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TCL Tab A1 Plus Nxtpaper is now available in the US
And its price is already reduced by 25%. TCL unveiled the Tab A1 Plus and its Nxtpaper variant in early March at MWC, and now the Nxtpaper version is...
Packers dealt two more injuries at tight end position
The Packers are dealing with two more injuries at an already hobbled tight end position.
Women’s sports are No. 1 at this new bar in North Park
One of Us in North Park is San Diego’s first women’s sports bar. It’s already become the go to spot to watch Wave FC matches.
If Not AOC, Then Who?
What do we do if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decides not to run for president in 2028? It makes sense that many leftists are currently focused on calling on her to take the plunge. But the absence of a Plan B, or even much discussion about one, is worrisome. The US Left can’t afford to sit out the 2028 Democratic primary. Doing so in 2024 was a disaster: our abstention self-marginalized anti-billionaire politics from the national conversation and thereby gave space for Harris to pivot to the “center” (i.e. the policy preferences of corporate donors, establishment hacks, and AIPAC). Abstaining again in 2028 would be especially counterproductive since democratic socialists now have so much wind in our sails after our big electoral wins in NYC and across the country. It’s time to deepen our momentum, organization, and profile — not to retreat to the margins during America’s single most important political battle. Even more urgently, keeping Trump’s heir out of the White House may depend on whether leftists and the party’s unprecedentedly disenchanted base can force the Democrats in 2028 to take meaningful steps towards a very angry electorate and away from the corporate-consultant blob that has helped get us into this mess. If AOC (or Abdul El-Sayed) decides to run, we should enthusiastically go all in — DSA, fighting unions, progressive organizations, anybody who wants to see a better country and world. But, as far as I can tell from the outside, there’s a real chance that she doesn’t run. And we can’t just wait and see where she lands before discussing alternatives, since AOC’s decision might not come for quite a while, giving us little time to scramble at the last minute for an alternative. So we should start working now on getting a Plan B into motion, and recruiting a good candidate for the role. Here’s one idea. A Worker Candidate — Healthcare Not Warfare 2028 Run a union worker Leftists don’t need to always run experienced, well-known socialist politicians for high-profile contests. Lula, the current president of Brazil, began his political career as a metalworker militant who ran for governor of São Paulo in 1982. Especially in an era of institutional distrust, it’s possible to lean hard into making a virtue out of a working-class comrade’s distance from traditional politics. Experience abroad shows this clearly. Rachel Kéké — an immigrant hotel housekeeper — ran as the candidate of the leftist La France Insoumise for the National Assembly in 2022, defeating a former minister in the Macron government. The Belgian Workers’ Party in 2024 won its first Flemish seat in the European Parliament by running Rudi Kennes, a three-decade veteran of the Opel Antwerp auto factory. And the South Korean left in 2024 elected auto factory militant Yoon Jong-oh to the National Assembly. If a tiny French Trotskyist organization could make such a big splash in 2002 and 2007 by running a well-spoken postal worker cadre for office — the LCR’s Olivier Besancenot received about 1.5 million first-round votes — it’s not far-fetched to expect that a much larger organization like DSA, together with a broader coalition of the willing, could run this playbook to much greater effect. This is especially the case now that almost everything DSA does immediately becomes a national news story. We don’t need someone famous. We just need a charismatic, well-vetted comrade who works in a relatable working-class occupation — e.g. a nurse, or a worker in auto or construction, or at Amazon. Ideally, they have a compelling personal story or have been part of a significant strike or organizing campaign, but even those criteria don’t necessarily have to be deal-breakers. The main lesson of the Graham Platner fiasco isn’t that we should never run outsiders for office (the momentum he generated proves the exact opposite), but that they need proper vetting and roots in democratic membership organizations like DSA or a union. In any case, there are plenty of ways to signal working-class authenticity without resorting to Platner’s or Fetterman’s performative macho white dude affect. Better to have someone of any gender or race who is actually working class, with firm socialist politics, who can speak from experience about the day-to-day realities of trying to make it in America. There are surely at least a dozen such worker leaders in our movement nationwide; we just need to sit down and convince one that their personal sacrifice for the greater good (i.e. running for president) will be worth it. If we don’t have a frontrunner with a clear path to victory like AOC (or El-Sayed, were he to win Michigan), it’s better to embrace someone whose decision to run in itself tells an important story about US politics: workers have been iced out of our political system and are now fighting hard to break back in. The novelty factor, in itself, would generate press. And it would help democratic socialists signal to the American public that our movement’s defining characteristic is that we represent workers vs. bosses, not that we’re “the furthest left” force in American politics — a framework that suggests we’re extremists and that helps our opponents isolate us from non-college-educated voters by highlighting extremely minoritarian (and misguided) stances included in DSA’s platform like prison abolition. We don’t get many opportunities to speak to tens of millions of Americans; we need to use these opportunities to broaden our appeal beyond those already in our orbit. Run to polarize the 2028 primary and general election around “Medicare for All” and “End All Aid to Israel” Why should democratic socialists use our scarce time and volunteer energy to run in a race we’re unlikely to win? Running in the 2028 primary will not only recruit us scores of members (imagine having a DSA member intervening in eleven nationally televised primary debates!), but — more importantly — it has the potential to be a decisive leap forward towards an America that finally starts meeting the needs of working people instead of HMO and AIPAC billionaire donors. Polarizing litmus tests are good, actually — as long as they’re fought for around popular demands in a thoughtful and strategic way. Democratic socialists have an opportunity and responsibility to make the 2028 primary about two of the most widely and deeply felt issues of our moment: domestically, America’s unaffordable, family-breaking private healthcare system; internationally, America’s bankrolling of the genocidal Israeli government. A candidacy relentlessly demanding Medicare for All and No Aid to Israel would pose a sharp question to the American public, the Democratic Party, and other 2028 contenders: Why can’t working-class Americans afford their healthcare bills at the same time that our government is spending at least $3.8 billion yearly to fund an Israeli regime eager to keep dragging us and the world into more forever wars? Our candidate can agitate around a clear message: I’m running to give voice to all those working-class Americans who are struggling to get by. No matter what state you live in, who you voted for in 2024, or your background, it’s just plain common sense that we should make healthcare more affordable instead of spending billions to enable the Israeli government’s crimes against humanity. Every American who agrees with me when I say ‘Medicare for All — Not a Dime for Israel’ should make their voice heard through our campaign. Racking up a high number of votes for this agenda is a crucial way to show the Democratic Party and the country as a whole that we can’t keep supporting a life-destroying status quo in our healthcare system and in the Middle East. If we want to defeat Trump’s handpicked crony this coming November, we need to speak to ordinary people’s frustrations with the status quo — we can’t keep running the same tired establishment playbook and expecting a different result. For those highly engaged voters (or skeptical media pundits) who raise concerns about wasting votes, the candidate can take the time to explain why this isn’t the case: It's true I'm a long shot. But Zohran showed anything can happen — and voting for me is a pragmatic decision, not a wasted vote. In a heavily divided primary with a large number of candidates and a very discredited establishment, my campaign and the democratic socialist movement I’m part of are positioned to be the balance of power if we can get a large enough number of voters to loudly demand Healthcare Not Warfare. Since there’s a high chance no candidate will get to 50% in the 2028 primaries, the Democrats could very well be heading towards a brokered convention, where a disciplined, principled current committed to breaking from corporate donors can play an outsized role in making sure whoever ends up with the nomination raises the banner of single-payer healthcare and cutting aid to Israel. How exactly could running this sort of primary campaign be translated into actual leverage? The candidate replies: I’m aiming to win the nomination, but if I don’t achieve that goal, my delegates and I will pledge our support in the primary only for a candidate who agrees in the general election to call for ending US aid to Israel and establishing Medicare for All at home. These are both winning planks for November against the Republicans, and the only reason I can see that other candidates haven’t yet raised these is that they’re still more scared of the donor class than they are of the people. That needs to change. If Democratic leaders want young people, workers, and those sick