A dangerous strain of bird flu is spreading in US livestockMediaMedium/Alamy Since Donald Trump assumed office in January, the leading US public health agency has pulled back preparations for a potential bird flu pandemic. But as it steps back, another government agency is stepping up. While the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) previously held regular briefings on its efforts to prevent a wider outbreak of a deadly bird flu virus called H5N1 in people, it largely stopped once Trump took office. It has also cancelled funding for a vaccine that would have targeted the virus. In contrast, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has escalated its fight against H5N1’s spread in poultry flocks and dairy herds, including by funding the development of livestock vaccines. This particular virus – a strain of avian influenza called H5N1 – poses a significant threat to humans, having killed about half of the roughly 1000 people worldwide who tested positive for it since 2003. While the pathogen spreads rapidly in birds, it is poorly adapted to infecting humans and isn’t known to transmit between people. But that could change if it acquires mutations that allow it to spread more easily among mammals – a risk that increases with each mammalian infection. The possibility of H5N1 evolving to become more dangerous to people has grown significantly since March 2024, when the virus jumped from migratory birds to dairy cows in Texas. More than 1,070 herds across 17 states have been affected since then. H5N1 also infects poultry, placing the virus in closer proximity to people. Since 2022, nearly 175 million domestic birds have been culled in the US due to H5N1, and almost all of the 71 people who have tested positive for it had direct contact with livestock. Get the most essential health and fitness news in your inbox every Saturday. Sign up to newsletter “We need to take this seriously because when [H5N1] constantly is spreading, it’s constantly spilling over into humans,” says Seema Lakdawala at Emory University in Georgia. The virus has already killed a person in the US and a child in Mexico this year. Still, cases have declined under Trump. The last recorded human case was in February, and the number of affected poultry flocks fell 95 per cent between then and June. Outbreaks in dairy herds have also stabilised. It isn’t clear what is behind the decline. Lakdawala believes it is partly due to a lull in bird migration, which reduces opportunities for the virus to spread from wild birds to livestock. It may also reflect efforts by the USDA to contain outbreaks on farms. In February, the USDA unveiled a $1 billion plan for tackling H5N1, including strengthening farmers’ defences against the virus, such as through free biosecurity assessments. Of the 150 facilities that have undergone assessment, only one has experienced an H5N1 outbreak. Under Trump, the USDA also continued its National Milk Testing Strategy, which mandates farms provide raw milk samples for influenza testing. If a farm is positive for H5N1, it must allow the USDA to monitor livestock and implement measures to contain the virus. The USDA launched the programme in December and has since ramped up participation to 45 states. “The National Milk Testing Strategy is a fantastic system,” says Erin Sorrell at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. Along with the USDA’s efforts to improve biosecurity measures on farms, milk testing is crucial for containing the outbreak, says Sorrell. But while the USDA has bolstered its efforts against H5N1, the HHS doesn’t appear to have followed suit. In fact, the recent drop in human cases may reflect decreased surveillance due to workforce cuts, says Sorrell. In April, the HHS laid off about 10,000 employees, including 90 per cent of staff at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, an office that helps investigate H5N1 outbreaks in farm workers. “There is an old saying that if you don’t test for something, you can’t find it,” says Sorrell. Yet a spokesperson for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says its guidance and surveillance efforts have not changed. “State and local health departments continue to monitor for illness in persons exposed to sick animals,” they told New Scientist. “CDC remains committed to rapidly communicating information as needed about H5N1.” The USDA and HHS also diverge on vaccination. While the USDA has allocated $100 million toward developing vaccines and other solutions for preventing H5N1’s spread in livestock, the HHS cancelled $776 million in contracts for influenza vaccine development. The contracts – terminated on 28 May – were with the pharmaceutical company Moderna to develop vaccines targeting flu subtypes, including H5N1, that could cause future pandemics. The news came the same day Moderna reported nearly 98 per cent of the roughly 300 participants who received two doses of the H5 vaccine in a clinical trial had antibody levels believed to be protective against the virus. The US has about five million H5N1 vaccine