- Government plots to suppress vaccines, and the effects of climate change;
- With my speculation about conservative motivations;
- Heather Cox Richardson on how, despite concerns for the budget, conservatives are willing to spend millions and millions to deport people they don’t like;
- Trump’s deflection from the Epstein case is like the Barbra Streisand Effect;
- Another aspect of the conservative mindset is the veneration of the Confederacy;
- As predicted: war against UCLA;
- A mid-decade census? What is the point?
- And how Republicans think if they’ve won by 51%, they have license to rewrite the rules (i.e. gerrymander) so they’ll never lose again. I don’t think that’s how the system is supposed to work.
I was saying yesterday how for years conservative conspiracy theorists have floated imaginary evidence, or misunderstood real evidence, to impugn the government, or Democrats, with plots against them — claims of reality that don’t synch with the way they think the world works, or should work. In the Trump era, however, actual conspiracy theories and plots are plain as day, and the conservatives are just fine with them — because they’re in the support of their own worldview, which is driven by anti-scientific, religious mythology.
Here’s a quote first:
There’s a weird little trick to living longer. It’s one that influencers won’t tell you; after all, there’s no way to earn a commission on it. It can be found tucked in the back of CVS, or even at any regular old doctor’s office. It’s expensive, but you may very well be able to get it for free. The government increasingly—staggeringly, stupefyingly—doesn’t want you to know about it.
It’s this:
Slate, Shannon Palus, 7 Aug 2025: RFK Jr. Is Waging War on American Lifespans, subtitled “It’s a massive, life-saving breakthrough. Trump’s health secretary is trying to strangle it.”
After the para above, it goes on:
It’s vaccination, a concept so boring, so establishment that it’s easy to forget that it matters at all. Vaccines, it’s been said for years, work so well to eliminate terrible illnesses like polio and measles that some people question why we need to inject them into our kids at all. But even a remarkable recent vaccine success seems to have been wiped from the memory of our leaders. In December 2020, Donald Trump called the COVID-19 vaccine an “incredible success”: “Before Operation Warp Speed, the typical timeframe for development and approval, as you know, could be infinity,” he said in remarks at the White House. “And we were very, very happy that we were able to get things done at a level that nobody has ever seen before.” In 2020, the American life expectancy dipped by nearly two years. Vaccination went a long way toward correcting that.
That success was due to the mRNA vaccine technology that RFK Jr. now wants to defund; “a position that no credible expert agrees with.”
Now, Trump’s administration has its hands around the throat of the very technology that made the rapid development of the COVID vaccine possible. On Tuesday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the incredibly ill-suited leader of the Department of Health and Human Services, announced that the agency would be defunding the development of mRNA vaccines, canceling $500 million in contracts. He implied that these vaccines are broadly unsafe and ineffective, a position that no credible expert agrees with. On the contrary, cutting this funding is downright reckless: “I don’t think I’ve seen a more dangerous decision in public health in my 50 years in the business,” Mike Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan, told the Associated Press. The COVID pandemic saw the first mRNA vaccine brought to market, and the technology could prove useful for protecting us against everything from cancer to norovirus (the illness that, in addition to death, can cause one to shit and vomit at the same time). RFK Jr.’s war on mRNA won’t halt all mRNA vaccine progress, Scientific American notes, but it will notably affect our ability to be prepared for the next pandemic. Which means more people will die than should have to.
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The article helpfully links the Scientific American piece I’d noticed earlier in the day:
Scientific American, 6 Aug 2025: Why mRNA Vaccines Are So Revolutionary—And What’s at Stake if We Lose Them, subtitled “Speed and flexibility have made mRNA a blockbuster technology”
Technical details about how they work.
))
But back to Slate. And the big picture.
Or to put it another way: This is really, really bad for human longevity. Why bother putting it like that? If vaccination is boring, routine, old news like landing on the moon, the science of living longer is alluring, sexy, obsession-worthy.
Followed by numerous examples.
Longevity bros, now is the time to be shrieking at the top of your lungs about how bad these vaccine cuts are—for America’s longevity, and for yours.
…
But at the end of the day, germs don’t really care who you are. When a novel disease spreads and we don’t have a way to whip up protection against it, the rich will die, too.
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My take: The conservative resistance to vaccines is due to 1) it’s a technology they don’t understand; 2) it’s a technology that seems counterintuitive, because conservatives are especially concerned with purity, and resist injections that would seem to violate the sanctity of the body. Some people can think around these intuitive fears; others cannot.
