This is a follow up to my July 31, 2025 article, The Trump Administration’s Continued War Against Science, Research and Public Health. Since its publication, the administration has ramped up its use of unsupportable actions to expand the cancellation of billions of dollars of congressionally approved funding for a broad swath of government-funded agencies, institutions, programs and leading edge initiatives. They are relentlessly targeting and censoring academic research in the sciences, public health, medicine, and on the climate crisis. The deliberate collateral damage has purged the leadership in organizations whose subject matter expertise drives vast knowledge acquired through decades of public service. The continued decimation of the country’s long standing support for the sciences impacts every person in America. It has fractured our collective human and technological systems and resources. Our country is rapidly falling behind as global support for science and scientists is concurrently expanding. As noted by the Christian Science Monitor on August 25, 20 – The U.S. used to be a haven for research. Now, scientists are packing their bags.

To anchor this update, I begin with The Innovation Engine: Government-Funded Academic Research. David A. Patterson. Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. University of California, Berkeley Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2025-140. July 4, 2025. Government-funded academic research (GoFAR), lately the subject of across-the-board cuts in the US, is one of
the engines that truly makes America great. When I started as a new assistant professor in 1976, I was advised to aim my research objectives for “home runs”. In an environment in which ambitious projects with high potential weren’t penalized if they fell short, my colleagues and I strove to make a high impact. The thinking was that you’re more likely to hit home runs by swinging for the fences than by bunting for singles. And so we swung. NSF and DARPA used grants, contracts, and fellowships to sponsor our research, alongside some smaller donations from industry.

Five government-funded academic research projects over one career at one university delivered economic benefits across nearly 90% of U.S. states with new product sales about 10,000 times the US government funding—returning taxes back over 1000 times its investment—and trained generations of innovators…

Overall, the American public is not aware of the long term, dynamic outcomes of government funding for research across disciplines that directly benefit not only our lives, but the vigor of our economy as well. The Trump administration’s war against research is fundamentally destroying the multilayered connections that have been established over decades of collaboration and result in innovative and life changing medical devices, treatments for fatal conditions, and vaccines that effectively combat infectious diseases. Implementing Project 2025’s roadmap to defund research is causing widespread harm across red and blue states, censors the right to make choices about medical care, and puts critical care and life saving medications out of reach for many Americans.

The selected sources that follow, in reverse chronological order, highlight the most egregious and damaging actions taken this past month. They include news about people, programs and services that affect national well being across health, education, environmental disciplines and beyond to our economic and domestic security sectors.

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We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health. [gift article] The New York Times, September 1, 2025. We have each had the honor and privilege of serving as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, either in a permanent or acting capacity, dating back to 1977. Collectively, we spent more than 100 years working at the C.D.C., the world’s pre-eminent public health agency. We served under multiple Republican and Democratic administrations — every president from Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump — alongside thousands of dedicated staff members who shared our commitment to saving lives and improving health. What Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has done to the C.D.C. and to our nation’s public health system over the past several months — culminating in his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as C.D.C. director days ago — is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced. Secretary Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he’s focused on unproven “treatments” while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements. And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage. Firing Dr. Monarez — which led to the resignations of top C.D.C. officials — adds considerable fuel to this raging fire. We are worried about the wide-ranging impact that all these decisions will have on America’s health security. Residents of rural communities and people with disabilities will have even more limited access to health care. Families with low incomes who rely most heavily on community health clinics and support from state and local health departments will have fewer resources available to them. Children risk losing access to lifesaving vaccines because of the cost. This is unacceptable, and it should alarm every American, regardless of political leanings….

See also – Read the Resignation Letters of Top CDC Officials — Their words capture an unprecedented, historic, and dramatic moment in the agency’s history. MedPage Today, August 28, 2025.

