jpedmd, Author at JPs Space

More Government Inflicted Terror on American Streets

From Matt Yglesias’ January 20 Slow Boring, Blame Trump for Trump-era immigration excesses:

“Trump’s surge in enforcement has been accompanied by large-scale racial profiling that’s been blessed by Trump’s appointees on the Supreme Court. They are deliberately surging resources into places controlled by their political opponents rather than places where state and local officials are asking for additional immigration enforcement. They have told ICE personnel that they should cover their faces and wear fatigues rather than maintain the normal appearance of police officers in a democratic society. The Department of Homeland Security’s social media accounts keep winking at white nationalist memes. In Minneapolis, along with detaining illegal immigrants, they are deliberately arresting Somali-born legal residents and trying to come up with pretexts to strip them of refugee status. And of course, when an officer killed an anti-ICE activist after repeatedly violating protocol and after his colleagues needlessly escalated the situation, the Trump administration responded by characterizing the dead woman as a domestic terrorist.”

All of this is terrible. And all of it is Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s doing (with help from the Supreme Court).

And now ICE has committed yet another brutal, inexcusable murder. R.I.P. Alex Pretti, ICU nurse and model American citizen. None of this would be happening if we had decent, moral leadership and if ICE was operating in a lawful manner (and perhaps operating in states where there are many more illegal immigrants, rather than ones the petulant president likes to goad). And the reprehensible lying about what is transpiring – sickening. As the New York Times Editorial Board said today, “The administration is urging Americans to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. Ms. Noem and Mr. Bovino are lying in defiance of obvious truths. They are lying in the manner of authoritarian regimes that require people to accept lies as a demonstration of power.” I am sad and fear for my country.

jpedmd2026-01-25T14:28:14-05:00January 25th, 2026|Home, Musings|

Jamelle Bouie Again

• Another Jamelle Bouie essay I enjoyed from the NYT – This Is Not How a Normal President Speaks. I especially agree with his notion that John Roberts shares some blame for his role in Trump v. United States, which not only stopped ongoing prosecutions that might have derailed DJT’s election, but has fully empowered his dictatorial presidency. Excerpts:

“Trump is, in his mind, an elected monarch — although not an enlightened one — whose whims are law and whose power extends to every inch of the United States and every corner of the Western Hemisphere…Trump’s assertion of unlimited authority — subject only to his moral judgment and his mind (whatever that means) — is a total rejection of popular sovereignty and the logic of the Constitution…

In Trump v. United States, Roberts and his Republican colleagues anointed the office of the presidency with immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts,” defined — somewhat vaguely — as anything extending from the president’s “core constitutional powers.” Never mind that this language had no basis in the constitutional text or its drafting and ratification. Never mind that the framers, in fact, seemed to accept the possibility that a president might be criminally prosecuted for actions in office after impeachment and removal…

If the only things Trump thinks can stop him are his own morality and his own mind, our task — at least for those of us who view the state of things with outrage and anger — is to show him the folly of his words.”

jpedmd2026-01-15T17:04:01-05:00January 15th, 2026|HomeRecommended|

You Can’t Handle the Truth

After watching what actually transpired in the horrific shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an as-yet unnamed ICE agent versus the responses from the current administration, I thought that Steve Vladeck, writing in his One First Substack, had a wonderfully fitting quote from Hannah Arendt, who wrote in her 1967 New Yorker essay “Truth and Politics”:

“The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.”

And so it is.

jpedmd2026-01-08T14:32:48-05:00January 8th, 2026|Home, Musings|

Tr*** Fusion

• From the always excellent Joy of Tech:

(Click the thumbnail to see the whole thing.)

jpedmd2026-01-04T10:06:14-05:00January 4th, 2026|HomeRecommended|

Jack Smith’s sworn testimony

If you are interested in an excellent summary of Jack Smith’s sworn testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, read Parker Molloy, writing in her The Present Age substack here. One excerpt:

“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power.”

Besides the Republican release of the transcript on New Year’s Eve, one might surmise that the timing of the illegal Venezuelan incursion was not entirely coincidental.

jpedmd2026-01-04T09:36:18-05:00January 4th, 2026|Home, Musings|

More on Tr***

• What a tangled web that family weaves – read more about the vast enrichment schemes organized by the Trump crime family here in the NYT.

