SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
science
Meet the 9 Former Federal Workers Running for Congress
All Americans who want to continue living in a democratic society need to know about these candidates and support their campaigns.
Oct 11, 2026
This article introduces you to nine contemporary heroes.
All nine were on the frontlines of President Donald Trump’s authoritarian attack on our democratic society.
All nine had careers serving the American people in socially essential government jobs. All nine could not tolerate seeing their career work undermined, and even outright destroyed, by DOGE and MAGA’s contempt for science, the rule of law, public safety, and the welfare of the common person.
If we want to continue living in a society guided by scientific knowledge with a government that provides for and protects the education, health, and safety of all Americans—these are the candidates we need to elect to Congress.
All nine are fighting back in the best possible way.
They are running for federal office.
They are running to preserve popular sovereignty and our constitutional democratic republic.
All nine won their primaries and, if they win on November 3, they will enter the US House of Representatives on January 3.
Their goal is to rebuild the best traditions and practices of the US government so that it once again serves all the people not just a kleptocratic elite.
The nine candidates are Sam Forstag in Montana’s 1st District, Zach Dembo in Kentucky’s 6th, Lauren Reinhold in Kansas’ 1st, Mike Masuda in California’s 5th, Alissa Ellman in New York’s 24th, Trina Swanson in Minnesota’s 8th, Dr. Kristin Hook in Texas’ 21st, Tom Perriello in Virginia’s 5th, and Chris Backenmeyer in Nebraska’s 1st.
Together, along with two non-federal candidates (Tamara Bavendam in Tennessee’s 66th House District and Chuck Borges in Maryland’s 29th Senate District), they are endorsed by an ad hoc group called Federal Workers United Congressional Slate. They are also all endorsed by Progressive Democrats of America (PDA).
All Americans who want to continue living in a democratic society need to know about these candidates and support their campaigns.
Why? Because these nine candidates know how a healthy US federal government operates; and the essential services it, and only it, can and must deliver for the people. Better than any group of people, honest, hard-working federal employees know how to rebuild our government in the wake of the self-serving destructiveness of DOGE and Trump.
If we want to continue living in a society guided by scientific knowledge with a government that provides for and protects the education, health, and safety of all Americans—these are the candidates we need to elect to Congress.
No group of non-incumbent candidates have ever been so experienced in these essential matters. These nine patriots have the experience and knowledge to guide the rest of Congress as we make our government whole again.
If you don’t believe me, read the following platform, which all nine candidates have endorsed. In my opinion, it is as eloquent an expression of faith in our democratic republic, as laid out in the constitution, as anything I have read in the 21st Century:
Federal Oversight and Accountability Platform
This policy platform was drafted by federal workers across the Executive Branch and represents a shared vision for partnership between Congress and the federal workforce. Through this partnership, federal workers will help Congress fulfill its oversight responsibilities, protect its Constitutional powers, and ensure the Executive Branch delivers for the public good as Congress intended. Federal workers will provide insight into developments at federal agencies that require Congressional attention, offer technical expertise to inform legislation, and share strategies borne from lessons learned on the ground to help preserve the legislative and budgetary rights and responsibilities established by the Constitution.
This platform is organized into three "programs of tactics" for Congressional partners, as outlined below.
Program 1: Information and technical expertise. Position federal workers as a steady source of information and technical expertise to help Congress deliver oversight and effective legislation.
Program 2: Checks and balances. Strengthen the ability of federal workers to uphold their responsibility to ensure that laws, regulations, and legal policies are followed, to report wrongdoing when they see it, and to impede actions that undermine Constitutional checks and balances.
Program 3: Institutional capacity and workforce protections for the public good. Provide broad labor protections and unemployment supports for federal workers to address the loss of institutional knowledge and ensure the long-term strength of the civil service for the benefit of the public.
These programs contain a mix of legislative statutory components, non-legislative statutory components, and non-statutory components. The legislative statutory components can be implemented when majority support in Congress has been attained or when bi-partisan negotiations provide an earlier opportunity. Non-statutory components allow Congress to act without majority support.
Please support Sam, Zach, Lauren, Alissa, Trina, Kristin, Mike, Tom, and Chris.
Sam Forstag was a fire jumper with the Forest Service; Zach Dembo, an assistant US attorney; Lauren Reinhold, an attorney adviser with the Social Security Administration; Alissa Ellman, a program support assistant in the Department of Veterans Affairs; Trina Swanson was a director of international operations in the Refugee and International Operations District, and US Citizenship and Immigration Services, in the Department of Homeland Security; Dr. Kristin Hook is a biological scientist, who was in the US Government Accountability Office and, previously, was a science and technology policy fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the US Senate; Mike Masuda is an engineer and was a Foreign Affairs officer in the US Department of State, and American Association for the Advancement of Science Science & Technology Policy fellow; Chris Backenmeyer, a deputy assistant secretary for Assistance Coordination-Regional and Multilateral Affairs in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, US Department of State; Tom Perriello, a US special envoy for Sudan, Bureau of African Affairs, US Department of State; (Tamara Bavendam, a senior adviser, NIH; and Chuck Borges, a chief data officer, Social Security Administration, and retired US Navy commander).
The amount of scientific knowledge and technical expertise represented by just these 11 people is staggering. Now multiply that by the thousands for all the excellent, upstanding federal workers—people of integrity who were excellent at their jobs serving the American people—who lost their jobs in DOGE purges.
These 11 are not only representing the more than 300,000 federal workers who were abruptly fired, or were forced out of their jobs, in the most unjust and life-destabilizing purge in recent US labor history; they are representing millions-upon-millions of Americans they served directly—and truly all of us, since everyone of us benefited from their work.
Every federal worker takes an oath of office similar to the president’s. Unlike the current president, these 11, like federal workers all across the country, take that oath seriously.
The nine congressional candidates were impacted by Trump, Elon Musk, and all their corruption. They found themselves on the other side of their federal careers. Instead of licking their wounds and turning their back on a system that betrayed them, they are standing up to preserve, protect, and defend their country, which is our country, and its Constitution against enemies both foreign and domestic.
That’s why they’re running for Congress.
Let’s lift them to victory; for the benefit of all Americans!
For more information on all nine congressional candidates go to the Federal Workers United Congressional Slate website.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Hope for the Seabirds
In a summer full of alarming environmental news, two nesting sites off the coast of Maine observed record numbers for razorbills and puffins.
Sep 20, 2026
In a cabin on Seal Island, 21 miles off the coast of Rockland, Maine, Coco Faber reached for last year’s island report. She opened the book to a chart showing how many active razorbill burrows have been confirmed over the years.
“Some people might find charts boring, but if you want to understand how the story is unfolding, you have to understand the trends over time,” Faber said. “I really love looking at long-term data sets like this and realizing that my crew is part of the story.”
There was a record-setting story to tell this summer about razorbills, chunky black-and-white birds that stand about 16 inches tall. Razorbills are cousins of Atlantic puffins and the closest living relative to the extinct great auk.