In the wake of the departure of CDC Director Susan Monarez, PhD, three top leaders at the agency resigned:

• Demetre Daskalakis, MD, MPH, director of the National Center on Immunization and Respiratory Diseases
• Daniel Jernigan, MD, MPH, Director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases
• Debra Houry, MD, MPH, Deputy Director and Chief Medical Officer

See also – RFK Jr.’s damage to the CDC is ‘past the point of no return,’ The Advocate. August 29, 2025. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis warns. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, once regarded as the nation’s premier agency against illness, is now damaged beyond repair, according to one of its most prominent departing leaders. “We may be past the point of no return,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis warned in an interview Friday, a day after leaving the agency’s Atlanta campus with colleagues in a dramatic walkout. The gay infectious diseases physician and expert told The Advocate that President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had so thoroughly politicized science that the once-respected CDC is no longer the institution that Americans and the world can regard as the gold standard in public health. On Wednesday, Daskalakis published a scathing resignation letter, shortly after news broke that CDC director Susan Monarez had been ousted by the Trump administration only weeks after being sworn in. By Thursday afternoon, he was “very respectfully” escorted out of the building. Outside the CDC headquarters, hundreds of employees and supporters greeted him and two other resigning department directors, Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry, and Director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Daniel Jernigan, with flowers, applause, and tears.

See also The Atlantic (Gift Article): ‘It Feels Like the CDC Is Over.’ The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is coming undone. The White House announced last night that it had ousted the agency’s newly sworn-in director, Susan Monarez, whose lawyers insist that she still has her job because only President Donald Trump himself can fire her. (Yes, it’s a mess.) Four top officials resigned yesterday. Two of them—Demetre Daskalakis, who was the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, and Debra Houry, who was the chief medical officer—told me that the group quit together to signal that they believe science is being ignored and that public health is in danger.

The departures leave a leadership void that, according to current and former CDC officials, has demoralized the agency’s staff and will further undermine its ability to provide reliable guidance to Americans. As Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, who resigned from the agency in June as co-leader of a group that advises outside experts on COVID vaccines, told me, “It feels like the CDC is over.”

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COVID Booster Now Highly Restricted by CDC, Politico: “The shift away from mass immunization for COVID by making healthy people under 65 ineligible for it without a scientific basis for doing so and outside the normal process has adverse health implications for millions of Americans. What’s it mean for you and your family? Here’s an initial survey of landscape:

• Are you eligible for the annual COVID booster?
• CVS and Walgreens Clamp Down on Covid Vaccines in Many States. Because a C.D.C. panel has not yet recommended the shots, the country’s largest pharmacy chains are requiring prescriptions or are holding back on rolling out the annual COVID booster in 16 jurisdictions that require approval from the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which isn’t scheduled to meet until next month and was stacked by RFK, Jr., with vax skeptics. The restricted jurisdictions are: Arizona, Colorado, D.C., Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.
• If the CDC ratifies the FDA decision, as expected, then insurers and employers will not be required to cover the annual COVID booster for those under 65 without an underlying condition. The uninsured out-of-pocket cost for a COVID vaccine is about $225.

More Fallout From The CDC Massacre

• Politico: Monarez would not cross ‘red lines’ before she was fired, confidant says
• Washington Post: CDC leaders who resigned said RFK Jr. undermined vaccine science
• New York Times: Inside the C.D.C., a Growing Sense of Despair

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Trump’s Attacks on Public Health & The War on All of Us. Jim Acosta, August 29, 2025. The appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Junior as Secretary of Health and Human Services may be Trump’s most devastating blow to the idea that evidence-based science should guide public policies impacting the medical needs of citizens. Kennedy is a crackpot of galactic proportions, whose bizarre conspiracy theory-driven belief system is like a trip to a parallel universe where self-diagnosing nuttiness reigns supreme. At an event with Texas governor Greg Abbott on Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again program Wednesday, the Secretary claimed he, an untrained goofball with a famous last name, could diagnose the medical needs of children simply by looking at them. “I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, inflammation. You can tell from their faces, movements, and lack of social connection,” Kennedy said.

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Hang onto this image of CDC’s full list of underlying conditions tied to severe risk of COVID. Jen Bendery – @jbendery.bsky.social – If you’re an adult aged 18-64, RFK Jr. is now making you show some proof of one of these underlying conditions in order to get a COVID vaccine.

