FDA head uses great-sounding science standards to dismiss COVID vaccine benefits.

Nearly two decades ago, scientists made an alarming discovery in upstate New York: Bats, the world’s only flying mammal, were becoming infected with a new, deadly fungal disease that, in some cases, could wipe out an entire colony in a matter of months. Since then, the disease — later called white-nose syndrome — has spread across much of the country, utterly decimating North American bats that hibernate in caves and killing over 90 percent of three bat species. According to some scientists, WNS has caused “the most precipitous wildlife decline in the past century in North America.” These declines have clear consequences for human populations — for you, even if you don’t like bats or visit caves. Bats eat insect pests, such as moths and beetles. And as they decline, farmers need to spray more pesticides. Scientists have linked the loss of bats in the US to an increase in insecticide use on farmland and, remarkably, to a rise in infant deaths. Insecticide chemicals are known to harm the health of newborns. The only reason we know any of this is because of a somewhat obscure government program in the US Geological Survey (USGS), an agency nested within the Interior Department. That program, known as the Ecosystems Mission Area (EMA), is the biological research division of Interior. Among other functions, it monitors environmental contaminants, the spread of invasive species, and the health of the nation’s wildlife, including bees, birds, and bats.White-nose syndrome, a fungal disease, has caused massive declines in a handful of bat species, including the tricolored bat, shown here in flight. J. Scott Altenbach/Bat Conservation InternationalThe Ecosystems Mission Area, which has around 1,200 employees, produces the premier science revealing how animals and ecosystems that Americans rely on are changing and what we can do to keep them intact — or risk our own health and economy. This program is now at an imminent risk of disappearing.Send us a confidential tipAre you a current or former federal employee with knowledge about the Trump administration’s attacks on wildlife protections? Reach out to Vox environmental correspondent Benji Jones on Signal at benji.90 or at benji.jones@vox.com or at benjijones@protonmail.com.In the White House’s 2026 budget request, the Trump administration asked Congress to slash funding for EMA by about 90 percent, from $293 million in 2025 to $29 million next year. Such cuts are also in line with Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative policy roadmap, which calls for the government to “abolish” Interior’s Biological Resources Division, an outdated name for the Ecosystems Mission Area.Meanwhile, the Trump administration is also reportedly trying to fire government employees in the Ecosystems Mission Area, though a federal judge has so far blocked those efforts. Eliminating biological research is not good. In fact, it’s very bad.For a decade now, EMA’s North American Bat Monitoring Program, or NABat, has been gathering and analyzing data on bats and the threats they face. NABat produces research using data from hundreds of partner organizations showing not only how white-nose syndrome is spreading — which scientists are using to develop and deploy vaccines — but also how bats are affected by wind turbines, another known threat. Energy companies can and do use this research to develop safer technologies and avoid delays caused by wildlife regulations, such as the Endangered Species Act. The irony, an Interior Department employee told me, is that NABat makes wildlife management more efficient. It also helps reveal where declines are occurring before they become severe, potentially helping avoid the need to grant certain species federal protection — something the Trump administration would seem to want. The employee, who’s familiar with Interior’s bat-monitoring efforts, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by the Trump administration. A northern long-eared bat with white-nose syndrome. Steve Taylor/University of IllinoisA dead bat infected with white-nose syndrome under UV light. USGS“If they want to create efficiencies in the government, they should ask us,” another Interior employee told Vox. “The damage that can be done by one administration takes decades to rebuild.”In response to a request for comment, an Interior Department spokesperson told Vox that “USGS remains committed to its congressional mandate as the science arm of the Department of the Interior.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment. In a Senate appropriations hearing last week, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum refused to commit to maintaining funding for EMA.“There’s no question that they don’t know what EMA does,” said a third Interior employee, who has knowledge of the Ecosystems Mission Area.Ultimately, it’s not clear why the administration has targeted Interior’s biological research. EMA does, however, do climate science, such as studying how plants and animals are responding to rising temperatures. That’s apparently a no-go for the Trump administration. It also gathers information that sometimes indicates that certain species need federal protections, which come with regulations (also a no-go for President Donald Trump’s agenda).What’s especially frustrating for environmental advocates is that NABat, now 10 years old, is starting to hit its stride.“We should be celebrating the 10-year anniversary of this very successful program that started from scratch and built this robust, vibrant community of people all collecting data,” said Winifred Frick, the chief scientist at Bat Conservation International, an environmental group. “We have 10 years of momentum, and so to cut it off now sort of wastes all that investment. That feels like a tremendous loss.” Meanwhile, the cost of maintaining the program is less than 1 percent of Interior’s overall budget.The government’s wildlife monitoring programs are “jewels of the country,” said Hollis Woodard, an associate professor of entomology at University of California Riverside who works with USGS on bee monitoring. “These birds and bats perform services for us that are important for our day-to-day lives. Literally everything I value, including food, comes down to keeping an eye on these populations. The idea that we’re just going to wipe them out is just terrifying.”Update, June 2, 12:58 pm ET: This article was originally published on May 29, 2025, and has been updated to include newly public details on the 2026 White House budget request.See More:

If you wanted to get a COVID vaccine during pregnancy, to protect yourself and your future baby from the virus, that may soon be difficult to impossible. According to a short video posted on X, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, who is also a noted anti-vaccine activist, said that the COVID-19 vaccine “has been removed” from the list of vaccines recommended in pregnancy, as well as the list of vaccines recommended for healthy children. This announcement sidesteps the usual regulatory process, and it’s not clear exactly what will happen next—but here’s what we know. The announcement may not be entirely validRFK, Jr made the announcement in a video where he stood alongside the NIH director Jay Bhattacharya and FDA commissioner Marty Makary. Notably, nobody from the CDC was present. The FDA approves vaccines, but it’s the CDC that is in charge of recommendations. (It is not clear who the CDC’s acting director actually is, or whether there is one.) Normally, the CDC has an advisory panel called ACIP (the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices) that reviews scientific evidence to make recommendations for vaccines. They’ll vote on whether a given vaccine should be recommended for everybody in a group of people. Their decisions are then passed to CDC leadership, who make the final call as to whether the vaccine gets officially recommended for that group. Vaccines are not usually added or removed to the recommended list by the CDC without consulting with ACIP, and they definitely aren’t usually added or removed by tweeting a video. Dorit Reiss, a law professor who specializes in vaccine policy, posted on LinkedIn that the announcement may not be legally valid if it’s not immediately followed by supporting documentation. She says: “Under administrative law, to avoid being found arbitrary and capricious, an