Outside of one heatwave in July, razorbills were able to find a bounty of sand lance and Atlantic herring and puffins were generally able to munch on plump haddock, sand lance, hake, herring, and an unusual amount of squid.
There is no official record of razorbills having historically nested on Seal Island. They were hunted to the extent that Arthur Herbert Norton, a leading expert of Maine’s natural history in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, saw no razorbills in the state from 1894 to 1923. A 1989 article in American Birds said the razorbill “has the distinction of being perhaps the rarest breeding seabird in the continental United States, with under 200 breeding pairs.”
The bird began breeding on Seal Island in 1999, possibly attracted over from other islands by the successful reintroduction of puffins by conservationists with Project Puffin, now called the Audubon Seabird Institute. But unlike the puffin population, which grew on Seal Island to a record 672 pairs in 2024, the reestablished razorbill population grew at a painfully slow place for several years, stuck at just one breeding pair for the first five years and taking nine years to cross the 10-pair mark.
Finally, after creeping up to 36 pairs by 2017, the razorbills took off. Between 2019 and 2025, the number of active breeding burrows nearly doubled from 60 to 113. This year, Faber and her crew of Juliana Ramirez, Leah Volak, Claudia Halbreiner, and Eden Reck identified a record 127 active nests.
“It’s magical to see razorbills fly in with fish,” Volak said. “They look all black and white, but when they open their mouth, the inside is bright and yellow. It’s something to see.”
A couple of weeks later, at the end of the seabird breeding season, Faber’s crew and all the crews on seabird research islands from Cape Cod up to Nova Scotia shared their findings at the Gulf of Maine Seabird Working Group conference at the Audubon Hog Island Camp in Bremen, Maine.
The crew of Eastern Egg Rock, led by Alison Ballard, identified a record 213 active puffin burrows. The crew of Petit Manan Island, managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and led by supervisor Courtney Naughton, saw a record 103 burrows. While no official census was taken on Seal Island, Faber’s crew identified nearly 100 new active puffin burrows.
For razorbills, besides the record on Seal Island, Eastern Egg Rock recorded its first-ever-known razorbill nesting, with the successful fledging of a chick. The crew of Matinicus Rock, led by Coco Faber’s twin sister Tracey Faber, identified a record 419 nests. Petit Manan counted a record eight razorbill burrows.
The growth in Maine’s razorbill and puffin populations comes as the Gulf of Maine, which has been warming faster than 99% of the ocean, has seen a temporary pause in its heating up over the last couple of years. Five years after a disastrous breeding season for alcids and terns because parents could not find fish for chicks amid record sea surface temperatures, most of the reports at this summer’s conference were delivered with smiles.
Outside of one heatwave in July, razorbills were able to find a bounty of sand lance and Atlantic herring and puffins were generally able to munch on plump haddock, sand lance, hake, herring, and an unusual amount of squid. On Eastern Egg Rock, puffins were observed for the second straight year catching river herring as well as ocean herring.The introduction of river herring in their diets could be because of dam removals and herring run restoration projects, said Michelle Staudinger, an associate professor at the University of Maine’s School of Marine Sciences.
Common terns and the federally endangered roseate tern did well this summer. The White and Seavey Islands had a record number of roseate nests, and its highest count of common tern nests in five years. Stratton Island had its third-highest count of common tern nests and a strong year for roseates. Also a haven for waterbirds, Stratton Island had a record number of more than 200 pairs of nesting glossy ibis and its first-ever nesting of yellow-crowned night herons, a species much more common in the southeastern part of the country.
Stratton also had what might be a game-changing success in protecting the least tern, which is listed as endangered in Maine. Least tern colonies have often been wiped out by black-crowned night herons. Over the years, researchers have used lights, lasers, bangers, and screamers, and banged pots to try to scare away herons. They even tried to use a mannequin. All to no avail.
“The herons eventually figure it out,” said Stratton supervisor Ben Becker.
This summer, researchers erected a slightly electrified fence around part of the colony. Island supervisor Ben Becker said there was no predation within the fence. Only two chicks hatched outside the fence, but 31 hatched inside it. “I’m hopeful this method will stick,” Becker said.
The one sour note to the summer was a poor breeding season for Arctic terns. For whatever reason, the parents could not find food for chicks, not even invertebrates, especially when the summer heated up. Many chicks starved to death.
Staudinger called it a “head scratcher” as in many years, Arctic terns, the world’s long-distance migratory champion, arrive in the Gulf of Maine in poor condition, perhaps from climate change affecting its food supplies between here and the Antarctic ice shelf. This year, it was the other way around. Out on Seal Island, the Arctic terns arrived “with good feathers and good body shape,” Faber said. “But once they got here, they couldn’t find much of anything.”
That was not the case for puffins and razorbills.
Claudia Halbreiner, who is a zookeeper at the Central Park Zoo in New York City, said it was a thrill to reach under burrows on Seal Island to measure and weigh healthy puffins in their natural environment. “You feel how sturdy this bird is,” Halbreiner said. “You instantly have so much more appreciation for how it makes it out there.”
Among those at the Gulf of Maine Seabird Working Group who were particularly gratified to hear about the good fortunes for alcids was Richard Podolsky. One of the earliest participants in Project Puffin, he wrote the 1989 report on the then-rarity of razorbills. He said their resurgence represents a “multigenerational success story,” demonstrating that decades of dogged restoration can create the conditions for natural expansion.
Podolsky said it is proof that people “really can change the future of a species.”
This article was first published by The Maine Moniter.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Anthropic Report Says Company Blocked Possible Use of AI Model to Build Biological Weapons
"Right now, we're counting on AI corporations to voluntarily block weapons of mass destruction," said Rep. Greg Casar, who is pushing for a ban on "superintelligent" AI.
Sep 10, 2026
As industry insiders issue louder warnings about the catastrophic danger of unchecked artificial intelligence, Anthropic has revealed in a report out Thursday that it had to "disrupt" several attempts by scientists to use its AI models for research that could contribute to the creation of biological weapons.
In the report, titled “Detecting and Countering Misuse of AI,” Anthropic said that over the past eight months, it banned several accounts that had used its chatbot Claude for research into highly contagious diseases.
As NBC News reported:
In each of the five cases Anthropic cited, the company suspected that the researchers behind them were affiliated in some way with a government or military in a country it had banned or took deliberate steps to hide their location and identity, or both. The company declined to say where any of the researchers were based, but its terms of service allow all use from all but a few regions, including China, Iran, and Russia.
In one example, Anthropic said researchers used a third-party platform that attempted to use Claude to complete a grant application for work that would look into how to repeatedly mutate chikungunya, a mosquito-borne virus that causes severe pain and fever in humans. Anthropic said it blocked all attempts by the researchers. The research, which would be conducted at a military institute, would seek to repeatedly mutate the virus in live animals to become increasingly more infectious, Anthropic said.
Another had used Anthropic’s Claude to assist in research into how to make bird flu, which historically has a global fatality rate of around 50% in confirmed human cases, more virulent and damaging to mammals. Anthropic said the researcher only received assistance from Claude’s weakest class of models, which provided clerical help.
