Bryn Nelson

Kennedy sharpens vaccine attacks, without scientific backing HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims that the aluminum ingredients in vaccines cause a variety of harmful reactions, from allergies to autism. Scientists say that's wrong and warn of risks if th...

www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-...

Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino, Federal Agents Repeatedly Lied About What They Did During Aggressive Immigration Raids: Judge U.S. District Court Judge Sara Ellis used a blistering 233-page ruling to painstakingly detail how agents falsely asserted in court and in official reports that they had been confronted with unrelenti...

Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, and the agents who led a series of aggressive raids across Chicago, falsely depicted ordinary Chicagoans as professional agitators determined to mount a violent resistance, a federal judge determined. news.wttw.com/2025/11/24/b...

High school senior, a U.S. citizen, detained by ICE in Oregon The 17-year-old was held more than five hours Friday in an ICE facility, his brother said.

The teenager told officers he was a U.S. citizen, but an officer broke the car’s driver’s side window and detained him. In a video, the boy can be heard telling an officer that he is a citizen, to which the officer replies, “Get out of the car” and “I don’t care.”
www.oregonlive.com/portland/202...

That MAGA Account Might Be a Troll From Pakistan How X blew up its own platform with a new location feature

I wrote about the fake account blowup on X this weekend. A genuine post-truth nightmare and proof that these companies have polluted their platforms so thoroughly and traded reality for profit that they've undermined the very idea of what the internet is supposed to be.

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It’s blowing my mind that schools, universities, public services would run headlong into this. We spent 15 years documenting black boxes. This is a black box in a black hole!

DHS quietly corrects inaccurate information after Charlotte Observer report As Border Patrol arrived in Charlotte, DHS falsely said a Honduran man charged with murder was released under NC’s “sanctuary policies.”

DHS claims that an accused murderer was released from a Charlotte jail and was “back onto North Carolina’s streets because of sanctuary policies.”

The local paper reported that was false.

So DHS quietly removed that statement—and never admitted they lied. www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/c...

By and large, however, the allegations against the other social media platforms are less detailed than those against Meta. The internal documents cited by the plaintiffs allege: Meta intentionally designed its youth safety features to be ineffective and rarely used, and blocked testing of safety features that it feared might be harmful to growth. Meta required users to be caught 17 times attempting to traffic people for sex before it would remove them from its platform, which a document described as “a very, very, very high strike threshold." Meta recognized that optimizing its products to increase teen engagement resulted in serving them more harmful content, but did so anyway. Meta stalled internal efforts to prevent child predators from contacting minors for years due to growth concerns, and pressured safety staff to circulate arguments justifying its decision not to act.

17 strikes and you’re out. 💀

Meta buried 'causal' evidence of social media harm, US court filings allege - The Economic Times Meta reportedly halted internal research into the mental health impacts of Facebook and Instagram after finding causal evidence of harm. Internal documents revealed users reported lower depression and...

“Meta shut down internal research into the mental health effects of Facebook after finding causal evidence that its products harmed users’ mental health, according to unredacted filings in a lawsuit by U.S. school districts against Meta and other social media platforms.”

The skinny on this is that *any* grant can be terminated at *any* time for *any* reason, making planning impossible.

For more background on this, see my thread from a few months ago: bsky.app/profile/kgan...

Exclusive: CDC to end all monkey research Studies related to HIV and other infectious diseases will be phased out, sources say; fate of the agency's animals remains unclear

EXCLUSIVE: CDC to end all monkey studies. Decision handed down by recent college grad and former DOGE employee who is now deputy chief of staff at the agency. Animals were being used in studies of HIV prevention. Some may be euthanized. My latest for @science.org

Oops!

A Battle with My Blood When I was diagnosed with leukemia, my first thought was that this couldn’t be happening to me, to my family.

In this tough and moving essay, Caroline Kennedy's 35-year-old daughter Tatiana Schlossberg reveals that she is terminally ill with leukemia. She has some choice words about how her cousin Bobby has made the limited time she has left worse. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

White House blew past legal concerns in deadly strikes on drug boats The Trump administration sidestepped skeptical lawyers across national security agencies as it pursued a military campaign against alleged narcotraffickers, officials say.

The Trump administration sidestepped skeptical lawyers across national security agencies as it pursued a military campaign against alleged narcotraffickers, according to multiple current and former officials familiar with the debates.

www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

If You Use Gmail, You're Going To Want To Turn Off This 1 Automatic Setting ASAP Plus: a quick guide to the two-step process for opting out.

