From the MAGA death chronicles: MAGA attacks infant HBV vaccination, babies will die

The NYT reports (not paywalled) that Dr. Brainworm's (RFK Jr) politicized, pseudoscience CDC (Centers for Disease Control) has changed the science-based standard recommendation to get infants vaccinated against HBV (hepatitis B virus). The new magic and crackpottery based recommendation is shown below. The vaccinations at birth and 1 month are no longer recommended despite data proving that lives are saved using the current vaccination schedule.

A modeling study released in December 2025 by researchers in partnership with HepVu, the Hepatitis B Foundation, and the National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable projected that delaying the birth dose to 2 months for infants whose mothers test negative could result in at least 1,400 preventable hepatitis B infections among children, 304 excess cases of liver cancer, and 482 preventable deaths for each year the revised recommendation remains in place, along with over $222 million in excess healthcare costs.​ If the vaccination schedule is delayed to a first vaccination at 12 months of age, the projections increase to 2,700 preventable infections and over $313 million in excess healthcare costs annually.

Infants face catastrophic outcomes if infected. Ninety percent of infants infected at birth develop chronic infection, and one in four chronically infected children will die prematurely from liver disease or liver cancer. Children infected between ages 1-5 have a 25-50% chance of developing chronic infection.

A comprehensive review by the CIDRAP Vaccine Integrity Project examining more than 400 studies spanning 40 years found no evidence that delaying the universal hepatitis B birth dose improves safety or effectiveness. The review found that birth dose vaccination does not cause any short- or long-term serious adverse events or deaths.

The NYT article commented:

Dr. Noele Nelson, a hepatitis expert at Cornell Public Health and a senior author on the C.D.C.’s previous guidelines for the vaccine, said the advisers did not “follow the scientific evidence, and risk undoing decades of progress in hepatitis B prevention, eroding vaccine confidence, and causing confusion among parents and health care providers.”

Mr. Kennedy fired all 17 previous members of the vaccine panel in June, replacing them with people who largely share his [pseudoscientific] skepticism about vaccines. Meetings of the new members, most of whom have no experience in vaccine research or clinical practice, have been marred by disorganization and intense disagreements, sometimes devolving into shouting matches. (emphasis added)

CDC vaccine experts 

Q: Once there is solid evidence of an increase in infant deaths from HBV infections under the new recommended HBV vaccination schedule, does that make Dr. Brainworm, his crackpot experts and his boss evil people who have committed Trump homicide, i.e., killers, or are they (a) merely good people doing what they think is best for us, or (b) something else, e.g., ignorant but making excusable honest mistakes?

Qs: Killer or not, or do we need to wait for the mortality data to accumulate? Is it responsible or not to suggest he and his crackpot pseudoscience cadre and his boss Trump are killers?

Dr. Brainworm - a killer?

Q: Does being deceived and manipulated by MAGA crackpottery absolve parents of the deaths, harms and costs of them being deceived and manipulated?

Clueless, therefore not responsible 

for their actions?

An editorial shift at the NYT: Authoritarian institutional capture

An incoherent opinion defending the indefensible

Context

One astute observer of politics recently noticed that something strange seemed to be going on at the NYT (New York Times). The newspaper openly positions itself as pro-democracy and staunchly opposed to Trump and MAGA authoritarianism and corruption. Despite that public face, the observer pieced together information that led to an assessment that the NYT has undergone a major editorial shift. The shift constituted what the observer called "a retreat from pluralism and from the democratic purpose the NYT so recently claimed to defend".

That assessment was based on several congruent observations. One was that NYT reporting and editorializing about threats to democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties and the public interest generally from Trump and MAGA elites had shifted. There was an apparently intentional, strategic omission of context and facts readers needed to assess what was being reported. What the NYT left hidden was the scope and depth of MAGA authoritarianism. Instead of core facts needed to assess MAGA politics and actions, NYT reporting and commentary had degraded into superficial reporting of selected facts and MAGA propaganda without context or mention impacts on democracy or the public interest.

In essence, the argument is that the NYT and a lot of other national reporting and commentary frame Trump and MAGA authoritarianism in ways that normalize and justify what is clearly abnormal and unjustifiable.