doses stockpiled, but these are made using eggs and cultured cells, which take longer to produce than mRNA-based vaccines like Moderna’s. The Moderna vaccine would have modernised the stockpile and enabled the government to rapidly produce vaccines in the event of a pandemic, says Sorrell. “It seems like a very effective platform and would have positioned the US and others to be on good footing if and when we needed a vaccine for our general public,” she says. The HHS cancelled the contracts due to concerns about mRNA vaccines, which Robert F Kennedy Jr – the country’s highest-ranking public health official – has previously cast doubt on. “The reality is that mRNA technology remains under-tested, and we are not going to spend taxpayer dollars repeating the mistakes of the last administration,” said HHS communications director Andrew Nixon in a statement to New Scientist. However, mRNA technology isn’t new. It has been in development for more than half a century and numerous clinical trials have shown mRNA vaccines are safe. While they do carry the risk of side effects – the majority of which are mild – this is true of almost every medical treatment. In a press release, Moderna said it would explore alternative funding paths for the programme. “My stance is that we should not be looking to take anything off the table, and that includes any type of vaccine regimen,” says Lakdawala. “Vaccines are the most effective way to counter an infectious disease,” says Sorrell. “And so having that in your arsenal and ready to go just give you more options.” Topics:

The desert that surrounds Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home and studio, is no stranger to camping. Which is perhaps why it is the perfect place to unveil the Airstream Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian Limited Edition Travel Trailer, a new collaboration between the architect’s eponymous foundation and the American travel trailer brand.When Wright arrived in the Sonoran Desert in December of 1937, he made two purchases. First, 600 acres of land, on which Taliesin West would eventually sit. Then, shortly after, a handful of tents for his apprentices to sleep in while they helped build the new property. Even once construction finished, it became a tradition that his disciples would build temporary shelters among the cacti, bushes, and sandy soil. “This was a camp, and Wright was moved by the way canvas from the tents diffused light. That’s what inspired the canvas roofs on Taliesin West today,” Sally Russel, the director of licensing at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, said at a press briefing at Taliesin West about the trailer.You might also like: What Was It Like Living at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West?The trailer door features a pattern called the Gordon Leaf motif, which was created by Taliesin apprentice Eugene Masselink. Photo: Andrew PielageCoincidentally, Airstream’s founder, Wally Byam, began designing trailers for people who didn’t like sleeping on the ground in tents—a sect his first wife belonged to. Nearly 100 years later, the Usonian trailer lets owners enjoy the desert (or any part of the world) Wright-style, while still taking advantage of modern comforts like a bed, shower, and kitchen. “I’ve been dropping the idea of a Frank Lloyd Wright trailer into the thought mill at Airstream for about 20 years,” Bob Wheeler, the president and CEO of Airstream, said at the briefing.The kitchen includes under cabinet lighting and warm, wood-toned cabinets. Photo: Andrew PielageInside the Frank Lloyd Wright AirstreamAt just over 28 feet long, the trailer is among the larger of Airstream’s offerings, which range from 16 to 33 feet. From the outside, the company’s instantly recognizable aluminum shell offers little evidence of the idiosyncrasy that’s on full display inside. But from the moment the door opens—which is printed with a leaf motif designed by a Taliesin apprentice—Wright’s influence is all encompassing.You might also like: 7 Stylish Mobile Homes Owned by Celebrities

June 5, 20254 min readThe Trump-Musk Fight Could Have Huge Consequences for U.S. Space ProgramsA vitriolic war of words between President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk could have profound repercussions for the nation’s civil and military space programsBy Lee Billings edited by Dean VisserElon Musk (left) and President Donald Trump (right) seemed to be on good terms during a press briefing in the Oval Office at the White House on May 30, 2025, but the event proved to be the calm before a social media storm. Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesFor several hours yesterday, an explosively escalating social media confrontation between arguably the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and the world’s most powerful, President Donald Trump, shook U.S. spaceflight to its core.The pair had been bosom-buddy allies ever since Musk’s fateful endorsement of Trump last July—an event that helped propel Trump to an electoral victory and his second presidential term. But on May 28 Musk announced his departure from his official role overseeing the U.S. DOGE Service. And on May 31 the White House announced that it was withdrawing Trump’s nomination of Musk’s close associate Jared Isaacman to lead NASA. Musk abruptly went on the attack against the Trump administration, criticizing the budget-busting One Big Beautiful Bill Act, now navigating through Congress, as “a disgusting abomination.”Things got worse from there as the blowup descended deeper into threats and insults. On June 5 Trump suggested on his own social-media platform, Truth Social, that he could terminate U.S. government contracts with Musk’s companies, such as SpaceX and Tesla. Less than an hour later, the conflict suddenly grew more personal, with Musk taking to X, the social media platform he owns, to accuse Trump—without evidence—of being incriminated by as-yet-unreleased government documents related to the illegal activities of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Musk upped the ante further in follow-up posts in which he endorsed a suggestion for impeaching Trump and, separately, declared in a now deleted post that because of the president’s threat, SpaceX “will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.” (Some five hours after his decommissioning comment, tempers had apparently cooled enough for Musk to walk back the remark in another X post: “Ok, we won’t decommission Dragon.”)Dragon is a crucial workhorse of U.S. human spaceflight. It’s the main way NASA’s astronauts get to and from the International Space Station (ISS) and also a key component of a contract between NASA and SpaceX to safely deorbit the ISS in 2031. If Dragon were to be no longer be available, NASA would, in the near term, have to rely on either Russian Soyuz vehicles or on Boeing’s glitch-plagued Starliner spacecraft for its crew transport—and the space agency’s plans for deorbiting the ISS would essentially go back to the drawing board. More broadly, NASA uses SpaceX rockets to launch many of its science missions, and the company is contracted to ferry astronauts to and from the surface of the moon as part of the space agency’s Artemis III mission.Trump’s and Musk’s retaliatory tit for tat also raises the disconcerting possibility of disrupting other SpaceX-centric parts of U.S. space plans, many of which are seen as critical for national security. Thanks to its wildly successful reusable Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, the company presently provides the vast majority of space launches for the Department of Defense. And SpaceX’s constellation of more than 7,000 Starlink communications satellites has become vitally important to war fighters in the ongoing conflict between Russia and U.S.-allied Ukraine. SpaceX is also contracted to build a massive constellation of spy satellites for the DOD and is considered a leading candidate for launching space-based interceptors envisioned as part of Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile-defense plan.Among the avalanche of reactions to the incendiary spectacle unfolding in real time, one of the most extreme was from Trump’s influential former adviser Steve Bannon, who called on the president to seize and nationalize SpaceX. And in an interview with the New York Times, Bannon, without evidence, accused Musk, a naturalized U.S. citizen, of being an “illegal alien” who “should be deported from the country immediately.”NASA, for its part, attempted to stay above the fray via a carefully worded late-afternoon statement from the space agency’s press secretary Bethany Stevens: “NASA will continue to execute upon the President’s vision for the future of space,” Stevens wrote. “We will continue to work with our industry partners to ensure the President’s objectives in space are met.”The response from the stock market was, in its own way, much less muted. SpaceX is not a publicly traded company. But Musk’s electric car company Tesla is. And it experienced a massive sell-off at the end of June 5’s trading day: Tesla’s share price fell down by 14 percent, losing the company a whopping $152 billion of its market value.Today a rumored détente phone conversation between the two men has apparently been called off, and Trump has reportedly said he now intends to sell the Tesla he purchased in March in what was then a gesture of support for Musk. But there are some signs the rift may yet heal: Musk has yet to be deported; SpaceX has not been shut down; Tesla’s stock price is surging back from its momentary heavy losses; and it seems NASA astronauts won’t be stranded on Earth or on the ISS for the time being.Even so, the entire sordid episode—and the possibility of further messy clashes between Trump and Musk unfolding in public—highlights a fundamental vulnerability at the heart of the nation’s deep reliance on SpaceX for access to space. Outsourcing huge swaths of civil and military space programs to a disruptively innovative private company effectively controlled by a single individual certainly has its rewards—but no shortage of risks, too.