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The Trump administration is urging West Virginia to offer religious exemptions from school vaccine mandates, alarming public health advocates who see it as part of a broader campaign to undermine an effective immunization strategy. Washington Post, August 27, 2025. West Virginia, which has one of the nation’s strictest vaccine mandates, has been embroiled in a dispute over Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s demand to let parents decline shots for their children by invoking their religious beliefs. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services backed the governor’s efforts last week by sending a letter to West Virginia officials warning that the state may be violating civil rights laws. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a critic of vaccine mandates who founded an anti-vaccine organization, followed up with an X post supporting Morrisey and vowing to “defend every family’s right to make informed health decisions.”

The US used to be a haven for research. Now, scientists are packing their bags. Christian Science Monitor, August 25, 2025. “…As government funding for scientific research dries up, and as President Donald Trump wages pointed attacks against some of the nation’s top universities, more academics are looking to Europe and Asia as safe havens. A recent survey of U.S. college faculty by the journal Nature found that 75% were looking for work outside the country. Some are doing so to protect their research, while others are trying to safeguard their individual freedoms. The result is a reverse brain drain that has not been seen since European scientists sought refuge on U.S. shores before and during World War II. For the researchers who have chosen to leave, it is bittersweet – and professionally risky. But they say the future of science depends on it. “A lot of us scholars value our independence,” says Isaac Kamola, director of the American Association of University Professors’ Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom. “We value the ability to research, write and teach what we want, and do what we think is in the best interest of … our disciplines. “So, when somebody comes and tells us, ‘No, you can’t say these words, you can’t teach this book … this class … it’s basically like saying to a doctor, ‘You’ve trained for years to become a doctor, but we’re not going to let you see patients. You’ll have to do office work,” says Dr. Kamola, who is also an assistant professor at Trinity College in Connecticut…”

RFK Jr demanded a vaccine study be retracted — the journal said no. Nature. August 22, 2025. In a rare move for a US public official, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr called for a Danish paper finding no link between aluminium in vaccines and disease to be retracted. Nature, August 22, 2025. US health secretary and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr has called for the retraction of a Danish study that found no link between aluminium in vaccines and chronic diseases in children — a rare move for a US public official. Aluminium has been used for almost a century to enhance the immune system’s response to some vaccines. But some people claim the ingredient is linked to rising rates of childhood disorders such as autism. Public-health officials in Kennedy’s position rarely request that studies be retracted, says Ivan Oransky, a specialist in academic publishing and co-founder of the media organization Retraction Watch. Through this request, “Secretary Kennedy has demonstrated that he wants the scientific literature to bend to his will”, says Oransky.

The study¹ in question, published in Annals of Internal Medicine in July, is one of the largest of its kind, looking at 1.2 million children born over more than two decades in Denmark. The authors reported that no significant risk of developing autoimmune, allergic or neurodevelopmental disorders was associated with exposure to aluminium compounds in vaccines. In an opinion piece published on TrialSite News on 1 August, Kennedy called into question the study’s methodology, analysis and results. Since his appointment as head of the US Department of Health and Human Services, Kennedy has bypassed normal scientific review processes to change vaccine recommendations and terminated grants for projects on mRNA vaccines. Annals of Internal Medicine says it stands by the study and has no plans to retract it. Christine Laine, editor in chief for the journal, wrote in a comment on the study’s web page on 11 August that “retraction is warranted only when serious errors invalidate findings or there is documented scientific misconduct, neither of which occurred here”. The US Department of Health and Human Services said that Kennedy’s article spoke for itself, and that the department did not have any further comment in response to Nature’s questions about Kennedy’s request for a retraction.