of the status quo to show up in big numbers this November, they need to meet us halfway. In this way, whether or not we win the nomination, democratic socialists could still play a decisive role in 2028. The approach outlined here is similar to what radical left parties periodically do in parliamentary democracies like Denmark or Sweden when they find themselves as a junior partner electorally: they dictate to center-left allies what their terms would be for enabling, from the outside, the formation of a new government. Running a Healthcare Not Warfare candidate will make it significantly more likely that the 2028 Democratic candidate stands with ordinary people instead of donors on these two pivotal planks — a shift that will, in turn, make it easier to achieve the existentially important task of defeating MAGA’s heir in November. Look at how much popular traction the Uncommitted movement got with a similar strategy in 2024 with so little on-the-ground organization — surely we can go much further with a working-class candidate, a much bigger DSA, and a Democratic Party base that has turned against Israel, billionaires, and the hacks in the party who prop them up. Objections and Responses There are quite a few objections to this proposal, many of which are very reasonable. Let me briefly address each here. Socialists shouldn’t waste their scarce time and resources on a candidate unlikely to win. This is a good rule in general, but there are important exceptions, and presidential elections are the main one. There’s no other political contest that gets anything like this level of attention and engagement in the US, so if you want to be a serious force in nationwide politics, you basically can’t afford not to have a candidate. Far from being an overall drain on our resources, running a dynamic 2028 campaign would likely result in a major net increase in members and capacity. In that spirit, the very pragmatic Milwaukee sewer socialists — who mostly ran to win at home in Wisconsin — supported Eugene Debs’s propagandistic presidential campaigns, which they correctly saw as a crucial means of recruiting to the Socialist Party. And now that the (post-1972) Democratic Party gives more weight to voters than party operatives in determining its presidential nomination, it’s become feasible to run as a socialist in primaries without risking a split in the vote against the Republicans in November. We should just support Ro Khanna, who also supports M4A and ending aid to Israel. I like Ro Khanna and would enthusiastically vote and canvass for him for president were he to get the nomination. But there’s a real chance that Khanna’s bid for office doesn’t catch on; he lacks the grassroots organizational apparatus of DSA, and, because he’s not really of the Left or labor (despite his current very good positions), he’s unlikely to generate the type of buy-in and enthusiasm that a DSA candidate would. Moreover, Khanna would be running as an individual, not as someone emerging from and building an organized movement — his campaign would not likely focus on building sustained power from below, nor would it likely polarize the 2028 primary around M4A and Israel aid. Also, and not inconsequentially, the poor electoral results for Tom Steyer and Saikat Chakrabarti this spring suggest that there’s perhaps not much of a popular appetite in the Democrats’ base to support multi-millionaire class traitors. Much better, then, to run a democratic socialist worker. If by Super Tuesday it’s clear that our campaign has captured the main left lane in the primary, Khanna should drop out and endorse us; conversely, if he’s managed to capture this lane, DSA could at that point transform its Healthcare Not Warfare campaign into an independent campaign to elect Ro Khanna focused on winning (and holding him accountable to) those two critical planks. An openness to consolidating an anti-corporate candidate by Super Tuesday is a necessary component of the strategy I’m proposing, because otherwise we risk splitting the primary votes (per DNC rules, you need at least 15% to get any delegates to convention). We should convince Shawn Fain or Sara Nelson to run for president instead. I agree it’d be great if either ran for president, but my impression is that there’s basically no chance that will happen in 2028, because both are firmly focused on their union leadership duties (and, in the case of Fain, beating back a federal witch-hunt). This plan could have DSA end up endorsing a non-socialist, non-DSAer for president. That’s against our principles. It’s a myth, and bad politics, that socialists can’t ever support candidates who aren’t members of their organization and/or who don’t call themselves socialists. Bernie, after all, was not a DSAer. And socialists abroad regularly make tactical decisions about if and when supporting a non-socialist candidate makes sense from the standpoint of promoting working-class interests, defending democracy, and building a socialist current in the process. If your “principles” prevent you and DSA from helping achieve the momentous stride forward of having a Democratic candidate in 2028 run on Medicare for All and ending aid to Israel, those “principles” are not very good. In fact, they actively undermine the causes they’re aiming to support. We shouldn’t confuse principles (working-class independence) with tactics (the best way to advance this in a given context). In my recent article in Catalyst on Milwaukee sewer socialism (I’ve uploaded the full text here), I have a section showing how similarly rigid rules about endorsements had to be eventually discarded in the old Socialist Party nationwide after WWI because they tended to lead socialists towards a sectarian abstention from broader anti-corporate electoral insurgencies beyond their party’s control. For what it’s worth, Lenin’s current under Tsarism frequently backed bourgeois candidates in the second round of elections and Lenin himself advocated that British Communists support Labour Party candidates; for his part, Kautsky in 1912 defended the German Social Democracy’s electoral pact with the Progressives in the runoffs. If our predecessors could be that tactically flexible in an era before the limits of their underlying strategic assumptions about intransigent class politics in capitalist democracies were made clear, then there’s no need to insist on being more tactically rigid today, after a century’s worth of accumulated experience. As long as you maintain your own political profile and organization while engaging in broader coalitional efforts, there’s zero inherent contradiction with the principle of political independence. More specifically: DSA and allied organizations should enthusiastically back Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed if AOC declines to run and he throws his hat in the presidential ring. (I have no idea whether he’s even considering this path, but there’ll surely be chatter about it if he wins his Senate race this November.) Though he doesn’t call himself a socialist, El-Sayed is a principled Berniecrat, a consistent fighter for Palestine, and would have a clear path to victory. Using the “s” word is far less important than whether a campaign fights for the interests of working people at home and abroad — and whether actively participating in it can grow the organized working class and the Left. And the same holds true if a less anti-corporate candidate were, under pressure, to adopt our two Healthcare Not Warfare planks. Why focus only on M4A and ending US aid to Israel? There are so many other important issues to fight for! Obviously there are many pivotal issues beyond healthcare and Israel, and our candidate — and especially our organizations involved in the campaign — should be prepared to speak on all of these. But one of the crucial lessons of the Zohran campaign is that you have to relentlessly stay on message if you want to cut through the noise. CNN and Fox News will want to talk about DSA’s views on Venezuela and abolishing the police; we need to polarize the debate on the widely and deeply felt issues that are most favorable for growing the Left, isolating our opponents, and winning urgently needed changes. One recent poll found 63% of Americans support M4A, even after respondents were told it would raise taxes and eliminate most private insurance. Another found that 74% of Democrats opposed “providing additional economic and military support to Israel.” And focusing on two demands sets the campaign up to be able to leverage its mandate to make clear demands upon other candidates (which we can’t do if we run with a laundry list of demands). Talking about a Plan B is a distraction from the more urgent work of building a groundswell of calls on AOC to run. It’s good for DSAers, fightback unionists, and progressive organizations to try to convince AOC to run. This proposal is meant as an addendum to pushes to get AOC to run and to line DSA up for that eventuality, not as a substitute for those efforts. But I’m worried that, like in 2024, we might eventually find ourselves with no time to find a viable alternative unless we start now. DSA, with its abundant deliberative processes, moves slowly. The approach you’re suggesting seems risky. If a DSA candidate runs but doesn’t receive a lot of votes, it’ll undercut our current national momentum. This is a reasonable worry. All big initiatives always carry risks, and the path I’m advocating is certainly not free of these. That said, if a Healthcare Not Warfare campaign doesn’t catch on like we envisioned, it’s a pretty simple pivot in March 2028 to explain that in the future we really need our standard-bearers like AOC, or our growing bench of national electeds, to step up in presidential primaries. Moreover, it’s worth noting that the risk of my Plan B proposal is on the whole significantly less than the risk entailed by an AOC run. We should all back her if she runs, since she’d fire up the base, provide huge openings for organizing, have a real shot at defeating a Republican (especially given MAGA’s unpopularity), be a great standard-bearer for our issues, particularly M4A and ending aid to Israel, and