Afternoon all. I sent you a post this morning with suggestions on how you can stand up and fight for your democracy this week, something we all must do now with tremendous urgency.
While there is a lot happening right now, and in the spirit of “not chasing the new,” this afternoon’s post is just a recording of an interview I did this morning with Dr. Michael Mann, a renowned climate scientist and author. Our discussion is about the need for our leaders to open up a far more powerful “second front” against Trump, one that builds on our early success on economic issues and starts talking to the American people about the ongoing, ferocious attack Trump-Musk have launched against what I call the America of the Four Freedoms and the US government itself.
Our discussion today focuses on the decades long fight by the American right - and their foreign allies - on American science. A few weeks ago I came across an article written by Dr. Mann and Dr. Peter Hotez, “A Triple Threat to Humanity: Climate Change, Pandemics, Anti-Science,” where they discuss the existential threat we face from all three, including, interestingly, the "anti-science” movement. I asked Dr. Mann to join us in the early days of Trump 2.0 before we understood how violent the Trump-Musk attack would be on the America’s scientific and academic communities. As I discuss in my “second front” essay from a few days ago, we need to act with far greater urgency in challenging Trump-Musk given that they are breaking things now - lots of things - that will be very hard to repair. Dr. Mann does a very good job explaining what it is they are breaking and why we must act with so much urgency now.
Here’s a bit more on Dr. Mann. And if you don’t want to watch or listen to the interview you can read the transcript by clicking on the button to the upper right.
I also recommend this new article by Greg Sargent in the New Republic about what the vaporizing of USAID is doing to the public health of all the people in the world including us here in the US. In related and worrisome breaking news, the top official for public affairs at HHS has resigned just two weeks into working with Robert Kennedy, an anti-science extremist:
The top spokesperson at the Health and Human Services Department has abruptly quit after clashing with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his close aides over their management of the agency amid a growing measles outbreak, two people familiar with the matter told POLITICO.
Thomas Corry announced on Monday that he had resigned “effective immediately,” just two weeks after joining the department as its assistant secretary for public affairs.
“I want to announce to my friends and colleagues that last Friday I announced my resignation effective immediately,” he wrote in a post to his LinkedIn page. “To my colleagues at HHS, I wish you the best and great success.”
The sudden departure was prompted by growing disagreement with Kennedy and his principal deputy chief of staff, Stefanie Spear, over their management of the health department, said the two people, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Corry had also grown uneasy with Kennedy’s muted response to the intensifying outbreak of measles in Texas, the people said. The outbreak has infected at least 146 people and resulted in the nation’s first death from the disease in a decade.
A reminder we have a new “Events” page on the main Hopium to learn about and register for our events and my public appearances. Hopium paid subscribers can a link to register for our Wednesday night get together there.
Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon
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