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After CDC shooting, anger grows as hundreds lose jobs. Remaining employees learned the shooter attempted to enter campus days before the attack. Washington Post, August 21, 2025. The gunman who sprayed hundreds of bullets at the Atlanta headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Aug. 8 probably tried to enter the campus two days earlier, according to an email sent Thursday by the CDC’s security team to all employees. The update came during a difficult week for the agency after hundreds of employees received permanent termination notices, according to multiple officials familiar with the matter. The job losses compounded the stress of the attack and revelations that the shooter appeared motivated by his distrust of the coronavirus vaccine, employees said. The assault, which left a police officer dead, has shaken the workforce, many of whom say they are angry at the Trump administration’s treatment of federal health agencies. CDC officials tried to assuage concerns about the campus’s safety by disclosing Thursday that security stopped him from entering the headquarters two days before the attack, when they believed he was conducting reconnaissance. “This is an understandably distressing development, and we want to emphasize that CDC security measures were effective,” the email said, later adding, “The fact that the shooter was turned away on Wednesday without incident is a testament to the strength of our protocols.” The shooter did not attempt to enter the campus on Aug. 8 before the attack, “due to our existing security protocols,” the email said. Law enforcement officials have said the shooter was still able to spray hundreds of rounds at six buildings from across the street. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation declined to comment, and a spokesperson for the CDC did not immediately return a request for comment.

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RFK Jr.’s halt on mRNA vaccine research risks progress on tackling dangerous illnesses. Prism, August 21, 2025. The research, canceled earlier this month, made promising inroads on developing vaccines for cancers and HIV, which both have significant racial and socioeconomic disparities. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently announced that his department would be canceling $500 million worth of research into mRNA vaccines across 22 projects. In a video posted on X on Aug. 5, Kennedy claimed that mRNA vaccines are dangerous and don’t work—despite the millions of lives the technology saved at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, he said the administration would be pursuing other vaccine technology. The canceled research includes projects that were making promising inroads into using mRNA to develop vaccines for cancers and HIV, diseases with significant racial and socioeconomic disparities. “I’ve been in public health for 50 years and this was by far the worst [decision] I’ve seen,” said Michael Osterholm, founding director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota. “Everyone is at risk.” Abandoning research into more durable and variant-proof vaccines could disproportionately impact communities of color and low-income populations, who have more difficulty affording frequent vaccination and less access to medical care, according to Lucky Tran, a science communicator based in New York.  “Vaccines can be costly, may not always be covered by insurance, and people may not be able to get regular boosters due to lack of access in their location or being unable to take time off work,” he said. “More durable vaccines that can last several years can help address these health inequities.”  Stopping development of mRNA vaccines could put cures of the world’s most common and debilitating chronic diseases, such as cancer and HIV, out of reach. “These diseases disproportionately affect marginalized populations, and by that we mean communities of color, lower-income communities,” said Tran, as well as the elderly and young children. “By defunding this research, it’s another tool that’s taken away from us.” The move comes as millions of people are set to lose health insurance in 2026 due to the Trump administration’s budget bill, which the president signed into law last month. It makes significant cuts to Medicaid, the country’s largest insurer, serving about 71 million low-income and disabled Americans.

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Supreme Court Lets Trump Administration Cut N.I.H. Grants for Disfavored Research. The New York Times, August 21, 2025. The court’s order was fractured, with the justices splitting over whether individual cancellations and the policy behind them could be challenged in a federal trial court. In a fractured ruling, the Supreme Court on Thursday ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that the Trump administration could for now cancel more than $780 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health that the government said had been intended to explore topics like diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, “gender ideology” and vaccine hesitancy. But a different five-justice majority let stand for now a lower court’s ruling that the administration’s underlying policy directing the cuts was probably unlawful and should be put on hold. Only Justice Amy Coney Barrett was in both majorities. The court’s order is not the last word, and the case will proceed in lower courts. The upshot of the scrambled ruling, subject to ongoing litigation, appears to be that grants already canceled will not be immediately reinstated but that recipients may be able to sue in a specialized court. Further cancellations may be barred. In a concurring opinion, Justice Barrett wrote that challenges to individual grant terminations had probably been filed in the wrong court. But she said the challenge to the policy guidance had been filed in the correct court. Still, she added, “whether claims about the guidance in this case will succeed is another question” but the lower court judge’s ruling could remain in place for now. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s three liberal members — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — would have blocked the policy and also restored the funding. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh would have allowed the Trump policy and the cuts to be implemented.