After that, read about Jack Smith’s testimony in the Times, indicting Tr***. No surprise here:

““Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power,” Mr. Smith said, according to the transcript.”

jpedmd2026-01-02T14:25:59-05:00January 2nd, 2026|HomeRecommended|

More Gun Deaths

And the plague of firearm deaths continues…from Katelyn Jetelina’s Your Local Epidemiologist:

“Almost immediately, social media seized on the tragedy to argue that Australia’s strict gun laws don’t work. I’ll stop that right there. This isn’t a debate because the data are crystal clear:

1. Mass shootings are extremely rare in Australia. Since the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, strict firearm regulations (a buyback program and tight licensing) have kept mass shootings to zero or one per year on average in Australia. By contrast, the U.S. experiences roughly 400–650 mass shootings annually, with more than 46,000 deaths from gun violence each year. As the graph below shows, it’s not even close.
2. A tragedy does not disprove the effectiveness of these laws. Data show that strict regulations reduce deaths. Beyond Australia, places like the U.K., Japan, and Canada have similarly strict gun laws and extremely low rates of mass shootings. We can also see variability within the United States. States with the most lax gun laws have the highest rates of gun violence.
3. Firearm deaths are the leading cause of death for children in the U.S., whereas in Australia, child deaths from firearms are extremely rare, with suicide and road accidents being the top causes.”

jpedmd2025-12-15T16:26:54-05:00December 15th, 2025|Home, Musings|

Modular/Prefab housing

• More than 80% of new homes in Sweden are now completely or partly modular/prefab, with attendant housing cost and environmental benefits. Why can’t we do better in the U.S.?

jpedmd2025-12-15T15:57:24-05:00December 15th, 2025|HomeRecommended|

Reductionism vs Complexity

• A good quick read in the Atlantic discussing why reductionism in physics has to be secondary to studying complexity. I recommend it!
The Truth Physics Can No Longer Ignore by Adam Frank.

jpedmd2025-12-15T18:22:10-05:00December 15th, 2025|HomeRecommended|

mRNA Covid Vaccines Appear Safe

• Are mRNA Covid-19 vaccines safe? More strong evidence that the answer is YES:

From: Semenzato L, Le Vu S, Botton J, et al. COVID-19 mRNA Vaccination and 4-Year All-Cause Mortality Among Adults Aged 18 to 59 Years in France. JAMA Netw Open. 2025;8(12):e2546822. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.46822

“Design, Setting, and Participants This cohort study used data from the French National Health Data System for all individuals in the French population aged 18 to 59 years who were alive on November 1, 2021. Data analysis was conducted from June 2024 to September 2025.

Exposure Exposure was defined as receiving a first mRNA dose between May 1 and October 31, 2021. Individuals who were unvaccinated by November 1, 2021, were assigned a random index date based on vaccinated individuals’ vaccination dates.

Results A total of 22 767 546 vaccinated and 5 932 443 unvaccinated individuals were followed up for a median (IQR) of 45 (44-46) months. Vaccinated individuals were older than unvaccinated individuals (mean [SD] age, 38.0 [11.8] years vs 37.1 [11.4] years), more frequently women (11 688 603 [51.3%] vs 2 876 039 [48.5%]) and had more cardiometabolic comorbidities (2 126 250 [9.3%] vs 464 596 [7.8%]). During follow-up, 98 429 (0.4%) and 32 662 (0.6%) all-cause deaths occurred in the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups, respectively. Vaccinated individuals had a 74% lower risk of death from severe COVID-19 (weighted hazard ratio [wHR], 0.26 [95% CI, 0.22-0.30]) and a 25% lower risk of all-cause mortality (wHR, 0.75 [95% CI, 0.75-0.76]), with a similar association observed when excluding severe COVID-19 death. Sensitivity analysis revealed that vaccinated individuals consistently had a lower risk of death, regardless of the cause. Mortality was 29% lower within 6 months following COVID-19 vaccination (relative incidence, 0.71 [95% CI, 0.69-0.73]).

Conclusions and Relevance In this national cohort study of 28 million individuals, the results found no increased risk of 4-year all-cause mortality in individuals aged 18 to 59 years vaccinated against COVID-19, further supporting the safety of the mRNA vaccines that are widely used worldwide.”

jpedmd2025-12-15T18:22:34-05:00December 9th, 2025|HomeRecommended|

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