Authored by Arthur Schaper via American Greatness,

The United States, the American people, Donald Trump, and even myself: we have all been humbled over the last four years—or the last sixteen years … or even thirty years.

And we needed it.

More than thirty years ago, following the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States emerged as the leader of the pack in a once-bipolar world. The Soviet Union collapsed, socialism sloughed off, free enterprise became commonplace as the solution to all our problems, and the liberal democratic process was winning. “It is the End of History,” Francis Fukuyama (arrogantly, short-sightedly) prophesied.

Of course, history didn’t stop, and we had lessons to learn.

Some suggest that this fantasy of global liberalism came crashing down on September 11, 2001. Let’s not forget February 26th, 1993, when Islamic terrorists attempted to topple the World Trade Center by detonating the foundation of one tower to crash into the other.

Islamic terror replaced the adversarial communist regimes as our enemies. America was complacent, prosperous, and secure in its secular liberalism. Instead of remembering what made the West the best—the Gospel, our Judeo-Christian heritage, Biblical truth, our reliance on a Living Savior instead of humanist self-reliance—we got self-righteous and self-satisfied. “We beat the Russians! We are the only player on the world stage!”

Thus, it seemed that there was nothing left to fight but ourselves.

But that was never the case. Marxism’s vision of a stateless world dominated by class conflict never emerged, but Pan-Americanism would never work, either. An America-defined globalism not only offended other nations, but it also undermined the American citizen and the American experiment.

With an obsessive focus on free trade, cheap labor, and making money while ignoring national identity—borders, language, culture, faith, family, and freedom—Americans witnessed the wonders of the American dream turn into an elite fantasy that only the rich and politically connected could enjoy.

We got arrogant, then fearful and angry; we stopped believing in what really made America great. We forgot who we are. We needed to be humbled.

And what is humility? A biblical definition is apropos, I think:

“For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.” (Romans 12:3)

American exceptionalism is a real thing. We the People of the United States should be proud of our heritage. That recognition does not justify American supremacism, however. Nor does it mean our safety, security, or sovereignty depends on what other countries do and believe.

The United States embraced some humiliating defeats not just on September 11, 2001, but in the waning year of the George W. Bush administration, when risky financing and overextended loans inflated housing prices and unleashed the Great Recession.

Instead of taking stock of where we were wrong, we went with a false messiah, Barack Obama, who chimed, “We are the change we have been waiting for.” But we were the ones who caused our own downfall. How could we make changes if we did not change?

From this self-righteous refusal to own our failures came the Occupy Movement, Black Lives Matter, and the re-radicalization of race. Obama long harbored bitter disgust for the United States, and he seduced the American public. Under the Obama Administration, humility was minimized and disparaged, for sure. One of the most repeated words in the 44th president’s speeches was “I.” It was all about him, and to hell with America.

And the country was humbled for the worse. Obama called us all racist and insisted that we needed the government to run our healthcare. He exhorted us to flood our country with “undocumented immigrants” so that we could pay back for all the wrongs that American imperialism had caused. America fell into decline.

Then came Trump, and with him the mantra “Make America Great Again.”

He talked about God restoring America’s previous glory. But was that something he could do himself? Not at all. In too many ways, his first term had some of the hallmarks of amateur hour. He surrounded himself with bad advisors, went with tired ideas, and didn’t transform the Art of the Deal into the Art of Governing.

Election 2020, with COVID, George Floyd, massive spending, and a frustrating Congress, did not help matters. Americans still had not learned their lesson.

We need God. We need biblical truth. We need to restore our Judeo-Christian heritage, our Anglo-American legal traditions, and our revolutionary legacy.

America’s further humbling came under bumbling Joe Biden. Defined by Biden-Harris’ arrogant incompetence, suffused with dementia and DEI, America became weaker, worn out, and adrift, all while witnessing the left’s culmination of all their wishes. Obama got his third term.

Then Trump ran again. He faced challenges from the right because he hadn’t gotten the job done. Perhaps those challenges shaped his second-term determination. Then came a would-be assassin’s bullet, which changed the course of history in our favor.

Trump has acknowledged, “God saved my life.” And why? “To Make America Great Again.”

His second inaugural speech was all business, with a clear reliance on where his—and our—power comes from: God.