agency's decision has to meet certain criteria, including explaining the agency's fact finding, a connection between the facts and the decisions, etc. A one minute video on Twitter doesn't quite get you there.” So far, the CDC’s web page on vaccines recommended in pregnancy still says that “A pregnant woman should get vaccinated against whooping cough, flu, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).” The adult and child vaccine schedules still include COVID vaccines.Strangely, this move on behalf of the CDC contradicts the one we reported about recently from the FDA. The FDA plans to require extra steps (possibly unethical and/or impractical ones) to approve new COVID vaccines for healthy children and adults. But these steps don’t apply to people who are at high risk for complications of COVID. The FDA’s policy announcement included a list of those high risk health conditions—which includes pregnancy.Why it matters which vaccines are “recommended”Recommending a vaccine doesn’t just mean expressing an opinion; the Affordable Care Act requires that vaccines recommended by ACIP must be covered by most private insurance and Medicaid expansion plans without any cost sharing. That means no deductible and no copay—so these vaccines must be free to you out of pocket if you fall into a group of people for whom they are recommended. The recommended vaccines include all the standard childhood vaccines, plus your seasonal flu shot, and other vaccines that are recommended for adults, for people who are pregnant, and so on. The full schedules are here. If you’ve gotten a COVID shot, a flu shot, a tetanus shot, a shingles shot—the shot’s inclusion on this list is why you were able to (probably) get it for free.So taking a vaccine off the recommended list means that it could be prohibitively expensive. GoodRX, which keeps tabs on pharmacy prices, reports that COVID shots may cost $200 or more out of pocket, plus any applicable administration fee that the provider might charge.Taking a vaccine off the recommended list may also mean it won’t be covered by the Vaccines for Children program, which provides free vaccines to children who don’t have coverage for them through health insurance.Whether or not the vaccine actually gets taken off the list, the recent HHS announcement has another impact: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said in a statement that “Following this announcement, we are worried about our patients in the future, who may be less likely to choose vaccination during pregnancy despite the clear and definitive evidence demonstrating its benefit.” The ACOG statement also pointed out a few ways in which removing the vaccines from the recommended list is not “common sense and good science,” as the HHS announcement claimed. ACOG writes: “As ob-gyns who treat patients every day, we have seen firsthand how dangerous COVID infection can be during pregnancy and for newborns who depend on maternal antibodies from the vaccine for protection. We also understand that despite the change in recommendations from HHS, the science has not changed. It is very clear that COVID infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic and lead to major disability, and it can cause devastating consequences for families.”

More chaos CDC updates COVID vaccine recommendations, but not how RFK Jr. wanted Mixed messages only add to uncertainty about vaccine access for kids, pregnant individuals. Beth Mole – May 30, 2025 4:28 pm | 74 A nurse gives a 16-year-old a COVID-19 vaccine. Credit: Getty | Sopa images A nurse gives a 16-year-old a COVID-19 vaccine. Credit: Getty | Sopa images Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday updated its immunization schedules for children and adults to partially reflect the abrupt changes announced by health secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earlier this week. In a 58-second video posted on social media on Tuesday, May 27, Kennedy said he was unilaterally revoking the CDC's recommendations that healthy children and pregnant people get COVID-19 vaccines. "I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that, as of today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule," Kennedy said in the video. The health agency's immunization schedules were not, in fact, updated at the time of the announcement, though. The Washington Post subsequently reported that the CDC was blindsided by the announcement. Five hours went by after the video was posted before CDC officials said they received a one-page "secretarial directive" about the changes, which was signed by Kennedy and puzzlingly dated May 19, according to the Post. Late Thursday, the CDC updated the immunization schedules. Contradicting what Kennedy said in the video, the CDC did not remove its recommendation for COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children in the child and adolescent immunization schedule. Instead, it added a stipulation that if a child's doctor agrees with the vaccination and parents "desire for their child to be vaccinated," healthy children can get vaccinated. In practice, it is unclear how this change will affect access to the vaccines. Health insurers are required to cover vaccines on the CDC schedules. But, it's yet to be seen if children will only be able to get vaccinated at their doctor's office (rather than a pharmacy or vaccine clinic) or if additional consent forms would be required, etc. Uncertainty about the changes and requirements alone may lead to fewer children getting vaccinated. In the adult immunization schedule, when viewed "by medical condition or other indication" (table 2), the COVID-19 vaccination recommendation for pregnancy is now shaded gray, meaning "no guidance/not applicable." Hovering a cursor over the box brings up the recommendation to "Delay vaccination until after pregnancy if vaccine is indicated." Previously, COVID-19 vaccines were recommended during pregnancy. The change makes it less likely that health insurers will cover the cost of vaccination during pregnancy. The change is at odds with Trump's Food and Drug Administration, which just last week confirmed that pregnancy puts people at increased risk of severe COVID-19 and, therefore, vaccination is recommended. Medical experts have decried the loss of the recommendation, which is also at odds with clear data showing the risks of COVID-19 during pregnancy and the benefits of vaccination. The President of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) put out a statement shortly after the Tuesday video, saying that the organization was "extremely disappointed" with Kennedy's announcement. "It is very clear that COVID-19 infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic and lead to major disability, and it can cause devastating consequences for families," ACOG President Steven Fleischman said. Beth Mole Senior Health Reporter Beth Mole Senior Health Reporter Beth is Ars Technica’s Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes. 74 Comments

Let’s start with one unambiguous fact: More children are diagnosed with autism today than in the early 1990s. According to a sweeping 2000 analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a range of 2–7 per 1,000, or roughly 0.5 percent of US children, were diagnosed with autism in the 1990s. That figure has risen to 1 in 35 kids, or roughly 3 percent.The apparent rapid increase caught the attention of people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who assumed that something had to be changing in the environment to drive it. In 2005, Kennedy, a lawyer and environmental activist at the time, authored an infamous essay in Rolling Stone that primarily placed the blame for the increased prevalence of autism on vaccines. (The article was retracted in 2011 as more studies debunked the vaccine-autism connection.) More recently, he has theorized that a mysterious toxin introduced in the late 1980s must be responsible. Now, as the nation’s top health official leading the Department of Health and Human Services, Kennedy has declared autism an “epidemic.” And, in April, he launched a massive federal effort to find the culprit for the rise in autism rates, calling for researchers to examine a range of suspects: chemicals, molds, vaccines, and perhaps even ultrasounds given to pregnant mothers. “Genes don’t cause epidemics. You need an environmental toxin,” Kennedy said in April when announcing his department’s new autism research project. He