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So Elon is headed back to the private sector after a star turn as chainsaw-in-chief and co-president. How did that work out, anyway? “ Musk’s original goal was $2 trillion in annual savings, downsized several times to the range of $500 billion. DOGE currently claims $175 billion in savings. But the House bill would formalize barely 5% of that. “Those paltry cuts might not even pass the Senate, where there’s considerable, if unspoken, discomfort with the DOGE cuts, especially USAID. "DOGE has been more bark than bite," budget analyst Jessica Riedl of the Manhattan Institute recently told Yahoo Finance. “The actual [savings] figure is likely well short of $10 billion.” “The reality of politics has revealed DOGE to be what many of its critics claim: a sham cost-cutting effort that leaves the worst aspects of the federal budgeting process unmolested. Every member of Congress claims jurisdiction over some little agency in the executive branch, and they’re not keen to have a vigila...

One of my favorite aphorisms, for which I haven’t located the source, is: “There’s something about the sound of a clock striking 13 that calls into doubt everything that came before.” That came to mind when I read about RFK Jr’s “Make America Healthy Again” report: “   The Washington Post reported , “Some of the report’s suggestions ... stretched the limits of science, medical experts said. Several sections of the report offer misleading representations of findings in scientific papers.”   “That was last week. This week, NOTUS advanced these concerns,   reporting   that the administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” report “misinterprets some studies and cites others that don’t exist, according to the listed authors.” “Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says his “Make America Healthy Again” Commission report harnesses “gold-standard” science, citing more than 500 studies and other sources to back up its claims. Those citations, though, are rife with errors, fr...

The latest meme around the Trump tariffs is TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out. Savvy traders are buying on the TACO tariff dips and selling on the TACO caves. And those caves are popular. “Yesterday, the Conference Board reported   that in May consumer confidence surged by 12.3, the largest monthly increase in four years. Bloomberg said the surge was bigger than the estimates of any private-sector economists Bloomberg contacted for its survey. The data suggests consumer confidence was already moving up and then surged forward after Donald Trump made a series of “deals,” most notably with China, reducing the fear of tariffs or an economic slowdown tied to them. It’s important to note that these weren’t “deals” in any meaningful sense. He just agreed with the countries in questions, most importantly with China, to go back to the way things were before he introduced his tariffs, with small, continual, residual tariffs. In a way Trump is getting credit for caving. But in reality these sh...

I recall a time when the Republican Party stood for small government and local control. The grandiose Trump GOP cult has abandoned that principle in favor of meddling in anything and everything public and private that Trump opposes.     “ The administration has threatened to hold back the funds and permissions unless New York stops charging tolls to drive into the borough’s tolled zone. US District Judge   Lewis Liman   on Tuesday granted a request by the   Metropolitan Transportation Authority   to block such efforts by the federal government through June 9 while he considers whether the US has the legal right to terminate the toll.” *snip* “The ruling is a win for local government as the Trump administration withdraws support for regional projects or takes over development. US Secretary of Transportation   Sean Duffy   has cited subway system crime in wielding the threat of withheld funds, and announced in April that the federal government, inst...

I didn’t apply to Harvard. I wouldn’t have gotten in if I had. Even though I lettered in track and field and was captain of my high school cross country team, I was a B student in high school. I didn’t apply to Harvard for grad school either. The lab where I did my postdoc had recently moved to Washington University from Harvard, so I narrowly missed working there. I’ve only had one or two friends who attended Harvard as undergrads. Some of my friends were Harvard PhD students and/or postdocs, and I know some folks who were on the Harvard faculty. I never felt disadvantaged by not being affiliated in any way with Harvard. That said, there’s absolutely no excuse for the Trump Administration assault on Harvard. It’s not about fighting antisemitism or discrimination, it’s purely an exercise in dominance. There’s an interesting essay in the Boston Globe from a recent Harvard grad defending her alma mater. She grew up on a dairy farm in rural Maine, so Harvard was a culture shock for her. S...

It’s not just Tesla that is becoming poison in Europe: “ European airlines are freezing their transatlantic growth and pulling back from major U.S. cities like New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and Chicago as they redirect flights to Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Caribbean, where bookings are rising and demand is outpacing the American market. Carriers including Lufthansa, British Airways, Air France, KLM, Iberia, and SAS have adjusted their summer schedules to reflect shifting traveler priorities, with more passengers opting for destinations that offer smoother entry, better seasonal deals, and fewer political complications. The changes mark a clear retreat from the U.S. at a time when international sentiment is cooling and alternative routes are proving far more profitable. “The decision to reduce flights is being driven by a sharp drop in bookings, rising concerns among European travelers about safety and border restrictions, and growing political discomfort tied to President Donald Trump’...

