspective to things that give me hope for surviving the next 4 years. And I read a wide range of opinions on Substack, but yours are always a bright spot because of your life experiences.
Lucian writes superbly based on his life's experiences and we all agree on that. Now, unless you are nearing 100 years of age for which I applaud your long and productive life, or you have a chronic disease for which I will be praying for you to recover, I strongly believe you and I and a bazillion other readers of Lucian's will survive the next 4 years and most assuredly the next 21 months before we vote in the midterms. As I have said, the margins are razor thin and it won't take much to tip the scales. I survived the Carter years as a young officer in the Army and those first three were an absolute wasteland. With the exception of a few special units, the rest of the Army couldn't beat their way out of a wet paper bag during those 3 years and you saw what happened when we tried to rescue our Embassy personnel from Iran. Now, the 4th year got us started back on the right track but it took years to recover. Our ancestors survived the Great Depression and were plunged into WWII right after that. Bottom line, we'll get through the next 3 years and 9 months. Stay strong and when in doubt, have a stiff gin & tonic w/lime slice. The lime will prevent scurvy, the tonic water containing quinine will keep the malaria away and the gin will kill damn near any germ out there. Now, if you dislike the English as a matter of course, then swap the gin for vodka! Cheers!
God. Bless. You. Not to be confused with the sometimes useful southern dismissal, “Bless your heart.”
Your precision of language, analysis, and history give me hope in this dark chapter of our history, and in our collective ability to survive it and soldier on to that intangible and just out of reach but always expanding notion of the “more perfect union.”
Roger that on "Bless Your Heart" aka "you are so full of s**t." I was stationed in the South a couple of times in my active duty military career and I heard that a lot!
Your "soldier on" phrase brought me back to a time when the President Carter was President. For a former (and brilliant) Nuclear Navy officer, his first three years as President were an absolute wasteland for the US military. I was a young officer at the time and things were so bad my boss had to fill his jeep from the post gas station and pay for it himself because we had no fuel in our motor pool fuel tanks. Instead of being able to take 18 howitzers to the field and train, we drove 6 to the field, parked them, and then marched the troops miles into the field for gunnery. Didn't even have the fuel to drive them around. Other than the high inflation of those 3 years, we couldn't believe a former Navy officer who worked with Admiral Rickover, the Father of the Nuclear Navy, would fiscally punish the military that way. However, we "Soldiered On" and in the 4th year of President Carter's term, things improved quite a bit. All that said, the folks at the CIA suffered far worse than we did because of Admiral Turner's beliefs in how intelligence should be gathered but that's another story for another time.
May it be as you say. That sanity prevails. That the law prevails. That the least we can do is be determined as a society and as individuals to be upright, moral beings.
Clearly, you are feeling better. You’re back. Pace yourself still… How is Tracy? Be well. Grateful for all you do. Your clarity. Your depth of experience, research, context and history. Lots of reasons for hope woven through the message you wrote here. Thank you.
“I see no reason not to conclude that “democracy“ and the “rule of law“ in the US will now assume the same level of application in reality as they did in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and countless other autocracies throughout history.
That is to say, each is now a sham, observed only performatively, but with no actual basis in fact.
The MAGATs have already established that they can:
* Invade the capital with a mob, defecate on the desks of members of Congress, engineer and engage in a riot that leads to numerous deaths of law-enforcement officers, erect a (mock?) gallows to hang the vice president, and then make heroes out of the perpetrators and celebrate their release from prison;
*Use the overwhelming power of their right-wing propaganda machine to manipulate public opinion so that the perpetrator of the attack on the capital is transformed from a discredited outgoing President with no political future into a heroic figure who then wins a national election with the approval 77 million voters.
Just as the Nazis celebrated the Alte Kämpfer — “old strugglers” — and the Blutfahne — blood flag — of the November 1923 beer Hall Putsch once they took power, the MAGATs are glorifying and celebrating their own set of “martyrs“.
If there isn’t already a ballad of Ashli Babbitt, paralleling the Horst Wessel Lied, there will be one soon.