be less willing than mainstream candidates to capitulate to any anti-democratic machinations from Trump and co. But it’s also true that AOC could lose, which would be a devastating setback to the country and the Left. Or she could win and find herself unable to pass much, if any, of her (and our) program, a demoralizing prospect. So if we’re willing to take these risks with AOC (and we should), it follows that we should be able to take lower-level risks if she doesn’t throw her hat in the ring. What’s Your Plan B? The US Left is facing its biggest opening for growth and influence since the 1930s. Initiatives that would have been impossible a few months ago are now potentially feasible. A President AOC is now easier to imagine, but if she ultimately assesses that the risks aren’t worth the potential reward in 2028, we can’t be left flat-footed. So even if you’re not convinced by the specifics of my Plan B, I hope you can at least agree that it’d be a disaster for us not to have one — and not to start getting a Plan B into motion. Hopefully other organizers and political currents will put forward their responses and alternative ideas ASAP. The stakes are too high to just wait and see. More As always, please share this article widely. This newsletter depends on all you lovely people to get the word out. Thank you! I uploaded the full text of my Catalyst article on Milwaukee sewer socialism here (it’s updated and 3x as long as the version published earlier on this substack). If you haven’t yet, please make sure to subscribe to Catalyst here; I read every issue front to back, highly recommend. 🌹🎵 Ivan Lins (arranged by Arthur Verocai) — “General da Banda” 🌹🎵
Who's building and who's buying in Greater Baton Rouge
A look at the latest property transactions and issued permits in East Baton Rouge, Ascension and Livingston parishes. East Baton Rouge Dr. Jeremy Comeaux purchased a medical office building on… Already an INSIDER? Sign in. Already an INSIDER? Sign in
Debt Digest | Federal Debt is a Health Care Problem
Welcome David Ditch to the Debt Dispatch! We are pleased to announce a new regular contributor: David Ditch will be joining the Cato Institute as a Policy Analyst for Budget and Entitlement Policy later this week. David has more than a decade of experience in fiscal policy issues, with a particular focus on federal spending. He previously worked at the Senate Budget Committee, the Heritage Foundation, and the Economic Policy Innovation Center. David’s areas of expertise include appropriations, transportation, agriculture, federalism, grantmaking, and policy options for deficit reduction. Originally from the Rochester, N.Y. area, David has a BA in Economics and Political Science from the University of Rochester and a MA in Political Management from George Washington University. David currently lives in Arlington, VA. You may have enjoyed his earlier guest posts: CBO: New Highway Bill Has More Spending, Taxes, and Deficits Trump Administration’s Proposed Changes to Federal Grants Highlight Problems of Big Government Here are this week’s reading links and fiscal facts: The federal debt is largely a health care problem. In a new report, the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation find that “In 2026, federal subsidies for health insurance, net of related payments to the government, are projected to equal $2.4 trillion, or 7.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). In CBO and JCT’s projections, those subsidies grow by 65 percent, reaching $3.9 trillion, or 8.4 percent of GDP, in 2036. Subsidies for Medicare contribute most to that overall growth, increasing by $900 billion. Over the entire 2026–2036 period, federal subsidies for health insurance total $33.6 trillion.” Cato’s Michael Cannon emphasizes, “The long-term federal debt problem is a health care problem. […] Only two categories of federal outlays will grow faster than gross domestic product (GDP): health care subsidies and interest payments on the debt. The former is, therefore, the primary driver of the latter.” The bond market fears deficits, not the loss of tariff revenue. Responding to a New York Times essay claiming tariff revenue has grown too important for a future administration to unwind, Cato’s Kyle Handley argues: “Bond investors are not attached to customs duties as a line item revenue source. They care about the government’s overall fiscal position.” He continues, “tariff revenue is a side hustle. And the Trump administration has already promised to dole out the funds through schemes like tariff dividend rebates, farm subsidies, and pay-fors on tax cuts or other spending.” Furthermore, “tariff revenue is simply not large enough to transform the government’s fiscal trajectory.” Take net interest for example: it “reached $970 billion in fiscal year 2025, absorbing 18.5 percent of federal receipts. Customs duties accounted for only 3.7 percent of receipts—and that was before refunds (see Figure 2).” Handley concludes, “The real bond-market concern is a large and growing interest bill, persistent budget deficits, and a political system unwilling to bring spending and revenue into alignment.” Medicare’s spending growth is driven by more volume and utilization. A Congressional Research Service report finds that Medicare spending “grew at an average annual rate of 7.3%” from 1985 through 2025, and the trustees project health care expenditures will keep rising “faster than gross domestic product (GDP) in most future years.” Citing CBO, the report attributes Medicare’s projected 2026–2036 spending growth to “23% from higher enrollment, 31% from inflation, and 47% from the growth of inflation-adjusted spending per beneficiary. In other words**, the largest single driver of Medicare spending growth during the next decade is expected to be higher volume and intensity of health care services.”** Boccia and Thakur explain: “as the economy grows, Medicare spending tends to grow at least as fast—and often faster—because the program automatically pays the bill for more and more healthcare consumption by seniors, even as prices rise.” The Fed has little control over market interest rates. Cato’s Jai Kedia documents that the Fed has held its rate target steady since December, yet “nearly every rate Americans actually borrow at has climbed over the same stretch.” Kedia continues, “The Fed did nothing, and the cost of credit went up anyway. […] Markets spent these months repricing macroeconomic events such as sticky core inflation, a volatile energy market driven by the conflict in the Middle East, and global trade disrupted by tariffs, among others. None of that required a policy change to show up in borrowing costs because markets, not the FOMC, set prices.” He concludes, “Accurately priced borrowing rates will come from credible disinflation and disciplined budgets and from a Fed content to follow the economy rather than pretend it leads it.” Nearly half of US farm income comes from taxpayers. Former Reagan OMB director David Stockman notes that “in the most recently completed full year (FY 2025) farmer incomes in the US totaled $97.8 billion, but fully 42.7% or $41.8 billion of that amount came from taxpayers, not the marketplace. Nor is this some kind of one-year aberration. If we look at the most recent decade as a whole, total farm income posted at nearly $708 billion, but, as indicated, fully $322 billion or 45% of this came compliments of US taxpayers.” Cato’s Chris Edwards explains why so little of that income is market-earned: “Farmers are businesspeople, but the government shields them from just about every type of weather and market risk. Furthermore, just about every part of the agricultural industry is subsidized, including insurance, loans, marketing, research, export sales, and land improvements.” The Debt Dispatch is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
Galaxy S27 Ultra is already cooking, and I know what software Samsung is testing it with right now
Galaxy S27 Ultra news has been making headlines in the past couple of weeks, and the latest leak details one key component — the software.
The MLB trade deadline is here, plus Rodgers talks reconciliation
The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox. Good morning! It’s great to be back with you. Coming up: ⚾ MLB trade deadline latest ⚽ Soccer mess deepens 🗣️ Rodgers speaks out Just 12 hours separate the time this email landed in your inbox and MLB’s trade deadline at 6 p.m. ET today. It’s easy to wonder if there will be any intrigue at all, with the market’s biggest name already settling into his new Dodger home. Let’s catch up on yesterday’s deals before we get to today:...
Clinical Trials Aren’t the Only Way to Know if Flu Shots Work
With a bit of creativity, evidence can be drawn from data we already have in the form of natural experiments, write Christopher M. Worsham and Anupam B. Jena.
‘The Democratic Party is asleep at the wheel’: Democratic socialists are strategizing for their biggest moment yet
DSA has taken a strategic approach to grow its power within the Democratic Party, picking off two House incumbents already this year and potentially a third on Tuesday in Michigan. As the group’s summit in Chicago made clear, its members see this as only the beginning of a fight against both Republicans and Democrats alike.
Updated Vikings' 53-Man Roster Projection After First Four Practices
The first week of Vikings training camp is now in the books, and week 1 was eventful, with the QBs entering camp amid a dramatic battle, as well as a few front office moves that have already helped shake up the roster a bit. Notice that three of the players below have asterisks next to their names indicating that they are not currently on the roster, but that I feel strongly that the Vikings could sign them in the next couple of weeks. Kyler Murray is the odds-on favorite and has looked sharp getting the ball down the field in camp so far.
New Jersey and New York sue to block Trump admin. changes to health insurance marketplaces
The attorneys general argue that the changes would make it harder for Americans to get insurance and could raise prices for people who already have it.