Japan-based Ispace confirmed its Resilience lander likely crashed during its second failed attempt at a lunar landing, after a sensor malfunction prevented proper deceleration. Despite the setback, the company remains committed to future missions, with funding secured for a third attempt using a new lander, Apex 1.0, scheduled for 2027. "Until then, Ispace has its work cut out for it," reports CNN. "[Ispace CEO and founder Takeshi Hakamada] said during the news briefing he will need to work to regain the trust of investors, and the company will need to deeply investigate what went wrong on the Resilience mission to ensure similar issues don't plague Apex 1.0." The company has ambitious "plans to eventually build a city on the lunar surface that would house a thousand people and welcome thousands more for tourist visits," notes ABC News. "If ispace is going to establish a colony on the moon, it will need to identify an ample supply of ice or water, which it will convert into fuel for a future lunar fueling station. The ability to produce fuel on the moon will enable the company to transport people back and forth between the Earth and the moon." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

News Space A private Japanese spacecraft failed on its way to the moon’s surface  A lost signal marks the second imperfect attempt at a lunar landing for Tokyo-based company ispace The Resilience lunar lander (illustrated, left), owned by Tokyo-based company ispace, attempted to touch down on the moon’s surface on June 5. The spacecraft contains several payloads, including a micro rover called Tenacious (right). ispace By McKenzie Prillaman 6 hours ago A Japanese lunar lander called Resilience failed to softly touch down on the moon’s surface on June 5. The spacecraft’s status is currently unknown after Tokyo-based company ispace lost communication with it, but the lander was unable to decelerate properly. The company is calling it quits on the current mission. “This is our second failure, and by these results, we have to really take it seriously,” ispace founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada said during a June 5 press briefing. “We have to do some analysis to find out what caused” the problems. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

June 5, 20253 min readNew Hires Will Still Leave the NWS Dangerously Understaffed, Meteorologists SayNearly 600 employees left the National Weather Service or were fired in recent months. Meteorologists say 125 expected new hires will still leave the agency dangerously understaffedBy Chelsea Harvey & E&E News A tornado struck communities in Somerset and London, Ky., on May 16, 2025, leaving 19 dead and more injured. Michael Swensen/Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | New hiring efforts at the National Weather Service won’t be enough to overcome staffing shortages and potential risks to human lives this summer, meteorologists warned Wednesday at a panel hosted by Democratic Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell.NOAA will hire around 125 new employees at the NWS, the agency said in an announcement first reported Monday by CNN. But nearly 600 employees have departed the NWS over the last few months, after the Trump administration fired probationary federal employees and offered buyouts and early retirements.That means the new hires will account for less than 25 percent of the total losses.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.“A quarter of the staff are not going to do the job when, let’s just say, both hurricane and fire risks are increasing,” Cantwell said during Wednesday’s panel. “[The Trump administration’s] approach in response to this has been a flimsy Band-Aid over a very massive cut.”Cantwell added that the National Hurricane Center is not fully staffed, as NOAA officials suggested last month when announcing their predictions for the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season outlook. The NHC has at least five vacancies, she said, representing meteorologists and technicians who help build forecasts for tropical cyclones in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.Meanwhile, NOAA is predicting above-average activity in the Atlantic this hurricane season. Updated fire maps also suggest that nearly all of Cantwell’s home state of Washington, along with Oregon and large swaths of California, will experience an above-average risk of wildfires by August.Kim Doster, NOAA’s director of communications, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on NOAA’s staffing shortages or the NHC’s vacancies.Three meteorologists speaking on the panel echoed Cantwell’s concerns, suggesting that staffing shortages at weather offices across the country risk forecasting errors and breakdowns in communication between meteorologists and emergency managers.At least eight local weather offices across the country are currently so short-staffed that they can no longer cover their overnight shifts, said Brian LaMarre, a former meteorologist-in-charge at the NWS office in Tampa Bay, Florida. Some of these offices may have to rely on “mutual aid,” or borrowed staff, from other NWS locations to cover their shifts during extreme weather events.But Cantwell and other panelists expressed concern that staff-sharing across the NWS could erode the accuracy of forecasts and warnings for local communities.Cantwell pointed to the meteorologists that specialize in fire weather forecasts. NOAA typically deploys those experts to provide forecasts and recommendations to firefighters on the ground when wildfires strike.