argued that too much money had been put into genetic research — “a dead end,” in his words — and his project would be a correction to focus on environmental causes. “That’s where we’re going to find an answer.”But according to many autism scientists I spoke to for this story, Kennedy is looking in exactly the wrong place. Three takeaways from this storyExperts say the increase in US autism rates is mostly explained by the expanding definitions of the condition, as well as more awareness and more screening for it.Scientists have identified hundreds of genes that are associated with autism, building a convincing case that genetics are the most important driver of autism’s development — not, as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has argued, a single environmental toxin.Researchers fear Kennedy’s fixation on outside toxins could distract from genetic research that has facilitated the development of exciting new therapies that could help those with profound autism.Autism is a complex disorder with a range of manifestations that has long defied simple explanations, and it’s unlikely that we will ever identify a single “cause” of autism.But scientists have learned a lot in the past 50 years, including identifying some of the most important risk factors. They are not, as Kennedy suggests, out in our environment. They are written into our genetics. What appeared to be a massive increase in autism was actually a byproduct of better screening and more awareness. “The way the HHS secretary has been walking about his plans, his goals, he starts out with this basic assumption that nothing worthwhile has been done,” Helen Tager-Flusberg, a psychologist at Boston University who has worked with and studied children with autism for years, said. “Genes play a significant role. We know now that autism runs in families… There is no single underlying factor. Looking for that holy grail is not the best approach.”Doctors who treat children with autism often talk about how they wish they could provide easy answers to the families. The answers being uncovered through genetics research may not be simple per se, but they are answers supported by science.Kennedy is muddying the story, pledging to find a silver-bullet answer where likely none exists. It’s a false promise — one that could cause more anxiety and confusion for the very families Kennedy says he wants to help. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a news conference at the Department of Health and Human Services in mid-April to discuss this agency’s efforts to determine the cause of autism. Alex Wong/Getty ImagesThe autism “epidemic” that wasn’tAutism was first described in 1911, and for many decades, researchers and clinicians confused the social challenges and language development difficulties common among those with the condition for a psychological issue. Some child therapists even blamed the condition on bad parenting. But in 1977, a study discovered that identical twins, who share all of their DNA, were much more likely to both be autistic than fraternal twins, who share no more DNA than ordinary siblings. It marked a major breakthrough in autism research, and pushed scientists to begin coalescing around a different theory: There was a biological factor.At the time, this was just a theory — scientists lacked the technology to prove those suspicions at the genetic level. And clinicians were also still trying to work out an even more fundamental question: What exactly was autism? For a long time, the criteria for diagnosing a person with autism was strictly based on speech development. But clinicians were increasingly observing children who could acquire basic language skills but still struggled with social communication — things like misunderstanding nonverbal cues or taking figurative language literally. Psychologists gradually broadened their definition of autism from a strict and narrow focus on language, culminating in a 2013 criteria that included a wide range of social and emotional symptoms with three subtypes — the autism spectrum disorder we’re familiar with today.Along the way, autism had evolved from a niche diagnosis for the severely impaired to something that encompassed far more children. It makes sense then, that as the broad criteria for autism expanded, more and more children would meet it, and autism rates would rise. That’s precisely what happened. And it means that the “epidemic” that Kennedy and other activists have been fixated on is mostly a diagnostic mirage. Historical autism data is spotty and subject to these same historical biases, but if you look at the prevalence of profound autism alone — those who need the highest levels of support — a clearer picture emerges. (There is an ongoing debate in the autism community about whether to use the terminology of “profound autism” or “high support needs” for those who have the most severe form of the condition.) In the ’80s and ’90s, low-support needs individuals would have been less likely to receive an autism diagnosis given the more restrictive criteria and less overall awareness of the disorder, meaning that people with severe autism likely represented most of the roughly 0.5 percent of children diagnosed with autism in the 1990s. (One large analysis from Atlanta examining data from 1996 found that 68 percent of kids ages 3 to 10 diagnosed with autism had an IQ below 70, the typical cutoff for intellectual disability.)By 2025, when about 3 percent of children are being diagnosed with autism, about one in four of those diagnosed are considered to have high-support needs autism, those with most severe manifestation of the condition. That would equal about 0.8 percent of all US children — which would be a fairly marginal increase from autism rates 30 years ago. Or look at it another way: In 2000, as many as 60 percent of the people being diagnosed with autism had an intellectual disability, one of the best indicators of high-support needs autism. In 2022, that percentage was less than 40 percent.As a recently published CDC report on autism prevalence among young children concluded, the increase in autism rates can largely be accounted for by stronger surveillance and more awareness among providers and parents, rather than a novel toxin or some other external factor driving an increase in cases.Other known risk factors — like more people now having babies later in their life, given that parental age is linked to a higher likelihood of autism — are more likely to be a factor than anything Kennedy is pointing at, experts say. “It’s very clear it’s not going to be one environmental toxin,” said Alison Singer, founder of the Autism Science Foundation and parent of a child with profound autism. “If there were a smoking gun, I think they would have found it.”While Kennedy has fixated on vaccines and environmental influences, scientists have gained more precision in mapping human genetics and identifying the biological mechanisms that appear to be a primary cause of autism. And that not only helps us understand why autism develops, but potentially puts long-elusive therapies within reach. It began with an accident in the 1990s. Steven Scherer, now director of the Center for Applied Genomics at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, began his career in the late 1980s trying to identify the gene that caused cystic fibrosis — in collaboration with Francis Collins, who went on to lead the Human Genome Project that successfully sequenced all of the DNA in the human genome in the early 2000s. Scherer and Collins’s teams focused on chromosome 7, identified as a likely target by the primitive genetic research available at the time, a coincidence that would reorient Scherer’s career just a few years later, putting him on the trail of autism’s genetic roots.After four years, the researchers concluded that one gene within chromosome 7 caused cystic fibrosis. Soon after Scherer helped crack the code on cystic fibrosis in the mid-1990s, two parents from California called him: He was the world’s leading expert on chromosome 7, and recent tests had revealed that their children with autism had a problem within that particular chromosome.That very same week, Scherer says, he read the findings of a study by a group at Oxford University, which had looked at the chromosomes of families with two or more kids with autism. They, too, had identified problems within chromosome 7.