Anthropic clarified that it did not find any concrete instance of a scientist attempting to use its technology for nefarious purposes, and that these use cases may well have been part of beneficial scientific inquiry, like research into vaccines or other cures for disease. Nevertheless, it said it erred on the side of caution and shut down the accounts.
"Biological misuse is one of the most serious risks of frontier AI models," the report explains. "It has long been a concern that AI models might one day reach the level of capability where they can help to make existing pathogens more dangerous—or create entirely new ones. Without the correct safeguards, such capabilities could have catastrophic consequences."
The report acknowledges that even as safeguards are implemented, those with the intent to do harm are getting more savvy about how to evade them and using the appearance of legitimate science to do it.
"Sophisticated threat actors are aware that we (and other AI providers) are attempting to detect dangerous uses of our models, and they use the dual-use nature of biology to maintain a kind of 'plausible deniability' about their research," the report says. "More sophisticated actors can hide their intent, extracting assistance from an AI model in interactions that look plausibly beneficial, but when put in context and analyzed holistically, can provide clear warning signs of misuse."
The report details other ways in which actors have used its technology for malicious purposes. It found that governments like China, Iran, and Mali had used Claude to collect information about journalists and dissidents. Others used it to conduct hacking campaigns, automate identity theft operations, and create malware.
Anthropic said it hoped that by publishing the report, it would "help other developers recognize similar patterns on their own platforms, give governments and civil society a clearer view of how emerging threats take shape, and strengthen collective defenses."
The report comes amid a torrent of scrutiny directed at Anthropic and its competitor OpenAI following reports in recent months of severe security breaches involving their technology, which has been documented acting autonomously to hack into other websites and evade human detection.
Earlier this week, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who previously worked at OpenAI, resigned from his post and sounded the alarm about fears within the industry that the technology “could kill us all by the end of the decade" and that the companies are prioritizing the race toward superintelligence without regard for the potential risks.
In the wake of Coxon's resignation, several other researchers from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google have shared similar warnings that the technology could result in an extinction-level disaster or otherwise cause severe harm to human society.
A poll published on Wednesday by Data for Progress showed that 68% of likely voters in the US support a proposal announced last week by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) for legislation that would permanently ban the development of "superintelligent" AI that can surpass human cognition and would put a pause on "advanced" AI development until a federal body is put in place to regulate the industry.
Casar said the fact that Anthropic was being relied upon to stop its own users from using its tech to potentially create bioweapons illustrated the urgent need for regulation.
"Right now, we're counting on AI corporations to voluntarily block weapons of mass destruction. Voluntarily," Casar emphasized in a post to social media on Thursday. "Congress must do the obvious thing: BAN catastrophic AI uses like creating biological or nuclear weapons."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Scientists Sound Alarm on AI-Generated Biological Viruses Amid Unregulated Industry
"The ability to compose viral genomes using generative AI now exists; the governance to safely steer it does not," a pair of researchers said.
Aug 06, 2026
As scientists confirmed the first-ever biological viruses generated by artificial intelligence, experts warned Thursday that governments have failed to keep pace with a rapidly advancing and largely unregulated technology that, while having tremendous potential for medical breakthroughs, could also pose existential threats to humanity in the foreseeable future.
Research published Thursday in Science, available in full only to subscribers, describes how scientists at Stanford University and the Arc Institute used a genome language model, roughly the genetic equivalent of the technology behind AI chatbots, to generate hundreds of novel bacteriophage genomes—viruses that infect bacteria rather than humans. After synthesizing and testing the AI-generated designs, researchers found that 16 functioned successfully in laboratory experiments, infecting and killing E. coli.
While the researchers said that the new viruses pose no danger to humans because they only infect bacteria, experts have warned of the risks of AI creating novel bioweapons—either prompted by scientists or, in a future when superintelligent AI is achieved, independently—that could, in a worst-case scenario, threaten the existence of humanity.
"Although this is promising for life sciences applications, it also raises urgent biosafety and biosecurity questions," Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health Center for Health Security researchers Thomas Inglesby and Moritz Hanke wrote in a related article, also published Thursday in Science behind a paywall. "The ability to compose viral genomes using generative AI now exists; the governance to safely steer it does not."
The Stanford and Arc Institute study authors themselves noted the “important biosafety, biocontainment, and biosecurity considerations” accompanying such advances, urging researchers to “consult both safety and security professionals" during their work.
Calls for more robust regulatory guardrails have mounted in recent weeks amid revelations that one of ChatGPT maker OpenAI's models autonomously broke into the systems of other companies during testing. As AI advances to the point where it will likely outsmart humans, the challenge of ensuring that advanced systems reliably pursue goals that match what humans actually want—known as alignment—becomes increasingly difficult and, experts say, dangerous.
A misaligned, superintelligence could take uncontrolled autonomous actions at massive scale to achieve its goals, with industry pioneers warning of potentially catastrophic outcomes like AI-launched nuclear war or bioattack with existing or AI-generated pathogens.
While advocacy groups, the United Nations, and dozens of national governments are urging more robust regulation of AI development, the United States under President Donald Trump, the Republican-controlled Congress, and Big Tech’s army of lobbyists is strongly opposed to guardrails.
In fact, Trump—who Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) on Monday accused of being "too busy cashing in" on AI—has rolled back regulations, including some meager steps taken during the Biden administration to bolster safety.
“There’s just a huge disconnect," Hanke told The New York Times on Thursday.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Watchdog Says Rule Change for Federal Grants a ‘Recipe for Corruption’ on a Never-Before-Seen Scale
“This is not a grant reform—it is a blueprint for a spoils system applied to federal science funding."
Jul 13, 2026
An environmental watchdog group is calling on the White House Office of Management and Budget to withdraw a proposal that it said will give President Donald Trump and his allies unchecked power to control over a trillion dollars worth of federal grants.
Monday marked the end of the public comment period for a proposal from the OMB, spearheaded by Project 2025 architect Russell Vought and issued in late May, that would require all discretionary federal grants to “demonstrably advance the president’s policy priorities.”
As Elizabeth Kolbert explained in The New Yorker:
It would replace the current guidance for signing off on government grants, which generally leaves the task to civil servants and peer-review panels.
Instead, the final say would go to political appointees. All discretionary awards from the federal government would have to be assessed by senior administration officials, who could deny them on the [grounds] that they didn’t fit the President’s agenda. Grants could also be terminated at any time for the same reason.
The rules would affect hundreds of billions of dollars in funding disbursed by agencies ranging from the National Endowment for the Arts to the Transportation Department, to pay for everything from local dance performances to massive infrastructure projects.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed a formal comment on Monday urging the OMB to withdraw the proposal.
"The scale of what is proposed is staggering," the group said. "This rule would institutionalize corruption and cronyism in the distribution of over a trillion dollars in annual federal funds."
The comment noted the proposal's language forbidding political appointees from deferring to peer review, which the group said will lead grants to be awarded based on ideological conformity rather than scientific merit.