I wasn’t gonna buy a Tesla before Elon joined the Trump Administration, so his politics weren’t a consideration. Apart from the fact that I wouldn’t pay that much for a car, I’ve never lived in a place where Teslas are green. Before we left St. Louis, ca. 80% of electricity in Missouri came from burning coal. Here in Rhode Island, ca. 85 % of electricity comes from natural gas. So in both states, an EV runs on hydrocarbons. I suspect politics may have a role in European decline in Tesla sales: “Per the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA),  Tesla EV registrations (a proxy for sales) in Europe fell a whopping 49% in April compared to a year ago, to 14,228. Meanwhile, overall EV registrations in the region (which includes the UK and the European Free Trade Association) rose 34.1% in April, with overall registrations down 0.3%. “Tesla’s April drop marks its fourth straight down month in Europe, while other reports   show EVs from Volkswagen, BMW, and China’s BYD m...

Trump says he's using tariffs to re-shore manufacturing from other countries. Setting aside the fact that it takes years to build and operationalize a manufacturing plant, why would anyone bother when he flip-flops every week.     This has nothing to do with jobs in America. This is pure market manipulation for speculators. “Donald Trump has announced that he will pause his threatened 50% tariffs on the European Union until 9 July, after a “very nice call” with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/may/26/donald-trump-eu-tariffs-delay-us-politics-news-latest-updates?page=with%3Ablock-68342f0a8f08fb88c85e4f45#block-68342f0a8f08fb88c85e4f45

U.S. District Judge John Bates, appointed by G.W. Bush, awarded summary judgment to Jenner & Block, finding President Trump’s executive order against it unlawful, null and void: “This case arises from one of a series of executive orders targeting law firms that, in one way or another, did not bow to the current presidential administration’s political orthodoxy. Like the others in the series, this order—which takes aim at the global law firm Jenner & Block—makes no bones about why it chose its target: it picked Jenner because of the causes Jenner champions, the clients Jenner represents, and a lawyer Jenner once employed. Going after law firms in this way is doubly violative of the Constitution. Most obviously, retaliating against firms for the views embodied in their legal work—and thereby seeking to muzzle them going forward—violates the First Amendment’s central command that government may not “use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.” More subt...

In Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking-Glass,” Humpty-Dumpty   says, " When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less ." Every since Marbury v Madison, the Supreme Court has used similar logic with the Constitution. Now the Roberts SCOTUS has used this superpower to discover that the Constitution places the President beyond the law and allows the President to dismantle independent agencies when they attempt to assert their independence with the  ad hoc  exception of the Federal Reserve. “ It is demonstrably the case that the U.S. Constitution does not provide the President with any immunity from prosecution. You can argue this from absence (it literally doesn’t provide it); you can argue it from general logic, which is admittedly an inherently slippery kind of argument (no one is above the law); perhaps most convincingly you can argue by the fact that the Constitution writers very much knew how to provide immunity where they believed it...

Libertarianism is the political philosophy of middle school boys and arrested development. This is well-illustrated by the bleat that people should just “do your own research.” Look, I made an entire career out of research and was well-compensated for my judgement. But I certainly wouldn’t trust my judgement on which drugs are safe and effective and which aren’t. Apart from my lack of expertise, there’s the issue of the data: “Some of the detailed data the FDA receives from a drug's manufacturer is considered the company's private property and is kept secret, so any outside reviewer isn't playing with a full deck. “Furthermore, evaluating the results of a clinical trial can be tricky: Were the study groups truly comparable at the start of the trial? Were the randomization and blinding done appropriately? What statistical methods were used to compare outcomes? If the differences were statistically significant, were they also large enough to be  clinically meaningful? Were th...

Between 2022 and 2023, there were 1.5 million excess deaths in the US. These are people who would be alive if the US mortality rate were comparable to other industrialized nations.   “ The authors agree that further research is needed to fully understand the driving factors behind excess mortality, but suggest looking to other nations for inspiration on successful social programs would be a good start. “However,   recent policy decisions   by the Trump administration have [ Dr Jacob Bor, associate professor of global health and epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health]  concerned for the future. “ Deep cuts   to public health, scientific research,   safety net programs , environmental regulations, and federal health data could lead to a   further widening   of health disparities between the US and other wealthy nations, and growing numbers of excess – and utterly preventable – deaths to Americans.” “Imagine the lives saved, the gr...