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Here’s one more, on a similar theme.
Salon, Eugene Rusyn, 7 Aug 2025: When aging America collides with climate change, subtitled “During and after disasters, the elderly are the most vulnerable”
Deep into a summer already marked by record-breaking summer temperatures across much of the United States and an unusually high number of deadly floods, from Texas to New Mexico and North Carolina to New Jersey, the nation’s most vulnerable groups face an unprecedented crisis. The federal agencies meant to predict, protect against and help rebuild after disasters are being gutted. The Trump administration’s proposed 2026 budget would cut funding for NOAA by almost half while shuttering the division that coordinates weather and climate research.
The articles goes on to explain why seniors are most vulnerable to these effects.
The current administration says it’s trying to save money. Why is this how they do it? Do they not understand the consequences? Or is it a cult that simply doesn’t care about “other” people not on their team? Aren’t many old people on their team? I haven’t figured this out.
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They’re so concerned about saving money, yet spends lots of money ridding the nation of brown-skinned people. How could their motives not be more obvious? This story, about Mike Flood of Nebraska appearing at a town hall, has been widely reported, even on TV.
Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson: August 6, 2025
Members of the House of Representatives are back in their districts for August, and on Monday, Republican Mike Flood of Nebraska held a town hall in Lincoln. A woman asked what she called a fiscal question. She said: “With 450 million FEMA dollars being reallocated to open Alligator Alcatraz, and 600 million taxpayer FEMA dollars being used to now open more concentration camps, and ICE burning through $8.4 million a day to illegally detain people—How much does it cost for fascism? How much do the taxpayers have to pay for a fascist country?” The crowd cheered wildly. Nicholas Wu, Cassandra Dumay, and Mia McCarthy of Politico reported today that by the end of Flood’s town hall, “chants of ‘Vote him out!’ threatened to drown out his closing comments.”
Those things are what Trump and MAGA want, apparently, but some of us are beginning to object.
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This item reminds me of the Streisand Effect. The more you complain about an invasion of your privacy, the more you draw attention to yourself.
The Atlantic, David A. Graham, 6 Aug 2025: Donald Trump Doesn’t Want You to Read This Article, subtitled “The president keeps trying to change the subject from Jeffrey Epstein, but his tactics are only making it worse.”
Donald Trump doesn’t want you to read this article.
Don’t let it go to your head, and I won’t let it go to mine; we’re not special. He doesn’t want anyone reading anything about Jeffrey Epstein, or his own relationship with the late sex offender. And yet his intensive efforts to change the subject to something—anything—else seem to bring only more scrutiny.
With many examples.
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Another tendril of the conservative/MAGA mindset. Not independent of the others, of course.
JMG, from Military Times, 7 Aug 2025: Hegseth: Confederate Monument To Return To Arlington
And all the stories about restoring names to military bases originally named for Civil War heroes.
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More about undermining education.
JMG, from NBC News, 6 Aug 2025: Trump Admin Suspends $584M In Grants For UCLA
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Why would they want to do this?
NY Times, 7 Aug 2025: Trump Demands Census Excluding Undocumented Immigrants Amid Redistricting Fight, subtitled “With the midterm elections looming, Republicans are trying to secure every advantage they can as they face the prospect of Democrats taking control of the House.”
President Trump said on Thursday that he had ordered the Commerce Department to begin work on a new census that excludes undocumented immigrants, as he and his allies press Republican-led states to redraw their congressional maps to benefit the party.
A new census would be a significant departure from a process stipulated by the Constitution to occur every 10 years. Historically, the census has counted all U.S. residents regardless of their immigration status, a process that helps determine both the allotment of congressional seats and billions of dollars in federal money sent to states.
“People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on social media.
Once again, Trump is flouting the Constitution, in two ways. I assume they want to do this so that the existence of immigrants doesn’t shift the balance in the House, even indirectly, because they suppose that immigrants would support Democrats. Well that’s easy — it’s because Republicans are so mean to them.
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One more thought, that I saw expressed on Facebook a couple times but don’t have a source for.
It’s about the redistricting in Texas. Republicans think that because they won the state by 51% in the last election, they have the right change all the rules so that Republicans will never lose an election again.
I don’t think that’s what the Founders had in mind.