These are people who will obey the law and be respectful of it only when it suits their purposes, and when it can be used to persecute their opponents. If it inhibits them in any way, they will simply ignore it, and laugh contemptuously when courts issue rulings that they have no intention of respecting.
The cornerstones of this dictatorship have already been laid. With figures like Stuart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio now released from prison, having been made martyrs with global name recognition by their imprisonment, they are now free to organize all of the violent, heavily armed, militia-oriented Trump supporters nationwide into a Sturmabteilung Brownshirt brigade that will go after anyone they perceive as disloyal to their leader.
The “industrialists“ — whose modern equivalents are the tech titans we saw sitting behind the cult leader yesterday — are in the bag.
Any sort of critical media institutions have either been hollowed out or dismantled, and what is left of them have already demonstrated their eagerness to bend the knee.
The highest court in the land has already openly ruled that if the president decides to sic Seal Team Six on his political rivals, he is absolved from any criminal liability if he chooses to do so.
The entire federal law-enforcement apparatus has been demonstrated to be impotent to bring him to justice, even after four years, and a mountain of evidence produced in court, and in congressional proceedings, demonstrating his criminality and clear responsibility for the attempted insurrection and theft of top-secret documents.
The judges who were willing to hold him to account, Merchan and Engoron, whose rulings have now been neutered, face harassment and persecution by the cult leader’s thugs.
A key acolyte, Rudy Giuliani, who faced bankruptcy and poverty due to his grotesque defamation of two perfectly innocent, civic minded, black polling-station workers, just got off the hook by having some anonymous donor pay off his court ordered damages to the workers he defamed.
And to put the cherry on the top of the sundae, the cult leader‘s biggest backer who chipped in nearly a quarter of a billion to get him elected, can’t quite help himself from giving the “Roman salute“ in his inaugural speech to the faithful. The attempts of his supporters to “walk that one back“ are reminiscent of Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove trying to restrain his arm from reflexively snapping the Nazi salute as he salivates over the post-apocalyptic future in which he will reign supreme along with the chosen few.
And so the question remains, which institutional force in the country has the ability to stand up to the cunning High Chair King, “saved by God to make America great again” and roll back his dictatorship that is taking shape by the hour ?
Speaking of RFK, Jr., there is a late breaking piece in Politico.com regarding him.
==========
PENCE ORG DOWN ON RFK — Advancing American Freedom, the advocacy group founded by Mike Pence, is throwing everything at the wall in a bid to persuade Republican senators not to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as HHS secretary. It argues he’s unqualified due to his history as an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, former heroin addict, supporter of marijuana and psychedelic drug legalization and backer of abortion rights.
==========
We'll see how it goes.
Concerning another nominee, young Mr. Hegseth should have been considered for an assistant position in the DoD Public Affairs Office. His lack of experience in dealing with big picture stuff is telling. I know Senior NCO's in the Army who have a greater grasp of what it takes to run the Pentagon.
Last, President Trump's nominee for the Secretary of the Air Force is the current head of the National Reconnaissance Office, has served in coat & tie positions on the Air Staff, and is a retired Air Force officer. Literally, decades of experience dealing with Air Force, Space, and satellite requirements. As far as overall big picture management skills, right up there with Marco Rubio who was confirmed 99-0.
I find it amazing that Rubio and this Air Force professional are nominated and then you see Hegseth and Kennedy coming out of the same White House. It's bizarre!
My fear is when this 4 year term nears it's end, Trump will claim that because he says the 2020 election was "stolen" from him, he will stay for 4 more. No election. Crazy but possible.
Nah, he'll be 82 by then and while he looks fairly at himself now, age alone will grind him down. The issue is whether or not young Vance is the heir apparent because there's a guy who is well educated and watches what he says most of the time. For the long term, he is the one to watch.
The states run the elections, not the federal government. So the worst that could happen would be that some might not want a new election and we have another civil war. What could go wrong? However, remember that the Mango Menace from Mar-a-Lardo got less than half of the vote and he loses support by the day as more people find the leopards nibbling at their faces, or at faces they love.
