• There are of course innumerable opportunities for corruption in this new administration; here the Washington Post comments on one of the more egregious, re. cryptocurrency. An excerpt:
“Trump, who evidently sees crypto as a vehicle to make money, is increasing the urgency of this conversation by providing cryptocurrencies with a new nefarious use: funneling money into the president’s pocket in exchange for governmental favors.”
Apparently not only is science is out of fashion, the White House is for rent as a commercial venue (more quid pro quo, anyone?),and it’s just fine to turn our back on our allies, but the EPA’s mission is now to forward the interests of industry. Sigh.
I think Matt Yglesias is right with this sentiment:
“It drives me crazy that the very same progressives who shit on Democrats for not being able to stop bad things Republicans do after they lose elections spend all the time before elections shitting on the idea of being more pragmatic and moderate and winning more seats. If there were four more House Democrats, none of whom supported any policy changes in a progressive direction whatsoever, that would still give Democrats a majority and the ability to block all kinds of GOP fuckery. That’s true on DOGE, it’s true on Medicaid and SNAP for billions of poor kids. It’s actually a really big deal. If you want to stop Republicans from doing bad things, you need to win races. You need to back moderates in red-leaning districts and encourage party leaders to take popular positions and win.”
Some particularly timely quotes from Teddy Roosevelt (courtesy of Robert Reich):
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
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“To educate a person in the mind but not in morals is to educate a menace to society.”
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“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.”
• I have to agree with Zynep Tufekci, writing on the Texas measles outbreak in the NY Times:
“All governors should be launching campaigns to increase measles vaccination coverage, but some states are led by people who promote falsehoods. And some Americans live deep in echo chambers where most of what they hear about vaccines are lies and disdain. It won’t be possible to reverse all this quickly. Perhaps the best we can do is inform parents skeptical of vaccines what they’re risking, before it’s too late.”
• A fun post from Steve Newman’s Am I Stronger Yet Substack discusses AI capabilities: We’re Finding Out What Humans Are Bad At I’d recommend it!
Heather Cox Richardson’s February 6, 2025 Letters from an American Substack essay is worth a read.
• The heavy-handed, indiscriminate, and woefully uninformed attempts at budget cutting by Musk and his seeming puppet Trump continue with the imposition of a 15% “indirect research costs” cap at the NIH. Researchers (like, alas, many others) in the US are under siege by people wielding hammers whose authority is dubious at best. For more details, read Jeremy Faust’s February 8 Substack post here. And/or see Harlan Krumholz’s 5 minute video.
RIP, Dr. David Crippen, an amazing polymath whose legacy lives on in the International Critical Care List he started.