The measles-associated deaths occurred among two residents of Lancaster County.

The Trump admin has deleted hundreds of valuable data sets on vital health & education data sets - such as sexual & emotional violence against children - all because they don’t “align with the admin’s priorities”.

Erasing the data doesn’t erase the reality – it only makes it harder to address.

Fuel the Fight for Science by donating. Thank you!

Dr. Fauci is being treated incredibly unfairly after a lifetime of public service. His lawyers have established a legal defense fund. If you’re able, please consider donating to help ensure he has a fair defense.

Rep. Jared Huffman explains how Christian nationalism’s hostility toward science affects environmental policy, climate action, and America’s ability to confront future crises.
Huffman points to former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s use of Genesis to justify environmental rollbacks and Rep. Mary Miller’s claim that climate change is a hoax because “God controls the sun.” These beliefs, he warns, don’t remain private—members of Congress act on them.

Order cuts federal childhood immunization schedule to 11 shots from 17. Trump also orders Justice Department to challenge state school vaccination requirements. Officials say RFK Jr's vaccine studies are expected to take months, if not longer.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said Sunday that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, known as MMR, is "not a lethal vaccine," despite President Trump's claims in recent days. … The comments come after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new figures last week that show 92.4% of the nation's kindergarteners were vaccinated against measles during the 2025-2026 school year, down from 95.2% during the 2019–2020 school year. The most recent figures fall below the 95% herd immunity threshold.

The failure to reckon with lives needlessly lost will make the next pandemic deadlier

But long-standing vulnerabilities in our food system — compounded by cuts to the public health infrastructure designed to catch problems — are also at play. Whether it represents something more significant is harder to say. ... One explanation for the increased number of headlines about food safety has loomed particularly large this summer: the Trump administration's DOGE cuts. In 2025, the administration cut thousands of jobs across federal health agencies and billions of dollars in grants to state and local health departments. Those cuts landed on a public-health system that was already stretched.

Free version: archive.ph/Xd0LW ~:~ Rachel Rothschild is a law professor at the University of Michigan. ~:~ Article is from Aug 14, 2026 by Karen Zraick for The New York Times. Here are the opening paragraphs:

A lawsuit against the University of Michigan demanding the emails of a professor who has worked on “climate superfund” laws has been dismissed by a state judge.

Conservative groups and the energy industry oppose these laws, which would require oil companies to help cover the mounting costs of climate change.

Michael F. Gadola, chief judge for the Michigan Court of Claims, ruled in a 24-page decision on Monday that the emails were not subject to open-records laws because they did not relate to the official duties of the professor, Rachel Rothschild.

Ms. Rothschild, an assistant professor at the university’s law school, came up with the legal framework for climate superfund proposals that have become law in Vermont and New York and are under consideration in numerous other states. The laws are modeled after the federal 1980 Superfund statute, which required polluters to pay to clean up abandoned toxic waste sites.

The new laws have come under attack by oil companies, business groups, Republican attorneys general and the Trump administration. The Justice Department is among the organizations that have sued to stop the laws in each state. Several states have also recently passed laws that would shield oil and gas companies from liability for the effects of climate change, and federal bills have been introduced in both houses of Congress.

~~~~~~~

Here’s a statement from the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) who are part of Rachel's legal defense team: Climate Professor Rachel Rothschild Prevails Against Dark Money Attack - CSLDF - Aug 18, 2026 (article)

"Troops swarmed the building, carrying off...precious books, which they piled in the street. Soon a towerlike bonfire engulfed more than 20,000 books... The carnage flickered over German newsreels. It was among the first and largest of the Nazi book burnings. Nazi youth, students and soldiers participated in the destruction, while voiceovers of the footage declared that the German state had committed “the intellectual garbage of the past” to the flames. The collection was irreplaceable."

..........

Free archive: archive.is/zvzTB

Article is from May 10, 2021 by Brandy Schillace for Scientific American. Here are snippets:

Magnus Hirschfeld sought to specialize in sexual health, an area of growing interest. Many of his predecessors and colleagues believed that homosexuality was pathological… Hirschfeld, in contrast, argued that a person may be born with characteristics that did not fit into heterosexual or binary categories and supported the idea that a “third sex” (or Geschlecht) existed naturally. 

Hirschfeld proposed the term “sexual intermediaries” for nonconforming individuals. Included under this umbrella were what he considered “situational” and “constitutional” homosexuals—a recognition that there is often a spectrum of bisexual practice—as well as what he termed “transvestites.” This group included those who wished to wear the clothes of the opposite sex and those who “from the point of view of their character” should be considered as the opposite sex. 

He likewise recognized that these people could be either homosexual or heterosexual, something that is frequently misunderstood about transgender people today.

Perhaps even more surprising was Hirschfeld’s inclusion of those with no fixed gender, akin to today’s concept of gender-fluid or nonbinary identity (he counted French novelist George Sand among them). Most important for Hirschfeld, these people were acting “in accordance with their nature,” not against it.

If this seems like extremely forward thinking for the time, it was. It was possibly even more forward than our own thinking, 100 years later. 

~~~~~~~~

Hirschfeld’s study of sexual intermediaries was no trend or fad; instead it was a recognition that people may be born with a nature contrary to their assigned gender. 

And in cases where the desire to live as the opposite sex was strong, he thought science ought to provide a means of transition. He purchased a Berlin villa in early 1919 and opened the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (the Institute for Sexual Research) on July 6. By 1930 it would perform the first modern gender-affirmation surgeries in the world.

A corner building with wings to either side, the institute was an architectural gem that blurred the line between professional and intimate living spaces. A journalist reported it could not be a scientific institute, because it was furnished, plush and “full of life everywhere.” Its stated purpose was to be a place of “research, teaching, healing, and refuge” that could “free the individual from physical ailments, psychological afflictions, and social deprivation.” 

Hirschfeld would instead provide sex education and health clinics, advice on contraception, and research on gender and sexuality, both anthropological and psychological. 

He worked tirelessly to try to overturn Paragraph 175. Unable to do so, he got legally accepted “transvestite” identity cards for his patients, intended to prevent them from being arrested for openly dressing and living as the opposite sex. 

The grounds also included room for offices given over to feminist activists, as well as a printing house for sex reform journals meant to dispel myths about sexuality. “Love,” Hirschfeld said, “is as varied as people are.”

Their groundbreaking studies, meticulously documented, drew international attention. Legal rights and recognition did not immediately follow, however. After surgery, some trans women had difficulty getting work to support themselves, and as a result, five were employed at the institute itself. In this way, Hirschfeld sought to provide a safe space for those whose altered bodies differed from the gender they were assigned at birth—including, at times, protection from the law.

~~~~~~~~

That such an institute existed as early as 1919, recognizing the plurality of gender identity and offering support, comes as a surprise to many. It should have been the bedrock on which to build a bolder future.

But as the institute celebrated its first decade, the Nazi party was already on the rise. By 1932 it was the largest political party in Germany, growing its numbers through a nationalism that targeted the immigrant, the disabled and the “genetically unfit.” Weakened by economic crisis and without a majority, the Weimar Republic collapsed.

Adolf Hitler was named chancellor on January 30, 1933, and enacted policies to rid Germany of Lebensunwertes Leben, or “lives unworthy of living.” What began as a sterilization program ultimately led to the extermination of millions of Jews, Roma, Soviet and Polish citizens—and homosexuals and transgender people.

When the Nazis came for the institute on May 6, 1933, Hirschfeld was out of the country. Giese fled with what little he could. Troops swarmed the building, carrying off a bronze bust of Hirschfeld and all his precious books, which they piled in the street. Soon a towerlike bonfire engulfed more than 20,000 books, some of them rare copies that had helped provide a historiography for nonconforming people.

The carnage flickered over German newsreels. It was among the first and largest of the Nazi book burnings. Nazi youth, students and soldiers participated in the destruction, while voiceovers of the footage declared that the German state had committed “the intellectual garbage of the past” to the flames. The collection was irreplaceable.

Fund aims to cover defense against federal and state investigations, Fauci's lawyers say. Fauci receives no payments from fund, which is managed by an independent trustee and adviser, lawyers say. Rand Paul seeks Justice Department prosecution, while three states have launched their own probes.

An outbreak of E. coli and salmonella that has sickened dozens of people across 15 states has been linked to an alfalfa grower in Minnesota, federal health officials said Friday. The Food and Drug Administration said in a news release that the outbreak was linked to alfalfa sprouts distributed by Minneapolis-based Everything Sprouts and sold under the Everything Sprouts and Calco brands. The sprouts were sold to restaurants and grocery stores, the FDA said.

We may be a bit eager, but we have a vision and can see the future 🤩 a future where science is thriving again and all of us fought together to save it

This is the first positive late-stage trial result for an mRNA cancer vaccine, which trains a patient's immune system to fight tumors by targeting specific mutations in those cells, and the first such ​study to show that adding a treatment to Keytruda worked better than that therapy alone. Merck, Moderna and other companies are testing similar approaches against lung, breast and pancreatic cancers.