I know that it would take a lot for people who were deceived to admit they were — psychology teaches us that discovering you’ve been hoodwinked just makes you double down— and I am confident that it won’t take a devastating war for them to say, “We never believed in him, we were the good Germans, oopsie, no, I’m, we…ah,um,“ because it won’t just be (pick your minority group victim here), it’ll be everybody that suffers from this wholesale democracy demolition derby. But you’re right. We can survive this. Now excuse me, I have grandchildren to go indoctrinate.
Watch what happens when the totally inept in charge are faced with the next pandemic. When, next time, vaccines are not available or affordable or ineffective, and food is scare and priced at a premium, and jobs are lost, and people and their children are dying by the millions, and the citizenry looks to those in charge for solutions and none come.
The "institutional force" will be the citizens who are left alive to revolt against those whose promise of "I alone can fix it" comes full circle and reality sets in.
The American people will prevail! This is just a pimple on a hemorrhoid and the pus will run out and a scar will form to hold it at bay …until the next time we forget to wipe our assholes more aggressively!
I just read that Cheeto ordered the CDC, FDA and NIH to suspend external communications. Given the last 4 years of Pandemic this scares me most of all.,
Stock up on N95 masks, folks. It may sound flippant to say that, but if history is to be the guide for the next pandemic (and it is coming) PPD will be even less available than in 2020. The ‘bird flu’ is virulent, especially since it has jumped into swine, the perfect laboratory for mutation. And there -won’t- be a vaccine this time.
No worries - my job requires that I keep up with infectious diseases along with other similar things and what progress is being made in these areas. I must tell you, the train is moving pretty quickly. Next month, medical professionals from the Southern Hemisphere are scheduled to visit with our folks at HHS and talk about the Fall 2025 flu that should come to the Northern Hemisphere based on their most recent flu season. Then we'll determine what the best mix is for the Fall 2025 flu vaccine in Central and North America. There will be most likely the quadrivalent shot for us seasoned citizens and a slightly different version for the younger, healthier crowd. It all depends on what the Southern Hemisphere medical professionals tell our crew. Truth in lending, depending on where I am, sometimes I do wear a mask. For example, if I hit my grocery store on the wrong day and it's wall to wall, I will wear a mask. Most of my local restaurants are laid out so there's always a nice distance between tables. I know in my area the majority of folks, especially folks my age, lean towards taking their flu shot, COVID booster, shingles shot, and/or pneumonia shot based on what their family doctor tells them. Bottom line, I wash my hands like a fiend several times a day! As my doc tells me, do what makes sense and seems right. Take care!
Trump administration’s abrupt cancellation of scientific meetings prompts confusion, concern
A flurry of scientific gatherings and panels across federal science agencies were canceled on Wednesday, at a time of heightened sensitivity about how the Trump administration will shift the agencies’ policies and day-to-day affairs.
Several meetings of National Institutes of Health study sections, which review applications for fellowships and grants, were canceled without being rescheduled, according to agency notices reviewed by STAT. A Feb. 20-21 meeting of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, a panel that advises the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services on vaccine policy, was also canceled. So was a meeting of the Presidential Advisory Council for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria that was scheduled for Jan. 28 and 29.
Thanks for some sanity and common sense as a way to take the long view of this freaking nightmare. Be well and stay well! We need your analysis and your voice.
It's going to be a rocky, time-wasted four years for sure. We'll spend so much time fighting Drumpf and zero time improving the lives of Americans. All the positive things Joe Biden accomplished will fall by the wayside. I, for one, will continue to look to you for the light. Thanks for your positivity.
I was just thinking how counterproductive the past eight years have been to the U.S. Imagine if the time the thinking population has had to waste on this parasitic bore had been put to useful purpose! Maybe some future forensic economist will be able to measure trump's toll on GDP. … And the next four years?