“So I said, ‘Okay, we’re going to work on autism,’” Scherer told me. He helped coordinate a global research project, uniting his Canadian lab with the Oxford team and groups in the US to run a database that became the Autism Genome Project, still the world’s largest repository of genetic information of people with autism.They had a starting point — one chromosome — but a given chromosome contains hundreds of genes. And humans have, of course, 45 other chromosomes, any of which conceivably might play a role. So over the years, they collected DNA samples from thousands upon thousands of people with autism, sequenced their genes, and then searched for patterns. If the same gene is mutated or missing across a high percentage of autistic people, it goes on the list as potentially associated with the condition. Scientists discovered that autism has not one genetic factor, but many — further evidence that this is a condition of complex origin, in which multiple variables likely play a role in its development, rather than one caused by a single genetic error like sickle-cell anemia.Here is one way to think about how far we have come: Joseph Buxbaum, the director of the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, entered autism genetics research 35 years ago. He recalls scientists being hopeful that they might identify a half dozen or so genes linked to autism.They have now found 500 genes — and Buxbaum told me he believed they might find a thousand before they are through. These genetic factors continue to prove their value in predicting the onset of autism: Scherer pointed to one recent study in which the researchers identified people who all shared a mutation in the SHANK3 gene, one of the first to be associated with autism, but who were otherwise unalike: They were not related and came from different demographic backgrounds. Nevertheless, they had all been diagnosed with autism.Researchers analyze the brain activity of a 14-year-old boy with autism as part of a University of California San Francisco study that involves intensive brain imaging of kids and their parents who have a rare chromosome disruption connected to autism. The study, the Simons Variation in Individuals Project, is a genetics-first approach to studying autism spectrum and related neurodevelopmental disorders. Michael Macor/San Francisco Chronicle via The Associated PressPrecisely how much genetics contributes to the development of autism remains the subject of ongoing study. By analyzing millions of children with autism and their parents for patterns in diagnoses, multiple studies have attributed about 80 percent of a person’s risk of developing autism to their inherited genetic factors. But of course 80 percent is not 100 percent. We don’t yet have the full picture of how or why autism develops. Among identical twins, for example, studies have found that in most cases, if one twin has high-support needs autism, the other does as well, affirming the genetic effect. But there are consistently a small minority of cases — 5 and 10 percent of twin pairs, Scherer told me — in which one twin has relatively low-support needs while the one requires a a high degree of support for their autism.Kennedy is not wholly incorrect to look at environmental factors — researchers theorize that autism may be the result of a complex interaction between a person’s genetics and something they experience in utero. Scientists in autism research are exploring the possible influence when, for example, a person’s mother develops maternal diabetes, high blood sugar that persists throughout pregnancy. And yet even if these other factors do play some role, the researchers I spoke to agree that genetics is, based on what we know now, far and away the most important driver.“We need to figure out how other types of genetics and also environmental factors affect autism’s development,” Scherer said. “There could be environmental changes…involved in some people, but it’s going to be based on their genetics and the pathways that lead them to be susceptible.”While the precise contours of Health Department’s new autism research project is still taking shape, Kennedy has that researchers at the National Institutes of Health will collect data from federal programs such as Medicare and Medicaid and somehow use that information to identify possible environmental exposures that lead to autism. He initially pledged results by September, a timeline that, as outside experts pointed out, may be too fast to allow for a thorough and thoughtful review of the research literature. Kennedy has since backed off on that deadline, promising some initial findings in the fall but with more to come next year.RFK Jr.’s autism commission research risks the accessibility of groundbreaking autism treatmentsIf Kennedy were serious about moving autism science forward, he would be talking more about genetics, not dismissing them. That’s because genetics is where all of the exciting drug development is currently happening.A biotech firm called Jaguar Gene Therapy has received FDA approval to conduct the first clinical trial of a gene therapy for autism, focused on SHANK3. The treatment, developed in part by one of Buxbaum’s colleagues, is a one-time injection that would replace a mutated or missing SHANK3 gene with a functional one. The hope is that the therapy would improve speech and other symptoms among people with high-needs autism who have also been diagnosed with a rare chromosomal deletion disorder called Phelan-McDermid syndrome; many people with this condition also have Autism spectrum disorder.The trial will begin this year with a few infant patients, 2 years old and younger, who have been diagnosed with autism. Jaguar eventually aims to test the therapy on adults over 18 with autism in the future. Patients are supposed to start enrolling this year in the trial, which is focused on first establishing the treatment’s safety; if it proves safe, another round of trials would start to rigorously evaluate its effectiveness.“This is the stuff that three or four years ago sounded like science fiction,” Singer said. “The conversation has really changed from Is this possible? to What are the best methods to do it? And that’s based on genetics.”Researchers at Mount Sinai have also experimented with delivering lithium to patients and seeing if it improves their SHANK3 function. Other gene therapies targeting other genes are in earlier stages of development. Some investigators are experimenting with CRISPR technology, the revolutionary new platform for gene editing, to target the problematic genes that correspond to the onset of autism.But these scientists fear that their work could be slowed by Kennedy’s insistence on hunting for environmental toxins, if federal dollars are instead shifted into his new project. They are already trying to subsist amid deep budget cuts across the many funding streams that support the institutions where they work. “Now we have this massive disruption where instead of doing really key experiments, people are worrying about paying their bills and laying off their staff and things,” Scherer said. “It’s horrible.” For the families of people with high-needs autism, Kennedy’s crusade has stirred conflicting emotions. Alison Singer, the leader of the Autism Science Foundation, is also the parent of a child with profound autism. When I spoke with her, I was struck by the bind that Kennedy’s rhetoric has put people like her and her family in. Singer told me profound autism has not received enough federal support in the past, as more emphasis was placed on individuals who have low support needs included in the expanding definitions of the disorder, and so she appreciates Kennedy giving voice to those families. She believes that he is sincerely empathetic toward their predicament and their feeling that the mainstream discussion about autism has for too long ignored their experiences in favor of patients with lower support needs. But she worries that his obsession with environmental factors will stymie the research that could yield breakthroughs for people like her child.“He feels for those families and genuinely wants to help them,” Singer said. “The problem is he is a data denier. You can’t be so entrenched in your beliefs that you can’t see the data right in front of you. That’s not science.”See More:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr's HHS has cancelled Moderna's mRNA bird flu vaccine. That and new restrictions on Covid vaccines puts us at increased risk of deaths and a pandemic.

