All 17 experts ousted from the federal vaccine advisory committee have spoken out about the drastic changes that anti-vaccine advocate and current US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made since taking office. Those changes include unilaterally restricting access to COVID-19 vaccines and summarily firing the entire Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which had guided federal vaccine policies for more than 60 years.
"We are deeply concerned that these destabilizing decisions, made without clear rationale, may roll back the achievements of US immunization policy, impact people’s access to lifesaving vaccines, and ultimately put US families at risk of dangerous and preventable illnesses," the fired experts write in an editorial published in JAMA.
Kennedy dismissed the entire committee on June 9, accusing the former members of lacking public trust and being "plagued with persistent conflicts of interest," despite the committee's transparent disclosure and conflict of interest policies.
For years, Comixology was the place for digital comics. In 2014, the company was sold to Amazon. Despite some initial optimism about the e-commerce behemoth putting its considerable weight behind the growth of digital comics, Amazon was a poor caretaker. The URL comixology.com — Read the rest
Anti-vaccine advocate and current Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took to social media Wednesday to announce the names of eight people he is appointing to a critical federal vaccine advisory committee—which is currently empty after Kennedy abruptly fired all 17 previous members Monday.
In the past, the vetting process for appointing new members to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) could take years. But Kennedy has taken just two days.
The panel, typically stocked with vaccine, infectious disease, and public health experts, carefully and publicly reviews, analyzes, and debates vaccine data and offers recommendations to the CDC via votes. The CDC typically adopts the recommendations, which set clinical practices nationwide and determine insurance coverage for vaccinations.
Thank goodness real science and health experts are working tirelessly to combat the misinformation and disinformation about vaccines and other health issues currently being peddled by the folks — and brain worms — currently in charge of our public "health" system. — Read the rest
For years we’ve noted how this country’s corrupt inability to protect consumer security, regulate data brokers, or pass even a baseline privacy law was going to have increasingly deadly consequences. Endless signs have been there; from stalkers abusing app and cell phone data to pursue their victims, to right wing extremists using data broker data to target vulnerable women seeking reproductive care.
“The accused Minneapolis assassin allegedly used data brokers as a key part of his plot to track down and murder Democratic lawmakers,” Ron Wyden, the US senator from Oregon, tells WIRED. “Congress doesn’t need any more proof that people are being killed based on data for sale to anyone with a credit card. Every single American’s safety is at risk until Congress cracks down on this sleazy industry.”
To be very clear, both of the lawmakers’ addresses were available via their websites, and this information was already widely available online. Home addresses, even of prominent lawmakers, are generally widely available through public records.
That said, in this case, the court docs indicate the killer obtained the information through a dozen of different name and address websites that collect their data from a massive international web of barely-regulated data brokers.
This isn’t even the worst case scenario for the U.S. and its pathetic privacy standards. This was only name and addresses; most data brokers collect detailed minutiae about your every daily habit, including your movement patterns down to the meter, your online browsing behaviors down to the second, your sexual preferences, your bad driving habits, your home electricity usage, and so much more.
There’s zero meaningful oversight of the sector. Generally, data brokers and companies try to hide behind claims that they “anonymize” this data. A meaningless term given study after study has shown that users in such datasets can be easily identified with just a little extra information and a few seconds of work.
There’s bottomless potential for far worse scandals and potential deaths. All because the United States has, time and time and time again, put making money over public safety and even national security. It’s a hard lesson we’re going to learn again and again and again until Congressional lawmakers shake off the corruption and figure out how to craft competent legislation. Or we replace them.
Sen. Joni Ernst speaks at her now infamous town hall in Parkersburg, Friday, May 30, 2025. — via @SenJoniErnst on Twitter/X
After capturing national headlines on Friday for her response of, “Well, we all are going to die,” to an Iowan worried cuts to Medicaid in the Republican budget bill will cause untimely death, Sen. Joni Ernst decided to respond to critics of her dismissive response by mocking them in a passive-aggressive video posted as two Instagram stories on Saturday.
“Hello, everyone, I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologize for a statement that I made yesterday at my town hall,” Ernst says directly to the camera. The senator is outdoors, and gravestones can be seen in the background. “See, I was in the process of answering a question that had been asked by an audience member, when a woman who is extremely distraught screamed out from the back corner of the auditorium, “People are going to die.” And I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium that yes, we are all going to perish from this earth.”