This is wonderful. There’s an error, though. You note that “gender is not evident …” It’s sex, not gender, that’s in biology (and indeed it’d be better to say “not evident in a zygote or an embryo” before fetus) . Many conservatives insist that sex determines gender, but no one claims that gender is equivalent to sex. You write a lot, and really wonderful things, so I imagine you nod now and then. But the woefully ignorant people who draft these absurd “orders” do count upon us not paying attention to such matters.
Thanks for this comment. According to the Cleveland Clinic, sex (not gender) is determined as either XX or XY at the moment of conception. An extra chromosome is extremely rare.
Nothing like peer-reviewed science from an established, legitimate medical facility. I love this note. I am acquainted with too many people who use TikTok and YouTube for medical diagnosis.
Lucien-this essay is fantastic. Puts a lot of things in perspective and not with a “sky is falling” outlook. Like you I’m hoping the courts will see thru some of this nonsense and do the right thing. Until our politicians step up, the law is our only hope right now
As always Lucian, you bring a fresh perspective to things that give me hope for surviving the next 4 years. And I read a wide range of opinions on Substack, but yours are always a bright spot because of your life experiences.
Lucian writes superbly based on his life's experiences and we all agree on that. Now, unless you are nearing 100 years of age for which I applaud your long and productive life, or you have a chronic disease for which I will be praying for you to recover, I strongly believe you and I and a bazillion other readers of Lucian's will survive the next 4 years and most assuredly the next 21 months before we vote in the midterms. As I have said, the margins are razor thin and it won't take much to tip the scales. I survived the Carter years as a young officer in the Army and those first three were an absolute wasteland. With the exception of a few special units, the rest of the Army couldn't beat their way out of a wet paper bag during those 3 years and you saw what happened when we tried to rescue our Embassy personnel from Iran. Now, the 4th year got us started back on the right track but it took years to recover. Our ancestors survived the Great Depression and were plunged into WWII right after that. Bottom line, we'll get through the next 3 years and 9 months. Stay strong and when in doubt, have a stiff gin & tonic w/lime slice. The lime will prevent scurvy, the tonic water containing quinine will keep the malaria away and the gin will kill damn near any germ out there. Now, if you dislike the English as a matter of course, then swap the gin for vodka! Cheers!
God. Bless. You. Not to be confused with the sometimes useful southern dismissal, “Bless your heart.”
Your precision of language, analysis, and history give me hope in this dark chapter of our history, and in our collective ability to survive it and soldier on to that intangible and just out of reach but always expanding notion of the “more perfect union.”
I will not give up.
Absolutely Great Note!!!
Roger that on "Bless Your Heart" aka "you are so full of s**t." I was stationed in the South a couple of times in my active duty military career and I heard that a lot!
Your "soldier on" phrase brought me back to a time when the President Carter was President. For a former (and brilliant) Nuclear Navy officer, his first three years as President were an absolute wasteland for the US military. I was a young officer at the time and things were so bad my boss had to fill his jeep from the post gas station and pay for it himself because we had no fuel in our motor pool fuel tanks. Instead of being able to take 18 howitzers to the field and train, we drove 6 to the field, parked them, and then marched the troops miles into the field for gunnery. Didn't even have the fuel to drive them around. Other than the high inflation of those 3 years, we couldn't believe a former Navy officer who worked with Admiral Rickover, the Father of the Nuclear Navy, would fiscally punish the military that way. However, we "Soldiered On" and in the 4th year of President Carter's term, things improved quite a bit. All that said, the folks at the CIA suffered far worse than we did because of Admiral Turner's beliefs in how intelligence should be gathered but that's another story for another time.
May it be as you say. That sanity prevails. That the law prevails. That the least we can do is be determined as a society and as individuals to be upright, moral beings.
This is the kind of writing I subscribe for. Thank you!
Indeed !
Clearly, you are feeling better. You’re back. Pace yourself still… How is Tracy? Be well. Grateful for all you do. Your clarity. Your depth of experience, research, context and history. Lots of reasons for hope woven through the message you wrote here. Thank you.