Canucks Trade Pitch Sends 28-Goal Sniper to Sabres
The Vancouver Canucks have traded many players since they officially started a rebuild last season. This included moving players this summer, as they have already traded defenseman Marcus Pettersson and forward Nils Hoglander.While the Canucks have been busy, it would not be surprising if they continued to trade more players before next season is here. […] The post Canucks Trade Pitch Sends 28-Goal Sniper to Sabres appeared first on HEAVY.
Alabama Crimson Tide WR is Already on Transfer Watch
This Alabama Crimson Tide wide receiver could be facing a do or die season in 2026.
PlayStation Petition Loses Steam Even As Sony Doubles Down on Disc Decision
Sony Interactive Entertainment has not backed down from the decision to scrap discs, but the energy in the debate is already waning.
Arsenal 2026/27 third kit release date leaks
Arsenal’s third and final kit for 2026/27 will be released on Monday, new leaks have confirmed, with photos already appearing online.Photo via @IamCrisJ on TwitterFooty Headlines and Arsenal Shirt r...
The Vikings’ Starting Lineup as Training Camp Gets Rolling
The Vikings’ starting lineup isn’t set in stone. That being said, there are many details that are already known. Nobody […]
Rays Reacts Results: Winning the AL East
The trade deadline approaches tomorrow afternoon, and we’ve already seen one major domino fall in the last few hours, as the Dodgers have miraculously scooped up Tarik Skubal for just OF Zyhir Hope (ranked in the 25-50 range on MLB top prospect lists) and two throw-ins (injured RHP River Ryan and wonky RHP Brady Smith). […]
CB Jaylon Johnson Confirms What Chicago Bears Fans Already Knew
Steelers Training Camp Week One's Five Winners and One Loser
The Pittsburgh Steelers have wrapped up their first week of training camp. Pittsburgh has already seen several early developments. Here are the Steelers' early five winners and one loser from the first week of training camp.
“He already has four rings. It’s funny the people that …
“He already has four rings. It’s funny the people that …
Adam Schefter: 49ers, Deebo Samuel have been talking for weeks
Adam Schefter says the 49ers and Samuel had been talking for weeks. Pearsall's injury expedited what was already coming.
Tim Steller’s column: Grant Road businesses fold as construction adds to woes
For Star subscribers: The reconstruction of Grant Road is helping kill off Tucson businesses already weakened by street drug addiction and the sumer doldrums.
Flutter Entertainment (FLUT) Stock Still Looks Cheap On Its 65% Slump
Flutter Entertainment stock is down 65.1% over the past year. Yet the broader valuation checks still lean toward the shares looking cheap rather than fully priced. With sentiment starting to shift after recent research pointing to easing concerns around prediction markets, the gap between weak past returns and a supportive valuation read is back in focus for investors. Over the last 12 months, Flutter Entertainment has declined 65.1%, which means the market has already priced in a...
Healthcare costs have more than doubled for many farmers this year, on top of soaring expenses
When Congress allowed Affordable Care Act tax credits to lapse, healthcare premiums spiked for millions of Americans — especially self-employed farmers and ranchers. That added cost is multiplying the stress on their already stretched balance sheets.
Phillies news: Brandon Marsh, Andrew Painter, Tarik Skubal
C’mon trade deadline, happen already
Race Matters: When AI Learns Our Bias featuring Professor of Computer Science Ian Davidson
Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming part of how we work, learn and make decisions. But AI doesn't think independently — it learns from the data and information people provide. As a result, these systems can reproduce or even amplify patterns of bias that already exist in society.
Promising Patriots rookie sees night and day difference in abilities
Patriots rookie tight end Eli Raridon believes the NFL game is already starting to slow down for him.
Louis Carr outlines his fall vision for BET as focus on HBCU, storytelling take center stage
Seven months into his tenure as BET President, Carr has already revived ‘ComicView’ and had the highest-rated BET Awards since
UN, scientists warn that strong El Nino will add fuel to ‘a planet already on fire’
The United Nations warns that a strengthening El Nino is intensifying global weather extremes and is adding fuel to a planet that it says is already on fire.
Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls' Biggest Secrets Are Already Online
Make mine Marvel, and mute some keywords.
Layla Kiffin’s new business aims to bring a first-of-its-kind experience to Baton Rouge
Layla Kiffin is bringing a new heated fitness concept to Baton Rouge with the launch of Livin Studio, a workout and recovery studio near Tiger Stadium that is scheduled to open by the end of August. … Already an INSIDER? Sign in. Already an INSIDER? Sign in
Reddit is testing a new way to watch — and listen to — its viral posts
Reddit is developing a new video experience that lets users watch — or simply listen to — its most popular posts, taking inspiration from the viral TikTok videos that pair Reddit stories with gameplay or other footage. CEO Steve Huffman said the feature is already in the works and could begin testing later this year.
Tesla reportedly might sell its China business ahead of a SpaceX merger
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Does public health *need* MAHA?
Last week, our friend Dr. Craig Spencer sparked an ongoing volatile discussion with his Atlantic article “Public Health Needs MAHA.” Some have come out in strong dissent, others are cheering, and others are simply lamenting that we find ourselves in such a divided world to begin with. We will dare to dip our toes in these controversial waters, too. Does public health need MAHA? We think in some ways yes, and in other ways, no. MAHA leaders versus the everyday MAHA supporter The vitriol in this debate mostly comes from one collapsed distinction: the leadership of MAHA is not necessarily the same as the people who support it. Say “MAHA” and most people picture RFK Jr. Fair enough, as he coined the term and holds most of the power. And, yes, some MAHA followers treat Kennedy as something close to a saint. But talk to the grassroots, and it’s not a monolith. They’re Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. People who distrust vaccines and vaccine supporters. It’s a wide, eclectic coalition. The data backs this too: 4 in 10 Americans support the movement—that’s a lot of people! But according to polls, vaccines and medical choice (the issues most tied to Kennedy personally) are cited by only 4% as their reason for supporting the movement. For many, the motivations are much broader. Many MAHA supporters are signing up for the idea that “something needs to change” with health in this country. They’re asking good-faith questions about corporate influence on our health systems, health care costs, nutrition, chemicals, and clean air and water. These are all questions that plenty of public health professionals recognize as legitimate and also care about very deeply. Blurring the lines between the leadership and grassroots does real damage in two important ways: It hands the 4 in 10 exactly the narrative already fed—that the health ecosystem doesn’t listen, doesn’t care, and paints every critic with the same brush. It gives the actual bad actor more power. RFK Jr. has done irreparable damage and can’t be trusted. What the MAHA movement gets right A healthy population is something the public health field was literally built on, and many of these topics are things we have dedicated our lives to. Yet the MAHA movement has captivated nearly half the country in a way the public health establishment has failed to achieve. So that means MAHA is doing something right. Some of it may be timing (after a Covid-19 pandemic and deep frustration and mistrust with institutions). The movement also does three other things really well: 1. It gives a new, louder voice to system failures. While MAHA is not a monolith, one theme stays consistent across their stories: the system failed them. For some, it was the system that flooded their communities with opioids and then walked away. For others, it was the system that let their business collapse during Covid with no safety net in sight. For others still, it was the system that failed to help them manage a complex chronic illness, bouncing them from physician to physician without any real answers. And in many ways, our health ecosystems are failing Americans. Why are medical bills so incomprehensible? Why do some kids get a healthy school lunch and others don’t? Why do an epidemiologist and a MD/PhD student have to start newsletters in the middle of the biggest public health emergency in a century, just so people can get straight information? Because the systems failed. This deep-seated frustration driving many Americans to search for solutions elsewhere needs to be recognized. 2. MAHA has brilliant comms central to their efforts. MAHA figured out something most health institutions still have not: the information landscape changed. It’s participatory now, not top-down; influence runs through many nodes in a community, not one institution; and storytelling and telling audiences “what you really think” moves people more than data dumps do. MAHA goes where audiences are listening, using podcasts, social media, and memes in ways most health institutions would scoff at—but it works. 