California lawmakers pass bill barring authorities from wearing face masks California lawmakers have passed legislation to ban most law enforcement officers from covering their faces during official business.

California FTW. Massachusetts, it's time to step up.
@massgovernor.bsky.social @jamieeldridgema.bsky.social

apnews.com/article/cali...

Democrats: Stand Up this September and Shut Trump Down Democratic leaders can use budget negotiations to protect science — and democracy

tl;dr: Urge your reps to support a "fighting continuing resolution (CR)" that reverses Medicaid cuts, blocks tax breaks for big corp.s and the rich; gets military out of cities, puts scientists in charge of US public health & scientific research scienceandfreedomalliance.substack.com/p/democrats-...

Poll finds low public confidence in federal vaccine policy changes Nearly half say they worry about future vaccine access for children.

This is somewhat reassuring, in a depressing way. Oh and BTW -I am sick to death of the media talking about "vaccine confusion." There's no Fing confusion. Vaccines are being intentionally undermined by grifters. Get it right.
#standupforscience

www.cidrap.umn.edu/childhood-va...

Heatwaves linked to carbon emissions from specific companies Nearly one-quarter of heatwaves would have been ‘virtually impossible’ without global warming — and can be attributed to the emissions of individual energy producers.

"Around 1/4 of the heatwaves recorded between 2000 and 2023 can be directly linked to greenhouse-gas emissions from individual energy giants." They increased the likelihood of 53 heatwaves by a median factor of more than 10,000. Sue the bastards - hit 'em in the money
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Why journalists are reluctant to call Trump an authoritarian – and why that matters for democracy Media framing shapes people’s understanding of the world. A political communication scholar says that journalistic outlets’ failure to call Donald Trump an authoritarian is a problem for democracy.

tl;dr: There are two reasons:
1. Fear (of reprisal, of being called partisan)
2. Thoughtless adherence to "both-sides-ism", aka This Is a Rule I Learned in Journalism School So I Must Follow It Whether It Makes Sense or Not

theconversation.com/why-journali...

Infant mortality rises in states with restrictive abortion laws – new research A new study found that, on average, infant deaths increased by more than 7% in states with laws that limited abortions.

States where abortion restrictions allowed for exceptions based on the health of the mother or fetus saw essentially the same rise.

theconversation.com/infant-morta...

Florida Decided There Were Too Many Children The state’s elimination of vaccine mandates is a courageous first step toward decluttering itself of any excess kids.

Alexandra Petri FTW
@petridishes.bsky.social
#standupforscience

www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

What to know about Massachusetts' move to set its own vaccine rules Despite changing federal vaccine policies, Massachusetts will require local health insurers to cover new COVID boosters and other routine shots recommended by the state.

Thank you, @massgovernor.bsky.social !
#standupforscience

www.wbur.org/news/2025/09...

Physicians at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have set up a website that covers pediatric health misinformation that's going around and provides evidence-based info on the topics. For clinicians and parents.
www.chop.edu/pediatric-he...

As national consensus on vaccines unravels, Mass. and other states chart disparate paths - The Boston Globe Governor Maura Healey essentially wrote a prescription for COVID boosters for every person in the state over the age of 5, as Florida moved to lift all vaccine mandates.

Thank you, Governor Healey
@massgovernor.bsky.social
www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/03/m...

Write members of Congress - Will COVID-19 vaccines be available this fall? It is clear that HHS Secretary RFK Jr. is on a dangerous and fast-moving path to make COVID-19 vaccines totally unavailable here in the U.S. With COVID-19 cases on the rise in many parts of the US an...

#RFKJr wants to take away #COVID #vaccines (and then move on to #childhood #preventable #diseases). You can see it in the works now. Write to your member of #Congress now. This makes it easy to do so. @defendpublichealth.bsky.social actionnetwork.org/letters/writ...

A photograph of the front page of The New York Times dated September 2, 2025. The main headline reads: “In Blitz on Science, Experts Warn of an Autocratic Tilt.” Below it are two featured articles. The first, by Apoorva Mandavilli, is titled “C.D.C. Left Battling for Its Survival” and describes turmoil at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became health secretary, leading to staff losses, leadership resignations, and questions about the agency’s legitimacy. The second article, by William J. Broad, is titled “Are Research Cuts Fighting Red Tape or Free Inquiry?” and discusses threats to science and research under political pressure.