"This language makes clear that the rule's purpose is not to add accountability over expert review but to replace expert judgment with political judgment entirely," the comment says. "Researchers would learn quickly to propose only work likely to survive ideological screening, while federal program officers, many of whom are being stripped of civil service protections, would face pressure to recommend or approve grants to preserve their jobs. "
“This would corrupt scientific judgment at every level of the process,” it adds, noting the Trump administration’s concerted effort to strip away funding for research on health and environmental issues that conflict with his political agenda, including climate science, vaccine safety, chemical safety, and emerging infectious diseases.
Since last year, the administration has terminated or frozen nearly 8,000 research grants and has effectively slashed the budget of the National Science Foundation by refusing to disburse funds appropriated by Congress. The agency is on track to issue the fewest grants in more than half a century, according to a report last month from Grant Witness.
The proposal would also allow agency heads to keep grants from being posted publicly whenever they determine that doing so would be contrary to the "national interest," which the rule does not define.
PEER said this change "permits agencies to offer grants by invitation only among preferred recipients with no requirement to explain or justify the determination."
The group pointed to the Trump administration’s pattern of directing no-bid contracts to the president’s family, friends, and supporters.
Trump megadonor and former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk, the comment notes, was allowed to oversee the cancellation of the contracts for numerous vendors while never touching any of the more than $19 billion his businesses held in federal contracts.
“This is not a grant reform—it is a blueprint for a spoils system applied to federal science funding,” said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of PEER.
PEER's comment is one of nearly 342,000 OMB has received about the proposal in just over a month, of which 52,000 are publicly posted. The office is hoping to finalize the proposal by October 1 and has denied requests from watchdog organizations to extend the public comment period.
If that happens, Whitehouse has said it would upend the systems of accountability and transparency for scientific funding that have been in place for decades.
“Grant money has historically been distributed through programs authorized by Congress using statutory, regulatory, formula-based, or competitive criteria rather than direct tests of political loyalty,” added Whitehouse. “Placing all scientific research funding under the unreviewable discretion of political appointees is not an administrative reform; it is a recipe for corruption on a scale not seen even in this administration.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Astronomers Denounce Elon Musk-Led Plan to Pollute Earth's Orbit With 1.7 Million Satellites
Some of the satellites "would be the brightest ever in orbit, with damaging consequences for dark skies on Earth," said the European Southern Observatory.
Jul 01, 2026
European astronomers on Wednesday urged the US Federal Communications Commission to block a plan led by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to launch a total of 1.7 million satellites into the Earth's orbit, warning that the use of so many extremely bright satellites—partially to support artificial intelligence data centers—would have “devastating consequences for astronomy.”
SpaceX's Starlink telecommunications program has already rapidly increased the number of satellites orbiting the Earth, with the total now exceeding 14,000 since 2019.
Now the space exploration company led by Musk—a former special government employee under the Trump administration—has plans to send 1 million more satellites into space, which would "significantly alter the appearance of the sky," according to a new study by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
Scientists found that 100,000 is the maximum number of satellites—ones that are faint enough to be invisible to the naked eye—that can orbit the Earth in order to allow astronomers to continue observing the sky with modern telescopes.
In addition to Musk's launches, the US startup Reflect Orbital has proposed launching a constellation of 50,000 "very large mirror-like satellites to provide sunlight at night," said ESO.
"These satellites would be the brightest ever in orbit, with damaging consequences for dark skies on Earth," said the observatory. "Seen from within a reflected beam, the satellite delivering sunlight would appear four times brighter than the full Moon. Even if no satellite points its beam directly at an observer, each would be as bright as the planet Venus, the ‘morning star.' From a light-polluted city, like Munich, Germany, these hundreds of satellites would be the only ‘stars’ visible in the night sky."
The startup E-Space and two Chinese constellations, CTC-1 and 2, would also add hundreds of thousands of satellites into orbit.
The companies' satellite project could hinder scientists' ability to observe far-away galaxies, Earth-like planets near other stars, and asteroids that could potentially endanger the planet.
"Satellites, illuminated by the sun, are much brighter than distant galaxies. When a satellite crosses what we observe, it makes a bright streak on our image, zapping whatever is behind it," said ESO astronomer Olivier Hainaut, who led the study.
Hainaut noted that the planned launches could have economic and ecological impacts on the planet and humankind as well as harming astronomy.
Extreme light pollution from the bright satellites could disrupt people's biological clocks and ecosystems across the planet, and the satellites could also directly impact air quality due to the numerous launches required to send them into space and the "atmospheric pollution caused as they burn up on reentry at the end of life."
ESO conducted the research as the FCC considers applications from SpaceX and Reflect Orbital regarding the satellite launches
“The FCC received over 1800 comments regarding Reflect Orbital and nearly 1,500 comments on the application by SpaceX,” said ESO institutional affairs officer Betty Kioko. “The ball is now in the FCC’s court, and we wait to see the determinations they make on both filings. For optical astronomy, this is an existential threat, and we hope that the regulators will share that view.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Scilencing': The Trump Admin Wants to Gag American Scientists When We Need Them Most
Late last week the White House announced plans for a major tightening of political control over research grants; instead of relying on the advice of expert panels as to which research should be funded, it will defer to political appointees.
Jun 01, 2026
There are moments when it feels like the president’s attention (as occasionally happens when we age) just keeps getting narrower and narrower—the things he really cares about (arch, reflecting pool, Kennedy Center, gilded horse statues) are all within a few miles of his home. He can barely be bothered to stay interested in the war he started in Iran; he’s more concerned with giving pretend tours of his imaginary ballroom. (“You come in, you have cocktails,” he explained to his daughter in law, interviewing him for Fox in true dear-leader fashion. “They they go through the door, in for dinner.”)
But the momentum behind the truly dangerous Project 2025 reordering of our society continues apace, even if—without Elon Musk to give it a face—we aren’t noticing. Late last week the White House announced plans for a major tightening of political control over research grants. Instead of relying on the advice of expert panels as to which research should be funded, as Kevin Bogardus explains:
One or more senior political appointees designated by their agency head must conduct “a pre-issuance review” of all discretionary grants, making sure they follow several principles, including to “demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities.”
Since I enjoy making up new words (though surely someone has beaten me to this?) I’m going to call it “scilencing.”
The danger inherent in this should be entirely obvious. Jeff Mervis at Science interviewed a number of observers:
“What OMB [Office of Management and Budget] is proposing is not a reform of grants management,” Elizabeth Ginexi, a former program officer at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), writes in a Substack post. “It is a vehicle for complete political control of science… over every stage of the federal science funding lifecycle.” Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a leading critic of the Trump administration’s research policies, calls the proposal “a dystopian move that would destroy what remains of merit-based review.”
This would be a bad idea in a reason-based administration. In one that believes medieval nonsense about public health and that is eager to deregulate chemicals and end efforts to clean the air, it’s downright lethal.
And there is no doubt where the impulse really originated. The science the Trump administration really hates is climate science, because it threatens the “energy dominance” that the White House has made its basic foreign and economic policy, not to mention the profits of the fossil fuel industry that has been such an attentive donor. It’s not the first time that GOP administrations have tried to stymie climate science. Everyone remembers James Hansen’s crucial 1988 congressional testimony that global warming was underway; fewer recall that when he returned to Congress the next year the White House tried to rewrite and soften the conclusions in his testimony. That was under George H.W. Bush; under his son, in 2006, the White House tried again to rein him in. As he told Andy Revkin, NASA officials
ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site, and requests for interviews from journalists.
