Trump’s war against America’s public health infrastructure

The NIAID’s public interest agenda has been gutted, neutered and corrupted — now it serves Trump’s interests and the interests of pay-to-play players

In addition to putting incompetent, corrupt loyalists like the anti-vaxx crackpot RFK Jr. in positions of federal government power, Trump is gutting and corrupting the NIH and with it much of America’s public health infrastructure. Trump’s moves are a purely authoritarian political project focused on institutional capture. What Trump and MAGA elites are doing has nothing to do with neutral or good faith housecleaning or efficiency. Scientific American Nature and other sources report that eight of ten top officials at NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) have been pushed out for no solid reason. MAGA elites forced senior infectious‑disease experts to accept reassignment or resign. Meanwhile, COVID‑aligned scientists now face fabricated federal charges. Science reports that 14 of NIH’s 27 institutes now lack permanent leaders after Trump’s corrupted HHS blocked reappointments. MAGA elites installed corrupt Trump loyalists, which amounts to direct political interference in and corruption of scientific governance. These moves strip infectious‑disease institutions of autonomous expert leadership. Power over federal public health operations and planning is now centralized in the hands of corrupt, incompetent Trump‑aligned thugs working for special interests mostly at the expense of the public interest. Link, link, link

The pattern of targets and replacements show an effort to punish pro‑vaccine and pandemic‑response science experts while empowering a new health cabal built around crackpots who spout vaccine skepticism and anti‑regulatory ideology. Public Citizen’s profile of Trump’s health team highlights the elevation of RFK Jr., Mehmet Oz, and Jay Bhattacharya, who are all loony-toons with histories of undermining vaccine consensus, promoting privatization, and signaling willingness to use funding and personnel decisions to discipline perceived enemies. NIH whistleblower filings describe how officials who defended childhood vaccine programs or resisted canceling trials were marginalized or removed, while those aligned with administration narratives advanced. These purges of public health experts are not about policy disputes. Instead, this is about about giving power inside health agencies to corrupt, rigidly loyal Trump thugs. Link, link

Trump’s purges are coupled with elite MAGA efforts to control and corrupt information flows and weaken external checks. All of this make the underlying authoritarian motives quite clear. Oversight documents show that Trump and his MAGA elites have purged or restricted key CDC and federal public health datasets, especially ones related to vulnerable populations. At the same time inspectors general have been fired and advisory boards that previously provided independent scientific guidance have been dissolved or replaced. Attacks on scientific journals as MAGA’s latest target and calls to investigate editorial boards are also a part of MAGA’s campaign to destroy institutions that validate and disseminate scientific knowledge. By undermining data, journals, and watchdogs, Trump and his MAGA elites have gutted the capacity of outsiders (1) to contest false MAGA narratives, which are now everywhere, and (2) to document public health threats and harms. Link, link, link

Taken together, the evidence shows an old, coherent authoritarian strategy: purge disloyal experts, stack critical institutions with corrupt, incompetent ideological loyalists, kill off disfavored lines of research, e.g., vaccines, environmental health, and seize control over the production, corruption and circulation of health data. These changes dovetail with major special interests goals such as privatizing Medicare, weakening Medicaid and Obamacare protections, and steering public resources toward pay-to-play commercial and political interests and constituencies. The public rhetoric cynically emphasizes safety or draining the swamp, but the consistent throughline in all of this is the subordination of public health infrastructure to the demands of Trump’s coalition of corruption and the ongoing authoritarian project of delegitimizing expertise in the public interest.

Reasonable, open minds might be wondering about is how dangerous is all of this MAGA authoritarianism and corruption destruction of America’s public health infrastructure? Is my family going to be safe with crooks, cracks and crackpots in power?

Those are very good questions. One thing about it is certain, honest answers will never come from Trump or the elite MAGA thugs he put in power. We have to decide for ourselves how dangerous all of this is and how much danger MAGA’s incompetence and corrupt authoritarianism have put our families in.

Link

Why many Republicans have a deep seated suspicion of expertise and science methods

Believe it or not, science is science, not political or a weapon for evil, unless it has been politicized or weaponized for evil. When politics is ripped out of the picture, science is neutral because reality just is what it is. Science doesn’t care what anyone believes the world or humans to be. However, many or maybe most Republicans no longer trust science or scientists, particularly when the science is politically or personally inconvenient. That distrust exists despite vast, undeniable benefits to modern life that come from from modern science. So why distrust science or scientists, and why is it the decline in trust more pronounced with Republicans than with Democrats?