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A Quiet Policy Shift That Could Devastate American Science. Science And Freedom Alliance. July 28, 2025. Why NIH’s sudden move to multi-year grant funding should alarm every principal investigator and university. The NIH is rushing toward a radical change in how it funds research that will dramatically reduce the amount of medical research funded. Despite the catastrophic consequences this policy will have, most scientists don’t even know it’s happening. At the behest of the White House and under Jay Bhattacharya’s leadership, the NIH is implementing a rigid new policy that will make it all but impossible to support new and innovative work: starting in the current award cycle, 50% of competing research project grant dollars must be committed up front. This “multi-year funding” (MYF) scheme effectively quadruples immediate costs to NIH for each new award. That means NIH can fund far fewer studies than normal; even projects with highly competitive scores solidly within prior year funding ranges will be rejected. Because 50% of new grant dollars must be committed to multi-year awards, the number of new research projects can fall even more than 50% — as some large NIH grants, like clinical trials, are not being considered for MYF but still count against the 50% directive.

The impacts of the MYF scheme are immediate, affecting all grants not yet awarded in fiscal year 2025 (FY25). Because of delays introduced by the Trump administration’s cancellation of review meetings and changes in “agency priorities”, this will affect grants from as far back as the October 2024 Council round. The Trump administration plans to continue the MYF policy in FY26, when budget cuts could exacerbate its harm. Even with a flat FY26 budget, the MYF scheme will dramatically reduce the number of awards NIH can fund next year. If Congress does enact a budget cut, this could mean that nearly zero new grants are awarded in FY26.

Continuing the policy in future years will result in a staggering years-long dip in the number of grants NIH funds, even in the absence of budget cuts. Some modeling estimates suggest it would take about 6 years to return to 2024 award levels. By then, the research workforce will be so diminished it could not support that amount of science.

In June, the Coalition for Life Sciences warned about this multi-year funding scheme. In the past few days, several blog posts [DM, “Can We Still Govern”] outlined the impact. This post is an explainer with more details and analysis for scientists and advocates.

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Erasing over a decade of progress, the EPA move undermines protections for science and puts public health at risk. SciLight, August 21, 2025. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has quietly removed its updated 2025 Scientific Integrity Policy from the agency’s website today. No press release or public explanation accompanied the move. The policy’s removal follows the Trump administration’s May 2025 executive order, “Restoring Gold Standard Science,” which directed all federal agencies to roll back scientific integrity policies to the versions in place before January 20, 2021. The “gold standard” executive order was framed by the White House as an effort to reassert “rigor, transparency, and reproducibility” in government science. In practice, it replaced the Biden-era reforms with political oversight, requiring each agency to reevaluate and potentially rescind updated safeguards and operate under older scientific integrity policies.

For EPA, that means reverting from a modernized 2025 policy, issued in January of this year, to its outdated 2012 version. While the 2012 policy was considered strong at the time, the 2025 update represented more than a routine refresh. It reflected over a decade of learning about what works and what doesn’t in safeguarding scientific integrity, as well as a strong framework developed by a federal interagency working group, extensive public comment, and consultation with tribal governments, other stakeholders, and EPA staff themselves.

By discarding the 2025 policy, the Trump administration is not only rolling back stronger protections at the EPA; it is reopening the very gaps that learnings from the last decade were meant to close. The knowledge and experience that went into building the stronger policy, both within EPA and across the federal government, are effectively erased, leaving the agency governed once again by an older, less comprehensive set of rules.

The EPA’s quiet scrubbing of its 2025 policy today is therefore more than just compliance; it’s a signal of alignment with this broader rollback of scientific integrity, which is a dramatic reversal for an agency whose credibility depends on protecting science from political interference.