“So, I apologize. And I’m really, really glad that I didn’t have to bring up the subject of the Tooth Fairy as well. But for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my lord and savior, Jesus Christ.”
Ernst also posted a second, slightly shorter version of the video, with onscreen text, a musical soundtrack and ’90s-MTV-style cutaways to her saying, “We all are going to die” onstage at her Butler County town hall on Friday. This version omits the line about wanting to “sincerely apologize,” but otherwise follows the text of the longer version, ending with Ernst’s call to “embrace” Jesus.
The senator only posted these videos as Instagram stories, which Instagram automatically deletes after 24 hours. Ernst didn’t post the videos on either of her two Twitter/X feeds, or on her Facebook pages, where they would have reached a wider audience and would have remained until she removed them.
Ernst did appear to be herself at the town hall on Friday, as members of the audience questioned her about her support for President Trump’s planned drastic cuts to funding for domestic programs and the ongoing and seemingly ill-informed and arbitrary cuts to federal agencies by DOGE. (Ernst is a founding member of the Senate DOGE Caucus, which promotes the Musk-founded pseudo-agency’s work.) The Iowans gathered in the auditorium at Arlington-Parkersburg High School pushed back against Ernst’s statements, sometimes shouting and booing.
Among the statements that drew pushback from the crowd was Ernst’s defense of Medicaid cuts in the budget bill that the House passed two weeks ago. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the budget bill passed by House Republicans two weeks ago will end Medicaid coverage for 8.7 million people and lead an additional 7.6 million Americans to go without health insurance over the next 10 years. Using the CBO analysis, the Kaiser Family Foundation, a leading research center on healthcare issues, estimates Iowa will lose up to $8 billion in federal Medicaid funds over the same 10-year period, and see a decrease in Medicaid enrollment with as many as 112,000 fewer Iowans enrolled in the program by 2034 than would be without the eligibility changes in the bill.
Ernst defends her support of the Medicaid cuts with the talking points other congressional Republicans and the Trump administration are using, claiming they aren’t actually cuts, just reforms to eliminate waste and to remove people unworthy of receiving Medicaid.
The senator was telling the crowd in the auditorium that the cuts aren’t cuts, just “corrections of overpayments and people who have not been eligible,” and suggested that people who oppose the cuts are actually in favor of “illegals receiving Medicaid benefits.” That’s when a woman in the audience shouted, “People will die.”
“People are not…” Ernst began in reply, before dismissing the comment with, “Well, we all are going to die.”
As audience members shouted in disagreement, Ernst continued in the tone of an exasperated teacher lecturing unruly students.
“What you don’t want to do is listen to me when I say that we are going to focus on those that are most vulnerable. Those that meet the eligibility requirements for Medicaid, we will protect. We will protect them. Medicaid is extremely important here in the state of Iowa. If you don’t want to listen, that’s fine.”
On Sunday, Amie Rivers of Iowa Stating Line posted a statement from India May, the person who shouted the comment on Friday.
“I’m a mom, Library Director, Registered Nurse, and county death investigator,” May wrote. “At Senator Joni Ernst’s recent town hall I live-streamed every word, listening as real fears about food insecurity and lost health care were waved away again and again.”
A friend showed May the video Ernst posted Saturday (the longer version, because May referenced the “distraught woman” comment).
“It rang hollow and repeated the same gaslighting aimed at her MAGA base,” she said.
May, who is a progressive Democrat running for the Iowa House in District 58, said she intends to “keep emailing [Ernst] daily with my concerns.”
UPDATE: just heard from India May with Insufferable Wenches of Iowa says she's the woman who said "people will die," prompting Ernst's response. And May is also running for Iowa legislature. mayforiowa.com
Aside from mocking people who found her “Well, we all are going to die” response callous on Instagram, Ernst has only mentioned the town hall once so far on social media. In a tweet posted Friday on her official Senate X account, Iowa’s junior senator said, “Thanks folks for coming out to my town hall in Parkersburg today! I always enjoy hearing from constituents and sharing my work to cut government red tape for you.”
Thanks folks for coming out to my town hall in Parkersburg today!
I always enjoy hearing from constituents and sharing my work to cut government red tape for you. pic.twitter.com/Roy06rQVvL
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