Dr. Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions. “They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public,” he said.
Hansen was crucial enough—the Paul Revere of climate change—and senior enough that he was able to keep working and speaking. And the scientific research money kept more or less flowing. But now, in this new bureaucratic play, the Office of Management and Budget is trying to make sure that such independence (the single most obvious requirement for scientific advance) is a thing of the past. As John Timmer wrote at Ars Technica:
The result is a horror show for US science research. Not only is peer review made a secondary consideration, but the new rules would allow any federal agency to cancel any grant at any time based on the vague assertion that it isn’t in the “national interest.” The document would also ban any grants on a number of culture war topics, limit international collaborations, and block spending on things like publishing papers and attending conferences.
It is, in short, a recipe for how the government can finish the job of crippling American science.
This is not yet a done deal. There is a 45-day comment period for letting the government know what you think of their plan, and 41 of those days remain. Here’s the place to have your say.
I’m not, I must say, convinced they’ll pay great attention to the comments, so it’s also crucial to be letting your congresspeople know what you think about this attack on science. Congress has so far been able to save at least some of the things Russell Vought has sought to kill: indeed, word came this week that the NOAA budget will include money to keep the carbon dioxide observatory at Mauna Loa (aka the world’s most important scientific instrument) up and running. That’s a direct result of Congress hearing outcry, so let’s keep it up.
Remind them that real leaders actually want to know what science can tell them—case in point, the remarkable new movie, Pressure, which tells the story of how General Eisenhower listened to the new and unorthodox science of meteorology to guide his D-Day decision making (95% on Rotten Tomatoes, for those of you who like numbers).
That changes on this scale are possible is precisely what terrifies the fossil fuel industry, and in turn the Trump administration.
The good news, I suppose, is that on climate and energy the cat has largely escaped the bag. We do know what the problem is, even if the ramifications become more dire with each passing week. (Here’s a somewhat terrifying update on the prospects for this year’s wildfire season; meanwhile, Tom Harris has the new numbers on Antarctic melt.). And we know where the solution lies. Indeed, it too comes into clearer focus with each passing week. As I wrote earlier this year, the action in the next few years is going to be about batteries, and boy is that proving true. Bloomberg confirmed last month that 2025 was the first year the world installed more than a hundred gigawatts of battery storage, up 48% from the year before, and expected to grow another 46% this year.
South Australia held a big auction last month for “firm supply” across the territory’s electric grid. This is supposed to be the last place where fossil fuel is superior: always-on power. But all the low bids came from companies that wanted to (and now will) install big batteries. As Giles Parkinson reported:
It is yet another sign of the growing dominance of battery storage technology in Australia’s main grids (and off grid).
Big batteries have dominated other long duration storage tenders, particularly in NSW [New South Wales], were it has sidelined pumped hydro projects, and battery storage has been steadily sending gas peakers to the sidelines, particularly in the demand peaks they used to dominate.
Indeed, Australia is emerging as the test case for just how fast and furiously you can switch a grid to clean renewables. Even as its government continues to mine huge amounts of coal to send abroad, it’s providing a generous domestic subsidy for Aussies who want to put smaller batteries in their homes. And that, in turn, is underwriting a revolution on the grid. As Adam Morton and Petra Stock wrote this past week:
Nearly 60% of the household-scale battery capacity installed across almost 200 other countries this financial year will be in the southern continent, according to a recent analysis. Since July, about 415,000 have been connected—roughly 1 unit for every 25 Australian homes.
Previously, power prices would rocket in the evenings as gas-fired power—the most expensive form of energy generation on the Australian grid—was turned on to meet peak demand. With solar and wind now providing nearly half the electricity, and coal-fired power plants gradually closing, gas has been used to fill gaps after the sun sets.
But batteries are increasingly taking over that role. Total gas-fired generation was 24% lower across three months this summer compared with the year before. Tennant Reed, the climate change and energy director with the Australian Industry Group, representing more than 60,000 businesses, says it has “completely changed how electricity prices are formed.”
I hope you’ll go back and read the sentence I italicized in the last paragraph: the use of gas to create electricity dropped 23% in a year. This is much like what’s happened in California, where Mark Jacobson reports that the world’s fourth largest economy is using 60% less gas to produce electricity than it did three years ago. That changes on this scale are possible is precisely what terrifies the fossil fuel industry, and in turn the Trump administration.
Beginning one month from tomorrow, Australians, whether they have solar panels or batteries or none of the above, will get three free hours of electricity every afternoon from noon to 3:00 pm.
And the possibilities are everywhere. Canary Media’s Julian Spector wrote last week, a new global report shows that these so-called “firm renewables” (wind and sun coupled with batteries)
“has crossed the threshold of cost competitiveness with new fossil fuel generation,” in areas with plenty of sun or wind. “The central question is no longer whether firm renewables can compete on cost, but how quickly the structural conditions needed to realise their potential can be put in place across the diversity of markets and institutional contexts prevailing globally.”
China sets the bar with its shockingly low cost of firm renewables today.
IRENA [International Renewable Energy Agency] looked at 252 solar projects that went online there in 2024 and found that many of them could be augmented with extra solar capacity and batteries to deliver power cheaper than the $100-per-megawatt-hour benchmark for new gas-fired plants. Almost all the modeled solar-battery plants could beat that cost for firm clean power 90% of the time; even at the higher reliability threshold of 99%, nearly half the projects remained competitive, and the lowest cost was $46 per megawatt-hour.
And would any of this be, I don’t know, politically popular?
Beginning one month from tomorrow, Australians, whether they have solar panels or batteries or none of the above, will get three free hours of electricity every afternoon from noon to 3:00 pm. If you want to know why our government needs to shut up scientists and ward off engineers, that’s why.
Oh, they’re also trying to shut down the world’s central archive of disasters, which lets us learn from the past. I predict that will not slow the pace of trouble.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Exposing the University of Michigan’s Violence Against Chinese Scholars
UM research Dr. Danhao Wan reportedly committed suicide after being questioned by federal authorities, revealing a broader pattern of political discrimination.
Apr 26, 2026
On April 17, CODEPINK and the local University of Michigan community gathered to hold a vigil in honor of UM researcher Dr. Danhao Wan on the one-month anniversary of his death. According to reports, Dr. Wang died after jumping from an upper floor of the G.G. Brown Building on North Campus, shortly after being targeted and questioned by federal authorities.
Over 30 members of the local community attended the vigil, bringing candles and flowers. They joined in a traditional Chinese bowing ceremony. During the vigil, CODEPINK and US Peace Council member Bob McMurray spoke to the crowd: “Tonight, I want us to remember there is a Mom and Dad mourning the loss of their son; there are people here in the university research community feeling his absence every day; and we, as the human family, have lost a brother.”
