Queensland's controversial ban on puberty blockers and other hormone therapies is unlawful because of a failure to properly consult health executives on a decision affected by political interference, a court has heard. The supreme court in Brisbane on Wednesday heard the ban should be overturned as part of a legal challenge launched by the mother of a transgender child. The mother cannot be identified for legal reasons.
The chilling warning comes as a new culture of fear and silence has descended on NASA after Trump officials instituted dramatic staff reductions, along with alleged unilateral budget cuts and the gagging of an important program that allows people to air safety and performance issues without fear of reprisals, according to the report released by Democrats on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
If I were a federal prosecutor in Utah bringing murder charges against Tyler Robinson in the killing of Charlie Kirk, this would strike me as more than a little ominous. The future of their case would likely rely in large part on the president and the crew of his big ship of fools. They've already mucked around with the case of Luigi Mangione in New York, who is charged with the murder of healthcare executive Brian Thompson.
The already tumultuous landscape of U.S. vaccine policy faces more turmoil in what's anticipated to be a politically charged two-day meeting of a recently overhauled advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is an independent panel of experts that has traditionally met three times a year to make science-based recommendations about who should receive certain vaccines.
The first part of this past summer, I was preoccupied with preparing three different grant applications. Writing grants is a normal part of my job. Heck, sometimes it feels like it is the majority of my job as an academic scientist. So, those couple of months were not out of the ordinary; I often spend those early summer months preparing for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) summer cycle.
"Look at the way in which Tommy Robinson sort of fawned on Musk, look at the way in which Farage fawns about Trump, that, you know, they're seeking to turn this country into sort of little MAGA Britain. "We need to be just much clearer in calling out that this is in whatever shape or form, a form of extraterritorial interference into our democratic culture... which they would never tolerate in the US."
US president Donald Trump is an avowed climate science sceptic who during his second term has followed through on promises to slash funding for renewable energies like wind, and to promote oil and gas. But the administration has also gutted agencies that produce climate information used by millions of Americans. In February, only weeks after taking office, around 800 people were dismissed from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),
The complaint asserts that FBI Director Kash Patel indicated directly to one of the ousted agents, Brian Driscoll, that he knew the firings were likely illegal but was powerless to stop them because the White House and the Justice Department were determined to remove all agents who had helped in investigations surrounding Trump.
The move is a chilling escalation of Trump's weaponization of the DOJ against perceived political opponents. It's also part of an obvious and long-standing effort to gain control of the Fed. Like the politicization of law enforcement, seizing power over the central bank is a power grab straight out of the authoritarian playbook, and one with predictable, ugly outcomes for America's economy and democracy.
In 1937, Joseph Stalin commissioned a sweeping census of the Soviet Union. The data reflected some uncomfortable facts in particular, the dampening of population growth in areas devastated by the 1933 famine and so Stalin's government suppressed the release of the survey results. Several high-level government statistical workers responsible for the census were subsequently imprisoned and apparently executed. Though the Soviet authorities would proudly trumpet national statistics that glorified the USSR's achievements, any numbers that did not fit the preferred narrative were buried.
Our shared commitment to our country, our oaths of office, and our mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters compel us to warn Congress and the American people of the cascading effects of decisions made by the current administration,
More than 150 injuries from traffic crashes could have been avoided and nearly a quarter-million New York City bus riders had faster commutes had the Adams administration had not stymied several street redesigns at the behest of powerful interests - in at least one case allegedly in exchange for bribes - according to a Streetsblog analysis. Since taking office in 2022, Adams and his aides intervened in at least seven key Department of Transportation safety projects that could have reduced crashes by more than 50 percent and sped up bus trips by 24 percent, based on agency studies of similar overhauls elsewhere.
I think there is a reckoning coming for the central banks, not just in Britain but also in the United States, also the ECB [European Central Bank], she told Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast. Truss, who repeatedly criticised economic orthodoxy during her brief spell in Downing Street, argued that unelected central banks were able to undermine elected politicians. It's also very difficult, as I found as prime minister, to combine fiscal and monetary policy if you don't hold one of the levers. So I think it's got to change, she said.
"This is very worrying, because if past is prologue, it may suggest that they are preparing to eliminate or emasculate the committee," Peter Lurie, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told The New York Times.