Remember when RFK Jr. promised to have an answer to the cause of autism by September 2025? He’s already walking that back: “We will have some studies completed by September, and those studies will mainly be replication studies of studies that have already been done. We’re also deploying new teams of scientists, 15 groups of scientists. We’re going to send those grants out to bid within three weeks,” he told Collins.   “Kennedy added that he expects the results of those completed replication studies to begin to be finalized six months after September.” If there are results by March, they won’t be based on new data, they will be using currently published data. Those data from studies going back decades demonstrate 50-80% heritability for autism. I know. I’m a geneticist and I’ve read those papers.  Autism has nothing to do with vaccines. Never did, never will. I have reminded graduate students and several faculty that we don’t do research to “show,” we do research to test. What ...

In its decision in Trump et al. v Wilcox et al., the six right-wing extremists on the Roberts SCOTUS stripped independent federal agencies of their independence. In principle, the next president could restore independence to these agencies, but from now on, such decisions are tenuous at best: “ With unitary executive theory, Congress cannot write robust new legislation that modernizes the civil service and stops politicization. A President could just ignore it. Even if Trump leaves office, and a new President looks to restore nonpartisan competence, their promises are only good for four or eight years before another President can come in and rip up the terms of their employment. And over time, why would even a good government President invest effort in restoring capacity if their successor can undermine it?   “With unitary executive theory, the public sector becomes permanently viewed as an unstable and chaotic workplace that we are seeing now. The most capable potential employees ...

“Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old nurse and mother from Georgia, was declared brain-dead in February after suffering a medical emergency while about nine weeks pregnant. Even though that means she is legally dead, doctors at Emory University Hospital have kept her on life support in an effort to sustain the fetus to at least 32 weeks, telling her family that they are “legally required to keep Smith breathing until the fetus reaches viability,” as the Louisiana Illuminator described.    “This decision seemingly has been driven by Georgia's strict abortion laws, which ban terminating a pregnancy once fetal cardiac activity can be detected, or roughly six weeks into pregnancy.”  At nine weeks, the embryo, is about the size of a green olive or a strawberry, around 22mm long. It's still quite small, with a head that is large compared to the rest of the body and which is beginning to take on a more recognizable human shape. The face is starting to form...

Mark Zuckerberg says colleges aren’t preparing students for today’s job market and higher education is in for a “reckoning.” When, exactly, did “billionaire says” become a substitute for facts and evidence? • The unemployment rate for people with less than a high school diploma is 6.2%; • The unemployment rate for people with only a high school diploma is 4.1%; • The unemployment rate for people with a bachelors degree or higher is 2.6%; • In 2023,   the median annual salary for a college graduate with a bachelor's degree was approximately $60,000, while the median annual salary for a high school graduate was around $36,000 . The purpose of a college education isn’t job training, anyway. That’s what vocational schools and apprenticeships are for. Yes, you should ask yourself whether your goals after graduation will offset the opportunity cost of college, as well as the tuition burden of a private vs public college. But how you monetize the personal satisfaction of your life choices...

At some point in the next 15 years or so, someone is going to extend their hand to me and say: “You need to give me the car keys. You can’t drive anymore.” So having the option of a robotaxi to get to the grocery store is attractive. Where are we on that project? “In an interview with CNBC’s David Faber on Tuesday at the company’s headquarters in Austin, Musk said Tesla aims to bring its robotaxis to Los Angeles and San Francisco following the planned Austin debut.   “Musk said a Tesla robotaxi service will start with about 10 vehicles in Austin, and rapidly expand to thousands of vehicles should the launch go well with no incidents.   “Since 2016, Musk has been promising Tesla investors, customers and fans that the company is about a year away from delivering a self-driving car that’s capable of transporting passengers safely without human interventions, or a human at the steering wheel. However, Tesla does not yet offer a vehicle safe to use without human supervision.” So li...

My prediction is that the “negotiations” will be over what kind of fig leaf Japan will allow in return for abject Trump Administration capitulation: “Japan on Tuesday clarified its stance on U.S. tariffs, saying it wants all new levies put into place by the administration of President Donald Trump completely removed, confirming a hard-line position ahead of high-level negotiations that might be held later this week in Washington.   “As we have repeatedly stated, we find the series of U.S. tariff measures — including those on automobiles, auto parts, steel, aluminum, and reciprocal tariffs — extremely regrettable,” said Ryosei Akazawa, Japan’s chief tariff negotiator, at a news conference.   “The stance Japan would be taking in the next round of negotiations has been unclear, with officials repeatedly calling for the U.S. to “review” the measures. The term was open to interpretation and possibly suggested Japan was signaling it was open to compromise.   “On Tuesday, Akazaw...