For weeks, Dr. Wang’s death went uncovered by the media. By the time it hit the news, the Chinese Consulate in Chicago had already confirmed the incident as a suicide and demanded an investigation of the “unwarranted interrogations and harassment of Chinese students and scholars.”
This is not the first time a Chinese scholar has been targeted at the University of Michigan; it is part of a broader pattern of political discrimination. In the last year, five Chinese scholars have been accused of various crimes, detained for months on end, and ultimately deported after the quiet dismissal of their cases due to a lack of evidence.
When individuals like Dr. Wang are targeted, it is not only their livelihoods that are threatened, but the very purpose and meaning they have built their lives around.
This discrimination is not new. In 2018, the Trump administration launched the China Initiative, a deeply flawed and racially biased program that targeted Chinese and Chinese Americans for “suspected espionage.” More often than not, federal authorities targeted individuals with no evidence of wrongdoing—simply for their identity. As a result, a new climate of suspicion and fear took root across academia. Though few convictions were made, many Chinese scholars suffered permanent professional and personal harm. They began to self-censor, withdraw from collaborations, or leave the United States entirely. For them, the US was no longer safe.
Although the China Initiative was formally ended under the Biden administration due to widespread criticism of its racial bias, its underlying logic has not disappeared. Instead, it has evolved into a broader atmosphere of suspicion directed at Chinese scholars, particularly in fields tied to advanced technology and science. At the University of Michigan, this pattern is especially visible.
Take the case of Dr. Chengxuan Han, a Chinese PhD student who was arrested for mailing roundworms commonly used in biological research. In most academic contexts, such an error would result in a minor administrative penalty. Instead, she was jailed for months and subjected to a full criminal prosecution. This outcome was wildly disproportionate to the alleged offense and one that effectively ended her academic trajectory.
Another scholar, Dr. Yunqing Jian, was accused of "agricultural terrorism” for breaking protocol and shipping materials to the US without the proper paperwork. Renowned biologists refuted this claim, saying it was impossible to use Fusarium graminearum, the fungus Dr. Jian studied, as a bioterrorist weapon. In the world of research deadlines and red tape, scholars say it's typical to try to streamline research by acquiring your own materials, even if that means skipping some paperwork. Dr. Jian has spent years researching how to mitigate the harm caused to crops by Fusarium graminearum, which is native to North America. While she did break protocol, it is absurd to accuse her of weaponizing the fungus, especially without any evidence.
Similarly, the cases of UM scholars Xu Bai, Fengfan Zhang, and Zhiyong Zhang demonstrate how ordinary research practices were reframed as criminal acts merely because of the identity of the scholars. Even though charges against them were dropped and the cases dismissed, the damage had already been done.
The three scholars had spent months in jail awaiting their trial. In a letter, Zhiyong Zhang spoke of his confusion over the situation:
I like the research atmosphere in the University. I like the people here. They are kind and polite. I am living a happy life here. However, unfortunately and apparently, some people don't like us. They want to connect us with politics. But what is politics? I didn't know what politics is when I was 13 years old, at which age I decided to study biology. Now I am also confused about what politics is. It's so abstract. We didn't hurt anyone, and we don't want to hurt anyone, either. We just want to do research and find something that can benefit humanity. That makes me feel my life is meaningful, although I can not make much money.
Zhang decided to study biology because his grandfather and father were both diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in their mid-30s: “I thought I could change to study neuroscience to cure the disease of my family and all the people who are suffering the pain from the disease… So this is what I am doing here.” At 32, he worries he will soon suffer the same fate.
Originally, the three scholars were informed by the University of Michigan that they had 30 days to pack and leave. Since they’d spent all their free time in the laboratory, they decided to use their last few weeks to visit the Grand Canyon. While there, the UM administration backtracked on their words, informing the scholars they had to leave immediately. At the airport, while attempting to return home, they were intercepted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and arrested.
This was no coincidence. The UM administration not only provided the wrong information, but they also had terminated their SEVIS status, which gave them permission to live and study in the US, making them vulnerable to federal authorities at passport control.
The repeated pattern points to a system in which Chinese researchers are treated as potential threats merely on the basis of their identity—which is all a part of the larger campaign to paint China as an enemy of the United States.
Dr. Danhao Wang’s life and work stand in stark contrast to this narrative. An assistant research scientist in the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering, Dr. Wang dedicated his career to advancing semiconductor technology. His research focused on gallium nitride, a material critical to modern electronics and essential for improving the speed, efficiency, and energy consumption of devices ranging from smartphones to renewable technology systems.
He made significant contributions to understanding how these materials behave at the atomic level, correcting long-standing assumptions and helping to unlock new possibilities for high-performance electronics. His work also explored how next-generation semiconductors could remain stable under extreme electrical conditions, paving the way for more efficient energy systems and emerging technologies.
We must put increased pressure on the University of Michigan and other universities to do more to protect their international students.
The repercussions of this research are vast. Semiconductors with such high performance potential could potentially make the data center industry obsolete by enabling a smaller device to do what normally takes an entire facility. For the US, gallium nitride semiconductors are the key to significantly improving its high-power weapons systems, and China’s current dominance over the material is considered a looming threat. This is all part of the US preparation for war against China, and the ongoing arms race around strategic resources and technology.
It’s reported that Dr. Wang was planning to return to China in May and already had a job set up. This raises even more questions over the circumstances of his death, and many Michigan locals have begun calling for an independent investigation.
Like most scientists, Dr. Wang’s research stemmed from deep intellectual commitment and passion. Years of specialized training, long hours in the lab, and a singular focus on discovery defined his life’s work. When individuals like Dr. Wang are targeted, it is not only their livelihoods that are threatened, but the very purpose and meaning they have built their lives around.
His death is a profound tragedy. And while the full circumstances remain unclear, it occurred within an environment where Chinese scholars have repeatedly been subjected to intense surveillance and unfair targeting.
The broader political climate cannot be ignored. Increasingly, US policy and rhetoric have framed China as a primary geopolitical adversary, particularly in areas like technology and national security. This framing has filtered down into academic spaces, where international collaboration between the US and China is now essentially criminalized.
The Chinese Consulate in Chicago has criticized the US for “overstretching the concept of national security” and has called for a full investigation and accountability. These demands should not be dismissed.
There must be transparency around the circumstances leading to Dr. Wang’s death. There must also be concrete safeguards to prevent discriminatory investigations targeting international scholars. This includes stronger legal protections, clearer institutional accountability, and accessible mental health support for those under investigation.
Universities, in particular, have a responsibility to protect their students and researchers. The University of Michigan is clearly doing the opposite. They are not protecting their students; they are instead actively targeting them by aiding these discriminatory investigations, putting all international students at risk.
We must put increased pressure on the University of Michigan and other universities to do more to protect their international students, to preserve the integrity of academic research, to protect international collaboration, and to ensure that scientific progress is not undermined by federal discrimination. If institutions fail to act, the cost will not only be measured in lost careers but in lost knowledge, lost innovation, and lost lives.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Don't Call It a 'Bombshell'—Microplastics Science Is Doing Exactly What It Should
The biggest threat isn’t scientific uncertainty, since there’s a considerable amount of scientific consensus that there is plastic in us. The biggest threat is weaponized uncertainty used to delay regulations.