The Trump administration has waged unprecedented lawfare against the NYT. Direct legal attacks include a $15 billion defamation lawsuit filed in Sept. 2025 over 2024 election coverage. However, it is unclear if the NYT shift results mostly from public threats that Trump and MAGA elites have leveled at the NYT, or if other factors dominate. Authoritarian capture of political discourse has become widespread and that could easily be a major factor in the NYT editorial and reporting changes. NYT journalists reported explicit pressure to avoid appearing biased, leading to both-sides framing even when one side openly defies democratic norms. There is fear at the NYT of (1) loss of access to news sources, and (2) being labeled partisan for accurately describing MAGA's authoritarian actions.

The NYT hasn't become pro-Trump or pro-authoritarian, at least not yet. But it is institutionally captured. Its commitment to "viewpoint diversity" now includes perspectives that, if implemented, would destroy the free press it claims to defend.

An incoherent opinion defending the indefensible

An NYT opinion by Sarah Isgur (not paywalled), senior editor at The Dispatch, argues that the USSC (US Supreme Court) knows what it is doing, and it is good. Her argument is pretty simple. To increase accountability of executive agencies, the USSC is merely rebalancing power among the branches of government. She asserts that this not just transferring power to a unitary executive with legal immunity for committing crimes while in office. A unitary executive is close to a dictator, since he is now legally above the law while in office. 

In her opinion Isgur also claims, incoherently, that the Founders would be "shocked" not by a presidency that has accumulated vast new powers, but by a Congress that has given up a lot of its power. She argues that congress has too little power. But in the same opinion she notes that the USSC is on the verge of giving the president a whole lot more power at the expense of congress. The case, Trump v. Slaughter, could decide the fate of dozens of independent administrative agencies and the president’s ability to control them.

Isgur denigrates members of congress like this:

They [the Founders] would be confused that so many of its more than 500 members seem to have no further ambition than to act like glorified Instagram influencers**.**  

That may be true to some extent, but not very much. That aside, how that justifies giving an already too powerful and corrupt but above the law president more power is clear as mud. Her NYT opinion claims to strengthen Congress but she directly proposes supporting the USSC to weaken it further by transferring congressional delegations to unlimited presidential control in Trump v. Slaughter.

Points for consideration

Does this opinion mostly amount to the NYT publishing legal arguments that sanitize authoritarian power grabs as constitutional theory, the Founder's intent or some other rationalization?

If Isgur is right that the Founders would be shocked at how wimpy congress has become, is it irrational for her to argue that the presidency needs more power, which would be taken from congress in the pending Trump v. Slaughter case? Do her arguments amount to a blatant contradiction that exposes intellectual dishonesty? Does that dishonesty extend to the NYT itself, or is the newspaper walled off from criticism by saying it's her opinion, not ours?

Current GOP on Conspiracies.

 

https://manhattan.institute/article/the-new-gop-survey-analysis-of-americans-overall-todays-republican-coalition-and-the-minorities-of-maga

 On specific theories:

• The 2020 election: Just over half of the Current GOP (51%) believes that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was fraudulent, while 41% say that view is probably or definitely false. Among New Entrant Republicans, support for this belief rises to 60%.
• Vaccines and autism: One in three in the Current GOP (33%) believe that childhood vaccines cause autism. This view is more common among college graduates (42%) than non-graduates (29%), and among New Entrant Republicans (47%).
• 9/11 conspiracies: Four in ten in the Current GOP (41%) believe that the 9/11 attacks were likely orchestrated or permitted by U.S. government actors. Belief is highest among men (48%), college graduates (51%), Republicans under 50 (53%, compared with 34% of those over 50), and New Entrant Republicans (53%). Among black GOP voters the figure is 58%, and among Hispanic GOP voters, 56%.
• Holocaust denial or minimization: Nearly four in ten in the Current GOP (37%) believe the Holocaust was greatly exaggerated or did not happen as historians describe. Younger men are especially likely to hold this view (54% of men under 50 vs. 39% of women under 50). Among men over 50, 41% agree, compared with 18% of women over 50. Racial divides are particularly striking:
  • 77% of Hispanic GOP voters
  • 30% of white GOP voters
  • 66% of black GOP voters
• Moon landing: A similarly sized chunk of the Current GOP (36%) believes that the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked by NASA. Again, younger men are more likely to hold this view (51% of men under 50 vs. 38% of women under 50). There are stark racial divides: while only 31% of white GOP voters believe the conspiracy, this rises to 59% among Hispanic Republicans and 63% among black Republicans.                           