May 23, 20257 min readWhat FDA’s Planned Limits on COVID Vaccinations Mean for HealthDespite the fact that vaccines against COVID have already undergone strict safety reviews and that people continue to die from the disease, Trump’s FDA is moving to reduce access to annual COVID boosters for healthy AmericansBy Stephanie Armour & KFF Health News aire images/Getty ImagesLarry Saltzman has blood cancer. He’s also a retired doctor, so he knows getting covid-19 could be dangerous for him — his underlying illness puts him at high risk of serious complications and death. To avoid getting sick, he stays away from large gatherings, and he’s comforted knowing healthy people who get boosters protect him by reducing his exposure to the virus.Until now, that is.Vaccine opponents and skeptics in charge of federal health agencies — starting at the top with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are restricting access to covid shots that were a signature accomplishment of President Donald Trump’s first term and cost taxpayers about $13 billion to develop, produce, and distribute. The agencies are narrowing vaccination recommendations, pushing drugmakers to perform costly clinical studies, and taking other steps that will result in fewer people getting protection from a virus that still kills hundreds each week in the U.S.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.“There are hundreds of thousands of people who rely on these vaccines,” said Saltzman, 71, of Sacramento, California. “For people who are immunocompromised, if there aren’t enough people vaccinated, we lose the ring that’s protecting us. We’re totally vulnerable.”The Trump administration on May 20 rolled out tougher approval requirements for covid shots, described as a covid-19 “vaccination regulatory framework,” that could leave millions of Americans who want boosters unable to get them.The FDA will encourage new clinical trials on the widely used vaccines before approving them for children and healthy adults. The requirements could cost drugmakers tens of millions of dollars and are likely to leave boosters largely out of reach for hundreds of millions of Americans this fall.Under the new guidance, vaccines will be available for high-risk individuals and seniors. But the FDA will encourage drugmakers to commit to conducting post-marketing clinical trials in healthy adults when the agency approves covid vaccines for those populations.For the past five years, the shots have been recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for everyone 6 months and older. They have been available each fall after being updated to reflect circulating strains of the virus, and the vaccines have been shown to be safe and effective in clinical trials.Vinay Prasad, who leads the FDA’s division overseeing vaccines, cited “distrust of the American public” as he announced the new guidelines at a May 20 briefing.“We have launched down this multiyear campaign of booster after booster after booster,” he said, adding that “we do not have gold-standard science to support this for average-risk, low-risk Americans.”The details were outlined in a May 20 article in The New England Journal of Medicine, written by FDA Commissioner Marty Makary. He and Prasad later followed up with the briefing, which appeared the same day on YouTube.The added limits on access aren’t the result of any recent data showing there are new health risks from the covid vaccines. Instead, they reflect a different regulatory stance from Kennedy, who has a history of anti-vaccine activism, and Makary, who has questioned the safety data on covid mRNA shots.Announcing a major regulatory change in a medical journal and YouTube video is a highly unusual approach that still leaves many questions about implementation unanswered. It remains unclear when the changes will go into effect or whether there will be any public comment period. The changes were announced by the administration before an FDA advisory committee meeting on May 22 to consider the 2026 covid vaccine formula.It’s a sharp reversal from the first Trump administration, which launched Operation Warp Speed — the effort that led to the development of the covid shots. Trump called the vaccines the “gold standard” and a “monumental national achievement.”Concerns About Higher TransmissionThe announcement is rattling some patient advocacy groups, doctors, nursing home leaders, and researchers who worry about the ramifications. They say higher-risk individuals will be more likely to get covid if people who aren’t at risk don’t get boosters that can help reduce transmission. And they say the FDA’s restrictions go too far, because they don’t provide exceptions for healthy individuals who work in high-risk settings, such as hospitals, who may want a covid booster for protection.The limits will also make it harder to get insurance coverage for the vaccines. And the FDA’s new stance could also increase vaccine hesitancy by undermining confidence in covid vaccines that have already been subject to rigorous safety review, said Kate Broderick, chief innovation officer at Maravai Life Sciences, which makes mRNA products for use in vaccine development.“For the public, it raises questions,” she said. “If someone has concerns, I’d like them to know that of all the vaccines, the ones with the most understood safety profile are probably covid-19 vaccines. There is an incredible body of data and over 10 billion doses given.”Some doctors and epidemiologists say it could leave healthy people especially vulnerable if more virulent strains of covid emerge and they can’t access covid shots.“It’s not based on science,” said Rob Davidson, an emergency room doctor in Michigan and executive director of the Committee to Protect Health Care, which works to expand health care access. “It’s what we were all worried would happen. It risks peoples’ lives.”Current federal regulators say there is no high-quality evidence showing that vaccinating healthy people, including health workers who are near or around immunocompromised people, provides an additional benefit.“It is possible, actually, that such approvals and strategies provide false reassurance and lead to increased harms,” Prasad said.The covid vaccines underwent clinical trials to assess safety, and they have been subject to ongoing surveillance and monitoring since they obtained emergency use authorization from the FDA amid the pandemic. Heart issues and allergic reactions can occur but are rare, according to the CDC.On a separate track, the FDA on May 21 posted letters sent in April to makers of the mRNA covid vaccines to add information about possible heart injury on warning labels, a move that one former agency official described as overkill. The action came after the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, a panel of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, held a hearing on alleged adverse events associated with covid vaccines.Limiting boosters to healthy people goes against guidance from some medical groups.“The COVID-19 vaccine is safe, effective, and the best way to protect children,” Sean O’Leary, chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases at the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in an email. “Young children under 5 continue to be at the highest risk, with that risk decreasing as they get older.”Unsupported Claims About mRNA VaccinesThe covid booster clampdown is supported by many adherents of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, which casts suspicion on traditional medicine. Some opponents of covid mRNA vaccines say without evidence that the shots cause “turbo” cancer, are genetic bioweapons, and cause more heart damage than the covid virus.There is no evidence the shots lead to rapid and aggressive cancers. Cancer rates decreased an average of 1.7% per year for men and 1.3% for women from 2018 to 2022, according to the National Institutes of Health. The covid vaccines debuted in 2021.Federal regulators say narrowing who can get the boosters will align the U.S. with policies of European nations. But other countries have vastly different economic structures for health care and approaches to preventive care. Many European countries, for example, don’t recommend flu shots for the entire population. The U.S. does in part because of the financial drain attributed to lost productivity when people are sick.They also want more information. “I think there’s a void of data,” Makary told CBS News on April 29. “And I think rather than allow that void to be filled with opinions, I’d like to see some good data.”A massive five-year study on covid vaccine safety by the Global Vaccine Data Network, involving millions of people, was underway, with about a year left before completion. The Trump administration terminated funding for the project as part of cuts directed by the president’s Department of Government Efficiency, and work on the study has stopped for now.There are a multitude of studies, however, on the vaccines’ effectiveness in preventing severe illness, hospitalization, and death.Limiting boosters for healthy people can be risky, some doctors say, because people don’t always know when they fall into higher-risk categories, such as individuals who are prediabetic or have high blood pressure. The covid vaccine restrictions could deter them from getting boosted, and they might experience worse complications from the virus as a result. For example, about 40% of people