Feb 18, 2026
“Microplastics are everywhere, and they’re harming us.”
“Actually, maybe not.”
“Hold on, that study might be flawed.”
“Bombshell… the whole field is in doubt.”
The headline isn’t “microplastics in people might be wrong,” but rather “quantifying microplastics in human samples is challenging, and the science is evolving in the right direction.”
If you’ve been hearing about microplastics recently, you may have been getting whiplash from the headlines. But you shouldn’t be.
Because this is what science looks like when it’s working: Researchers test new ideas and challenge each other’s methods. This helps refine what we know. What isn’t supposed to happen is a normal, healthy, scientific process getting manipulated into a dramatic storyline about a fictional scandal—a story that can leave the public confused.
The Myth Machine: How a Story We Tell Can Become a Trap
For over two decades, we’ve studied plastic pollution in the ocean. Scientists started describing the accumulation zones of plastic in the subtropical gyres, the places where wind and water currents concentrate floating debris. The research pointed to a truth that was complicated but clear: Most of the pieces are tiny, fragmented plastic—microplastics—along with some larger marine debris, like fishing gear.
But the media put a spin on it, and gave the world a simpler picture: a floating island of trash, “twice the size of Texas.” Some even called this a “garbage patch” you could supposedly walk on. People cried, “Why can’t I see it on Google Maps?” Some wondered if the US should plant a flag, and a handful of naive entrepreneurs fabricated fantastic ocean cleanup contraptions.
It was dramatic. Word spread. But eventually, it backfired.
All those who went looking for an island, didn’t find one. Instead they concluded, “It’s more like smog than a landfill,” and some pointed out, “Maybe it was exaggerated and the world had been duped.”
The pattern—one that goes oversimplify, sensationalize, backlash, dismissal—can drain urgency from a real crisis. Misinformation gets the headline. This gets repeated, as we’ve seen before in other environmental debates, such as the hole in the ozone layer, or climate change. The same thing is unfolding now with microplastics and human health.
What the “Bombshell” Reporting Gets Wrong
The recent article in The Guardian that sparked this debate focuses on a real issue. In our research studying microplastics in the environment and animal studies, measuring micro- and nanoplastics in human tissue is incredibly hard. It is particularly difficult when researchers are looking for very small particle sizes, where laboratory contamination from airborne sources becomes harder to rule out. This is especially the case in human tissue.
Microplastics are not like other contaminants, such as lead in water, where you can measure parts per billion, and lean on decades of standardized instruments and test methods. Plastics come in many polymers, sizes, and shapes. Nanoplastics behave differently than microplastics. And plastic is everywhere, meaning background contamination is always a risk. This is sometimes called the “pig pen effect”—it is a challenge to study a material that is so widespread.
The Guardian article is not a devastating blow. It’s a scientific debate around specific methods in a research field that is rapidly improving.
What’s the Real Headline?
The headline isn’t “microplastics in people might be wrong,” but rather “quantifying microplastics in human samples is challenging, and the science is evolving in the right direction.”
That difference matters. If the public hears “doubt cast,” then it translates it as “maybe plastic pollution isn’t really there or not that bad.” The question is, does it hold up across methods, across labs, across time?
So what has science taught us?
- Yes, we do have microplastics in our bodies. A number of peer-reviewed research shows that plastics, or plastic-associated signals, are present in human samples. Some findings claims will hold up better with time. That’s normal.
- Scientists criticize each other's studies. This is how science becomes more reliable over time. How methods get stress tested. By challenging assumptions, doing repeated studies, etc. weak studies get corrected or critiqued. In rare cases retracted. This isn’t chaos. It’s science.
- Some headlines are hype. Microplastics science is new enough that every new study can feel like a “first,” which incentivizes media toward shock value. But, when scientific findings revise our understanding, the correction isn’t “nothing to see here.” The correction should be that science is a self-improving enterprise.
- Scientists have been, and will continue revising the numbers. For example, early reporting suggested we each eat a “credit card” of plastic each week (subsequent studies estimated much less). Is that a bombshell? No, not really. And if it’s widely seen as such, it might suggest we should wait before we act (e.g., until every uncertainty is resolved). But, that’s not how public health works. We make decisions based on the best available science, and assess risk with limited data.
Weaponized Uncertainty
The biggest threat here isn’t scientific uncertainty, since there’s a considerable amount of scientific consensus that there is plastic in us. The biggest threat is weaponized uncertainty.
Environmental health has a predictable plot—when evidence starts piling up that a pollutant is harmful, a well-funded countermovement doesn’t always try to prove it’s safe. On the contrary, it tries to prove that the science is messy, uncertain, and “we need more data.”.
We’re not asking journalists to avoid urgency. Plastic pollution is urgent. Certain phrases, however, may signal that you’re being pulled into a pattern of mythmaking.
The industry has a playbook with favorite phrases, such as: “not conclusive,” “uncertain,” “scientists disagree,” “lack of consensus.” Disagreement in science is healthy. However, this (very routine) component of science can also become a winning political strategy used against science and public policy. Casting doubt can delay regulation.
Naomi Oreskes writes in Merchants of Doubt, “The industry had realized you could create the impression of controversy simply by asking questions.” That’s why our concern isn’t that researchers are debating methods. Our concern is that sensational headlines can warp debate, and give merchants of doubt an opportunity to skew public perception.
Red-Flag Language—It Should Make You Pause
We’re not asking journalists to avoid urgency. Plastic pollution is urgent. Certain phrases, however, may signal that you’re being pulled into a pattern of mythmaking, such as “bombshell,” or “debunked,” when what’s really happening is refinement. Those phrases shock and entertain, but do little to foster understanding.
What we actually need next is for the microplastics field to keep growing. Researchers across the board—from those that think studies are exaggerated to those that stand behind their research findings—are making calls for better lab protocols, contamination controls, reporting requirements, and inter-lab studies to validate results. These are unglamorous, but they’re what solidify early research findings into trusted science. A first-of-its-kind finding of plastic somewhere in the human body shouldn’t be framed like the final truth. It should be heralded as the beginning of a more complete picture.
Keep ReadingShow Less
RFK Jr Is Putting Big Beef's Profits Over American Health
His new dietary guidelines promoting saturated fats are a recipe for disaster, and a heart attack.
Feb 01, 2026
Fat is now phat, at least according to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
When President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary unveiled new federal dietary guidelines this January, he declared: “We are ending the war on saturated fats.” Seconding Kennedy was Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary, who promised that children and schools will no longer need to “tiptoe” around fat.
Kennedy’s exaltation of fat comes complete with a new upside-down guidelines pyramid where a thick cut of steak and a wedge of cheese share top billing with fruit and vegetables. This prime placement of a prime cut is the strongest endorsement for consuming red meat since the government first issued dietary guidelines in 1980.
