• Heather Cox Richardson’s  July 6 Letters from an American is worth reading. Some excerpts:

“Brad Plummer of the New York Times noted that the budget reconciliation bill passed by Republicans last week and signed into law on Friday boosts fossil fuels and destroys government efforts to address climate change, even as scientists warn of the acute dangers we face from extreme heat, wildfires, storms, and floods like those in Texas. Scott Dance of the Washington Post added yesterday that the administration has slashed grants for studying climate change and has limited or even ended access to information about climate science, taking down websites and burying reports.”

“On June 30, the medical journal The Lancet published an analysis of the impact of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and consequences of its dismantling. The study concluded that from 2001 through 2021, programs funded by USAID prevented nearly 92 million deaths in 133 countries. It estimates that the cuts the Trump administration has made to USAID will result in more than 14 million deaths in the next five years. About 4.5 million will be children under 5.”

Modi ND et al. Assessing the system-instruction vulnerabilities of large language models to malicious conversion into health disinformation chatbots. Ann Intern Med 2025 Jun 24; [e-pub]. (https://doi.org/10.7326/ANNALS-24-03933)

• One more sad action from this administration:
“Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has taken the extraordinary step of firing the expert panel that advises the CDC, saying the action is needed to restore faith in vaccines.”
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/rfk-jr-hhs-moves-to-restore-public-trust-in-vaccines-45495112

From NPR:
“Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician and Republican representing Louisiana, cast a key vote to advance Kennedy’s nomination to the full Senate. In a floor speech after the committee vote, Cassidy said he was able to vote for Kennedy after securing assurances that he would “maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommendations without changes.””

“If confirmed, he will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes.”

Senator Bill Cassidy, Feb 4, 2025

• Once again, Tom Friedman lays out the many ways that this president is failing us and our children’s future.   Read Trump’s Guilded Gut Instinct in the NYT.  From the essay:

“In sum, what you are seeing from this Trump II administration, and its bended-knee Congress, is a dangerous, undisciplined, intellectually inconsistent farce that we will pay dearly for in the future. Major geoeconomic moves are being made by one man who has done no homework, modeling or stress-testing and has fostered little apparent interagency process, with no congressional oversight or apparent reference to history.

If you think this is not dangerous, just keep in mind that the Trump Organization Inc. over the years filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for six different businesses. There was a reason for that: the operating style and values of its boss.”

• If you are a victim of or interested in the damage being done to science, Action Lab is worth a look. It’s self-description:

“We are a living database that grows through user entries and supplies action items for the various issues scientists are facing in the wake of destructive anti-science policies. Filter our database by action type, by location, by deadline, or by the amount of time you have to spend today. Find a way to act that is right for you. “

• Peter Baker writes in the NYT on what is the most corrupt administration in U.S. history.  An excerpt:

By conventional Washington standards, according to students of official graft, the still-young Trump administration is a candidate for the most brazen use of government office in American history, perhaps eclipsing even Teapot Dome, Watergate and other famous scandals…“He’s not trying to give the appearance that he’s doing the right thing anymore,” said Fred Wertheimer, founder of Democracy 21 and a longtime advocate for government ethics. “There’s nothing in the history of America that approaches the use of the presidency for massive personal gain. Nothing.”

• Writing in the Atlantic, Charlie Warzel has an excellent piece on X’s descent into a cesspool. It’s worth a read: What Are People Still doing on X?  An excerpt:

“You may not have any interest in participating in a culture war. The problem is that on X, everything is a culture war. Culture war is the very point of the MAGA AI slop the platform traffics in and the viscerally cruel White House X account. Culture war is behind Tucker Carlson’s choice to debut his post-Fox show on X and why Alex Jones livestreams on the platform every day. West’s nihilistic neo-Nazi single is an act of culture war: Its message isn’t just that X has energized his ideas, but that the platform renders people like Ye unignorable. Only Musk could shut this machine down, but plenty of others lend it their credibility and happily turn the cranks, ensuring that the culture war grinds on and on.”

• Hannah Ritchie writes in her Sustainability by numbers substack on the carbon footprint of using ChatGPT and concludes that certainly for the average user, it’s OK.

• A podcast & transcript from the Atlantic: The Most Corrupt Presidency in American History

No argument here.

• Vance is clever, but an unlikeable and maladroit liar with a moral compass that twists in the wind.  Jamelle Bouie puts Vance’s flaws on full display in his NY Times opinion piece This Is How Far Vance Will Go to Sell a Lie.  An excerpt:

“During the presidential campaign, Vance defended his decision to slander the Haitian immigrants of Springfield, Ohio — to disparage and lie about them for political gain — by telling reporters that he would “create stories” if that’s what he had to do to get the news media’s attention. And here he is again, creating stories. In this case, however, it is less to get the attention of the press and more to defend the administration’s open contempt for the rule of law.”