Trump is a different man, acting like the president I wanted in 2016, whom I had anticipated DeSantis would be.

Like Homer’s eponymous hero, Trump is a man of many turns, and he’s turning out real results. Ulysses has come home. He has finished off all the suitors, he has his wife Penelope, and the gods are smiling at him. He learned his lesson. He gets it.

President Trump 2.0 has accomplished much of what we had expected in 2017, and more. Trump now knows his limits, and he knows what he can—and must—do. That is true humility.

If his supercharged successes continue, it makes all the disappointments, frustrations, and confusions of the previous six years worth the aggravation.

Authored by Andrew Lowenthal via The Brownstone Institute,

Last week, my non-profit liber-net unveiled a new database of US government awards to mis-dis-and-malinformation (MDM) and other content control initiatives. A previous Network Affects post broke down where that money came from. This one details where the money went, specifically the countries, regions, topics, and activities, and the top organisations that took home the cash.

The below graphs are based on 867 awards made between 2016-2024, out of nearly 1,100 that we reviewed from 2010 to the present day. You can review our process and methodology here. You can see all the graphs from the last post, this post, and a few more here.

When it comes to MDM funding, the vast majority of the awards went to US-based initiatives. The graph below includes a contract totaling nearly $1 billion to military contractor Peraton, but even without it, US recipients received around $318 million, dwarfing the next country, Kazakhstan, at $20 million. Out of the nearly $1.5 billion spent across the 867 awards, around $187 million left the US from a roughly $6.7 trillion annual federal budget.

The “US taxpayers are wasting money on foreigners” narrative isn’t the story here, at least not in the mis/disinformation space.

When you zoom out, it looks like this:

That said, when you look at the data by unique awards (individual grants and contracts made), American organisations are still the main recipients, though it isn’t quite as skewed – US organisations received 220 of the 867 awards made. 

Looking at unique awards is important in part because of the internal government resources and focus it represents. Giving out money costs money, whether it is $1,000 or $1,000,000.

Below, we’ve broken the individual awards down by region. After the US, Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic states are the main focus areas, mostly as a counter to Russian influence.

Here are the unique awards on a map:

Another interesting view is which countries the “Miscellaneous Foreign Awardees” awards went to. These are awards where the organisation is not explicitly named (this can be for security justifications or a host of unknown reasons), though in some cases it is easy to deduce what the organisation is (e.g., through the awardee address that is sometimes referenced in the USAspending record).

This is how the Misc. awards break down by country outside the US:

You can view the Misc. awards in our searchable database.

What topics did the money go to? The below outlines our analysis of the major themes. Note that while this is a pie chart, we’ve tagged individual awards with more than one topic as they were frequently combined, such as vaccine “misinformation” in minority communities.

This is how it breaks down among the top eight funders:

We have also classified the awards by the types of activities they entailed, such as conferences, research, or technology development. These were often a little harder to classify, but the general outline is still useful in understanding what “counter-misinformation” work looks like in practice.

Lastly, who got most of the money? 

The two visualisations below detail the top 30 awardees by dollar amount and by the number of individual awards. The $80 million award to the CDC Foundation is a kind of internal transfer the CDC gave to a technically external (but heavily linked) 501(c)(3).

And the unique awards which reveal some more familiar names and close government relationships. The number of awards doesn’t correlate too tightly with the overall funding received.

You can find explore and find more in the database. Enjoy!

Republished from the author’s Substack

As the global population grows and demand for affordable protein increases, eggs remain a dietary staple. On average, people consume roughly 10 kilograms of eggs per year.

However, prices have spiked in recent years due to avian flu outbreaks and rising feed, fuel, and labor costs, which farmers are passing on to consumers. In just four years, egg prices in the U.S. have surged by 238%.

This chart, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, explores what consumers are paying for a dozen eggs across major economies, based on crowdsourced data from Numbeo and official national statistics. Currency values are converted as of April 24, 2025.

Switzerland Tops the List

Switzerland tops the global chart, with consumers paying an average of $7.31 per dozen eggs—the highest price globally and nearly double what shoppers pay in neighboring Italy.

On the other hand, India offers the lowest egg prices, with a dozen costing just $0.97, reflecting broader affordability in emerging markets.