Look, I grew up Christian. I’m no theologian, but I have a pretty good idea of what Christian teachings are. “Paula White-Cain, a senior adviser for President  Donald Trump ’s White House Faith Office,  said in a recent interview  that she “submits” to her husband and that “God designed” men to be leaders of a household.” This is the God that Paula seems to have made in her image. I talked to God, and She told me Paula is just another huckster preaching heresy in Her name.   “ White-Cain, a televangelist who has been called  President Donald Trump’s spiritual adviser , referred to her third husband, Jonathan Cain, as the head of her household, stating, “God has an order.” Her third husband? This is someone we should pay attention to on the subject of marriage? What did Jesus say, Paula?  Jesus taught about the permanence of marriage and the sinfulness of divorce. He stated that divorce, except for "sexual immorality,” would make a woman an adulter...

“The headline election was Romania's presidential vote, with liberal Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan coming out the winner ahead of nationalist George Simion.” *snip* “ Poland   was also holding a presidential election, and Polish TV's exit poll indicated that Warsaw's liberal Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski received 30.8%, while national-conservative historian Karol Nawrocki won 29.1% of the vote.” “The pair will now head into the second round scheduled for 1 June.   “And   Portugal held a general election , the third in three years, with an exit poll for TVI and CNN Portugal showing that the centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD) won between 29.1% and 35.1% of the vote. The big change was the rise of the far-right Chega party which was predicted to almost match the vote share of the opposition Socialists.” From a Polish colleague on the 1 st  round Polish election: “ He did much worse than predicted, so he has some uphill to climb in second round. The right + far right candidat...

While neither the stock market nor bond credit rating business are the economy, changes in the stock market and bond credit ratings are often harbingers. “Moody’s announced Friday evening it was lowering the US score to Aa1 from Aaa. A gauge of the greenback fell 0.6%, US stock futures slid and Treasuries’ yield curve steepened on Monday. A weaker dollar tends to benefit gold, making it cheaper for buyers in other currencies. “While we recognize the US’ significant economic and financial strengths, we believe these no longer fully counterbalance the decline in fiscal metrics,” Moody’s said in a statement.”   Making America Great Again?   https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gold-gets-bounce-moody-us-235551394.html

For most people, 23andMe is synonymous with direct-to-consumer genomics. It isn’t DNA sequencing, it’s microarrays that are capable of detecting many annotated variants. As with all direct-to-consumer genomics, the cost to consumers was supposed to be subsidized by the aftermarket for genetic information. In the event, 23andMe declared bankruptcy recently, and there was a question of what would happen to all that genetic data. “DNA testing company 23andMe (MEHCQ) is being purchased out of bankruptcy by large-cap drugmaker Regeneron (REGN) for $256 million. “The deal includes "substantially all assets" but excludes the telehealth platform, pharmacy fulfillment business, and lab and test ordering services under Lemonaid Health, according to the agreement filed in the US Bankruptcy Court in the Eastern District of Missouri. The deal is scheduled to close July 1.” *snip* “ The company had tried for 10 years to create a robust business segment   pairing its DNA data bank with drug...

My brother Mike is a retired mechanical engineer. I lasted nine months as an engineering student in college, but he graduated as an engineer and made a career out of it. A pretty extraordinary feat considering he never used an SI unit in his calculations. I emailed him two pictures of duck and geese pelotons with birds drafting behind one another and the following (edited) exchange ensued: Mike: Drafting in a more viscous fluid.  What would Osborne Reynolds say? Me: He’s dead. Got a Ouija board? Mike: I think having ones own dimensionless number confers immortality. Me:   The Reynolds numbers for 3-,   7-, and 14-day-old ducklings . . . were 2.15 x 10^4, 2.82 x 10^4 [and]   3.60 x 10^4 . . . I couldn't find a comparable set of measurements for Canadian goslings, but I have to believe they're the same order of magnitude.   https://www.wcupa.edu/sciences-mathematics/biology/fFish/documents/1995JEZ-DuckFormation.pdf This is the money graf: "The results of this...