“If you think you're gonna substitute somebody that’s gonna be somewhere else — I don’t know where, some other part of the state or some other state — and you think you're gonna give them accurate weather information? It just doesn't work that way,” she said.Washington state-based broadcast meteorologist Jeff Renner echoed her concerns.“The meteorologists that respond to [wildfires] have very specific training and very specific experience that can’t be easily duplicated, particularly from those outside the area,” he said.Meanwhile, LaMarre’s former position in Tampa is vacant, and around 30 other offices across the country are also operating without a permanent meteorologist-in-charge.“That person is the main point of contact when it comes to briefing elected officials, emergency management directors, state governors, city mayors, parish officials,” LaMarre said. “They are the individual that’s gonna be implementing any new change that is needed for hurricane season, blizzards, wildfires, inland flooding.”The NWS suffered from staffing shortages prior to the Trump administration. But LaMarre said he never saw such widespread vacancies, including offices unable to operate overnight, in his 30 years at the agency.He emphasized that NWS meteorologists will do whatever it takes to ensure accurate forecasts when extreme weather strikes. But too many gaps at local offices mean that some services will inevitably suffer, LaMarre added.“Whenever you look at an office that is short-staffed, that means a piece of that larger puzzle is taken away,” he said. “That means some outreach might not be able to occur. Some trainings might not be able to occur. Some briefings to officials might not be able to occur.”Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

After a while, Danae Shell got tired of hearing the same story over and over again.  “Something bad would happen to someone at work, and the story always ended the same way,” she told TechCrunch. “They just left, because doing anything else was incredibly complex and expensive.”  One doesn’t need to look far to notice that for many people, seeking legal recourse feels so daunting and complex that many just don’t try. Even for someone with a cushy tech job, the prospect of going against their company is daunting. That bothered Shell so much that in 2022, she launched Valla, which seeks to make legal support more accessible to workers.  The company focuses on employment law, and since its launch, it says, more than 12,000 workers have successfully brought complaints against employers and negotiated settlements. “The basic thesis of Valla was, ‘If we can build tools that let someone file their tax return from their mobile phone, surely we can build something that can help them manage their own legal issue,’” Shell said. Valla platform enables users to collect their own evidence, generate documents, and then talk to legal experts who “coach” them through what the legal process would be for each stage of their case. For example, Shell said, a user can keep track of an ongoing issue at work, draft a Tribunal claim, and then purchase a coaching package to prepare for the preliminary hearing. Techcrunch event Save now through June 4 for TechCrunch Sessions: AI Save $300 on your ticket to TC Sessions: AI—and get 50% off a second. Hear from leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Khosla Ventures, and more during a full day of expert insights, hands-on workshops, and high-impact networking. These low-rate deals disappear when the doors open on June 5. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW Like nearly every other startup these days, Valla uses AI to streamline knowledge transfer. “The GenAI engine in our platform acts as a legal secretary in the background,” Shell said. “It does everything from briefing the coach on the case, taking notes and actions during any calls, and picking up all the admin and reminders as the case progresses.”  Investors seem to like what they see at Valla: Today, the company said it had raised a £2 million (about $2.7 million) seed round led by Ada Ventures. Active Partners and Portfolio Ventures, as well as returning investors Techstart and Resolution Foundation, also invested.  Shell said Valla started using generative AI in early 2023 and paired with the early traction her product received, that helped investors see the potential of her product.  The company will use the fresh capital to boost marketing, build relationships with worker unions and insurers, and build more AI features within the platform. After employment law, Shell said the company hopes to expand into small claims and tenancy.  “Then we will broaden out to other geographies,” she said. “We’re already looking at opportunities in the U.S. and Europe.” 