U.S. Prices Rise Amid Shortages and Policy Shifts

Egg prices in the United States climbed sharply through the end of the Biden administration (topping $8 per dozen), thanks to a combination of avian flu outbreaks, and supply chain disruptions drove costs higher, surpassing prices in many European nations and Canada. 

The last few weeks, since President Trump took over, egg prices have tumbled back below $4 per dozen…

Emerging Markets Offer Relative Bargains

Despite global inflation, several emerging markets remain egg-price havens. In Brazil, Russia, and China, consumers pay under $2 per dozen, making eggs a highly accessible protein source for large populations.

To learn more about food prices, check out this graphic that shows the cost of a McDonald’s Big Mac in different countries worldwide in U.S. dollars.

Via Middle East Eye

The organization set to administer Israel’s controversial plan to take control of humanitarian aid distribution in Gaza will use private contractors to secure hubs where Palestinians will receive 1,750 kcal meals that will cost donors a little more than a dollar each.

Details about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) strategy for Gaza are laid out in a 14-page document circulating amongst aid organizations working on Gaza and seen by Middle East Eye.

The hitherto unknown nonprofit, which was registered in Switzerland in February, has been touted as the umbrella body that will seemingly take over humanitarian operations in Gaza while inviting NGOs to “take advantage” of its “logistics, security and transparency frameworks”.

The pitch-like document offers detailed information about how the foundation, largely led by Americans and involving a mix of disaster relief, security and financial experts, will operate and how it is organized, though some details appear yet to be finalized. The document is undated.

The new details have emerged as UN agencies and international aid organizations, which have roundly rejected the plan that GHF would administer, reportedly coming under pressure from the US government to participate. Earlier this week, Amnesty Switzerland raised concerns that, based on the information available, GHF could be risking contributing to international crimes through its services. 

The Israeli operation appears to already be underway. Israel security cabinet approved its plan on Sunday with satellite evidence emerging on Wednesday suggesting that work has already begun to build the humanitarian hubs from which aid will be distributed.

‘New operating model’

According to the document, the foundation says it is offering “a new operating model”, blaming aid diversion, active combat and “restricted access” as reasons why millions of civilians have been left without food, water and other supplies.

It does not specify the blockades on aid that Israel has put in place, including over the past two months, that have led the enclave’s population to the brink of mass starvation. Instead, it says Hamas and criminal organizations have intercepted, taxed and resold aid, and that Israeli “domestic security concerns and political pressure limit Gaza access and drive risk-averse policy toward humanitarian organizations”.

The document repeatedly frames one of the main issues the foundation serves as fixing “eroded donor confidence”, saying it was established to “restore that vital lifeline through an independent, rigorously audited model that gets assistance directly – and only – to those in need”.

GHF says it is set to establish four “secure distribution sites” that will each serve 300,000 people “with capacity to expand past 2 million”. Pre-packaged rations, hygiene kits and medical supplies will be delivered to the sites via armored vehicles “through tightly controlled corridors, monitored in real time to prevent diversion”.

“At just US $1.3 per meal… donors can see immediate, measurable impact,” the document says, later indicating that each meal will be 1,750 kcal.

It is unclear how many meals would be provided daily, though it is suggested that donors might be offered a chance to fund “a family-box” which would contain 50 meals at a time. The World Food Programme aims to provide recipients of food aid with at least 2,100 kcal per day.

The Israeli military will “not be stationed at or near” the sites. Instead, security will be provided by “experienced professionals, including personnel who previously secured the Netzarim Corridor during the recent ceasefire”. The document says aid will be distributed “without regard to identity, origin or affiliation” and “delivered purely based on need, with community dignity and safety as top priorities”.

Some pro-Palestinian advocates have warned over a US-controlled aid scheme, after Trump White House blasted a ‘compromised’ UNRWA:

Breaking: Israel has just bombed an aid center in northern Gaza, killing dozens of civilians. In doing so, it paves the way to force the population into submission to the U.S. starvation plan through a private company, ending the role of UNRWA and international agencies. pic.twitter.com/KoUDSCypVa

— Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده (@RamAbdu) May 9, 2025

GHF and its partners are said to be “actively engaging local communities to generate support” for its operations and will train “additional local champions” to expand the programme.