3. They are very good at organizing. A MAHA meeting feels like a rally: energy, speakers, music, and most importantly, an action for everyone. Someone’s writing the next policy brief, someone’s seeding a narrative, someone knows the next legislative deadline, someone’s sending the text messages for a campaign. None of this is new (ask the civil rights movement), but MAHA knows it works and has capitalized on it. What MAHA gets wrong This list could be much longer, and this newsletter has spent a lot of time covering it, but here are a few things: Poor use of scientific evidence. This is the fundamental problem with many MAHA policies: the hype outpaces the science, and experts are often villainized for pointing this out. MAHA leadership has traded real solutions for cheap wins. For example, instead of taking on the powerful food industry and passing real reforms, it has celebrated french fries made of beef tallow and taken out artificial dyes from still very sugary children’s cereal. These changes won’t move the needle on America’s diet. MAHA leadership has tried to dismantle vaccine access in the U.S. While many MAHA supporters emphasize other issues, the effort to change vaccine policy has become MAHA’s signature effort. This is not surprising given RFK Jr.’s extensive track record campaigning against vaccines. It has rallied behind the wrong leader. RFK Jr. has a decades-long track record of villifying doctors, scientists, and public health workers, well before he became HHS secretary. He is known for his decades-long work sowing distrust in vaccines as well as life-saving treatments like antiretroviral therapy for HIV. This is not a serious person who can move the needle on health in the U.S, and he has already done serious damage. Public health needs more than defense Defending the evidence is absolutely necessary so health in the U.S. doesn’t move further backward. The public health establishment is very good at defense. The problem is this defense often sounds like defending the status quo, which has failed many people. Public health needs to offer an alternative to RFK Jr.’s MAHA—one that is rooted in evidence, truly listens to and addresses people’s frustrations, and has innovative solutions and the courage to change the systems. How do we get there? Find common ground. Do you know what most people care most about? The abysmal cost of healthcare. Start there. Fight for the human loudly. Too often, communications and engagement center on science with a capital S, funding mechanisms, or the CDC/FDA/NIH. Not the person. So the public doesn’t see themselves in it. Instead, they see people fighting for the very powerful systems that they feel negatively impact their health and well-being. Let the public feel and hear that you see their frustrations, you get it, and you’re fighting for them within the system. Recognize when pro-science messages are alienating people. Facts absolutely matter, but angrily venting only alienates people further. Our friend Elisabeth Marnik recently wrote a New York Times article about her experience growing up unvaccinated and how listening and empathetic conversation are the only ways to reach people that really work (a position backed by communication science). Her comments section was full of hateful comments from pro-vaccine individuals attacking her for daring to suggest we approach vaccine-hesitant individuals with empathy. It is possible to both stand firm behind scientific evidence and empathize with people who don’t trust it. Lean into politics smartly. Often, public health has shied away from politics: Don’t touch it, lest you get burned. But this fails to recognize that the third rail is what fuels the train: who is elected determines our budgets, our priorities, and our authority. Being political means being very savvy in strategy on both sides of the aisle, knowing your audience, and recognizing that political capital is as scarce as financial resources and needs to be allocated accordingly. Bottom line So does public health need MAHA? That’s not really the right question. Public health has a responsibility not to dismiss 40% of the country who feel heard by this movement and are frustrated that the system has failed them. And it has a responsibility to stick to the evidence and recognize MAHA leadership for what it is: a danger to our nation’s health. Both can, and should, be done. Love, YLE and KP A big thanks to Craig Spencer, who had the courage to put his neck out there to start a much-needed discussion at such a critical moment—one that is determining the identity of an entire field. Kristen Panthagani, MD, PhD is completing an emergency medicine residency and research fellowship focusing on health literacy and communication. In her free time, she writes the newsletters You Can Know Things debunking health myths and rumors and The Public Health Roundup. Views expressed belong to KP, not her employer. Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) comprises a team of experts, ranging from physicians to immunologists to epidemiologists to nutritionists, working together with one goal: to “translate” ever-evolving public health science so that people are well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. The YLE suite of newsletters reaches over 475,000 people across more than 132 countries. This newsletter is free to everyone, thanks to the generous support of fellow YLE community members. To support the effort, subscribe or upgrade below: Subscribe
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The new "science golden age" looks suspiciously like a grift
This edition of PN is made possible by paid subscribers. Become one ⬇️ 🚀 Subscribe to PN 🚀 The Trump regime is trying to usher in a “Golden Age in Science” where scientific research is run like a Trump family business, artificial intelligence is all that matters, profit is everything, and expertise is for chumps. Or at least that’s the vision emerging from a new 123-page “Report to the President” from Michael Kratsios, the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In a normal administration, you could probably skip over learning about a science policy document — but this is no normal administration, and this is no normal science policy document. Instead, it’s Trump’s attempt to end the actual golden age of science that was kicked off in 1945 with the publication of '“The Endless Frontier” by Vannevar Bush. [ ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/harmeet-dhillon-portland) [ Harmeet Dhillon demonstrates danger of posting through it ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/harmeet-dhillon-portland) Liz Dye · Jul 29 [ Read full story ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/harmeet-dhillon-portland) Bush, at President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s request, laid out a vision of federal support for science that centered on funding universities to do basic research, saying that as long as those institutions were “vigorous and healthy and their scientists are free to pursue the truth wherever it may lead, there will be a flow of new scientific knowledge to those who can apply it to practical problems in Government, in industry, or elsewhere.” Kratsios’s report is supposed to be the successor to Bush’s, and even apes the format, but this isn’t really a document about science policy. It’s one about ending science research as we know it in favor of shoveling cash at big tech companies. While it might be temping to wave this away as an aspirational policy document, Trump has already begun to shift billions in research funds to AI projects and has taken a hatchet to science funding across the board. He’s teed up the shift Kratsios proposes here, and since neither Congress nor the Supreme Court seem inclined to stop him from doing whatever he wants with taxpayer money, it isn’t doomering or hyperbole to say we are staring down the barrel of a world where the only “science” the government intends to support is for-profit tech and defense advancements. Science for dummies Part of how you can tell this isn’t a document about science is that you are immediately faced with an absolute wall of business-speak of the worst sort. Did you know we must “tightly couple our science and technology enterprises to ensure that groundbreaking ideas invented in the United States are rapidly prototyped, tested, manufactured, and scaled domestically”? You do now! That tone isn’t surprising, because Kratsios has no background in science or research. He has a bachelor’s in political science and spent most of his career working for Peter Thiel at Thiel Capital. After a stint in the first Trump administration as Chief Technology Officer, where he also did not do any science, Kratsios was tasked in 2020 with overseeing the Pentagon’s research budget for a brief time, a position that, as the Wall Street Journal put it, “carries a great deal of power in terms of dictating investment allocations.” He spent the Biden years at Scale AI as “head of strategy,” which you will also note is neither a science nor a research job. But Scale AI has contracts with the Department of Defense and, as the Washington Post wrote in 2023, “has been aggressively pitching itself as the company that will help the US military in its existential battle with China.” And now you have the necessary background for our new golden age, which is going to be a golden age of taking money away from scientists and universities and giving it to companies like Scale AI. A note from Aaron: Working with brilliant contributors like Lisa takes resources. If you aren’t already a paid subscriber, please become one to support our work. 