So the White House and its right-wing media hounds have their panties in a twist because former FBI director posted an image that spelled out 86 47, which they claimed meant that   James Comey was inciting the assassination of President Trump. Where were all these folks back when Sarah Palin pasted rifle crosshairs on Arizona Congressional districts? “ Sarah Palin introduced on her website in March 2010 a United States map with crosshairs on the 20 Democrats and congressional districts she targeted for the November 2010 elections. Palin's opponents have constantly criticized the map noting that they were gun sights and a possible incitement to violence, but a Palin aide said on January 9, 2011 that they were more like a surveyor's symbol. Arizona Democrat Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot and critically injured on January 8, 2011, was one of the 20 Democrats targeted, but she won re-election over a Tea Party-backed candidate. ” Oh, yeah. IOKIYAR. https://bsky.app/profile/justinb...

This is a long but cogent piece in Talking Points Memo. Unlike the author, I long ago appreciated the threats posed by the massive cuts to NIH funding. But Josh does the extra work of thinking about how this anti-science juggernaut could be halted. Read the whole thing, but here are the nut grafs: “So how can this trajectory be changed? Basically we need people with big megaphones to start leveling with the public about what’s happening. The more widely known this becomes, the more salient it becomes, the worse it will get for those pushing these cuts or at least point trying to make them permanent through the 2026 budget process. But how can this be done at scale, change the equation in the very short term? There’s one approach which mostly hasn’t been tried and which I believe holds great promise.   “Every major disease affecting Americans has what we might call a disease community build up around it. These are a mix of survivors, people suffering from the disease, family members...

“ During an interview with Dr. Phil in late April, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made the bold claim that "the mumps part" of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine "has never worked."” Do I even have to tell you he’s full of it? Of course he is. If you gave the man an enema, he’d fit in a matchbox. “Two randomized placebo-controlled trials in the late 1960s showed that the mumps vaccine worked -- and it's the same vaccine that's in use today.   “One trial was conducted among 867 children in Philadelphia, resulting in 133 cases of mumps in the control group, and just five cases in the vaccine group, for a 95% effectiveness rate. The other, conducted in North Carolina school kids, resulted in an effectiveness rate of 96%, with 13 cases in 316 controls, and just five cases among 2,965 kids who were vaccinated.” RFK Jr. is interested in environmental causes of disease. Know what the most common cause of acquired deafness was before the mumps vaccin...

Back in the 1960s, it was believed that autism was caused by “refrigerator moms,” moms who were cold and aloof and thus drove their otherwise normal children into a lifetime of autism. Nobody believes the refrigerator mom environment anymore. Research has shown that autism has a heritability of 60-80%. So while there may be environmental inputs, the dominant input is genetic. “ Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr has vowed to address rising U.S. autism rates as a top health priority for the Trump administration.   “Last month, he pledged $50 million to help identify environmental causes of autism, to be issued as grants by the National Institutes of Health and has announced plans to create a national “autism registry.”    “Yet during the first four months of 2025, the NIH has reduced funding for autism-related research by an estimated $31 million to $116 million from $147 million in the same period in 2024, according to a Reuters analysis of NIH data. The spending is 26...

I was a subject in the Moderna Phase III trial for the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. It was a placebo-controlled trial: of the 30,000 people enrolled, half received the vaccine and half got the saline control. I ended up breaking the blind by having myself tested independently. I was positive for spike protein antibody, which was what the vaccine was designed against, but I was negative for nucleocapsid antibody, so it wasn’t a natural infection.   An HHS spokesperson recently told The Washington Post that "All new vaccines will undergo safety testing in placebo-controlled trials prior to licensure -- a radical departure from past practices." “The statement confused experts who said that vaccines aimed at new pathogens have always been tested this way. "That has been true of every new vaccine, ever," Paul Offit, MD, of Children's Hospital Philadelphia, told  MedPage Today . "I can't think of a single vaccine in the United States that was truly a new vaccine --...

Well, he’s Secretary of the Treasury under Trump. But what about the man, not the title? “ Bessent,   according to an interview in the Yale Alumni Magazine in 2015 , never imagined he’d be able to get married as a gay man, and have children via surrogacy. It’s a comment that is quite jarring considering that, a year later, he’d support Trump— and is now working for him:   “In a certain geographic region at a certain economic level, being gay is not an issue. What’s fantastic is now, people in the rest of America, whether blue collar or white collar, have access to everything. If you had told me in 1984 when we graduated and people were dying of Aids that 30 years later I’d be legally married and we would have two children via surrogacy, I wouldn’t have believed you.   “But who made it possible for Bessent to marry, and have children?   “Not the Republicans he was supporting—nor Trump. And not the current Supreme Court Trump created, which, if the issue came to them n...