“This effort aims not only to safeguard humanitarian access, but to ethically empower traditional community leaders to reestablish constructive influence supporting the organic restoration of local communities,” the document says.

American executives

GHF’s board of directors includes Nate Mook, the former CEO of World Central Kitchen and a special advisor on Ukraine to the Howard G Buffett Foundation.

It also includes Loik Henderson, who is said to be a legal and business professional with 20 years experience including to Fortune 500 companies; Raisa Sheynberg, a vice president of government affairs and policy at Mastercard who previously led Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency project and also worked on national security and economic policy for the US government; and Jonathan Foster, founder and managing director of Current Capital Partners LLC.

The foundation will be run by three Americans with disaster relief experience, led by executive director Jake Wood, founder and former CEO of Team Rubicon, a US-based disaster relief organization. Wood is a Marine Corps veteran and the founder of Groundswell, a platform “reinventing employee giving through donor-advised funds”.

Chief operating officer David Burke is a “strategic operations expert” who previously worked at Team Rubicon and is also a Marine Corps veteran.

John Acree, a former USAID official, will serve as head of mission. In addition to experience in disaster response and civil-military coordination, the document notes that he served as “chief of party” on US government contracts in Latin America and the Caribbean worth more than $45m.

An advisory board includes Bill Miller, a former UN and US State Department official, and retired Lt General Mark Schwartz, a former US security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority. David Beasley, the former governor of South Carolina and former executive director of the UN World Food Programme, is listed as “to be finalised” as a potential board member.

The document suggests that major donors are “invited to nominate additional candidates for board membership”. It also says discussions are underway with “prominent Palestinians” to join the board.

‘Every dollar traceable’

The document focuses repeatedly on how GHF will be transparent, saying it has secured banking with US-based Truist Bank and JPMorgan Chase. “Real-time monitoring and beneficiary feedback loop into public dashboards so every dollar is traceable and every outcome verifiable,” it says.

Truist, it notes, has “demonstrated its commitment to humanitarian and disaster relief efforts” including through committing $725m to recovery initiatives in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene last year.

A separate Swiss GHF affiliate is being created “to address donors who would prefer to participate outside of the US structure”.

Goldman Sachs is said to have made a verbal commitment to establish a bank account for the entity “which should be completed shortly”. It also says it is “in the process of retaining one of the world’s most respected audit and assurance firms” to provide third-party oversight of its financial and operational practices, and that it is also in discussion with accounting firm Deloitte.

Just over a week after Bloomberg exposed the rise of “zombie” or “phantom” oil tankers—cargo ships that hijack the identities of scrapped ships to evade U.S. sanctions—another clandestine maritime supply chain has emerged, this time revealing how Iranian crude continues flowing into China despite mounting pressure from the Trump administration. 

Bloomberg reports that a U.S.-sanctioned “zombie” tanker—Gather View, disguised as a scrapped vessel named Global—delivered 2 million barrels of Iranian oil to a government-run port in Shandong despite a provincial ban on sanctioned ships. Ship tracking data showed the zombie tanker’s port call occurred in late April. 

The clandestine maritime supply chain reveals an increasingly desperate Tehran and China’s “teapot” refiners, defying U.S. sanctions and allowing the Iranian oil trade to remain alive. 

In a separate report, Reuters reported that U.S. sanctions on two small Chinese teapots have created difficult operating conditions for those refineries.

President Trump has been seeking “maximum pressure” on Iran by disrupting Tehran’s crude export operations with sanctions over its nuclear program. 

In March, the U.S. sanctioned Shandong Shouguang Luqing Petrochemical and Shandong Shengxing Chemical in April.

Beijing has previously rejected unilateral sanctions and defends legitimate trade with Iran. China has become Iran’s largest crude buyer.

“Iran needs to be creative because the pace for them to find new tankers cannot really match the pace of US sanctions,” Muyu Xu, senior crude oil analyst at analytics firm Kpler in Singapore, told Bloomberg, adding, “So that’s why we’re seeing them come up with this tactic.”

Last month, Bloomberg identified zombie tankers hauling Venezuelan crude as these new tactics to operate dark fleet operations become more prevalent with foreign adversaries of the U.S. 