with hepatitis C are unaware of their condition, according to a study published in 2023.The number of people getting covid vaccines has already dropped significantly since the height of the crisis. More than half of the more than 258 million adults in the U.S. had gotten a covid vaccination as of May 2021, according to the CDC. In each of the past two seasons, less than 25% of Americans received boosters, CDC data shows.While deaths from the virus have dropped, covid remains a risk, especially when cases peak in December and January. Weekly covid deaths topped 2,580 as recently as January 2024, according to CDC data.Some high-risk individuals are worried that the new restrictions are just the first salvo in halting all access to mRNA shots. “The HHS motivation really is hidden, and it’s to dismiss all mRNA technology,” said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota.Officials at the NIH have told scientists to remove references to mRNA in grant applications. HHS also announced plans in May to develop new vaccines without mRNA technology, which uses messenger RNA to instruct cells to make proteins that trigger an immune response.Rose Keller, 23, is concerned about future access to covid shots. She would be eligible under the current announcement — she has cystic fibrosis, a progressive genetic condition that makes the mucus in her lungs thick and sticky, so covid could land her in the hospital. But she is concerned the Trump administration may go further and restrict access to the vaccines as part of a broader opposition to mRNA technology.“I’ve had every booster that’s available to me,” said Keller, a government employee in Augusta, Maine. “It’s a real worry if I don’t have the protection of a covid booster.”KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

This week, two new leaders at the US Food and Drug Administration announced plans to limit access to covid vaccines, arguing that there is not much evidence to support the value of annual shots in healthy people. New vaccines will be made available only to the people who are most vulnerable—namely, those over 65 and others with conditions that make them more susceptible to severe disease. Anyone else will have to wait. Covid vaccines will soon be required to go through more rigorous trials to ensure that they really are beneficial for people who aren’t at high risk. The plans have been met with fear and anger in some quarters. But they weren’t all that shocking to me. In the UK, where I live, covid boosters have been offered only to vulnerable groups for a while now. And the immunologists I spoke to agree: The plans make sense. They are still controversial. Covid hasn’t gone away. And while most people are thought to have some level of immunity to the virus, some of us still stand to get very sick if infected. The threat of long covid lingers, too. Given that people respond differently to both the virus and the vaccine, perhaps individuals should be able to choose whether they get a vaccine or not. I should start by saying that covid vaccines have been a remarkable success story. The drugs were developed at record-breaking speed—they were given to people in clinical trials just 69 days after the virus had been identified. They are, on the whole, very safe. And they work remarkably well. They have saved millions of lives. And they rescued many of us from lockdowns. But while many of us have benefited hugely from covid vaccinations in the past, there are questions over how useful continuing annual booster doses might be. That’s the argument being made by FDA head Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad, director of the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Both men have been critical of the FDA in the past. Makary has long been accused of downplaying the benefits of covid vaccines. He made incorrect assumptions about the coronavirus responsible for covid-19 and predicted that the disease would be “mostly gone” by April 2021. Most recently, he also testified in Congress that the theory that the virus came from a lab in China was a “no-brainer.” (The strongest evidence suggests the virus jumped from animals to humans in a market in Wuhan.) Prasad has said “the FDA is a failure” and has called annual covid boosters “a public health disaster the likes of which we’ve never seen before,” because of a perceived lack of clinical evidence to support their use. Makary and Prasad’s plans, which were outlined in the New England Journal of Medicine on Tuesday, don’t include such inflammatory language or unfounded claims, thankfully. In fact, they seem pretty measured: Annual covid booster shots will continue to be approved for vulnerable people but will have to be shown to benefit others before people outside the approved groups can access them. There are still concerns being raised, though. Let’s address a few of the biggest ones. Shouldn’t I get an annual covid booster alongside my flu vaccine? At the moment, a lot of people in the US opt to get a covid vaccination around the time they get their annual flu jab. Each year, a flu vaccine is developed to protect against what scientists predict will be the dominant strain of virus circulating come flu season, which tends to run from October through March. But covid doesn’t seem to stick to the same seasonal patterns, says Susanna Dunachie, a clinical doctor and professor of infectious diseases at the University of Oxford in the UK. “We seem to be getting waves of covid year-round,” she says. And an annual shot might not offer the best protection against covid anyway, says Fikadu Tafesse, an immunologist and virologist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. His own research suggests that leaving more than a year between booster doses could enhance their effectiveness. “One year is really a random time,” he says. It might be better to wait five or 10 years between doses instead, he adds. “If you are at risk [of a serious covid infection] you may actually need [a dose] every six months,” says Tafesse. “But for healthy individuals, it’s a very different conversation.” What about children—shouldn’t we be protecting them? There are reports that pediatricians are concerned about the impact on children, some of whom can develop serious cases of covid. “If we have safe and effective vaccines that prevent illness, we think they should be available,” James Campbell, vice chair of the committee on infectious diseases at the American Academy of Pediatrics, told STAT. This question has been on my mind for a while. My two young children, who were born in the UK, have never been eligible for a covid vaccine in this country. I found this incredibly distressing when the virus started tearing through child-care centers—especially given that at the time, the US was vaccinating babies from the age of six months. My kids were eventually offered a vaccine in the US, when we temporarily moved there a couple of years ago. But by that point, the equation had changed. They’d both had covid by then. I had a better idea of the general risks of the virus to children. I turned it down. I was relieved to hear that Tafesse had made the same decision for his own children. “There are always exceptions, but in general, [covid] is not severe in kids,” he says. The UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunology found that the benefits of vaccination are much smaller for children than they are for adults. “Of course there are children with health problems who should definitely have it,” says Dunachie. “But for healthy children in healthy households, the benefits probably are quite marginal.” Shouldn’t healthy people get vaccinated to help protect more vulnerable members of society? It’s a good argument, says Tafesse. Research suggests that people who are vaccinated against covid-19 are less likely to end up transmitting the infection to the people around them. The degree of protection is not entirely clear, particularly with less-studied—and more contagious—variants of the virus and targeted vaccines. The safest approach is to encourage those at high risk to get the vaccine themselves, says Tafesse. If the vaccines are safe, shouldn’t I be able to choose to get one? Tafesse doesn’t buy this argument. “I know they are safe, but even if they’re safe, why do I need to get one?” People should know if they are likely to benefit from a drug they are taking, he says. Having said that, the cost-benefit calculation will differ between individuals. Even a “mild” covid infection can leave some people bed-bound for a week. For them, it might make total sense to get the vaccine. Dunachie thinks people should be able to make their own decisions. “Giving people a top-up whether they need it or not is a safe thing to do,” she says. It is still not entirely clear who will be able to access covid vaccinations under the new plans, and how. Makary and Prasad’s piece includes a list of “medical conditions that increase a person’s risk of severe covid-19,” which includes several disorders, pregnancy, and “physical inactivity.” It covers a lot of people; research suggests that around 25% of Americans are physically inactive. But I find myself agreeing with Dunachie. Yes, we need up-to-date evidence to support the use of any drugs. But taking vaccines away from people who have experience with them and feel they could benefit from them doesn’t feel like the ideal way to go about it. This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.