For EPA staff, the removal of the 2025 policy is not just an abstract regulatory change; it is yet another soul-sucking reversal. Many have spent decades building the scientific foundation that underpins the agency’s mission to protect human health and the environment, from the painstaking research behind the Endangerment Finding to the work of entire offices like the Office of Research and Development, now targeted for elimination. Each rollback erases not only hard-won policy progress, but also the contributions of scientists who devoted their careers to protecting human health and the environment. Yet despite these repeated blows, EPA’s scientists continue pressing forward under increasingly hostile conditions, striving to uphold the agency’s mission even as the guardrails that once protected their work from political interference are steadily dismantled.

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N.S.A.’s Acting Director Tried to Save Top Scientist From Purge.The New York Times, August 20, 2025. Vinh Nguyen, an expert in artificial intelligence and advanced mathematics, was among the current and former officials whose security clearances were revoked by the president. The acting director of the National Security Agency tried to protect one of his top scientists from losing his security clearance as Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, prepared to announce the move this week, according to officials briefed on the matter. The effort failed. Ms. Gabbard, on orders from President Trump, fired the scientist, who was a leading government expert on artificial intelligence, cryptology and advanced mathematics. The scientist, Vinh Nguyen, was one of 37 current and former national security officials whose security clearances were revoked on Tuesday. Many, though not all, had tangential connections to the intelligence agencies’ review of Russian efforts to influence and meddle in the 2016 election. Ms. Gabbard has released documents about that intelligence inquiry and accused Obama administration officials of related crimes, an effort Mr. Trump has praised. Lt. Gen. William J. Hartman, the acting N.S.A. director, called Ms. Gabbard in the days before the revocation and asked to see the evidence that Mr. Nguyen, the agency’s chief data scientist, had done anything that merited the revocation of his security clearance. Ms. Gabbard rebuffed the request, the officials said. The list of people losing their clearance began to circulate Tuesday morning and was made public in the afternoon. The N.S.A. referred all questions to Ms. Gabbard’s office, which did not return a request for comment.

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U.S. Cuts Antarctica’s Only Research Icebreaker Ship under Trump Budget Squeeze. Scientific American, August 19, 2025. The National Science Foundation will stop operating the Nathaniel B. Palmer icebreaker and slash polar science funding by 70 percent, devastating Antarctic research.

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Your Local Epidemiologist August 18, 2025. Covid-19 vaccine label change, alpha-gal syndrome, leaked MAHA report, mRNA funding cuts, and

• Tuesday: The Vaccine Integrity Project—an outside group formed in response to federal vaccine policy changes—will meet tomorrow to review the latest evidence on Covid-19, flu, and RSV vaccine effectiveness and safety. Their findings matter because insurers, physicians, and other groups are seeking third-party validation of scientific evidence after the ACIP committee revealed minimal regard for facts. This meeting will be public HERE. I have been selected to be on the panel, so if you attend, I’ll see you there.
• Shortly after: Professional organizations, like the American Academy of Pediatrics, are expected to issue recommendations on who should receive Covid-19 vaccines based on the latest scientific evidence.
• Friday (or soon after): The FDA is expected to license the Covid-19 vaccine. Word is that the label will be restricted to adults 65+ and people at high risk.

Expect discord. The Vaccine Integrity Project and professional organizations will almost certainly not align with RFK Jr.’s FDA license. This rarely happens, so it will cause confusion.

What this means for you: Prepare for lots of headlines and mixed messages this week. I’ll return next week with a clear breakdown of what it all means for you. In the meantime, if you’re under 65 and not high risk, the window to get a Covid-19 vaccine is right now—before the FDA label changes. Once it happens, access will be limited immediately (if it isn’t already). Go here if you have more questions on why this process is a mess right now. And, as always, talk to your doctor or pharmacist for more guidance.

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Initial read of leaked MAHA draft strategy report. Politico. August 19, 2025. A few months ago, the Trump administration tapped RFK Jr. to develop a strategy to tackle chronic disease among kids in the U.S. Last week, RFK Jr.’s highly anticipated action plan was leaked. His plan is disappointing, but unsurprising, as it was more posture than policy to move the needle.