Authored by Paul D. Thacker via The DisInformation Chronicle,

“Jocelyn, you know, I just, I’m really uncomfortable with this conversation because you’re like actually spreading rumors that you don’t know anything about.”

The charge from NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya came during an uncomfortable and confusing interview with Science Magazine reporter Jocelyn Kaiser last week. The DisInformation Chronicle is releasing a recording of the interview and a transcript.

During almost 20 minutes of back and forth, Kaiser pressed Bhattacharya several times to account for canceled grants as well as news accounts of turmoil inside the agency, while Bhattacharya asked Kaiser to clarify and explain exactly what she was asking. Kaiser’s interview then ended up in two Science Magazine articles that falsely implied Bhattacharya misled Kaiser about a new policy on NIH grants.

Confusing, contentious exchange

Skipping about in a rambling, meandering path, much of the Kaiser interview concerned reports of problems that Bhattacharya claimed he had fixed in his first month as director. However, a proposed policy to ensure that subawards to foreign universities were better managed seemed to take center stage.

KAISER: Okay, so since you brought it up, kind of skipping around here, but so as you know, as you may not have seen the story. But we had heard it too, that there’s going to be a policy canceling collaborations, foreign collaborations.

BHATTACHARYA: No, that’s false.

KAISER: Is there going to be some sort of policy that…

BHATTACHARYA: There was a policy, there’s going to be policy on tracking subawards.

KAISER: What does it mean?

BHATTACHARYA: I mean, if you’re going to give a subaward, we should be able—the NIH and the government should be able see where the money’s going.

Later in the interview, Kaiser noted that Nature Magazine ran an article on a proposed NIH policy that reported all foreign grants might end.

“I mean, Nature also is spreading rumors, right?” Bhattacharya responded. “There’s no announced policy about, what did you say, like ‘halt foreign collaborations.’ Not true.”

Based upon unnamed sources but headlined as an “exclusive,” Nature Magazine reported that the NIH was threatening thousands of global health projects by ceasing foreign awards to laboratories and hospitals outside the United States. Further down in the piece, Nature reported that it was unclear from sources whether the policy “would apply to all research funds to non-US institutions or only ‘subawards’, which are NIH funds that a US researcher can give to an international collaborator to help complete a project.”

Confusion over whether the upcoming NIH policy would cover all research funds or just subawards continued throughout Science Magazine’s interview, with Bhattacharya telling Kaiser she would have to wait until the policy is announced. “There’s no intent to cancel the foreign collaborations, it’s just not true,” Bhattacharya said. “That’s just a rumor being spread falsely by Nature. And now apparently, I hope you don’t spread it.”

Shortly after the interview, the NIH published their new policy which only covers subawards. “NIH continues to support direct foreign awards,” the policy reads.

“’This is insane:’ New NIH policy on funding foreign scientists stirs outrage,” reported Science Magazine’ headline. Hinting to readers that Bhattacharya lied to Kaiser in his interview, Science Magazine falsely implied that Nature Magazine had reported the upcoming policy would only concern subawards.

Concerns about subaward changes grew earlier this week, with Nature reporting on an apparent draft of the policy on Wednesday, before it was finalized. NIH’s new director, Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya, dismissed the report as “rumors” in an interview with Science on Thursday morning, hours before he announced the new policy.

In a post on Bluesky, Science reporter Jon Cohen also implied that Bhattacharya had lied during the interview.

During Kaiser’s interview, Bhattacharya can be heard explaining that changes in subawards were partly spurred by problems encountered with EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit run by Peter Daszak which gave an NIH subaward to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In the last week of the Biden Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) debarred EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak from receiving federal funds, in part because EcoHealth Alliance had been unable to provide records from the Wuhan Institute of Virology “in response to NIH’s multiple safety-related requests.”

“You wrote about the EcoHealth Alliance,” Bhattacharya told Kaiser, in the interview.

“I did, yeah. Straight, I mean,” Kaiser responded.

“It wasn’t all that straight,” Bhattacharya replied.

Unfortunately, Science Magazine lived up to Bhattacharya’s characterization with reporting that wasn’t all that straight about EcoHealth Alliance.