This week, two new leaders at the US Food and Drug Administration announced plans to limit access to covid vaccines, arguing that there is not much evidence to support the value of annual shots in healthy people. New vaccines will be made available only to the people who are most vulnerable—namely, those over 65 and others with conditions that make them more susceptible to severe disease. Anyone else will have to wait. Covid vaccines will soon be required to go through more rigorous trials to ensure that they really are beneficial for people who aren’t at high risk. The plans have been met with fear and anger in some quarters. But they weren’t all that shocking to me. In the UK, where I live, covid boosters have been offered only to vulnerable groups for a while now. And the immunologists I spoke to agree: The plans make sense. They are still controversial. Covid hasn’t gone away. And while most people are thought to have some level of immunity to the virus, some of us still stand to get very sick if infected. The threat of long covid lingers, too. Given that people respond differently to both the virus and the vaccine, perhaps individuals should be able to choose whether they get a vaccine or not. I should start by saying that covid vaccines have been a remarkable success story. The drugs were developed at record-breaking speed—they were given to people in clinical trials just 69 days after the virus had been identified. They are, on the whole, very safe. And they work remarkably well. They have saved millions of lives. And they rescued many of us from lockdowns. But while many of us have benefited hugely from covid vaccinations in the past, there are questions over how useful continuing annual booster doses might be. That’s the argument being made by FDA head Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad, director of the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Both men have been critical of the FDA in the past. Makary has long been accused of downplaying the benefits of covid vaccines. He made incorrect assumptions about the coronavirus responsible for covid-19 and predicted that the disease would be “mostly gone” by April 2021. Most recently, he also testified in Congress that the theory that the virus came from a lab in China was a “no-brainer.” (The strongest evidence suggests the virus jumped from animals to humans in a market in Wuhan.) Prasad has said “the FDA is a failure” and has called annual covid boosters “a public health disaster the likes of which we’ve never seen before,” because of a perceived lack of clinical evidence to support their use. Makary and Prasad’s plans, which were outlined in the New England Journal of Medicine on Tuesday, don’t include such inflammatory language or unfounded claims, thankfully. In fact, they seem pretty measured: Annual covid booster shots will continue to be approved for vulnerable people but will have to be shown to benefit others before people outside the approved groups can access them. There are still concerns being raised, though. Let’s address a few of the biggest ones. Shouldn’t I get an annual covid booster alongside my flu vaccine? At the moment, a lot of people in the US opt to get a covid vaccination around the time they get their annual flu jab. Each year, a flu vaccine is developed to protect against what scientists predict will be the dominant strain of virus circulating come flu season, which tends to run from October through March. But covid doesn’t seem to stick to the same seasonal patterns, says Susanna Dunachie, a clinical doctor and professor of infectious diseases at the University of Oxford in the UK. “We seem to be getting waves of covid year-round,” she says. And an annual shot might not offer the best protection against covid anyway, says Fikadu Tafesse, an immunologist and virologist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. His own research suggests that leaving more than a year between booster doses could enhance their effectiveness. “One year is really a random time,” he says. It might be better to wait five or 10 years between doses instead, he adds. “If you are at risk [of a serious covid infection] you may actually need [a dose] every six months,” says Tafesse. “But for healthy individuals, it’s a very different conversation.” What about children—shouldn’t we be protecting them? There are reports that pediatricians are concerned about the impact on children, some of whom can develop serious cases of covid. “If we have safe and effective vaccines that prevent illness, we think they should be available,” James Campbell, vice chair of the committee on infectious diseases at the American Academy of Pediatrics, told STAT. This question has been on my mind for a while. My two young children, who were born in the UK, have never been eligible for a covid vaccine in this country. I found this incredibly distressing when the virus started tearing through child-care centers—especially given that at the time, the US was vaccinating babies from the age of six months. My kids were eventually offered a vaccine in the US, when we temporarily moved there a couple of years ago. But by that point, the equation had changed. They’d both had covid by then. I had a better idea of the general risks of the virus to children. I turned it down. I was relieved to hear that Tafesse had made the same decision for his own children. “There are always exceptions, but in general, [covid] is not severe in kids,” he says. The UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunology found that the benefits of vaccination are much smaller for children than they are for adults. “Of course there are children with health problems who should definitely have it,” says Dunachie. “But for healthy children in healthy households, the benefits probably are quite marginal.” Shouldn’t healthy people get vaccinated to help protect more vulnerable members of society? It’s a good argument, says Tafesse. Research suggests that people who are vaccinated against covid-19 are less likely to end up transmitting the infection to the people around them. The degree of protection is not entirely clear, particularly with less-studied—and more contagious—variants of the virus and targeted vaccines. The safest approach is to encourage those at high risk to get the vaccine themselves, says Tafesse. If the vaccines are safe, shouldn’t I be able to choose to get one? Tafesse doesn’t buy this argument. “I know they are safe, but even if they’re safe, why do I need to get one?” People should know if they are likely to benefit from a drug they are taking, he says. Having said that, the cost-benefit calculation will differ between individuals. Even a “mild” covid infection can leave some people bed-bound for a week. For them, it might make total sense to get the vaccine. Dunachie thinks people should be able to make their own decisions. “Giving people a top-up whether they need it or not is a safe thing to do,” she says. It is still not entirely clear who will be able to