A1 above the fold in the @nytimes.com. The message is getting through. Keep pushing everyone. We can save the #CDC, save the #NIH from the clutches of #RussellVought #StephenMiller and #DonaldTrump. Keep the pressure up on your members of Congress and the media (letters to editors, op-eds).

Whistleblower says Trump officials copied millions of Social Security numbers A whistleblower complaint says the personal data of over 300 million Americans was copied to a private cloud account to allow access by former members of the Department of Government Efficiency team.

So pretty much everyone?

“A whistleblower says that a former senior DOGE official now at the Social Security Administration copied the Social Security numbers, names and birthdays of over 300 million Americans to a private section of the agency's cloud.”

Geoff Brumfiel/NPR

Of note: The guy who threw the sandwich WASN'T wearing a mask, unlike the cowardly ICE thugs

Potentially reassuring news:
#resist

The signers of the FEMA Declaration have all been placed illegally on administrative leave for speaking out. Let’s support them in their resistance to the autocracy!
Stand Up for Science!

College students are bombarded by misinformation, so this professor taught them fact-checking 101 − here’s what happened Just 2½ hours of online instruction made students a lot better at identifying misinformation on YouTube and TikTok.

College professors (and high-school teachers), spread the word!
#standupforscience
theconversation.com/college-stud...

Every newspaper in America should publish this statement. RFK is a grifter, just like his boss, and he's going to have a tremendous amount of blood on his hands.
#standupforscience

Boromir from Lord of the Rings with the text "One does not simply remove government data"

Concerned about a specific federal dataset being altered or removed? We at the #DataRescueProject have you covered.

Submit to our Nominations Tool (bit.ly/DRP-nominati...) or check out our portal (portal.datarescueproject.org)

This is huge. And appalling. And not at all surprising. If we get another COVID-level event (or worse) in the next few years, we're in serious trouble.

Glad that states in the NE are banding together on public health - hope it'll be enough, at least for folks in that region.
#standupforscience

🚨🚨🚨FEMA employees just sounded the alarm with their Katrina Declaration. They’re warning that Trump’s dismantling is gutting disaster response, erasing climate science, and putting lives at risk. Read it, sign on, and stand with them.

Now it’s #FEMA workers standing up to an administration that is destroying our capacity to respond to natural disasters. These workers have more integrity and courage than anyone in this White House. To them, their duty sacred. To protect Americans from the worst that nature can bring.

RFK Jr and MAHA: dangerous, emboldened, and escalating

"a dangerous pseudoscientific programme of work that supports a corrupt, unscientific wellness industry, seeks to discredit mainstream medicine, and portrays institutions and experts as enemies, not partners"

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

US Supreme Court allows NIH to cut $2 billion in research grants The decision will hinder lawsuits against grant terminations, legal specialists say.

The illegal loss of funding for these grants is a profound loss of progress in research. Before funding, these grants were all subjected to highly rigorous peer-review by experts in the research topics. NIH and Congress approved the funds. Trump stole them away.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

This is what fascism looks like.
#resist

A F*ing GAG ORDER. You're not allowed to talk about HOW TO CONTAIN AN OUTBREAK THAT COULD KILL PEOPLE. These people are beyond evil
#standupforscience #resist

NIH Grants Fueled $95 Billion In FY 2024 Economic Activity, Finds New Report National Institutes of Health grants generated almost $95 billion in economic activity nationwide in FY 2024 according to a new report by United for Medical Research.

NIH funding had a 156% basic annual return in 2024 (ie not taking into account any previous and/or future investments and/or returns). I’m no finance expert but it seems crazy that we’re all going to have that thrown away cause some people think public schools want to turn kids into transgender mice

Eight states, including Mass., met this week in a step toward public health independence from the federal government - The Boston Globe Northeast states are seeking closer collaboration amid Trump's public health policies.

Yes!! More of this, please. And not just in the public-health sphere - want to see this for law enforcement (don't cooperate w/ illegal ICE activities) and protection of LGBTQ+ folks, among other things www.bostonglobe.com/2025/08/22/m...
#standupforscience #resist

Rainbow crosswalk outside Pulse nightclub removed overnight “We did everything according to state law, everything was compliant,” said Patty Sheehan, the city’s first openly gay elected official. “FDOT never moves that quickly with anything.&#82…

The rainbow crosswalk outside the Pulse nightclub site in Orlando, one of the most significant LGBTQ sites in Florida, has been removed as state and federal transportation officials aim to wipe "political banners" from public streets

www.orlandosentinel.com/2025/08/21/r...

They want it to spread and get worse. That way they have an excuse to keep troops on the streets