Damn, now THAT above link breaks down a lot of the attitudes of today's GOP and MAGA types. Too much to post all of it here but worth delving into that link by the Manhattan institute.

I just posted the conspiracy theory parts because it is just too bizarre that there are still this many folks who believe those conspiracies. 

Made me laugh.

Balancing of interests in the law is under attack

 Context

Since the founding of the Republic, American laws have generally taken into account cost-benefit for affected people and interests when a law has significant impacts. Balancing of interests has been ubiquitous in constitutional law since the early 20th century. Even when absolutists claim the Constitution is silent about balancing, e.g., clauses asserting a right "shall not be infringed" or congress "shall make no law", their decisions are usually crafted in ways that actually do some balancing, even when that is denied.

Although absolutism and hostility toward balancing of interests is a minority legal view, it is arguably dogma among MAGA legal practitioners, generally including all six Republicans on the US Supreme Court bench. That makes absolutism a powerful influence on modern law despite it being a minority position. The majority view is that constitutional rights and laws must be interpreted in a manner that is sensitive to their purpose and to the necessities of society and the law.

Some legal scholars have called out the hypocrisy of selective anti-balancing originalism in the law. That brand of originalism almost always results in partisan outcomes, not principled outcomes. It uses the law as means to partisan ends. One scholar asserted that originalism is a form of a living constitution that is simply not honest about its values, aims, and commitments. In the hands of MAGA US Supreme Court judges, originalism functions as an after-the-fact rationalization, and an anti-democracy weapon, for partisan decisions made on partisan grounds.

In short, anti-balancing legal scholars and judges are, or at least look like they are, asserting anti-balancing absolutism as a smoke screen for MAGA authoritarianism. The current US Supreme Court is increasingly extending absolutist levels of protection to current favored rights, e.g., speech, religious exercise, bearing arms, and holding property, while zeroing out protection for currently" disfavored rights, e.g., abortion, voting rights and consumer rights and protections.

The Founders' Approach

The Founders explicitly embraced balancing. James Madison cautioned against "absolute restrictions in cases that are doubtful, or where emergencies may overrule them". He understood that rigid rules will not be well-respected when they significantly oppose the public interest. Jefferson similarly acknowledged that declarations protecting free press will not take away the liability of the printers for false facts printed" and that protecting religious freedom "does not give impunity to criminal acts, dictated by religious error. The historical record makes clear that the Founders assumed rights had limits.

MAGA Hypocrisy

Today's conservative Supreme Court majority claims to reject interest balancing in favor of "text, history, and tradition." However, historian Eric Foner has observed that originalism is intellectually indefensible because there is no important document in the world that has only one original meaning or one original intention.

The hypocrisy is glaring. The same justices who eliminated interest balancing for gun safety laws (the 2022 Bruen decision) employ balancing when it favors preferred outcomes. Preferred outcomes include expanding executive power (under the authoritarian unitary executive theory), religious exemptions (allowing discrimination against target groups), and weakening protections for voting rights. Legal scholars document that when convenient, conservative originalists announce decisions and doctrines that have no basis in the Constitution's original meaning.

The Authoritarian Threat

The net effect of MAGA's selective anti-balancing dogma is authoritarian. Recent scholarship argues that the widespread adoption of originalism has diminished the ability of the United States to stare down anti-democratic threats because it has eroded two key bulwarks against authoritarianism, namely individual rights and an independent judiciary.

Since January 2025, the Supreme Court has sided with the Trump administration in 20 of 23 shadow-docket rulings. Lower-court judges who ruled against the administration have been consistently overturned by a Supreme Court majority that claims fidelity to constitutional text while functionally expanding executive power beyond anything the Founders contemplated. There's little to no balancing in that.

Public Ignorance

Most Americans remain unaware that abstract-sounding debates over "originalism" versus "balancing" determine whether their rights have practical meaning. When courts refuse to balance, they either make rights absolute by blocking all regulation, or they defer to government or special interest power. Neither outcome reflects the Founders' nuanced understanding that liberty requires both protection and prudent limits. Both are anti-democracy

The stakes are democracy itself. Empowered originalism creates a legal environment where authoritarianism is viable and democracy weakened. When a an anti-democratic constitutional dogma becomes a weapon wielded for partisan ends, the rule of law and democracy have eroded. Understanding this battle is an important first step toward defending democracy and self-governance.