👇 Subscribe In a genuinely galling move, Katsios spends a lot of time slamming universities because of “administrative burdens on researchers” and the “well-documented inefficiencies” in academia, the message being that those damn universities waste the time of amazing researchers with paperwork. Except it’s the administration that is attempting to impose inefficient, unnecessary burdens on those researchers with a proposed Office of Management and Budget rule that would require senior political appointees to approve every science grant and ensure it aligns with Trump’s personal priorities. Researchers would also have to seek prior government approval to attend conferences or publicize their research. And political appointees could terminate any grant at any time if they feel like it. [ ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/omb-rule-science-funding) [ The murder of expertise ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/omb-rule-science-funding) Lisa Needham · Jun 11 [ Read full story ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/omb-rule-science-funding) But when it comes to AI, we’re going to “restore permissionless innovation.” The report proposes to give lucky ducky innovators a pile of cash up front for grants lasting five years or longer, saying “awards should be fully-funded in year one, with all resources earmarked upfront, to minimize administrative burdens and reduce pressure for researchers to generate intermediate results to secure continued funding.” Yeah, wouldn’t want to have to make the Very Special Tech Bros show results or get money parceled out year by year like the plebes at universities. The report also proposes that we should have “fast grants” with “simplified applications requiring just a few pages of writing” because that is definitely how science works, just writing a bit off the dome and getting some cash. [ ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-ai-action-plan-altman-llms) [ Tech elites are turning AI into ChatGPTrump ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-ai-action-plan-altman-llms) Paul Waldman · July 29, 2025 [ Read full story ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-ai-action-plan-altman-llms) Oh, and we should have prizes and challenges, where multiple teams compete. The proposed prizes include incentives like “advance procurement commitments,” which means the federal government agrees to buy whatever is being developed. There’s also “regulatory fast-tracking,” making sure all those great AI thingies don’t have to wait too long to be unleashed on a market. These aren’t incentives to do science. These are incentives to develop things with tax dollars that you can then sell to the government for more tax dollars. In the suggestion that might be the most unhinged, the most very opposite of how both government and research work, our new age will include “golden tickets.” That’s where an individual reviewer in an agency — yes, just one person — can “recommend unconventional proposals that may not pass consensus-driven review panels” because somehow this will “surface valuable ideas too divisive for committees and attract higher quality reviewers by empowering them to exercise independent scientific judgment.” Yes, that’s saying that a random person in an agency should be able to shovel money at some idea even if it can’t pass a review panel, and that the opportunity to do so will attract better employees because apparently all the best minds in science are chomping at the bit to be allowed to unilaterally fund AI research based on their personal vibes. But that isn’t at all how actual science works, and actual scientists aren’t unhappy about review panels. They work collaboratively, not siloed in some secret race to create the next AI chatbot. A 2020 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research examined whether peer review panels succeed in helping agencies predict which research ideas will best advance science. Peer review was better at finding “diamond in the rough” applicants than a single government program official. How about that. Trump always wants a taste It’s painfully clear that what Katsios is trying to do here is turn the whole of government science research and funding into the sort of “move fast and break things” paradigm that is the hallmark of big tech. That method works to line the pockets of tech executives, but it isn’t science. There’s a reason the government funds different kinds of research than private tech companies do. What Katsios either fails to understand or deliberately ignores is that the federal government is the main funder of basic research precisely because it can take a long time for it to bear fruit and is not intended to be profitable as such. “Basic” here does not mean rudimentary or simple, but rather research that is designed to advance scientific knowledge instead of achieving a specific outcome or product. Big tech companies don’t widely fund that sort of research, because it doesn’t make them money. Industry dollars account for only about 20 percent of basic research funding, while the government contributes around 60 percent. Big tech companies and startups do, however, rely on and benefit from that basic research. A 2019 study found that 35 percent of all patents obtained by venture-backed startups from 1976 to 2016 cited federally supported research. Basic research funded by the NIH contributed to every single drug the FDA approved from 2010 to 2016. [ ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-saudi-nuclear-deal) [ The Saudi nuclear farce and governance by whim and meme ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-saudi-nuclear-deal) Noah Berlatsky · Jul 27 [ Read full story ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-saudi-nuclear-deal) Unlike inventing the next ChatGPT, actual science is slow and iterative. Government funding of research that, on its face, would not appear to lead to any big new invention is actually what underpins those big new inventions. If the government hadn’t funded research into desert lizard venom, we wouldn’t know about semaglutide, and we wouldn’t have Ozempic. If research scientists hadn’t studied how bees optimize nectar foraging within a colony, we wouldn’t have the algorithm that assigns internet traffic across computer servers. The report assiduously ignores that a symbiotic, profitable relationship between the federal government, universities, and private companies already exists. Each federal research dollar generates about $1.50 to $3.00 in long-term economic benefits. The $36 billion the government awarded in NIH research funding in fiscal year 2025 generated $94 billion in new economic activity. Trump’s proposed new golden age is intended to strip those billions from universities, resulting in the dismantling of departments and the shuttering of labs. But Katsios has a plan for that: Universities should just become trade schools to churn out no-show STEM degrees! “Require universities and community colleges to embed practical technical training and externships into STEM curricula. Let hands-on experience and industry credentials count toward degrees.” It’s quite the feat to, on the one hand, strip schools of funding for scientific research while simultaneously demanding to control what is taught and, oh, also, colleges need to give degrees to employees at big tech companies just for being employees at big tech companies. The new golden age would also exacerbate the brain drain Trump’s policies have already caused. Nature found that in the first quarter of 2025, US scientists submitted 32 percent more job applications abroad than in 2024. A March 2025 poll by Nature of roughly 1,600 scientists found that over 1,200 said they were considering leaving the country. Europe is investing $565 million to make it a “magnet for researchers” and provide funding for scientists who relocate. The new golden age is also about embedding Trump’s xenophobia into the fabric of American science. The report complains of an “over-reliance on foreign students” that “creates a security challenge our institutions are ill-equipped to address” and that a “reliance on foreign talent sidelines American students.” This is, to put it mildly, nonsense. International students pay far higher tuition and often receive no financial aid. Their tuition dollars are what make it possible for American students to get financial aid. In the 2023-2024 school year alone, international students contributed $43.8 billion to the US economy and supported over 378,000 jobs. Those 1.1 million international students accounted for only six percent of the total number of students in higher education that year, but were such an economic engine that for every three international students, one job was created or supported. It’s impossible not to wonder whether part of Trump’s loathing for universities and their leading role in scientific research is that there is no way for him to corrupt the process and make money off it in the same way he can by giving millions and billions to Silicon Valley types who, in turn, give him millions in cash. There’s no way for his children to invest in universities that the government then gives no-bid contracts to, fattening the family’s bottom line, which is pretty much the Trump sons’ current venture capital practice. Trump and Katsios’s view of science is narrow, cramped, and wrong. We’re not in a crisis, we’re not a failed state. We’ve been a science superpower for decades, and the only thing that threatens that is Donald Trump. Tech bros are already living high off the hog in this administration. They don’t need any more of our tax dollars. Hopefully this new golden age never comes to pass. Thanks for reading Public Notice. This post is public so feel free to share it. Share We’ll be back with more tomorrow. If you appreciate today’s PN, please do your part to keep us free by signing up for a paid subscription. 🚀 Subscribe to PN 🚀 Thanks for reading, and for your support.
