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"The muted response to Mei’s death sharply contrasts with the Gelsinger tragedy decades ago." This story in @science.org is long, detailed, and very much worth your time.

One of the critical lessons for the future is we should not suppress images of the effects of the disease. Most of the public never saw, as docs and healthcare workers did, how bad it was. If there were more images we might be in a different place now. (Info environment matters!)

Which is the whole thing: it’s easy for RFK Jr (and sadly, Ryan Grim) to lie about this now because alternative realities with a virus that kills only a small percentage are hard to know or imagine.

I’ve said this before but: I got COVID and got over it like most people. No long COVID or lingering symptoms. But I got it after four vaccine doses and I was flattened- on my back for more than a week. If I had gotten it in 2020 I might be dead now. It’s impossible to say.

Fauci made some mistakes, but got the most impactful things correct. His real error, in the eyes of those who are too immature to do things that benefit others, was telling people what to do. But doing so saved lives- though it’s now easy to deny bc most people didn’t see the death up close.

Bagenstos on Reconstructing the Civil Rights State Samuel R. Bagenstos (University of Michigan Law School) has posted Reconstructing the Civil Rights State After Democratic Backsliding…...

Huge congrats! Looking forward to reading more.

it’s probably obvious, but: why should science and medicine care about Congressional subpoena power? Because fixing the science agencies requires accountability for all the Vought/Trump/Musk illegal acts, and to do that Congress must be able to compel testimony.

Here’s @americalabs.org covering a 2024 report on inherent contempt and subpoena power. Then it was Rep Luna, but strengthening Congress’ subpoena powers is good no matter who’s in charge and especially next year. firstbranchforecast.com/2024/07/08/f...

And I think we should expect the Roberts Court + Trump DOJ to do everything they can to kill other Congressional subpoenas too.

The remand meant no records before he left office. Functionally, it was a slow-walk that blocked subpoena enforcement. What happens when a future Congress subpoenas Trump? We should predict more Calvinball.

Moreover, the Roberts Court majority has shown us before that they will use available means to block Congressional subpoenas if they want to. In Mazars, the Court directed lower courts to apply a new four-factor balancing test, leaving unresolved whether Trump had to comply.

It will not be hard for the Trump admin to block subpoenas. Normally, Congress sends subpoena enforcement to DOJ. So the Trump DOJ can interfere.

This is good. Yet there is a problem. It is near certain that the Trump admin will work to block Congressional subpoenas if and when the majority changes—backed by the Roberts Court. This is part of our battle for the Constitution. So we should be planning for the use of inherent contempt.

😳 “Adult supervision” as the Trumpers see it:

‘The Heritage Fdn, a rightwing think tank whose work the OMB cites, praised the proposed changes in a recent column. Empowering political appointees establishes the “kind of adult supervision”…’ 😳 So-called “Adult supervision” by the Trump admin:

“The proposal [purports to] allow the OMB to override existing congressional statutes that govern agency spending,” Professa Murray said

“Take the GPS technology that powers the maps on phones, Miller said. It depends on century-old equations formulated by Albert Einstein. “I guarantee you Einstein wasn’t thinking about yr ability to find Starbucks when he wrote down the special and general theory of relativity.”

“His mother was the first female paramedic hired by the Chicago Fire Department. His father, a firefighter, did construction work on his days off. Miller liked building stuff in his dad’s workroom…” Many such cases.

“Miller owes his entire career to government investments in research and education. He grew up in Chicago and went to public schools. Neither of his parents went to college.” This is what public investment does, allow people to follow this path