Russell L. Johnson

The Worst People Have the Most Power The CDC shooting reveals who is worth of admiration—and who is not.

"For their whole lives, Trump and Kennedy have gotten away with contemptible behavior. They occupy high office after living sordid lives...The contrast with David Rose, Marine and police officer, who lived a life of courage and public service, is striking."

www.thebulwark.com/p/the-worst-...

Gotta get rid of the woke and DEI and return to merit-based hiring.

The wildest thing about this era is watching so many institutions say out loud yeah, we’re done committing ourselves to excellence, we’re going to specialize in the coddling of mediocre white men

In some ways, the drug prices thing is the platonic ideal of Trump assertions:

An incredibly wrong statement that isn’t sensible much less possible, a media that won’t push back, and an American discourse that will adopt it uncritically, making culture just a hair worse. Great work, all around.

Under the current regime, America is running — full reverse — into the 19th century.

NYTimes headline reading "NYC Mass Shooting Was Nearly Impossible to Prevent, Experts Say"

Onion headline: 'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens'

THEY LITERALLY DID THE ONION HEADLINE

Trump's mental decline is on vivid display as he rages about Epstein, windmills | Opinion It was nice of Donald Trump to travel to Scotland and show our European allies we're led by a self-absorbed, weird man in obvious mental decline.

At least USA today had a headline calling out the mental decline on display here. It was an opinion piece, but at least we finally have a mainstream media headline. May there be many more.

www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...

Sorta feels like "they are actively gutting cancer research" should be finding more purchase out there

Kennedy to oust care task force, WSJ reports; HHS says no decision yet U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is planning to remove all the members of an advisory panel that determines what cancer screenings and other preventive health measures insurers must cover, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

www.reuters.com/business/hea...

Thimerosal isn’t mercury. But to RFK Jr, facts don’t matter. RFK Jr. just made vaccine disinformation federal policy. People will die from preventable illness—and that’s the point.

Thimerosal isn’t mercury. But to RFK Jr, facts don’t matter.
open.substack.com/pub/immunolo...

When you’re so busy crowing about your political motivations that you forget to pretend you did it for the Jews.

America in a nutshell.

#BookSky

I see we’re at the “OK, Nixon will release his own transcripts of some of the Watergate tapes” stage of this story.

The Trump Administration Is About to Incinerate 500 Tons of Emergency Food Federal workers warned for months that the high-energy biscuits would go to waste.

"Five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign-aid programs, the Trump administration has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people who need it"
@hana-kiros.bsky.social, on spending $130,000 to burn food worth $800,000
www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

Red states, defying reality, are reclassifying gas as a “green” fuel The designation, pushed by right-wing think tank ALEC, allows fossil fuel firms to compete for clean energy funding.

Red states, defying reality, are reclassifying gas as a “green” fuel

[from our @climatedesk.org partners, @grist.org]

In 1996 Al Gore caught hell for making fund raising calls from a White House phone!

Much as I would not dare to predict the consequences of this war, I do think we can summarize it thusly so far:

A smart and evil man manipulated a stupid and evil man into a war against a fanatical and evil regime.

‘Extremely disturbing and unethical’: new rules allow VA doctors to refuse to treat Democrats, unmarried veterans Trump order allows VA staff to decline providing healthcare to patients based on political affiliation or marital status

This is pretty appalling: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., ladies and gentlemen. One of the great minds of the 13th century….

I loathe Musk as much as anyone else but for a sitting president to openly threaten a private citizen over what political donations he or she chooses to make is a reminder of how authoritarian this country is becoming by the day - by the hour even!

Anti-science kills: From Soviet embrace of pseudoscience to accelerated attacks on US biomedicine This Essay argues that COVID-19 exposed how a rising tide of anti-science rhetoric and activities can dramatically exploit society's vulnerabilities to an infectious disease, suggesting that anti-scie...

Dr. Peter Hotez wrote an open access essay published in PLOS Biology in 2021.

Trump, like Stalin, wants nothing more that fealty of his servants. Even it means hiding or destroying information resulting in harm, death, and destruction doing so.
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

The MAHA Report Cites Studies That Don’t Exist The Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” report misinterprets some studies and cites others that don’t exist, according to the listed authors.

This is what happens when you put internet conspiracy theorists in charge of major government departments.

It really is amazing how bad Trump has been at everything he's ever tried.

This should be the end of Noem’s career in public life. It almost certainly won’t be, however, which is itself damning.

“The rise in treasury yields since Trump’s tariffs were announced leads to an increase in US debt interest payments that is larger than all the DOGE savings.”
@jburnmurdoch.ft.com
(via @kellycnbc.bsky.social)

bsky.app/profile/jbur...

DOGE “cost cutting” goals chart by @steverattner.bsky.social:

Exactly this.