“I see no reason not to conclude that “democracy“ and the “rule of law“ in the US will now assume the same level of application in reality as they did in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and countless other autocracies throughout history.
That is to say, each is now a sham, observed only performatively, but with no actual basis in fact.
The MAGATs have already established that they can:
* Invade the capital with a mob, defecate on the desks of members of Congress, engineer and engage in a riot that leads to numerous deaths of law-enforcement officers, erect a (mock?) gallows to hang the vice president, and then make heroes out of the perpetrators and celebrate their release from prison;
*Use the overwhelming power of their right-wing propaganda machine to manipulate public opinion so that the perpetrator of the attack on the capital is transformed from a discredited outgoing President with no political future into a heroic figure who then wins a national election with the approval 77 million voters.
Just as the Nazis celebrated the Alte Kämpfer — “old strugglers” — and the Blutfahne — blood flag — of the November 1923 beer Hall Putsch once they took power, the MAGATs are glorifying and celebrating their own set of “martyrs“.
If there isn’t already a ballad of Ashli Babbitt, paralleling the Horst Wessel Lied, there will be one soon.
These are people who will obey the law and be respectful of it only when it suits their purposes, and when it can be used to persecute their opponents. If it inhibits them in any way, they will simply ignore it, and laugh contemptuously when courts issue rulings that they have no intention of respecting.
The cornerstones of this dictatorship have already been laid. With figures like Stuart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio now released from prison, having been made martyrs with global name recognition by their imprisonment, they are now free to organize all of the violent, heavily armed, militia-oriented Trump supporters nationwide into a Sturmabteilung Brownshirt brigade that will go after anyone they perceive as disloyal to their leader.
The “industrialists“ — whose modern equivalents are the tech titans we saw sitting behind the cult leader yesterday — are in the bag.
Any sort of critical media institutions have either been hollowed out or dismantled, and what is left of them have already demonstrated their eagerness to bend the knee.
The highest court in the land has already openly ruled that if the president decides to sic Seal Team Six on his political rivals, he is absolved from any criminal liability if he chooses to do so.
The entire federal law-enforcement apparatus has been demonstrated to be impotent to bring him to justice, even after four years, and a mountain of evidence produced in court, and in congressional proceedings, demonstrating his criminality and clear responsibility for the attempted insurrection and theft of top-secret documents.
The judges who were willing to hold him to account, Merchan and Engoron, whose rulings have now been neutered, face harassment and persecution by the cult leader’s thugs.
A key acolyte, Rudy Giuliani, who faced bankruptcy and poverty due to his grotesque defamation of two perfectly innocent, civic minded, black polling-station workers, just got off the hook by having some anonymous donor pay off his court ordered damages to the workers he defamed.
And to put the cherry on the top of the sundae, the cult leader‘s biggest backer who chipped in nearly a quarter of a billion to get him elected, can’t quite help himself from giving the “Roman salute“ in his inaugural speech to the faithful. The attempts of his supporters to “walk that one back“ are reminiscent of Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove trying to restrain his arm from reflexively snapping the Nazi salute as he salivates over the post-apocalyptic future in which he will reign supreme along with the chosen few.
And so the question remains, which institutional force in the country has the ability to stand up to the cunning High Chair King, “saved by God to make America great again” and roll back his dictatorship that is taking shape by the hour ?
I wish I could be as optimistic as Lucian, but my outlook for the future is absolutely bleak.
There is something really wrong with the American electorate when more of them vote for an absolute beast than a decent person.
And the Supreme Court is packed with six corrupt judges.
And had that idiot, RFK jr., been in charge of Health, would we have gotten the Covid vaccines? No.
I could go on, but I've had it.
Speaking of RFK, Jr., there is a late breaking piece in Politico.com regarding him.
==========
PENCE ORG DOWN ON RFK — Advancing American Freedom, the advocacy group founded by Mike Pence, is throwing everything at the wall in a bid to persuade Republican senators not to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as HHS secretary. It argues he’s unqualified due to his history as an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, former heroin addict, supporter of marijuana and psychedelic drug legalization and backer of abortion rights.