Straight out of Science

Science Magazine’s lead reporter on the new NIH subaward policy is Jon Cohen, a science writer with a rather tattered history of ethics. In 2023, Tablet reported that an anonymous whistleblower emailed Cohen “a grenade of an allegation” claiming that the virologist authors of a prominent paper were not the true authors. Published in the journal Nature Medicine, the “Proximal Origin” paper dismissed the possibility of a Wuhan lab accident and was later promoted promoted by Francis Collins in his March 2020 NIH Director’s Blog and by Anthony Fauci during a televised White House briefing the following month.

Here’s Tablet’s report:

Cohen was handed an opportunity that most journalists can only dream of—a potentially career-making scoop dropped in his inbox by a seemingly knowledgeable anonymous source—and a scoop, it turns out, that was in many ways correct. But he never pursued the story.

Instead, Tablet reported, Cohen forwarded the email to the paper’s lead author, who then forwarded it on to Anthony Fauci.

The purple headline for Science Magazine’s piece “This is insane” is a quote ripped from the mouth of Gerald Keusch, a virologist and an emeritus professor at Boston University, with close ties to EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak.

Due to Daszak’s undisclosed ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs disbanded a Lancet task force investigating the origins of Covid virus in 2021. Specifically, Daszak had not disclosed that several hundred thousand dollars of an EcoHealth Allliance NIH grant had been sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a subaward. Sachs also discovered that emails showed Daszak had orchestrated a February 2020 statement in the Lancet alleging that it was a “conspiracy theory” to argue that the pandemic could have started from a laboratory leak in Wuhan.

Keusch had signed onto Daszak’s “conspiracy theory” Lancet letter and was a co-investigator on an NIH grant to EcoHealth Alliance when Sachs shut the task force down. HHS suspended the EcoHealth grant with Keusch as co-investigator in March 2024, some months before debarring Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance.

Despite this history, Science Magazine quoted Keusch as an unbiased source, who claimed that “no compelling evidence supports the allegation that the virus leaked from WIV.”

A few minutes on Google finds several reports undermining Keusch’s claim.

In the final months of the Biden administration, the CIA assessed that the COVID virus is “more likely” to have leaked from a Chinese lab than to have come from animals. The current CIA director released the report in January. Both British and German intelligence were reported in March to have concluded back in 2020 that the virus likely leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And the French National Academy of Medicine released a report last month that found “a body of facts and arguments” support the conclusion that he SARS-CoV-2 pandemic originated from a leak at a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan.

Keusch was also caught in a House report released last year coordinating with the NIH’s David Morens to keep EcoHealth Alliance funded and to hide government records of this collusion. NIH scientists are required produce emails and other records under the Freedom of Information Act.

For example, the New York Times reported:

“I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia’d but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe,” Dr. David Morens, a former senior adviser to Dr. Fauci, wrote in February 2021. That email chain included Dr. Gerald Keusch, a scientist and former N.I.H. official, and Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a virus-hunting nonprofit group whose work with Chinese scientists has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers.

“Plus i deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail,” Dr. Morens added, referring to his personal Gmail account.

In emails released by House investigators, Keusch and Morens also shared ideas to pressure NIH leadership to fund EcoHealth Alliance. This included writing essays and placing stories with writers Jon Cohen and Meredith Wadman at Science Magazine.

“I did try to get Jon Cohen and Meredith Wadman moving on a new article,” Keusch wrote in an April 2021 email to Morens, “but as you know they both declined at this point because it was not news.”

Some months after attempting to place a story in Science with Cohen and Wadman, Keusch emailed Morens that the Washington Post had rejected an essay he had submitted to defend EcoHealth Alliance. However, Keusch wrote, Science Magazine’s Jon Cohen had helped him find a possible home for the essay at Science and suggested that he also try a columnist at the LA Times.

A few days ago, Kaiser published excerpts of her confusing interview with Bhattacharya. In the article, Kaiser again falsely stated that Bhattacharya had dismissed as rumors “Nature news article reporting that NIH planned to suspend subawards for foreign collaborations.” In fact, Nature had speculated the new policy might end all foreign awards.

“Again, the policy is in process,” Bhattacharya said during the interview with Kaiser. “But the aim of the policy ultimately is so that we can track subawards.”