• Instead of concrete action items addressing chronic disease causes among children, it offered vague calls for more research and education, voluntary change from industry, and generally less regulation.
• It highlighted a need for more research on nutrition, environmental pollutants, and vaccines, as well as community education and nutrition programs. (Note: many of these things already existed or have been reduced by widespread cuts from this administration.)
• It changed its tone on pesticide practices—a welcome relief to farmers and agricultural scientists, but a disappointing surprise to the MAHA community.
• It changed its tone on ultra-processed foods (UPFs) — unlike the preceding assessment, there was little mention of UPFs beyond efforts to define them and educate the importance of prioritizing whole foods.
• New topic areas were introduced, including precision nutrition, supplements, sunscreen, fertility, breastfeeding, and food marketing to children.

Bottom line: Unless the final report changes substantially, don’t expect transformation. The strategy is minor, performative, and at worst misleading—most notably in doubling down on the false claim that vaccines cause chronic disease. This soft-pedaling reflects growing tensions between MAHA and MAGA, where lobbying interests increasingly shape priorities instead of confronting root causes.

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In case you missed it: a reversal on mRNA research – RFK Jr. cut $500 million across 22 ongoing mRNA research grants—funding that was driving clinical trials for infectious disease vaccines, including bird flu. Trials for cancer and allergy treatments appear spared, which is a small win, but the overall loss is profound. This research was our front line for preparing against the next pandemic and seasonal viruses like influenza.

The rationale? That mRNA vaccines don’t prevent all upper respiratory infections and that the risks outweigh the benefits. This is partially true—no vaccine prevents every single infection, especially against highly mutable viruses. But mRNA vaccines are no different from other vaccines in this regard, and the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines saved more than 3 million American lives during the pandemic.

This is what makes the cut both fascinating and disappointing: it marks a stunning reversal from President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed—a rare, bipartisan moonshot that fast-tracked mRNA vaccines and stands as one of the most effective public health investments in U.S. history.

Why it matters:

• Platform potential: mRNA is not a single vaccine—it’s a flexible platform adaptable to many viruses. During Covid, it allowed us to pivot to new strains in under 90 days.
• Lost progress: Interrupted trials will likely have to restart from scratch, wasting years of work and billions in sunk cost.
• Preparedness gap: Cuts leave us more vulnerable to emerging viruses and even bioterror threats.
• Abandoned innovation: This decision undermines a model of government-driven science and tech transfer that was actually working.

What this means for you: These cuts won’t affect existing Covid-19 mRNA vaccines. Those are still being made and will be available to some people this fall. But this will mean fewer options for future threats and stalled progress on next-generation vaccines.

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CDC’s Publications On Demand will close in September 2025. The last day for orders was August 15, 2025. CDC Publications On Demand allowed you to order a limited selection of public health materials such as printed copies of factsheets, posters, reports, books, and other educational materials.

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US medical journal rejects call from RFK Jr to retract vaccine study. Guardian, August 14, 2025., with link to study page

The Flooding Will Come “No Matter What” 11 Aug 2025. ProPublica: This article is an excerpt from the book “On The Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America,” about climate migration in the U.S. For more, see abrahm.com -…As the U.S. gets hotter, its coastal waters rise higher, its wildfires burn larger and its droughts last longer, the notion that humankind can triumph over nature is fading, and with it, slowly, goes the belief that self-determination and personal preference can be the driving factors in choosing where to live. Scientific modeling of these pressures suggest a sweeping change is coming in the shape and location of communities across America, a change that promises to transform the country’s politics, culture and economy. It has already begun. More Americans are displaced by catastrophic climate-change-driven storms and floods and fires every year. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, the global nongovernmental organization researchers rely on to measure the number of people forcibly cast out of their homes by natural disasters, counted very few displaced Americans in 2009, 2010 and 2011, years in which few natural disasters struck the United States. But by 2016 the numbers had begun to surge, with between 1 million and 1.7 million newly displaced people annually. The disasters and heat waves each year have become legion. But the statistics show the human side of what has appeared to be a turning point in both the severity and frequency of wildfires and hurricanes. As the number of displaced people continues to grow, an ever-larger portion of those affected will make their moves permanent, migrating to safer ground or supportive communities. They will do so either because a singular disaster like the 2018 wildfire in Paradise, California — or Hurricane Harvey, which struck the Texas and Louisiana coasts — is so destructive it forces them to, or because the subtler “slow onset” change in their surroundings gradually grows so intolerable, uncomfortable or inconvenient that they make the decision to leave, proactively, by choice. In a 2021 study published in the journal Climatic Change, researchers found that 57% of the Americans they surveyed believed that changes in their climate would push them to consider a move sometime in the next decade.