The Supreme Court handed down a very brief order on Friday, which effectively permits the Trump administration to strip half a million immigrants of their right to remain in the United States. The case is Noem v. Doe.Although the full Court did not explain why it reached this decision, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson penned a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. As Jackson explains, the case involves “nearly half a million Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan noncitizens” who are in the United States “after fleeing their home countries.” The Department of Homeland Security previously granted these immigrants “parole” status, which allows them to live in the United States for up to two years, and sometimes to work in this country lawfully. Shortly after Trump entered office, DHS issued a blanket order stripping these immigrants of their parole status, putting them at risk for removal. But, a federal district court blocked that order — ruling that DHS must decide whether each individual immigrant should lose their status on a case-by-case basis, rather than through an en masse order.Realistically, this district court order was unlikely to remain in effect indefinitely. In its brief to the justices, the Trump administration makes a strong argument that its decision to terminate these immigrants’ status is legal, or, at least, that the courts cannot second-guess that decision. Among other things, the brief points to a federal law which provides that “no court shall have jurisdiction to review” certain immigration-related decisions by the secretary of Homeland Security. And it argues that the secretary has the power to grant or deny parole because federal law gives them “discretion” over who receives parole.Notably, Jackson’s dissent does not question that the Trump administration is likely to prevail once this case is fully litigated. Instead, she argues that her Court’s decision to effectively strip these immigrants of their status is premature. “Even if the Government is likely to win on the merits,” Jackson writes, “in our legal system, success takes time and the stay standards require more than anticipated victory.”The primary disagreement between Jackson and her colleagues in the majority concerns the Court’s aggressive use of its “shadow docket” to benefit Trump and other conservative litigants. The shadow docket is a mix of emergency motions and other expedited matters that the justices decide without full briefing and oral argument. The Court typically only spends days or maybe a few weeks weighing whether to grant shadow docket relief, while it spends months or longer deciding cases on its ordinary docket.Since Jackson joined the Court in 2022, she’s become the Court’s most vocal internal critic of its frequent use of the shadow docket.As Jackson correctly notes in her Doe dissent, the Supreme Court has long said that a party seeking a shadow docket order blocking a lower court’s decision must do more than demonstrate that they are likely to prevail. That party must also show that “irreparable harm will befall them should we deny the stay.” When these two factors do not strongly tilt toward one party, the Court is also supposed to ask whether “the equities and public interest” favor the party seeking a stay.Jackson criticizes her colleagues in the majority for abandoning these requirements. As she argues, the Trump administration has not shown an “urgent need to effectuate blanket…parole terminations now.” She also argues that DHS “does not identify any specific national-security threat or foreign-policy problem that will result” if these immigrants remain in the country for a few more months. And, even under the lower court’s order, the government “retains the ability to terminate…parole on a case-by-case basis should such a particular need arise.”Although the Court has never formally repudiated the requirement that parties seeking to stay a lower court order must prove irreparable harm, it often hands down shadow docket decisions that don’t explicitly consider this requirement. Concurring in Labrador v. Poe (2024), Justice Brett Kavanaugh argued that, in many shadow docket cases, “this Court has little choice but to decide the emergency application by assessing likelihood of success on the merits.” So Kavanaugh, at least, has stated openly that there are some cases where he will rule solely based on which side he thinks should win, regardless of whether that side has proven irreparable harm. Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion was joined by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.In the short term, the Doe decision could lead to many immigrants losing their protections. Long term, the most significant aspect of the decision involves an internal dispute about how fast the Court may move when it disagrees with a lower court decision. No justice contested that the Trump administration is eventually likely to prevail in this case. But Jackson called for her Court to continue to apply procedural constraints that a majority of her colleagues appear to have abandoned. The upshot of this abandonment is that right-leaning litigants like Trump are likely to receive relief very quickly from the justices, because most of the justices are Republicans, while left-leaning litigants will remain bound by lower court orders.See More:

There are some questionable sources underpinning Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s controversial “Make America Healthy Again” commission report. Signs point to AI tomfoolery, and the use of ChatGPT specifically, which calls into question the veracity of the White House report meant to address reasons for the decline in US life expectancy.An investigation by NOTUS found dozens of errors in the MAHA report, including broken links, wrong issue numbers, and missing or incorrect authors. Some studies were misstated to back up the report’s conclusions, or more damningly, didn’t exist at all. At least seven of the cited sources were entirely fictitious, according to NOTUS.Another investigation by The Washington Post found that at least 37 of the 522 citations appeared multiple times throughout the report. Notably, the URLs of several references included “oaicite,” a marker that OpenAI applies to responses provided by artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT, which strongly suggests its use to develop the reportGenerative AI tools have a tendency to spit out false or incorrect information, known as “hallucinations.” That would certainly explain the various errors throughout the report — chatbots have been found responsible for similar citation issues in legal filings submitted by AI experts and even the companies building the models. Nevertheless, RFK Jr has long advocated for the “AI Revolution,” and announced during a House Committee meeting in May that “we are already using these new technologies to manage health care data more efficiently and securely.”In a briefing on Thursday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to concerns about the accuracy of the citations while evading any mention of AI tools. Leavitt described the errors as “formatting issues” and defended the health report for being “backed on good science that has never been recognized by the federal government.” The Washington Post notes that the MAHA report file was updated on Thursday to remove some of the oaicite markers and replace some of the non-existent sources with alternative citations. In a statement given to the publication, Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said “minor citation and formatting errors have been corrected, but the substance of the MAHA report remains the same — a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic disease epidemic afflicting our nation’s children.”See More:

Lousy ROI Elon Musk counts the cost of his four-month blitz through US government Term at DOGE did serious damage to his brands, only achieved a fraction of hoped-for savings. Joe Miller and Alex Rogers, Financial Times – May 30, 2025 9:28 am | 59 Elon Musk wields a chainsaw at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February to illustrate his aim to cut government waste Credit: Jose Luis Magana/AP Elon Musk wields a chainsaw at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February to illustrate his aim to cut government waste Credit: Jose Luis Magana/AP Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Elon Musk’s four-month blitz through the US government briefly made him Washington’s most powerful businessman since the Gilded Age. But it has done little for his reputation or that of his companies. Musk this week formally abandoned his role as the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), which has failed to find even a fraction of the $2 trillion in savings he originally pledged. On Thursday, Donald Trump lamented his departure but said Musk “will always be with us, helping all the way.” Yet the billionaire will be left calculating the cost of his involvement with Trump and the meagre return on his $250 million investment in the US president’s election campaign. “I appreciate the fact that Mr Musk put what was good for the country ahead of what was good for his own bottom line,” Tom Cole, the Republican chair of the House Appropriations Committee, told the Financial Times. After Doge was announced, a majority of American voters believed Musk would use the body to “enrich himself and undermine his business rivals,” according to a survey, instead of streamlining the government. Progressive groups warned that he would be “rigging federal procurement for billionaires and their pals” and cut regulations that govern his companies Tesla and SpaceX. Democratic lawmakers said Doge was a “cover-up” of a more sinister, self-serving exercise by the world’s richest person. Early moves by the Trump administration suggested Musk might get value for money. A lawsuit brought by the Biden administration against SpaceX over its hiring practices was dropped in February, and regulators probing his brain-implant company Neuralink were dismissed. Musk’s satellite Internet business Starlink was touted by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick as a potential beneficiary of a $42 billion rural broadband scheme. An executive order calling for the establishment of a multibillion-dollar Iron Dome defense system in the US looked set to benefit Musk, due to SpaceX’s dominance in rocket launches. The gutting of various watchdogs across government also benefited Musk’s businesses, while a number of large US companies rushed to ink deals with Starlink or increase their advertising spending on X. Starlink also signed agreements to operate in India, Pakistan, and Vietnam, among other countries it has long wished to expand into. But while Doge took a scythe to