The US ‘golden age’ science strategy: what Europeans need to know
The US has unveiled what officials claim is the most radical overhaul of the public R&D system in a generation, which if implemented could have significant implications for transatlantic research collaboration. Science: A New Golden Age derides universities as “legacy institutions” and instead wants to prioritise funding on technological challenges, new research labs and funding that follows individual scientists, rather than being linked to their institutions. “Too much of our research enterprise has come to serve itself rather than the scientists within it,” writes Michael Kratsios, director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the only named author of the report. “Federal funding agencies should support a broader range of performers.” But some critics argue that the strategy is a smokescreen, using genuine problems in academia as an excuse to further weaken US universities, which US vice-president JD Vance has labelled “the enemy..”Even as it talks of a “golden age” for science, the White House has proposed halving the 2027 budget of the US National Science Foundation (NSF), and has put forward double-digit cuts for other funding bodies, such as the National Institutes for Health. It asked for similarly steep savings in 2026, but Congress stopped them going through. Science: A New Golden Age says success will be measured by the extent to which scientists are “free” to pursue the most “vital questions,,” painting academia as currently hidebound by bureaucracy, sluggishness and consensual conservatism. And yet the Trump administration is simultaneously planning new rules that will hand political appointees unprecedented powers to screen and cancel grants. The report has pretentions to be the successor to Science: The Endless Frontier, the seminal 1945 document in which presidential science advisor Vannevar Bush set out the case for post-war government funding of basic research, helping to spur the creation of funders such as the NSF. Even the title page font is the same. But it remains unclear if the latest report will leave anything like as lasting a legacy.Here, Science|Business explains some of the biggest proposed changes in Science: A New Golden Age, and how Europeans think it might change the landscape of their biggest science partner.Universities under fireA key target of the report are US universities, which it repeatedly suggests are outmoded as research institutions. It criticises the NSF for channelling resources “overwhelmingly to a single type of performer, the university-based, principal investigator-led research group..” Universities “extract” money from researchers’ grants to support “growing administrative bloat,” alongside legitimate uses. The Trump administration has been trying to cut the overhead costs in federal research grants that flow to universities. Instead, new institutions are being built. In May, the NSF announced it would spend $1.5 billion on two new so-called X-Labs, focused on scientific instrumentation and quantum systems. The idea is that they fill a niche in the landscape, tackling problems that are too big for a university lab, but too early stage for private start-up funding. Parallel with Europe?This shift to new research organisations parallels moves in Europe to set up new innovation agencies, such as Germany’s Sprind, the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency, and the EU’s European Innovation Council. The Dutch and French governments are looking to set up their own entities too. There’s now an emerging consensus, evident in a number of new strategies, that public R&D needs to be shaken up, Charles McIvor, an economist at the OECD, has written in response to Kratsios’s plans. “What stands out for me across these strategies [in the US, Germany, South Korea and Japan] is that governments are realising that the old ways of delivering STI [science, technology and innovation] programming no longer works,” he said in a LinkedIn post. Metascience wins?The document is, at least on the face of it, also a big win for some policy thinkers in the US who want far more experimentation with new forms of research grant and institution.It name-checks a litany of new public R&D ideas, from focused research organisations and advance market commitments to “golden tickets,” which allow grant reviewers the power to hand applicants money without requiring the consensus of other review panellists.Related articlesEuropean researchers sound the alarm that Trump rule changes will hit cooperationFocused research organisations: what are they, and how do you set them up? NIH turmoil risks reciprocal EU-US access to health research funding In addition, every federal research funding agency should set up a metascience unit, the strategy says, “with authority to run controlled experiments on review and funding mechanisms.” The UK has already set one up, the strategy points out. This mirrors recommendations to the European Commission. In 2024, a report led by former Portuguese science minister Manuel Heitor also advised the EU to set up an “experimental unit” to test out new methods of funding research. So far, however, Brussels hasn’t put forward any plans to do so. Bypass universitiesBut there’s a worry that the Trump administration is using the metascience movement to justify an overhaul of public R&D that punishes universities, which it sees as centres of political resistance. Last year, it threatened to cut Harvard University’s federal funding unless it hired and admitted a “critical mass” of new faculty and students to create “viewpoint diversity” across campus. It’s also attempted to strip academics of funding for working on politically forbidden areas, like LGBTIQ people’s health.The new strategy appears to be a “move to bypass the power of universities full stop and allow funders and political bureaucracies to handpick the projects and people who will execute them,” said Jean-Claude Burgelman, a former senior official in the Commission’s research directorate, on LinkedIn.The EU’s science counsellor in Washington, Florent Bernard, wrote that the plans risk diverting public research funding so that it “solely serves private interests.” “Who, if not independent universities, will do research that demonstrates the impact of tobacco on lung cancer or the role of human activities in our current climate crisis?” he wrote.Should we take it seriously?“I would view the overall document as a bad faith argument,” said Cole Donovan, director of science policy at the campaigning group Stand Up for Science, and a former OSTP official. “I don’t see the project itself as something that can be isolated from the broader attack on the system.” He thinks the argument that academia has become dysfunctional and in need of radical reform is being deployed as part of a “PR argument” to legitimate moves against US scientists. The strategy presents ideas like metascience units as new, whereas there were moves to set them up at the NSF during the previous administration of Joe Biden, Donovan said. The other caveat here is that the OSTP has limited power to carry out any of these recommendations. While Kratsios has issued a memo to research agencies telling them to implement the recommendations in the report, he doesn’t have direct budgetary control. “As a former OSTPer myself, this does not seem like a document that is realistic,” said Donovan.
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A column by Sascha Lobo Is AI making us dumb? So asked DER SPIEGEL on its cover a while ago. After a few weeks of recovery and a therapeutic intervention with the help of my AI, I feel able to respond. That’s a bit unfair, of course; the article itself is more nuanced than the loud cover, the image of a schoolkid with dull prompt questions, or the subtitle: “AI is conquering the schools, and educators fear a disaster.” The short answer to “Is AI making us dumb?” is: no. The long answer is more interesting, and even carries a preliminary glimmer of the spectacular. Unfortunately, it requires a detour into the sphere of artificial intelligence, into the mogul-field terrain of technology assessment, the attention economy, and the destructive virus of cultural pessimism. Along with narrowing the scope to AI’s effects on education and work rather than on intelligence. Because the honest version of the question would be: Does AI help us learn and work, or not? Generative AI, which set off the still-ongoing hype with ChatGPT, has only existed in relevant distribution since late 2022, early 2023. For a technology-driven transformation of people and society, that is extremely short. For that reason alone, research is still in its infancy. And technology assessment is not a fast discipline anyway. Prominent voices from Elizabeth Eisenstein to RAND to Tom Wheeler say we still cannot conclusively judge the consequences of the printing press. Its invention is a mere 580 years back, and some scholars would rather not circulate assessments that might have to be retracted in two or three hundred years. We’re Going Through Growing Pains A phenomenon that already caused upheaval in social media research makes serious assessment of AI’s consequences even harder: the “moving target” problem of LLM-ology, as the linguist Sean Trott called it in 2025. AI develops so quickly and so unpredictably that researchers often end up studying snapshots of the past. There are concepts, from morphological analysis to anticipatory governance, for keeping research, planning, and regulation halfway meaningful anyway. But even with those, universally valid statements are rare. DER SPIEGEL - The German View is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe We should therefore treat findings about the interplay between humans and AI as far more procedural and situational. Unfortunately, this challenge comes at the worst possible time. We are going through growing pains: AI’s everyday impact has grown very large very fast, and with it the longing for guidance. Annoyingly, the body of solid knowledge has not exploded along with it. Experts cannot be moved to broad consensus on even banal statements about AI. Sascha Lobo, born in 1975, is an author and strategy consultant focusing on the internet and digital technologies. Together with Jule Lobo, he explores the debates of the day in the podcast “Feel the News – Was Deutschland bewegt” (”What Moves Germany”). Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says software developers are dying out. Bill Gates considers coders one of only three professions that will survive the AI tsunami. Top tech economists find virtually irrefutable arguments both for and against an AI bubble. The same naturally applies to the structurally youth-hostile debate over whether AI is good or bad for young people. The gap between the demand for insight and the supply of solid knowledge creates an orientation vacuum. This vacuum of AI cluelessness is filled, as the attention economy described by Georg Franck in 1998 would have it, with half-knowledge (funnily enough, often AI-generated), marketing, and self-marketing. After all, infinite money is at stake, along with academia’s best current shot at global fame. But this iridescent froth of interpretation operates more by the algorithmic principles of the digital public sphere than by seriously earned insight. That is why dramatized, fear-feeding claims about AI are so promising. It tempts parts of academia into distorted drivel, and parts of the media then sensationalize the published drivel once more. Was the Research Aimed at a Desired Result? How badly this can influence academia and public perception is demonstrated by one of the most-discussed studies on AI’s effects: “Your Brain on ChatGPT.” The MIT study by Nataliya Kosmyna also gets plenty of space in the SPIEGEL cover story. What was measured and interpreted: lower brain activity in people who write with AI assistance, compared to people who only google or write without any tools. As is common with preprints, the study has not yet been peer-reviewed, and it contains substantial weaknesses that experts have sharply criticized. The first round had 54 participants in three groups, the second only 18, who reportedly also came from MIT’s own orbit. There was no preregistration (committing in advance to what you want to find out with which data). In their analysis, Stanković et al. even discovered an opposite effect that the study does not further explain. Some measurement data has not (yet) been published. And the EEG analysis method used is considered too imprecise to support such far-reaching conclusions. The biggest criticism, though, is the suspicion of an activism-driven study. In an interview with Time, lead author Kosmyna said she published the study immediately, rather than after full peer review, because she feared politicians might otherwise decide to put ChatGPT in kindergartens. She considers that absolutely harmful. It is legitimate to hold such a view. It just seems unscientific to approach a study with it, and then to design the setup so that the chance of a fitting desired result remains as high as possible. Ideologies Collide It is not easy to separate genuine AI insights from studies that trivialize and weaken well-founded AI criticism. The same goes for the opposing, AI-enthusiastic narratives, because the pro-AI side works against it with billions in resources. Ideologies collide, fed by egos, PR strategies, moral posturing, and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. Doomsday marketing makes the search even harder: AI companies can profit from warnings about the dangers of AI, whether through the notoriety of apocalypse narratives or because, in some target groups, danger translates into power. Some seemingly negative findings are therefore quite welcome in the AI industry. If you try to get at the findings presumably less influenced by interest groups, the picture in education seems relatively clear: AI can improve educational outcomes when the right AI is used the right way, namely pedagogically. Simply dumping an AI chatbot into a classroom, by contrast, accomplishes little. Huge surprise. But something else is also obvious: whether they are allowed to or not, kids use AI for school, which is why the controlled integration of AI tools into education is, in the medium term, entirely without alternative. In the world of work, the landscape of findings is more complex and requires more differentiation. A series of serious studies points to an AI effect that suits neither the alarmists, regulation fetishists, and AI opponents, nor the trillion-dollar corporations with their armada of paid scientists, PR professionals, and ecosystems: working with AI helps the inexperienced (at least for now) considerably more than it helps the pros, in certain fields of work, and provided they know how to use it correctly. Missing Domain Knowledge Among the experienced, the professionals, and the high flyers, by contrast, despite frequent time savings, partially negative effects and new problems are emerging. Take the jagged frontier problem: AI solves task A brilliantly and fails completely at task B, even though both look similar even to professionals. Or the verification-cost problem, in which AI’s greater productivity gets eaten up by the enormous effort of checking its output. Or the illusion of competence, because AI makes new domains seem easily penetrable, until you painfully discover that deep domain knowledge is missing. Taken as a whole, the effects of working with AI do lean positive. But the promise that AI works as a turbocharger for everyone and boosts practically everything simply refuses to materialize. The AI magic the world has been feeling since ChatGPT arrived in late 2022 has so far barely shown up in most companies’ numbers. The consulting firm McKinsey has coined a term for this, the “gen AI paradox,” and believes that work processes and corporate structures would have to be rebuilt quite fundamentally to realize AI’s benefits at scale. Reuters just reported that only 3.3 percent of Microsoft’s customers have subscribed to the AI package Copilot. That may be down to the product; in other areas we continue to see soaring successes and new AI triumphs. But after the first quarter of 2026, disillusionment is the word for all too many AI projects at traditional companies: because the promised revolution of AI agents has so far failed to arrive or been postponed, and because of the leveling effect that many of the studies cited here suggest. Against Inequality The societal effects, on the other hand, appear rather encouraging. Many previous technologies operated on the Matthew principle, named for the Gospel verse about giving to those who already have: they tended to reward the more competent and more privileged. AI, however, seems more often to have an equalizing effect once a threshold of access and education is crossed. Some anecdotal insights point in this direction, for example, how an unemployed man in Leipzig successfully defended himself in court in 2025 against fraud accusations from Germany’s federal employment agency — without a lawyer, armed only with ChatGPT. The AI made mistakes and cited invented court rulings, but in the end the man walked away unpunished. And a key capability of artificial intelligence is its capacity to learn: set up correctly and fed with data, it can keep getting better. It is a question of time, or more precisely of AI innovations and training data, until even free AI chatbots write better legal briefs than law graduates with perfect exam scores. Whether that will make anyone dumb is something the world’s press will surely inform us of in due time. Subscribe Leave a comment
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What England's local councils tell us about fragmenting politics
Even the most ardent advocate for local democracy would concede that council chambers are not always the most exciting places. Subscribe Whether it’s planning meetings, motions or resolutions, you’d be forgiven for switching off. Unless it’s lockdown and we’re talking about standing orders, of course. Remember Jackie Weaver, who infamously “had no authority here” at a chaotic parish council Zoom call in 2021? Yet, as a general rule since then, council meetings rarely make the headlines beyond local papers and news websites. Reform’s success After Reform’s stunning success at the local elections in May though, the leader of the party’s group on Kirklees Council suddenly found she’d gone viral online for admitting that she didn’t actually understand council procedures. “I don’t understand the constitution”, Councillor Sarah Wood, pictured above, told the council chamber. “I have not had sufficient time to read that as yet. I don’t understand what standing orders are, what they’re made up of, nor do I understand what an amendment is.” Share Channel 4 News Councillor Wood later defended her comments to the BBC, and said that “new councillors and not just us, are coming from jobs”. She claimed that the sharing of the clip mocking her online was an example of “Reform-bashing”. She added: “Yes, we need to know procedures. Yes we need to do the homework. And we have addressed that now and we have put that right.” So, with standing orders getting another moment in the spotlight, not to mention the fracturing and fragmentation from May’s results, we set out to find out how new councillors are doing across England in this new political landscape. New political landscape Where better to start then than Kirklees, in West Yorkshire. Reform is the largest party, the council is under no overall control and has chosen a new leader - Sarah Wood - after two failed attempts to elect one. It is difficult to secure interviews with new Reform councillors, but John Hardie, pictured below, told us it’s been a “whirlwind” since being elected in May. He represents the Dalton ward and told us the party’s lack of political experience hasn’t been a hindrance. “We’ve come with lots of experience, lots of business experience and life experience, and it’s been good, actually, too. And to mix with other councillors who have been in the political world, and we can learn from each other.” Indeed, more parties are now having a say than ever before. In Manchester, the Green Party followed up their victory in the parliamentary by-election in Gorton and Denton by gaining 17 seats on the city council. That makes them the official opposition to Labour, who have long dominated Manchester City Council. [ ](https://channel4news.substack.com/p/how-landmark-green-by-election-win) [ How landmark Green by-election win could change British politics ](https://channel4news.substack.com/p/how-landmark-green-by-election-win) Krishnan Guru-Murthy · Feb 27 [ Read full story ](https://channel4news.substack.com/p/how-landmark-green-by-election-win) Thirza Amina Asanga-Rae, pictured below, is one of those new councillors, representing Moss Side. We asked her how being the official opposition can make a difference. She said: “I think even the fact that we’ve made history in what we’ve done, it’s been a 50-year stronghold of Labour in Manchester, and now that we’ve broken that and chipped in that, there’s real hope that we can not only run the council in the future, but currently hold them to account. So, I think that’s powerful. It’s just going to help shape and build what I call the green wave.” The reality, though, is that several newly elected councillors across the country have already left their roles through resignations, suspensions or defections. ‘It’s a slog’ Asanga-Rae adds: “It’s a job, it’s a slog. Obviously, we’re going through hard times. Austerity is real. We’re talking about food, child poverty, furniture poverty. The list is endless, and I think people who come into a councillor role need to be willing to help, really roll the sleeves up and get involved and help, and I think a lot of the career politicians, who think it’s the ‘la-di-da’ position, get in and realise I’m not going to do this work and bounce.” Share Although Manchester still has a clear majority, many councils, including Kirklees, are now under no overall control. That is perhaps the strongest sign of the political fragmentation we are seeing. Burnley is another example of this. Reform is now the largest party, yet they’re not part of the power-sharing coalition on this council - the Liberal Democrats and a local group of independents. Zulkernehn Hayat, pictured below, is part of The Independent Group. He represents Queensgate ward and told us all councils can benefit from having more independent councillors. ‘This is where I was brought up’ He said: “This is my home. This is Burnley. This is where I was brought up. Why do I need to get approval from somebody in a head office down south somewhere, you know? “This is my biggest argument. If okay, my neighbour comes to me with an issue, I can then take that straight to the council, because I don’t need to get approval from anywhere else. And this is the benefit of being independent.” So, while voters will always inevitably want quick results, perhaps spare a thought for the newly-elected councillors who are still navigating local government - one standing order at a time. 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