“Former President Donald Trump’s administration marshaled unprecedented federal resources to develop and promote a Covid vaccine in record time. But within a few weeks of its arrival, lingering resentment over lockdowns and mistrust of government led to a widespread backlash, particularly among conservatives, that persists almost three years later. Nearly four in 10 Republicans say they will “definitely” or “probably” get the new vaccine, according to polling conducted by Morning Consult and POLITICO, while nearly eight in 10 Democrats expect to seek out the updated shot.
That skepticism is bleeding over into other vaccines, like those that prevent measles, mumps and rubella. Dr. Umair Shah, Washington state’s secretary of health, said it may even take the death of an influential figure to a vaccine-preventable disease to shock the public back to wider acceptance of immunizations.
“I’m really concerned, and a lot of people in public health and health care are very concerned, that this is the beginning of a really rough and tough time,” Shah said. “Unfortunately, people are going to get sick. We’re going to lose lives.”
For decades, being openly skeptical of vaccines made one a pariah in all but the smallest of political circles. Both parties generally accepted that modern science had made essential breakthroughs in health care. To cast doubt on them placed you on the fringe. But public health officials fear those days are increasingly numbered.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who notched 15 percent support in a Harvard-Harris poll of the Democratic presidential primary field earlier this month, is running on his anti-vaccine bona fides. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, is campaigning on his work to promote “medical freedom” and has said he would put Kennedy on a task force to investigate government overreach in medicine if elected president. Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur also running for the Republican nomination, has touted his plans to “expose and ultimately gut” the FDA and floated Kennedy as a running mate.
While these candidates are trailing in the polls, their followings are certain to outlast the campaign. Lingering resentment over pandemic restrictions is fueling further skepticism around public health, potentially leading to even lower vaccination rates, wider spread of disease and an inability to address future pandemics.
“Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died in this pandemic because of the bad information about vaccines and treatments,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown School of Public Health and former White House Covid-19 response coordinator under the Biden administration. “I certainly am worried about what happens over the next three to five years.”
The data show the vast majority of Americans still trust science, listen to doctors and vaccinate their children. But the growing number of those who don’t threatens to undo generations of work combatting deadly and debilitating diseases that haven’t widely circulated for decades.”
“Trump’s attempt to have it both ways on the fraught issue — calling himself “the most pro-life president ever” and taking credit for the fall of Roe v. Wade while also shunning the priorities of the anti-abortion groups that helped elect him in 2016 — has exposed those groups’ struggle for relevance in a lopsided primary and highlighted ongoing divisions inside the movement.”
“Protests over the Islamic Republic’s mandates have accelerated since the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old, in September 2022, three days after her arrest in Tehran by the morality police. Thousands of demonstrators have been arrested, including Amjad Amini, her father.
Amid fresh protests on the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death, Iran’s parliament moved to enact a bill that would impose harsher penalties for violations of the hijab law.”
“Gov. Gavin Newsom is pressing the U.S. Supreme Court to review a controversial ruling that has prevented cities from clearing homeless encampments.
In a brief filed to the high court Friday, Newsom’s office warned a ruling invalidating anti-camping ordinances in Grants Pass, Ore. had “paralyzed” cities around California by imposing an “insurmountable roadblock” that effectively bars cities from moving people from parks and sidewalks.”
“For Biden, the tried-and-tested formula for defusing labor disputes has included back-channel negotiations that kept the pressure on companies to make concessions to workers, along with his agencies’ efforts to make it easier for employees to organize and his own frequent public praise for labor activists. Fain, though, made it clear he doesn’t want quiet murmuring from the administration behind closed doors, and he wasn’t satisfied with Biden’s remarks from Washington that automakers should “go further” in their offers.”
“The indictment is brief because the underlying situation is quite simple. When Hunter bought the gun, he filled out a form saying he was not a drug user, when in fact he had a serious addiction at that time. Prosecutors assert that this violated three different laws — two false statements laws, and one law banning firearm possession by a drug user.
But the legal and political saga surrounding the indictment is much more complicated. Initially, prosecutors weren’t going to charge Hunter in the gun case at all. They did so only after the lead prosecutor, David Weiss, shifted to a more aggressive posture after a plea deal he’d struck with Hunter’s team fell apart. The question is why, exactly, that plea deal fell apart.
The Hunter Biden investigation has had about as messy a year as could be imagined. In May, two IRS officials involved in the probe went to Congress as whistleblowers to argue that Weiss’s team wasn’t being aggressive enough. In July, Weiss’s team presented their plea deal with Hunter before a judge — who refused to accept it, telling both sides to clarify some of its provisions after a dramatic public hearing.
Then, in August, talks between Weiss’s team and Hunter’s attorneys to finalize that deal collapsed. Hunter’s team has claimed that Weiss tried to belatedly change the deal’s terms on them — offering Hunter much more limited immunity from prosecution — after criticism from Republicans that he wasn’t being tough enough on the president’s son.
Whatever the reason for Weiss’s shift, there’s likely more to come from him. Last month, Weiss, who is the US Attorney for Delaware, requested that Attorney General Merrick Garland grant him special counsel status as well, and Garland agreed. Weiss has suggested in court filings that he intends to charge Hunter with tax crimes as well.”