various causes loathed by Musk, most notably international aid spending and government contracts purportedly linked to diversity initiatives or “woke” research, it also caused severe blowback to the billionaire’s businesses, particularly Tesla. At one point during his Doge tenure, Tesla’s stock had fallen 45 percent from its highest point last year, and reports emerged that the company’s board of directors had sought to replace Musk as chief executive. The 53-year-old’s personal wealth dropped by tens of billions of dollars, while his dealerships were torched and death threats poured in. Some of the brand damage to Tesla, until recently Musk’s primary source of wealth, could be permanent. “Eighty percent of Teslas in the US were sold in blue zip codes,” a former senior employee said. “Obviously that constituency has been deeply offended.” Starlink lost lucrative contracts in Canada and Mexico due to Musk’s political activities, while X lost 11 million users in Europe alone. Probes of Tesla and SpaceX by government regulators also continued apace, while the Trump administration pressed ahead with plans to abolish tax credits for electric vehicles and waged a trade war vehemently opposed by Musk that threatened to further damage car sales. In the political arena, few people were cheered by Doge’s work. Democrats were outraged by the gutting of foreign aid and by Musk’s 20-something acolytes gaining access to the Treasury’s payment system, along with the ousting of thousands of federal workers. Republicans looked askance at attempts to target defense spending. And true budget hawks were bitter that Musk could only cut a few billion dollars. Bill Gates even accused Musk of “killing the world’s poorest children” through his actions at Doge. Musk, so used to getting his way at his businesses, struggled for control. At various points in his tenure he took on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Transport Secretary Sean Duffy, and trade tsar Peter Navarro, while clashing with several other senior officials. Far from being laser-focused on eliminating waste, Musk’s foray into government was a “revenge tour” against a bureaucracy the billionaire had come to see as the enemy of innovation, a former senior colleague of Musk’s said, highlighting the entrepreneur’s frustration with COVID-19 regulations in California, his perceived snub by the Biden administration, and his anger over his daughter’s gender transition. Trump’s AI and crypto tsar, David Sacks, an influential political voice in the tech world, “whipped [Musk] up into a very, very far-right kind of mindset,” the person added, to the extent that was “going to help this administration in crushing the ‘woke’ agenda.” Neither Musk nor Sacks responded to requests for comment. Musk, who claimed Doge only acted in an “advisory role,” this week expressed frustration at it being used as a “whipping boy” for unpopular cuts decided by the White House and cabinet secretaries. “Trump, I think, was very savvy and allowed Doge to kind of take all those headlines for a traditional political scapegoat,” said Sahil Lavingia, head of a commerce start-up who worked for Doge until earlier this month. Musk, he added, might also have been keen to take credit for the gutting of USAID and other moves but ultimately garnered unwanted attention. “If you were truly evil, [you] would just be more quiet,” said Lavingia, who joined the initiative in order to streamline processes within government. “You would do the evil stuff quietly.” The noise surrounding Musk, whose ability to dominate news cycles with a single post on his social media site X rivaled Trump’s own hold on the headlines, also frustrated the administration. This week, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller took to X to indirectly rebut the billionaire’s criticism of Trump’s signature tax bill, which he had lambasted for failing to cut the deficit or codify Doge’s cuts. Once almost synonymous with Musk, Doge is now being melded into the rest of government. In a briefing on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that following Musk’s departure, cabinet secretaries would “continue to work with the respective Doge employees who have onboarded as political appointees at all of these agencies.” She added: “The Doge leaders are each and every member of the President’s Cabinet and the President himself.” Doge’s aims have also become decidedly more quotidian. Tom Krause, a Musk ally who joined Doge and was installed at Treasury, briefed congressional staff this week on improvements to the IRS’s application program interfaces and customer service, according to a person familiar with the matter. Other Doge staffers are doing audits of IT contracts—work Lavingia compares with that done by McKinsey consultants. Freed from the constraints of being a government employee, Musk is increasingly threatening to become a thorn in Trump’s side. Soon after his Doge departure was announced, he again criticized the White House, this time over its plan to cancel clean energy tax credits. “Teddy Roosevelt had that great adage: ‘speak softly but carry a big stick’,” Fred Thiel, the chief executive of Bitcoin mining company MARA Holdings, told the FT. “Maybe Elon’s approach was a little bit different.” © 2025 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way. Joe Miller and Alex Rogers, Financial Times Joe Miller and Alex Rogers, Financial Times 59 Comments