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A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate. The Trump Department of Energy Climate Report. July 23, 2025. Climate change is real, and it deserves attention. But it is not the greatest threat facing humanity. That distinction belongs to global energy poverty. As someone who values data, I know that improving the human condition depends on expanding access to reliable, affordable energy. Climate change is a challenge—not a catastrophe. But misguided policies based on fear rather than facts could truly endanger human well-being. We stand at the threshold of a new era of energy leadership. If we empower innovation rather than restrain it, America can lead the world in providing cleaner, more abundant energy—lifting billions out of poverty, strengthening our economy, and improving our environment along the way.

The Carbon Brief factcheck on the Trump climate report. “Trump’s climate report includes more than 100 false or misleading claims.”

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U.S. scientists are under attack. France wants to give them refuge. Washington Post, August 14, 2025. As the Trump administration cuts science jobs and funding, this university is offering a new home. For many American scientists, the second Trump administration has instilled a sense of fear and futility. Billions of dollars in federal grants to universities have been frozen or slashed. Thousands of scientists across federal agencies have been terminated. Entire research initiatives have been defunded for containing politically inconvenient keywords such as “health disparities,” “climate change” and “coronavirus.” The administration’s budget proposal seeks to cut the nation’s scientific infrastructure even further — the National Institutes of Health by 40 percent and the National Science Foundation by more than half. Against this backdrop, a university in southern France is welcoming America’s “scientific refugees” with open arms. Though its efforts won’t stop the ongoing dismantling of what was once the beacon of global scientific leadership, it is a principled stand to safeguard intellectual pursuits free from political interference. The school is Aix-Marseille University, one of the oldest and largest higher-learning institutions in France. Its president, Éric Berton, an engineer with a PhD in fluid mechanics, is an unlikely hero in the resistance to the Trump administration’s offensive on science. In March, as he saw the stream of news about mounting budget cuts, dismissals and censorship, he knew the moment demanded more than words. “We have colleagues whose funding was cut, whose databases were erased,” he told me in an interview. “Some were fired, others lost grants, so they no longer have the means to continue their research.” So he established the Safe Place for Science program, tasked with recruiting American researchers and providing them with three years of dedicated funding. Berton mobilized his university to commit 15 million euros (more than $16 million) to support 15 scientists, who would use the funds to cover laboratory supplies, their salaries, and those of postdoctoral fellows and other staff.

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A top cancer specialist left the US and returned to his native China in the wake of President Donald Trump’s funding cuts, part of a wider exodus of scientific talent. Semafor, August 14, 2025 [paywall]. Feng Gensheng of the University of California San Diego moved to North America in the 1980s and is a world expert in tumor immunology. Beijing has been keen to attract diaspora researchers back to China since before Trump’s second term — scientists are offered financial incentives, and the number returning tripled between 2010 and 2021 — but funding cuts appear to have accelerated the process. European and Australian universities are also keen to attract US researchers whose funding streams are threatened: Health and climate funding initiatives have been particularly badly hit.

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A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to partially restore some of the UCLA’s frozen federal research funding, a decision that comes as the White House is seeking to extract $1 billion settlement from the public university ostensibly for antisemitism on campus. Politico. August 12, 2025.