The endorsement reverses decades of advisories, which the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and HHS jointly issue every five years, to limit red meat consumption issued under both Democratic and Republican administrations given the strong evidence that eating less of it lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease. Multiple studies over the last decade have linked red and processed meats not only to cardiovascular disease, but also to colon polyps, colorectal cancer, diabetes, diverticulosis, pneumonia, and even premature death.
Given the scientific evidence, we should intensify the war against saturated fats, not call it off.
The new dietary guidelines even contradict those issued under the first Trump administration just five years ago, warning Americans not to eat too much saturated fat. “There is little room,” those guidelines stated, “to include additional saturated fat in a healthy dietary pattern.” A significant percentage of saturated fat comes from red meat. Americans, who account for only 4% of the people on the planet, consume 21% of the world’s beef.
Kennedy’s fatmania even extends to beef tallow and butter, which the new pyramid identifies—along with olive oil—as “healthy fats” for cooking. In fact, beef tallow is 50% saturated fat. Butter is nearly 70%. Olive oil, meanwhile, is just 14% saturated fat and is, indeed, healthy.
This rendering of recommended fats muddles a message that could have been stunningly refreshing, given the Trump administration’s penchant for meddling with science. Some of the new pyramid’s recommendations were applauded by mainstream health advocacy groups, particularly one advising Americans to consume no more than 10 grams of added sugar per meal and others, as Kennedy pointed out, calling for people to “prioritize whole, nutrient-dense foods—protein, dairy, vegetables, fruits, healthy fats, and whole grains—and dramatically reduce highly processed foods.”
But such wholesomeness could easily be wasted if Americans increase their meat consumption. That would not, as Kennedy professes, make America healthy again. Given the scientific evidence, we should intensify the war against saturated fats, not call it off.
Saturated Fats Are Poison
The 420-page report by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee prepared in 2024 for the USDA and HHS found that more than 80% of Americans consume more than the recommended daily limit of saturated fat, which is about 20 grams—10% of a 2,000 calorie-per-day diet. The report concluded that replacing butter with plant-based oils and spreads higher in unsaturated fat is associated with lower cardiovascular disease risk and eating plant-based foods instead of meat is “associated with favorable cardiovascular outcomes.”
A March 2025 peer-reviewed study in JAMA Internal Medicine came to a similar conclusion. It found that eating more butter was associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer. Using plant-based oils instead of butter, the researcher found, was associated with a 17% lower risk of death. Such a reduction in mortality, according to study co-author Dr. Daniel Wang, means “a substantial number of deaths from cancer or from other chronic diseases … could be prevented” by replacing butter with such plant-based oils as soybean or olive oil.
What does a “substantial” number of deaths look like? Heart disease is the No. 1 killer in the United States, and heart disease and stroke kill more people than all cancers and accidents combined. The annual number of American deaths tied to cardiovascular disease is creeping toward the million mark. According to the American Heart Association (AHA), it killed more than 940,000 people in 2022.
Over the next 25 years, AHA projects that the incidence of high blood pressure among adults will increase from 50% today to 61%, obesity rates will jump from 43% to 60% and diabetes will afflict nearly 27% of Americans compared to 16% today. Reducing mortality by 17% for those and other related health problems would go a long way to make Americans healthier.
Highly Processed Food Is a Killer, Too
A good place to begin reducing food-related mortality is by cutting highly processed foods out of the American diet. That would require a drastic change in eating habits for a lot of people. A July 2022 study found that nearly 60% of calories in the average American diet comes from ultra-processed foods, which have been linked to cancer, cardiovascular disease, depression, diabetes, and obesity.
One of the main culprits is fast food. A January 2025 study of the six most popular fast-food chains in the country—Chick-fil-A, Domino’s Pizza, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Subway and Taco Bell—found that 85% of their menu items were ultra-processed. And, according to a 2018 study, more than a third of US adults dine at a fast-food chain on any given day, including nearly half of those aged 20 to 39.
The new federal dietary guidelines reverse decades of advisories that recommended limiting red meat consumption. (Illustration: HHS/USDA)
Our overreliance on fast food presents a huge conundrum. US food systems are structured in a way that it is unlikely you can tell people to cut processed foods and eat more meat at the same time. Hamburgers and processed deli meat are among the main ways Americans consume red meat. And given the blizzard of TV ads for junk food and fast-food joints, which have proliferated across the country and especially in low-income food deserts—it is also unlikely that many people will use the new guidelines to comb through their local grocer’s meat department for the leanest (and often most expensive) cut of beef.
According to the University of Connecticut’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health, food, beverage, and restaurant companies spend $14 billion a year on advertising in the United States. More than 80% of those ad buys are for fast food, sugary drinks, candy, and unhealthy snacks. That $14 billion is also 10 times more than the $1.4 billion fiscal year 2024 budget for chronic disease and health promotion at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And don’t expect the CDC to get into an arms race with junk food advertisers any time soon. Kennedy slashed the CDC staff by more than 25%, from 13,500 to below 10,000.
All of this adds up to the probability that Americans will see the new guidelines’ recommendation to eat red meat as a green light to gorge on even more burgers and other fast-food, ultra-processed meat.
Meat and Dairy Interests Weigh In
The new guidelines’ green light for consuming red meat and saturated fats is particularly vexing given the guidelines produced five years ago during Trump’s first term did not promote them. Why the about-face?
During the run-up to Trump’s second term, the agribusiness industry went into overdrive to install Trump in the White House and more Republicans in Congress. In 2016, agribusinesses gave Trump $4.6 million for his campaign, nearly double what it gave Hillary Clinton. But in 2024, they gave Trump $24.2 million, five times what it gave Kamala Harris. Agribusinesses also donated $1 million to Kennedy’s failed 2024 campaign, making him the fourth-biggest recipient among all presidential candidates during that election cycle.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is nowhere near making America healthy again by declaring in his new food pyramid that red meat is as healthy as broccoli, tomatoes, and beans.
Despite claiming he wanted dietary guidelines “free from ideological bias, institutional conflicts, or predetermined conclusions,” Kennedy rejected the recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and turned over the nation’s dietary data to 9 review authors, at least 6 of whom had financial ties to the beef, dairy, infant-formula, or weight-loss industry.
Three of them have received either research grant funding, honoraria, or consulting fees from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, which is known for funding dubious research downplaying or dismissing independent scientific findings that show read meat to be threat to public health and the environment. In 2024, the trade group gave nearly all of its $1.1 million in campaign contributions to Republican committees and candidates.
Kim Brackett, an Idaho rancher and vice president of the beef industry trade group, hailed the new guidelines, claiming “it is easy to incorporate beef into a balanced, heart-healthy diet.”
Perhaps, but the grim reality is most Americans do not follow a balanced, heart-healthy diet. Four out of five of us are already consuming more than the recommended daily limit of saturated fat and we are well on our way to a 60% obesity rate.
So, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is nowhere near making America healthy again by declaring in his new food pyramid that red meat is as healthy as broccoli, tomatoes, and beans. Beholden to Big Beef, he is driving us full speed ahead on the road to a collective heart attack.
This article first appeared at the Money Trail blog and is reposted here at Common Dreams with permission.
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy