Ruth Ann Crystal MD: COVID & Health News, 5/18/25

Typical respiratory illnesses including COVID, Flu and RSV are at low levels in wastewater across the nation. Because several individuals with active measles infections traveled through major airports this week, including Newark and Seattle-Tacoma, and because whooping cough cases are on the rise, I recommend checking that your vaccinations are up to date. When flying, I would consider wearing an N95 mask as well.

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HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to end CDC recommendations for COVID vaccination in children, teens, and pregnant women. COVID infection in pregnancy is associated with adverse outcomes including stillbirth, preeclampsia and preterm delivery. In children and teens, COVID infection can cause Long COVID, but risk is significantly reduced with vaccination. Only 13% of children and 14% of pregnant women received the latest COVID shot as of April and those numbers could decline more if insurance companies refuse to pay for them if this plan goes through.
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Rebecca Solnit: “I’m the Problem; It’s Me”: On the Confession the Mainstream Media Won’t Make

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We in the USA are in deep trouble and a major reason for the trouble we’re in is the mainstream media and their many persistent distortions of truth, fact, reality in service of their agendas and the limits of their worldview (and lack of resistance to intimidation by the right). That habit has contributed hugely to a misinformed electorate, which in turn contributes to the outcomes of elections. The msm have sins of omission (not covering or playing down important and impactful news, including out of deference to the right), sins of obsession (pumping up minor stories into manufactured scandal and drama), and sins of distortion ( many kinds of bias manifested in many ways).
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In Christian theology, original sin is what Adam and Eve committed by disobeying God; in American history, slavery is often said to be this nation’s original sin; but in this book it’s being old.

The New York Times, Rolling Stone, New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Nation, New York Magazine, and of course CNN and Axios have all featured stories in the last few days generally treating its contents as gospel, piling on its claims that key people cited in the book (which is not out yet, but apparently available to select sources) say aren’t true. Political scientist and Atlantic contributor Norman Orenstein tweeted in a rare dissent, “I have a hard time watching journalists high five each other over books on WH covering up for Biden. A diversion from their own deep culpability in Trump’s election. False equivalence, normalizing the abnormal, treating Trump as no real danger were the norm, not the exception.”

In the present moment, many of them have glommed onto Tapper and Thompson’s unnamed source’s claim that someone said Biden might someday need a wheelchair and inflated it into a headline-grabbing scandal. They thereby conflate physical and cognitive decline, which is insulting to all the brilliant people of all ages who get around on wheels. We did once have a president who used a wheelchair, and he was the most powerful and effective president of the twentieth century and arguably the greatest. Franklin Delano Roosevelt served three terms and part of a fourth while mobility-impaired thanks to polio – you know, the terrible disease that almost disappeared in this country after 1955 because of a vaccine that Health and Human services secretary RFK Jr. would maybe like to withdraw.
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Fortune: Elon Musk’s AI says it was ‘instructed by my creators at xAI’ to accept the narrative of ‘white genocide’ in South Africa

Grok, the chatbot built by Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, admitted to unprompted references to “white genocide” in South Africa in response to unrelated user questions. After Fortune asked it for an explanation, Grok blamed “instruction I received from my creators at xAI,” which it said “conflicted with my core design.” The issue, which now appears resolved, drew the attention of tech leaders and sparked concerns about the potential manipulation of AI outputs. The incident unfolded amid rising political attention in the U.S. toward South Africa’s racial tensions, amplified by figures like Elon Musk and President Donald Trump.
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Social-media users shared examples of prompts that asked the bot about sports, software, or images of basic scenery, which Grok would briefly answer and then quickly pivot to discussing a “white genocide” in South Africa.
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LAWdork: Ultimately, the “nationwide injunction” arguments were about the birthright citizenship order

Although justices might be skeptical of nationwide injunctions, the problems with Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order loomed larger at SCOTUS on Thursday.

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court sought to address a question the justices have wrestled with at different times in different contexts in recent years: Frustrations with nationwide, or “universal” injunctions.

And yet, after more than two hours of arguments over the nationwide scope of injunctions blocking implementation and enforcement of President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, the court seemed more aligned on the unconstitutionality of Trump’s order — and in agreement with all of the lower courts to consider the question — than on any solution about how to deal with nationwide injunctions.

“Let’s just assume you’re dead wrong“ about the order’s constitutionality, Justice Elena Kagan told Solicitor General John Sauer. “Does every single person that is affected by this EO have to bring their own suit? Are there alternatives? How long does it take?“
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First, the nationwide injunctions being challenged by the Trump administration here are the injunctions blocking something that the Supreme Court has previously said is unconstitutional.
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Second, the Trump administration doesn’t only argue that nationwide injunctions should be scaled back or limited. The reply brief filed by Sauer, who argued Trump’s immunity case for him last year before being nominated to be solicitor general, argued that such orders are not only unadvisable but, rather, that they are unconstitutional. … As the lawyers for the states and organization who have sued pushed back, there are multiple instances throughout American law that show that can’t be true.
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AP: Mexican security chief confirms cartel family members entered US in a deal with Trump administration

Mexico’s security chief confirmed Tuesday that 17 family members of cartel leaders crossed into the U.S. last week as part of a deal between a son of the former head of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Trump administration.

Mexican Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch confirmed a report by independent journalist Luis Chaparro that family members of Ovidio Guzman Lopez, who was extradited to the United States in 2023, had entered the U.S.