Well, for the most part the answer to that is decades of demagoguery and propaganda from crackpots, rigid ideologues, radical right authoritarians and parties with lots of money at stake. They have intentionally and knowingly fomented irrational skepticism in science. Some science about this helps clarify the situation. First, the difference in trust is mostly partisan. Republicans really are more skeptical. In view of the overwhelming benefits of modern science, one can reasonably believe the distrust is mostly unwarranted (irrational), political and grounded mostly in decades of mendacity, i.e., the moral rot of demagoguery, propaganda, lies, deceit, etc. 

Second, solid evidence indicates that this partisan political divide is rooted in anti-regulatory, anti-government rhetoric, especially from the Reagan era forward. Conservative and authoritarian elites and institutions cynically framed inconvenient scientific findings, e.g., global warming, as ideologically hostile, politically motivated and thus not trustworthy.

Finally, research on right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation predict rejection of science. Right-wing authoritarianism (a personality trait) and related ideological attitudes predict disagreement with scientific consensus in several domains. That arises from generalized but irrational distrust of science and scientists

It's hard to believe, but stuff like this still needs to be said in public. 

Things are gonna have to get much worse

 Things are going to have to get much worse before they get better. The perversely good news is, it is highly likely that much worse times are on their way. 

As horrified as I was on January 6, 2021, I was also happy about the assault on the Capitol. This might just be bad enough to break the fever, I thought. Trump all but explicitly endorsed the murder of his Vice President. He incited a riot, then sat by for three hours while his followers assaulted police officers and ransacked the United States Congress. This had to be the death rattle of Trumpism.

Not so. 

Within a month, McCarthy went to Mar-a-Lago and kissed the ring and McConnell engineered Trump’s acquittal in the Senate. Four years later, the American people re-elected Trump as President. 

For clarity, I’ll describe what I mean by Trumpism and limit myself to one example of each trait. He didn’t invent these traits and habits, but he–like the party he leads–does embody them:

• Demagoguery. Poster Child: “They’re eating the dogs.”

• Gaslighting. Poster Child: Calling legitimate prosecutions “weaponization” of justice while using DOJ to go after the people he has a grudge against–James Comey, Letitia James, Mark Kelly, Jerome Powell.

• Contempt for the rule of law. Poster Child: Illegally firing inspectors general.

• Lies, lies, lies. Poster Child: Calling the Mueller report a “complete and total exoneration.”

• Celebration of brutality. Poster Child: Sending detainees to CECOT and praising it as “great” and a “very strong” facility.

• Contempt for human rights. Poster Child: Utter unconcern at the murder and dismembering of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

• Favoring dominance over cooperation. Poster Child: Abandoning the rules based international order for spheres of influence.

• Celebrating dictators. Poster Child: Fawning praise for Putin, Kim, Xi, Duterte, Bukele.

• Contempt for science. Calling climate science a “hoax.”

• Abjectly unqualified appointees. Poster Child: Pete Hegseth.

• Corruption and self-dealing. Poster Child: $TRUMP memecoin.

• Contempt for democracy. Poster child: Pushing states to intensify their gerrymandering.

I could go on, but none of this is news. Plus, it’s too hard to limit myself to one example in each of these categories. The short version: Trumpism is the antithesis of what we have held out as the American ideal for at least the last 75 years–it is the abandonment of democracy and the rule of law in favor of a mercurial brand of authoritarianism.

Our problem is that all these things were widely known in November, 2024, and easily knowable by anybody with a whiff of interest in our world and access to a phone, TV, or computer. But a plurality of our voters did not find these traits disqualifying. They were concerned about the price of eggs, transgender athletes, and/or immigration. 

Since taking office again, Trump’s net approval rating per Nate Silver’s average of polls has dropped from +11.7 when he was inaugurated last year to -19.6 today: a drop of 41.3 percentage points. This drop has come as Americans increasingly feel the squeeze of inflation, have recoiled from ICE brutality on the streets, and are deeply divided over the Iran war.

It’s not enough. 