access covid vaccinations under the new plans, and how. Makary and Prasad’s piece includes a list of “medical conditions that increase a person’s risk of severe covid-19,” which includes several disorders, pregnancy, and “physical inactivity.” It covers a lot of people; research suggests that around 25% of Americans are physically inactive. But I find myself agreeing with Dunachie. Yes, we need up-to-date evidence to support the use of any drugs. But taking vaccines away from people who have experience with them and feel they could benefit from them doesn’t feel like the ideal way to go about it. This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Meet Cathy Tie, Bride of “China’s Frankenstein” Since the Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui was released from prison in 2022, he has sought to make a scientific comeback and to repair his reputation after a three-year incarceration for illegally creating the world’s first gene-edited children.One area of visible success on his come-back trail has been his X.com account. Over the past few years, his account has evolved from sharing mundane images of his daily life to spreading outrageous, antagonistic messages. This has left observers unsure what to take seriously.Last month, in reply to MIT Technology Review’s questions about who was responsible for the account’s transformation into a font of clever memes, He emailed us back: “It’s thanks to Cathy Tie.” Tie is no stranger to the public spotlight. A former Thiel fellow, she is a partner in a project which promised to create glow-in-the-dark pets. Over the past several weeks, though, the Canadian entrepreneur has started to get more and more attention as the new wife to He Jiankui. Read the full story. —Caiwei Chen & Antonio Regalado Anthropic’s new hybrid AI model can work on tasks autonomously for hours at a time Anthropic has announced two new AI models that it claims represent a major step toward making AI agents truly useful. AI agents trained on Claude Opus 4, the company’s most powerful model to date, raise the bar for what such systems are capable of by tackling difficult tasks over extended periods of time and responding more usefully to user instructions, the company says. They’ve achieved some impressive results: Opus 4 created a guide for the video game Pokémon Red while playing it for more than 24 hours straight. The company’s previously most powerful model was capable of playing for just 45 minutes. Read the full story. —Rhiannon Williams The FDA plans to limit access to covid vaccines. Here’s why that’s not all bad. This week, two new leaders at the US Food and Drug Administration announced plans to limit access to covid vaccines, arguing that there is not much evidence to support the value of annual shots in healthy people. New vaccines will be made available only to the people who are most vulnerable—namely, those over 65 and others with conditions that make them more susceptible to severe disease.The plans have been met with fear and anger in some quarters. But they weren’t all that shocking to me. In the UK, where I live, covid boosters have been offered only to vulnerable groups for a while now. And the immunologists I spoke to agree: The plans make sense. Read the full story. —Jessica Hamzelou This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Thousands of Americans are facing extreme weatherBut help from the federal government may never arrive. (Slate $)+ States struck by tornadoes and floods are begging the Trump administration for aid. (Scientific American $) 2 Spain’s grid operator has accused power plants of not doing their jobIt claims they failed to control the system’s voltage shortly before the blackout. (FT $)+ Did solar power cause Spain’s blackout? (MIT Technology Review) 3 Google is facing a DoJ probe over its AI chatbot dealIt will probe whether Google’s deal with Character.AI gives it an unfair advantage. (Bloomberg $)+ It may not lead to enforcement action, though. (Reuters) 4 DOGE isn’t bad news for everyoneThese smaller US government IT contractors say it’s good for business—for now. (WSJ $)+ It appears that DOGE used a Meta AI model to review staff emails, not Grok. (Wired $)+ Can AI help DOGE slash government budgets? It’s complex. (MIT Technology Review)5 Google’s new shopping tool adds breasts to minorsTry it On distorts uploaded photos to clothing models’ proportions, even when they’re children. (The Atlantic $)+ It feels like this could have easily been avoided. (Axios)+ An AI companion site is hosting sexually charged conversations with underage celebrity bots. (MIT Technology Review) 6 Apple is reportedly planning a smart glasses product launchBy the end of next year. (Bloomberg $)+ It’s playing catchup with Meta and Google, among others. (Engadget)+ What’s next for smart glasses. (MIT Technology Review) 7 What it’s like to live in Elon Musk’s corner of TexasComplete with an ugly bust and furious locals. (The Guardian)+ West Lake Hills residents are pushing back against his giant fences. (Architectural Digest $) 8 Our solar system may contain a hidden ninth planetA possible dwarf planet has been spotted orbiting beyond Neptune. (New Scientist $) 9 Wikipedia does swag nowHow else will you let everyone know you love the open web? (Fast Company $) 10 One of the last good apps is shutting downMozilla is closing Pocket, its article-saving app, and the internet is worse for it. (404 Media)+ Parent company Mozilla said the way people use the web has changed. (The Verge) Quote of the day “This is like the Mount Everest of corruption.” —Senator Jeff Merkley protests outside Donald Trump’s exclusive dinner for the highest-paying customers of his personal cryptocurrency, the New York Times reports. One more thing The iPad was meant to revolutionize accessibility. What happened?On April 3, 2010, Steve Jobs debuted the iPad. What for most people was basically a more convenient form factor was something far more consequential for non-speakers: a life-­changing revolution in access to a portable, powerful communication device for just a few hundred dollars.But a piece of hardware, however impressively designed and engineered, is only as valuable as what a person can do with it. After the iPad’s release, the flood of new, easy-to-use augmentative and alternative communication apps that users were in desperate need of never came.Today, there are only around half a dozen apps, each retailing for $200 to $300, that ask users to select from menus of crudely drawn icons to produce text and synthesized speech. It’s a depressingly slow pace of development for such an essential human function. Read the full story. —Julie Kim We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.) + Dive into the physics behind the delicate frills of Tête de Moine cheese shavings.+ Our capacity to feel moved by music is at least partly inherited, apparently.+ Kermit the frog has delivered a moving commencement address at the University of Maryland.+ It’s a question as old as time: are clowns sexy?