Click here and scroll down listen to the leaked interview plus transcript…

Vice President J.D Vance has weighed in on the escalating fighting breaking out between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India over the last several days. He said in Thursday comments that a full-scare war would be “disastrous” but cautioned that the United States would not get involved. 

“Look, we’re concerned about any time nuclear powers collide and have a major conflict,” Vance told Fox News’s Martha MacCallum in a segment. “What we can do is try to encourage these folks to de-escalate a little bit.”

That’s when he emphasized that the South Asian conflict is “none of our business” and that Washington acknowledges its inability to control outcomes in the restive region.

“But we’re not going to get involved in the middle of war that’s fundamentally none of our business and has nothing to do with America’s ability to control it,” he asserted.

But he did admit the danger of nuclear confrontation if it were to spin out of control:

“Our hope and our expectation is that this is not going to spiral into a broader regional war or, God forbid, a nuclear conflict,” Vance told MacCallum. “Sure, we’re worried about these things, but I think the job of diplomacy — but also the job of cooler heads in India and Pakistan — is to make sure this doesn’t become a nuclear war.”

Interestingly, Vance had actually been visiting India last month when the Kashmir massacre unfolded, involving militants from the Pakistani side of the Line of Control (LOC) killing 26 mostly Indian tourists on April 22.

As for President Trump, he had soon after the killings stated that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ” and the incredible people of India, have our full support and deepest sympathies.” He said “Our hearts are with you all!”

But despite calls for de-escalation, the fight has been growing over the last 24 hours, with hundreds of drones being exchanged, and anti-aircraft fire active – and more crucially reports of major fighter jet engagements.

Of regional diplomatic efforts to defuse the situation, The NY Times writes Friday that “Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states are sending their diplomats to try to de-escalate the conflict between India and Pakistan at a moment of particular global disarray.”

The city of Jammu, on the Indian side, has been under two straight nights of Pakistani artillery fire – but some reports said this ceased at some point early Friday. Heavy artillery fire has been intermittent. 

Currently, each side’s leadership is seeking to prove a ‘tough’ response to their respective domestic populations:

Some Pakistani analysts say they believe that there is still a small window for de-escalation despite the wider fighting over the past day. Farhan Hanif Siddiqi, a professor of international relations at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, suggested that with both Indian and Pakistani leaders publicly proclaiming victory, there was still a chance to save face and back off. “The sooner they do it, the better it is for regional stability,” he said.

Some cities especially on the Indian side in Jammu and Kashmir have been plunged into darkness and even the capital New Delhi is under ‘high alert’ – and military imposed restrictions are evidence through parts of the country especially in the west.

Even US officials are now confirming that Indian jets were downed by Pakistan (https://t.co/I223JcJjpB)

So at this stage it’s been confirmed by:
– 4 local Indian government officials (https://t.co/LQ6puYDlBj)
– A high-ranking French intelligence official… pic.twitter.com/RX5Zxr3B0c

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) May 9, 2025

Islamabad is currently saying ‘no de-escalation’ and score-settling has continued. Pakistani officials have claimed the army shot down up to five Indian jets. But verification of all the claims and counter-claims have been hard to verify and a thick fog of war remains over the remote border region where fighting is at its most intense. 

The Trump administration’s commitment to non-involvement on a military scale is encouraging, however, given the number of hot spots where America is currently deeply involved (on a weapons and intelligence support level) – especially Ukraine and Israel/Gaza. Can a fourth all-out war over Kashmir be avoided? 

Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have launched a joint initiative to build a secure, real-world data platform aimed at uncovering the root causes of autism spectrum disorder, the agencies announced on May 7.

In a statement, NIH and CMS said the partnership will allow researchers to combine Medicare and Medicaid claims data with electronic medical records and consumer wearable information. The pilot phase will focus on individuals diagnosed with autism, with a longer-term goal of supporting broader research into chronic conditions.

“We’re using this partnership to uncover the root causes of autism and other chronic diseases,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “We’re pulling back the curtain—with full transparency and accountability—to deliver the honest answers families have waited far too long to hear.”

The NIH defines autism spectrum disorder as “a neurological and developmental disorder that affects how people interact with others, communicate, learn, and behave.”