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“The decision to charge here is not because this gun incident suddenly became more serious. It’s because prosecutors have now decided to go after Hunter more aggressively, after the political pressure and the plea deal’s collapse.
There’s nothing unusual about prosecutors charging more crimes after a plea deal falls apart. The mystery here remains why, exactly, the plea deal fell apart. If the main reason is simply that, due to political pressure from Republicans and embarrassment over the IRS officials’ claims, Weiss’s team got cold feet on a deal they’d agreed to — that wouldn’t make them look so great.
If the main reason is instead that, due to confusion or incompetence on his team, he belatedly concluded the initial deal with Hunter had been far too generous — well, that wouldn’t make him look so great either.”
“To receive government assistance in the US is to submit yourself to a whole host of requirements, some reasonable, some harsh. Each state, and each program within it, has their own requirements, which might be a test of income, of assets, or even of behavior. Some are reasonable — a millionaire probably doesn’t need food stamps; others are more punitive. A disabled single man wanting to get Medicaid in Maryland, for instance, has to show he doesn’t have assets totaling over $2,500. To receive unemployment benefits in Texas, quitting a job to take care of a child makes you ineligible, unless that child has a medical illness.
One requirement is especially odious, and little-known and little-studied: In many states, for many aid programs, you must agree to cooperate with authorities on enforcing child support against the parent of your child.
Depending on the state where they live, a single parent may have to agree to help the government recoup child support in order to receive child care assistance, food stamps, cash welfare, or Medicaid. They may have to establish parenthood of their child, provide estimated dates and locations of conception, home or work addresses of the other parent, or even sign away their right to child support payments to the state.
Given that around 80 percent of custodial parents are women, this is a welfare restriction with a disproportionate effect on one gender — and one that explicitly punishes you for being a single parent.”
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“As a country, we’ve operated under a perverse version of the maxim that it’s better to let 10 guilty men go free than one suffer: that it’s better that 10 deserving people receive nothing than a single undeserving one get health care or food. Small-government conservatives create bureaucracies to try to prevent it, and states micromanage peoples’ lives watching for it. But the government doesn’t need to operate that way”
“In 2021, the child poverty rate — as measured by the supplemental poverty measure that incorporates the value of government benefits — took a sharp drop to its lowest point on record: 5.2 percent, so that 3.8 million American children were living below the federal poverty line. Then, as a report just released by the Census Bureau found, it experienced the steepest rise in its history in 2022: a hike of 139 percent, or more than double, to 12.4 percent. Five million kids fell back into poverty, pushing the number of kids whose parents were struggling to meet their basic needs up to 9 million.
To anyone following the politics of poverty in America, the jagged rebound was entirely unsurprising. The child poverty rate was like a loaded spring being held down by pandemic-era welfare programs. Chief among them: the child allowance, which expanded on the existing child tax credit (CTC) and sent monthly payments to all parents in poverty, helping to cut child poverty by 46 percent in 2021. Release the spring — or let the expanded CTC expire, as Congress did — and of course it will shoot right back up. The child poverty rates settled right back around pre-pandemic 2019 levels.”
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“The concern is that giving out money to people in poverty without requiring them to work in exchange will ultimately create communities where dropping out of work is both widespread and accepted. Cash with no strings attached “gives up on work,” as one conservative analyst put it.
While there have always been disagreements about that view, increasingly, the evidence is against it. Unconditional cash transfers in low-income countries have been found to stimulate economic activity. In a pilot program for guaranteed income in Stockton, California, recipients of unconditional cash were quicker to find full-time employment than control groups.
Looking specifically at the impacts of the expanded CTC, there was no evidence that receiving the benefit reduced work, and economists at Columbia University estimated that making the program permanent would deliver a more than tenfold return on the investment of about $100 billion per year — a major boost to the economy. That means in addition to solidifying the massive drop in child poverty and giving millions of struggling American families continued support to pay for food, school supplies, utilities, and rent, taxpayers would also save money in the long run.”
“Coral in the Florida Keys, home to the largest reef in the continental US, is dying. The ghostly white appearance of the coral above is due to a phenomenon known as bleaching. Coral, an anemone-like marine animal, gets most of its color and food from a kind of algae that lives within its tissue. When that algae disappears, the coral appears stark white. Bleached corals aren’t dead; they are starving to death.
What happened between those two snapshots is extreme and unrelenting heat. Since July, a record-setting heat wave has been cooking waters in Florida and parts of the Caribbean, at times pushing water temperatures above 100 degrees. This excessive heat causes the relationship between coral and those symbiotic algae to break down; the algae leave the coral, though it’s not entirely clear which initiates the breakup.
The result of this epic marine heat wave is a devastating bleaching event that stretches across the Keys and much of the Caribbean, threatening the future of the region’s coral reefs. That in turn threatens human lives and well-being. These ecosystems — which were already under siege well before this summer — protect coastal communities from storm surge, support fisheries, and drive tourism.”
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“Underwater photojournalist Jennifer Adler and I went scuba-diving in the Florida Keys before and after this marine heat wave. What we saw is a stark reminder that climate change is not a distant threat; it’s destroying ecosystems today.”