Google defaulting all Gmail users to a setting that enables Google to harvest all your emails into chatbot training is straight-up evil and invasive.

www.huffpost.com/entry/opt-ou...

This perfectly encapsulates the "performative neutrality" of which @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social and I accuse the New York Times--with respect to both climate and vaccines--in #ScienceUnderSiege. In fact, it goes beyond that, engaging in outright antiscience pandering:

As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers striving to improve the lives of others, I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers; slashed billions in funding from the National Institutes of Health, the world's largest sponsor of medical research; and threatened to oust the panel of medical experts charged with recommending preventive cancer screenings. Hundreds of N.I.H. grants and clinical trials were cancelled, affecting thousands of patients. I worried about funding for leukemia and bone-marrow research at Memorial Sloan Kettering. I worried about the trials that were my only shot at remission. Early in my illness, when I

Just an absolutely gutting essay by Tatiana Schlossberg, a writer, mother of two young children, and cousin of RFK Jr who is dying of leukemia.

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

White House blew past legal concerns in deadly strikes on drug boats The Trump administration sidestepped skeptical lawyers across national security agencies as it pursued a military campaign against alleged narcotraffickers, officials say.

On the patently unlawful boat strikes

It's hard for USGs to claim ‘mistake of law’ or ‘advice of counsel’ – when they’re firing lawyers who wouldn't sign off on the strikes.

WaPo's new revelations on firings or removals:

1) CIA General Counsel
2) NSC Legal Adviser
3) CIA Mission Center’s lawyer
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ICYMI Dept of Education will no longer considers these professional degrees:

Nursing
Public health
Social work
Physician assistant
Occupational therapy
Physical therapy
Audiology
Speech-language pathology
Social work
Counseling & therapy
Health Admin

A smaller health workforce makes us all sicker

Nursing Excluded as 'Professional' Degree By Department of Education The Trump administration's "One Big Beautiful Bill" excludes nursing from graduate degree programs deemed as 'professional.' The move impacts loan funding, healthcare delivery, and patient care access...

The Dept of Education no longer classifies Nursing or Accounting degrees, among others, as "professional" when considering reimbursement for federal loans.

Two professions where shortages are rampant. Ain't gonna get better with this!

nurse.org/news/nursing...

“Embarrassing” and “horrifying”: CDC workers describe the new vaccines and autism page "The best way I can put it is it feels like we're on a hijacked airplane."

New from me: I talked to CDC staffers about the new vaccines and autism page. They said things like:

“The best way I can put it is it feels like we’re on a hijacked airplane.”

“I think people are starting to see that we can’t fulfill our mission here.”

I had terrifying conversations with four former CDC officials, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, Dr. Debra Houry, Dr. Dan Jernigan, and Dr. Nikki Romanik, about the formerly prestigious public health agency.

All of them told me that any information coming out of the CDC can no longer be trusted.

One of CDC’s final blows. And what it means for you. Where to find trusted health information now?

"At this time, I suggest the general public avoid the CDC website." --epidemiologist @kkjetelina.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/yourloca...

The Trump Admin’s War on Data Is Compromising Major Health Advancements for Black Americans Thanks to a 2009 medical breakthrough, researchers could be on the precipice...

Really important article about how the White House's anti-DEI crusade is cutting off data for new potential breakthroughs for African-Americans who disproportionately suffer from end-stage kidney disease. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-m...

Stop laying off copy editors and then complaining about errors and lack of reader trust challenge

Waste not: how researchers harness pee and poo for science It might seem gross, but these materials are treasure troves for research.

A great new feature in Nature suggests why you shouldn't pooh-pooh #poo. Or #pee! With some comments from me on getting over the "ick factor."

Hannah Docter-Loeb did a nice job describing some of the many critical applications (some of which are in Flush!). 💩🧪

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Elon Musk’s Grokipedia cites Stormfront — a neo-Nazi forum — dozens of times, study finds An analysis by researchers at Cornell University is the first comprehensive look at Grokipedia since Musk launched his project last month.

NEW: Elon Musk's Grokipedia cites a neo-Nazi website 42 times, researchers say www.nbcnews.com/tech/elon-mu...

Trump: Democrats ‘traitors’ for telling military not to follow unlawful orders The president said lawmakers who appeared in a video committed “seditious behavior” and should be arrested and put on trial for treason.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but he called for their execution, which deserves at least to be in the dek.

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