Although autism can be diagnosed at any age, NIH says it’s “described as a ‘developmental disorder’ because symptoms generally appear in the first two years of life. ”

The initiative marks the first time that NIH and CMS will link this type of data across systems, with the agencies citing the need for secure, privacy-compliant access to real-world health information. The agencies said the project will begin with a data use agreement under CMS’s Research Data Disclosure Program and focus on Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries with an autism diagnosis.

The announcement follows earlier public confusion after NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya described the initiative as an autism “registry,” prompting concern from advocacy groups. HHS later clarified that he was referring to the same data platform announced this week, emphasizing that it will link existing research datasets, not create a new registry or track individuals.

As part of the pilot, CMS and NIH teams will establish a technical mechanism for timely and secure data sharing. This will help establish a broader NIH platform to study health care use, chronic disease patterns, and the financial burden of illness, the agencies said.

“This partnership is an important step in our commitment to unlocking the power of real-world data to inform public health decisions and improve lives,” Bhattacharya said in the statement.

“Linking CMS claims data with a secure real-world NIH data platform, fully compliant with privacy and security laws, will unlock landmark research into the complex factors that drive autism and chronic disease—ultimately delivering superior health outcomes to the Americans we serve.”

Research priorities include autism diagnosis trends, outcomes from medical and behavioral interventions, disparities in care access by demographic or geography, and the financial toll on families and health systems, the agencies said.

More than one in 31 children in the United States has been diagnosed with autism, according to the agencies, with more than a quarter of those individuals experiencing profound or severe forms.

“This joint effort aligns with our shared goal of fostering innovation to improve Americans’ lives while safeguarding patient privacy,” CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in the statement.

Acting swiftly in the wake of his Tuesday Supreme Court victory, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is giving transgender service members until June 6th to “self-identify” and leave the service on their own, before facing a subsequent campaign to root them out and kick them out. 

“On conclusion of the self-identification eligibility window, the Military Departments will initiate involuntary separation processes,” Hegseth wrote in a memorandum. The Pentagon will immediately begin processing discharges of upwards of 1,000 openly-identifying trans service members. To root out another 3,000 or so — or far more, if you believe activists — the DOD will start scouring medical records looking for diagnoses or symptoms of gender dysphoria, or telltale medical prescriptions, the Associated Press reports. Active duty troops have a deadline of June 6 — the 81st anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied France — to come forward and leave voluntarily. National Guard and reservists have until July 7.   

“It is just shameful,” Jennifer Levi, a senior director at the pro-LGBTQ legal group GLAD Law, told Reuters. “It is senseless to fast-track people out of the military who are meeting standards and putting lives on the line to defend the country.”

In a previous memo, the DOD asserted that “the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service.” Between 2015 and 2014, the Pentagon spent $52 million on psychotherapy, hormone therapy and surgeries for trans service members, a Defense Department official told AP. 

After Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling, Hegseth reiterated his resolve to restore traditional military values and focus: 

“We are leaving wokeness and weakness behind. No more pronouns, no more climate change obsession, no more emergency vaccine mandates. No more dudes in dresses. We’re done with that shit. We’re focused on lethality, meritocracy, accountability, standards and readiness.”

.@SecDef is on pure FIRE!

“We are leaving wokeness and weakness behind. No more pronouns, no more climate change obsession, no more emergency vaccine mandates, no more dudes in dresses. We’re done with that shit.”

🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/fHZC1a6FwQ

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 6, 2025

Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling wasn’t the final word on the legality of excluding trans people from military service. The justices merely granted a stay of a lower court-imposed injunction against involuntarily discharging trans service members, while ongoing litigation continues. Brought by seven transgenders, the case that sparked that injunction is one of two major suits in progress. The other one also yielded a preliminary injunction against enforcing Trump’s trans policy, but the appeals court for the DC circuit already put that one on hold.  

The campaign to cleanse the ranks of trans service members comes alongside declining public enthusiasm about their presence there. In a 2019 Gallup survey, 71% of Americans supported having trans people in the armed forces. By February of this year, only 58% said trans people belong in the military. Gallup gave no insights into the decline, but we’re sure all the social-media-shared photos of lipstick-adorned dudes in uniforms played some part.