==========
We'll see how it goes.
Concerning another nominee, young Mr. Hegseth should have been considered for an assistant position in the DoD Public Affairs Office. His lack of experience in dealing with big picture stuff is telling. I know Senior NCO's in the Army who have a greater grasp of what it takes to run the Pentagon.
Last, President Trump's nominee for the Secretary of the Air Force is the current head of the National Reconnaissance Office, has served in coat & tie positions on the Air Staff, and is a retired Air Force officer. Literally, decades of experience dealing with Air Force, Space, and satellite requirements. As far as overall big picture management skills, right up there with Marco Rubio who was confirmed 99-0.
I find it amazing that Rubio and this Air Force professional are nominated and then you see Hegseth and Kennedy coming out of the same White House. It's bizarre!
My fear is when this 4 year term nears it's end, Trump will claim that because he says the 2020 election was "stolen" from him, he will stay for 4 more. No election. Crazy but possible.
Nah, he'll be 82 by then and while he looks fairly at himself now, age alone will grind him down. The issue is whether or not young Vance is the heir apparent because there's a guy who is well educated and watches what he says most of the time. For the long term, he is the one to watch.
The states run the elections, not the federal government. So the worst that could happen would be that some might not want a new election and we have another civil war. What could go wrong? However, remember that the Mango Menace from Mar-a-Lardo got less than half of the vote and he loses support by the day as more people find the leopards nibbling at their faces, or at faces they love.
I know that it would take a lot for people who were deceived to admit they were — psychology teaches us that discovering you’ve been hoodwinked just makes you double down— and I am confident that it won’t take a devastating war for them to say, “We never believed in him, we were the good Germans, oopsie, no, I’m, we…ah,um,“ because it won’t just be (pick your minority group victim here), it’ll be everybody that suffers from this wholesale democracy demolition derby. But you’re right. We can survive this. Now excuse me, I have grandchildren to go indoctrinate.
You just given highly articulate voice to all my fears and then some. I wish these were not truths, by alas. My fear and loathing grow by the hour.
But (not by) alas.
The salute comes from the Roman Empire to Mussolini to Hitler, I believe.
The Supreme Court addressed official duties. Violating the Constitution isn't yet an official duty--I hope
There goes the positive spin right out the window. But what you say is like it is!
Watch what happens when the totally inept in charge are faced with the next pandemic. When, next time, vaccines are not available or affordable or ineffective, and food is scare and priced at a premium, and jobs are lost, and people and their children are dying by the millions, and the citizenry looks to those in charge for solutions and none come.
The "institutional force" will be the citizens who are left alive to revolt against those whose promise of "I alone can fix it" comes full circle and reality sets in.
Rome fell, no?
And Drumpf will blame who? His cabinet? Hillary Clinton? Joe Biden?
At the point of desperation, blame won't matter...results will.
The American people will prevail! This is just a pimple on a hemorrhoid and the pus will run out and a scar will form to hold it at bay …until the next time we forget to wipe our assholes more aggressively!
Scatologically speaking,of course…
I just read that Cheeto ordered the CDC, FDA and NIH to suspend external communications. Given the last 4 years of Pandemic this scares me most of all.,
Good gravy
Stock up on N95 masks, folks. It may sound flippant to say that, but if history is to be the guide for the next pandemic (and it is coming) PPD will be even less available than in 2020. The ‘bird flu’ is virulent, especially since it has jumped into swine, the perfect laboratory for mutation. And there -won’t- be a vaccine this time.
Please see the following pieces from Time, NBC, and NPR regarding H5N1.
https://time.com/6991893/is-there-a-bird-flu-vaccine-h5n1/
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/18/nx-s1-5266868/bird-flu-vaccine-moderna
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/two-possible-bird-flu-vaccines-available-weeks-needed-rcna149961
Bottom line: Action is ongoing at a high rate of speed as we speak.
I stand corrected.