Barring a sea change, voters will vote widely for Democrats in the mid-terms. But Republicans may retain control of both chambers of Congress due to the idiosyncrasies of the Senate and steroidal gerrymandering in the House. That may be the best outcome for our country. Here’s why:

The electorate needs to clearly see how Trumpism harms us–that its violations of laws, ideals and norms aren’t bad only in the abstract, but that they concretely hurt regular people. In 2024, voters’ perception of their circumstances in the moment overrode any concern for the rules and norms that define the American ideal. And so, I reason, the electorate will not reject Trumpism until we feel a lot of pain and attribute that pain to Trump and the Republican Party. If the Democrats take one or both chambers of Congress, our pain will be less clearly attributable to Trumpism.

It took Hungary sixteen years to vote Viktor Orbán’s party out of office for a second time. Orbán degraded Hungary’s democracy and rule of law in a manner that the US Republican Party adopted as a model. JD Vance went to Hungary last month to campaign for Orbán’s re-election. But the people had finally had enough. 

Eventually we’ll get there, too. When we do, I hope we find a renewed appreciation for democracy, rule of law, truthfulness, cooperation, human rights. If these qualities aren’t important in their own right, perhaps we will rediscover how they contribute to our material well-being.

[By Dan T. I'm also going to post this over on that other site.]

Trump’s pro-pollution policy

Mining bitcoin is claimed to be a nation security concern that justifies breaking pollution law

Last March, Trump announced that polluting businesses could get a 2-year exemption to Clean Air Act regulations. The exemption could be requested by email. Thousands of exemptions were applied for, and apparently nearly all were granted with no science review impacts on public health or the environment. Lawsuits challenging the legality of the exemptions are pending. Science was not any part of the pollution waiver program.

To implement this gutting of the law, Trump had the EPA set up an email address where companies just had to send an email to make their waiver request. An EPA spokesman said that EPA played no role in the determinations set out in the statute and specifically vested in the President. All waiver requests were forwarded to the White House from the EPA.

Trump claims his waivers are legal based on on Section 112(i)(4) of the Clean Air Act. That law permits the President to exempt stationary pollution sources from compliance for up to two years if two conditions are met: (1) the technology needed to comply is unavailable, and (2) granting the exemption serves national security interests. This provision was nvere used by any president in its 55-year history.

The lawsuits argue that Trump’s justification is baseless because pollution controls were already in use at various facilities. That directly contradicts claims that the technology is unavailable.  Some of the utilities that got waivers publicly stated they were already implementing the pollution controls required by existing regulations. That further undercut Trump’s claim that necessary technologies don’t exist.

In its waiver application, one company that burns coal waste claimed that a significant portion of the electricity it generates is used to mine bitcoin. Keeping the cost of environmental compliance low was claimed to be important for the security of the United States. Needless to say, bitcoin mining is not related to national security. Trump granted the waiver anyway.

Also, a medical sterilizer company Sterigenics, asked for a waiver for nine facilities to continue emitting the carcinogenic gas ethylene oxide. The facilities include ones near Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Charlotte and Atlanta. More than 45,000 people, most of them not white, live within a mile of these facilities, according to federal data. Trump granted that waiver too.

What about the flow of wealth & power?

As with essentially all Trump/MAGA policies, wealth and power is affected. In this case, wiping out pollution regulations strips protections from the public interest. That opens the way for wealth and power to flow to the deregulated businesses. The cost and damage to public health and the environment are socialized for taxpayers to bear. Wealth and power flow from us to the deregulated special interests. By now it is clear that transfer of wealth and power from us to special interests is normal and routine for MAGA policy. It can be called trickle-up economics.

When industries are significantly deregulated, most of the benefits flow to the people who control where the benefits go. No surprise there. At most, the public and public interest rarely sees much benefit. Usually net damage is what the public gets. Deregulation doesn’t help us, but it sure does make the elites happy, and richer. Link, link, link

For what it’s worth, contrary to MAGA demagoguery on the point, the Clean Air Act generates approximately $30 in economic benefits for every $1 spent on compliance. That’s a 30:1 return on investment. EPA’s comprehensive analysis found that in 2020 alone, Clean Air Act Amendments prevented over 230,000 premature deaths, with about 85% of economic benefits attributable to reduced mortality from particulate matter. Through 2020, these regulations were projected to deliver more than $2 trillion in health savings at a compliance cost of $65 billion. Link, link

Because of the high level of public benefit from pollution laws, Trump ordered the EPA to stop calculating health-related monetary benefits when setting pollution limits. Now only economic costs to industry are considered. This tactic conveniently ignores high public benefit-cost ratios. Link, link

Q: Is Trump and MAGA’s pro-pollution deregulation good for the public interest, or does it mostly just transfer wealth and power from us to the few people in power at our expense?