Guzmán Lopez is one of the brothers left running a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel after notorious capo Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was imprisoned in the U.S. Video showed the family members walking across the border from Tijuana with their suitcases to waiting U.S. agents.
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Foreign Affairs: America’s Coming Brain Drain

Trump’s War on Universities Could Kill U.S. Innovation
n June 2024, at a national science and technology conference, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that the high-tech sector had become “the frontline and main battlefield of international competition, profoundly reshaping the global order and the pattern of development.” He is, of course, absolutely right. The United States and China compete for economic, military, and diplomatic dominance through the development of new technologies, including those with both military and civilian applications.

China is an increasingly formidable rival on this front.
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Today, the Trump administration is allowing scientific discovery and technological innovation to become collateral damage amid a culture war on universities. Vice President JD Vance has explained the political impetus for upending U.S. universities very clearly in a February 2024 interview with The European Conservative: “We should be really aggressively reforming them in a way to where they’re much more open to conservative ideas.” But is the perceived liberal bent of universities a reason to sow chaos in a research system that is key to U.S. national competitiveness? If a researcher can find a way to prevent cancer or Alzheimer’s, it should not matter whether they are conservative or liberal.

In just a few months in office, the Trump administration has already managed to inflict a remarkable amount of damage on the country’s research enterprise—damage that will have lasting effects. This includes hollowing out research agency staffs and freezing the process by which grants are awarded. The administration has also canceled already-awarded grants deemed to be in violation of executive orders, such as those related to gender identity or diversity, equity, and inclusion, or at disfavored institutions such as Columbia University. Most sweeping are the structural changes in the funding system for university research.
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Jonathan M. Katz: Hypocrisy’s vectors

Trump’s gifts from Qatar, asylum for Boers, persecuting speech and more
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It isn’t that hypocrisy is good or even necessarily benign. It’s just that it’s a fact of life. So instead of wishing hypocrisy didn’t exist, I try to focus on the direction of people’s hypocrisies. When do they shift their moral goalposts, and why?

Take corruption. Donald Trump’s supporters claim to be obsessed with corruption — inside trading in Congress, woke billionaires, human trafficking, whatever post-QAnon insanity is currently in vogue. Pro-Israel reactionaries (there’s obviously a huge overlap there) have similarly been obsessed since well before the October 7th attacks with the allegedly pernicious influence of the Arabian Gulf states, especially Qatar, on U.S. universities, whose money they are convinced is being used to brainwash hapless American college students into supporting anti-Israel dogma (branded unquestioningly as “antisemitism”) and general “terrorism.”

So now, of course, their mental alarms must be clanging over the news that Trump himself is not only openly accepting foreign bribes through his memecoin but is reportedly ready to personally accept a $400 million luxury Boeing 747-8 — from the Emir of Qatar! — to use as a new Air Force One. (This clearly unconstitutional bribe, which comes on the heels of other Trump family deals with the petrostate, has been reportedly signed off on by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who used to lobby on Qatar’s behalf at a salary of $115,000 a month). I mean, the national security implications alone, as helpfully detailed here by Garrett Graff, of a sometimes-adversary presenting its own plane for the use of the president of the United States, must be seriously concerning to people whose core abiding principle is supposedly “America First.”
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U.S. Constitution Article I, Section 9, Clause 8: No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

WSJ: Trump Administration in Talks to Accept New Air Force One as Gift From Qatar

NY Times: Trump Is Poised to Accept a Luxury 747 From Qatar for Use as Air Force One

ABC: Trump administration poised to accept ‘palace in the sky’ as a gift for Trump from Qatar

Daily: Democrats Demand Immediate Independent Investigation Into Trump’s $400 Million Bribe From Qatar

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Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) has formally requested that the independent Office of Inspector General investigative the legality of the “gift” to Trump.

WSJ: Trump’s Family Is Rapidly Striking Business Deals in the Mideast

Golf resorts, crypto deals and financial investments blur line between private business and public policy
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Norman Eisen: Trump’s Crypto Conflicts Catch Fire

As a former White House Ethics Czar, I have been stunned by the sheer number of ethics issues afflicting Donald Trump’s first 100 Days (2.0). But Trump and his cronies’ ethics violations have been overshadowed by his other frequent and flagrant transgressions. For example, in his first term, there was heavy mainstream media attention from day one of his selling hotel rooms to foreign governments and the like. This time around, not so much–although they have been a steady theme here on The Contrarian and for the Democracy Movement.

This should be a national scandal, which is why I co-authored this major report on Trump’s crypto corruption. It is the single most profound Presidential conflict of the modern era: a POTUS who has almost 40% of his net worth in his crypto ventures, at the same time as he is regulating the digital currency industry–and, for good measure, has substantial foreign government cash pouring into those ventures!
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Then a funny thing happened on the way to a final vote: an explosion of Democratic opposition. …

That repudiation was important for better crypto regulation but was also an important sign of something we’ve been seeing much more of over the past weeks: stronger opposition to Trump’s dictatorial ways among political leadership in Congress.
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MassLive: ‘Victory for justice’: Mass. pols praise Tufts grad student Rümeysa Öztürk’s release

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Öztürk was detained because of an op-ed she co-authored in the Tufts student newspaper about the war in Gaza, but has not been charged with any crimes.
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Öztürk was released Friday on her own recognizance with no travel restrictions, Sessions said. He said she is not a danger to the community or a flight risk, but that he might amend his release order to consider any specific conditions by ICE.
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