No worries - my job requires that I keep up with infectious diseases along with other similar things and what progress is being made in these areas. I must tell you, the train is moving pretty quickly. Next month, medical professionals from the Southern Hemisphere are scheduled to visit with our folks at HHS and talk about the Fall 2025 flu that should come to the Northern Hemisphere based on their most recent flu season. Then we'll determine what the best mix is for the Fall 2025 flu vaccine in Central and North America. There will be most likely the quadrivalent shot for us seasoned citizens and a slightly different version for the younger, healthier crowd. It all depends on what the Southern Hemisphere medical professionals tell our crew. Truth in lending, depending on where I am, sometimes I do wear a mask. For example, if I hit my grocery store on the wrong day and it's wall to wall, I will wear a mask. Most of my local restaurants are laid out so there's always a nice distance between tables. I know in my area the majority of folks, especially folks my age, lean towards taking their flu shot, COVID booster, shingles shot, and/or pneumonia shot based on what their family doctor tells them. Bottom line, I wash my hands like a fiend several times a day! As my doc tells me, do what makes sense and seems right. Take care!
https://www.statnews.com/2025/01/22/trump-administrations-cancels-scientific-meetings-abruptly
Trump administration’s abrupt cancellation of scientific meetings prompts confusion, concern
A flurry of scientific gatherings and panels across federal science agencies were canceled on Wednesday, at a time of heightened sensitivity about how the Trump administration will shift the agencies’ policies and day-to-day affairs.
Several meetings of National Institutes of Health study sections, which review applications for fellowships and grants, were canceled without being rescheduled, according to agency notices reviewed by STAT. A Feb. 20-21 meeting of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, a panel that advises the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services on vaccine policy, was also canceled. So was a meeting of the Presidential Advisory Council for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria that was scheduled for Jan. 28 and 29.
Actually, I just got three boxes. From Bezos, ok, but there could be some good irony there.
You are a gift. Thank you. (And I'm glad you are feeling better!)
As usual, you have given me more hope that I thought possible. Bless you! I hope you and your wife are continuing to feel much better. ❤️
Thanks for some sanity and common sense as a way to take the long view of this freaking nightmare. Be well and stay well! We need your analysis and your voice.
It's going to be a rocky, time-wasted four years for sure. We'll spend so much time fighting Drumpf and zero time improving the lives of Americans. All the positive things Joe Biden accomplished will fall by the wayside. I, for one, will continue to look to you for the light. Thanks for your positivity.
I was just thinking how counterproductive the past eight years have been to the U.S. Imagine if the time the thinking population has had to waste on this parasitic bore had been put to useful purpose! Maybe some future forensic economist will be able to measure trump's toll on GDP. … And the next four years?
Absolutely! What a waste!
We'll be lucky if it's only four years. Plenty of time to fix that, thinks the Drumpf.
You're back! Cheers, and merci.
This is wonderful. There’s an error, though. You note that “gender is not evident …” It’s sex, not gender, that’s in biology (and indeed it’d be better to say “not evident in a zygote or an embryo” before fetus) . Many conservatives insist that sex determines gender, but no one claims that gender is equivalent to sex. You write a lot, and really wonderful things, so I imagine you nod now and then. But the woefully ignorant people who draft these absurd “orders” do count upon us not paying attention to such matters.
Great point that is completely over the head of most politicians in both parties.
Thanks for this comment. According to the Cleveland Clinic, sex (not gender) is determined as either XX or XY at the moment of conception. An extra chromosome is extremely rare.
Nothing like peer-reviewed science from an established, legitimate medical facility. I love this note. I am acquainted with too many people who use TikTok and YouTube for medical diagnosis.
Muskrat is addicted to ketamine.
My own constitution is becoming weaker by each executive action. Please, please that the truth which you speak of happens…and quickly.
Lucien-this essay is fantastic. Puts a lot of things in perspective and not with a “sky is falling” outlook. Like you I’m hoping the courts will see thru some of this nonsense and do the right thing. Until our politicians step up, the law is our only hope right now