‘Emilia Perez’ leads Oscar nominations with 13
As fresh fires raced across the Los Angeles region, an embattled movie industry lined up behind the Netflix narco-musical about transgender identity “Emilia Perez” in Oscar nominations Thursday.
Trump’s Agriculture Pick to Face Questioning from Lawmakers
Brooke Rollins, the president’s nominee to lead the Agriculture Department, will appear before the Senate agriculture committee on Thursday.
Trump’s record-breaking executive actions prompt lawsuits, outrage
President Donald Trump shattered the record for most executive orders signed on his first day in office.
Mikaela Shiffrin healed from puncture wound suffered in ski crash, will race next week in France
Mikaela Shiffrin has recovered from her ski crash two months ago and told The Associated Press she plans to return to racing next Thursday at a World Cup slalom in Courchevel, France.
How to cope when disasters strip away photos, heirlooms and other pieces of the past
They’re the possessions that tell your story: the photos of old friends and relatives. The ring your mom left you. The hand-knit Christmas stockings. Your grandfather’s secretary desk and the letters inside.
RFK Jr. would put our kids’ safety at risk
Nearly 20,000 American doctors are warning that the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Department of Health and Human Services secretary would be hazardous to our nation’s health.
Although Kennedy may try to deny previous controversial statements or claim he is simply calling for “more research,” Kennedy’s conspiracy-theorist record speaks for itself. He has actively embraced an agenda that would reverse decades of progress in dramatically reducing disease, thereby putting children at risk and damaging systems that protect our communities.
Having previously stated that no vaccine is safe and effective, Kennedy, as he seeks Senate confirmation, is now rebranding his opposition to vaccines as “pro-vaccine safety.” His seemingly harmless calls for more evidence on vaccine safety and effectiveness are disingenuous. That evidence is clear, robust and has been publicly available for decades. What is of grave concern is that Kennedy appears unwilling to learn from the evidence and research we already have.
Routine childhood immunization is one of public health’s greatest success stories, preventing millions of deaths. One recent study estimated that vaccines have saved 154 million lives globally since 1974. That is comparable to a rate of six lives per minute. The overwhelming majority are among children under five years old. Routine vaccinations have prevented 1 million deaths and 32 million hospitalizations among children born in the last three decades alone. That also translates into trillions of dollars in economic savings on hospitalizations, special education programs for children harmed by vaccine-preventable diseases, lost wages due to disability and lost parent wages.
Diseases like polio and measles once caused widespread death and permanent disabilities, including brain damage, paralysis, infertility, hearing loss and more. Before the polio vaccine became available in 1955, the disease killed thousands of American children every year. In 1955 alone, almost 14,000 American children were paralyzed by the disease. However, by 1961 more than half the U.S. population was fully vaccinated against polio, and by 1965, only 61 new cases of paralytic polio were diagnosed — a 99.6 percent decline in the span of a single decade.
Kennedy also willfully ignores the extensive testing required for vaccine licensure in the U.S., which has among the strictest evaluation protocols in the world. Because of the rigorous standards that go into vaccine approval, children are far more likely to die from an infectious disease if left unvaccinated than to experience serious side effects from vaccines.
Take, for example, the MMR vaccine. For every 10,000 unvaccinated people who get measles, 10 to 30 children will die, 2,000 people will be hospitalized and more than 1,500 children will experience serious illnesses, including the potential for long-term disability.
In contrast, for every 10,000 people who get the MMR vaccine to protect against measles, fewer than four will experience a fever-related seizure or allergic reaction. To put this risk in perspective, the lifetime risk of being struck by lightning is about four times greater than the risk of experiencing an allergic reaction to the MMR vaccine.
Kennedy is again disingenuous when he calls for greater vaccine data transparency and accountability, implying that data affirming vaccine safety is somehow hidden. On the contrary, Americans have had full access to extensive data and research on vaccine safety for decades through the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System . Anyone, including Kennedy, can access the website, which provides step-by-step instructions and helpful videos to make it easy to navigate.
Senators should not be fooled by Kennedy’s posturing and should demand straight answers from him, because our children’s health depends on it. The questions they should ask are clear. There should be no room for platitudes.
What specifically does Kennedy find lacking in the vaccine approval process? If he is not satisfied with data from thousands of patients — which vaccine approval requires — then what kind of evidence is he looking for? What would it take for him to abandon his conspiracy theories and accept that vaccines are safe and effective? If he rolls back vaccine mandates, how is he prepared to handle the outbreaks of infectious disease that would occur among unvaccinated children? These questions apply not only to vaccines, but also to Kennedy’s other discredited beliefs about the safety of raw milk, fluoride and a host of other issues.
Neither senators nor the American public can afford to be conned by Kennedy’s insincere pretense of “just asking questions.” The risks are too great. If he’s confirmed to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, it will be our children who pay the price.
Jill Rosenthal is the director of public health policy at the Center for American Progress. Steven H. Woolf, M.D., M.P.H., is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and professor of family medicine and population health at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug—Billy Dare and the case of the other boy adventurer
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Madison Keys upsets No. 2 Iga Swiatek to reach her first Australian Open final
Madison Keys saved a match point and came back to upset No. 2 Iga Swiatek 5-7, 6-1, 7-6 (10-8) in a high-intensity, high-quality Australian Open semifinal on Thursday night to reach a Grand Slam title match for the second time in her career.
How Trump might change the world in his 2nd term
President Trump’s first term and campaign promises may hint at his plans for America’s relationships with Ukraine, Russia, China, Mexico and the Middle East.
Heartland voters delivered for Trump — here are 10 ways he can deliver for them
November’s election saw a narrow but decisive victory for President Trump. Although the national popular vote was close, the geography of Trump voters appears as a sea of red across the heartland of America.
Here are 10 recommendations for Trump to help him meaningfully improve the economic prospects and daily lives of the heartland working-class families that put him in office.
- Keep domestic investments: Recent bipartisan legislation, including the Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, constitute the largest investments in heartland regions in U.S. history. These programs give the United States a competitive edge in emerging industries and many new good-paying jobs for hard-pressed residents of heartland communities.
- Don’t throw the economic baby out with the governmental bath water. Trump moved quickly after his election to create the new Department of Government Efficiency . The streamlining of federal bureaucracy should, however, preserve officials responsible for administering the unprecedented funding pouring out to heartland communities. Trump should also keep existing federal entities responsible for economic data collection and statistics on state and local economies, maintaining the ability to gauge the impact of priorities like tariff and immigration policy.
- Keep illegal immigrants out — and let more legal immigrants in. Americans support getting control of illegal immigration, but legal immigration remains a driver of America’s competitive edge over economic rivals like China. Studies show that immigrants have led to U.S. employment and population growth for 50 years; they are particularly important to heartland regions , where they open new main-street businesses and repopulate dying communities.
- Don’t hand the global car industry over to China. During the campaign, Trump criticized then-President Biden’s support of electric vehicles. He also placed great faith in the judgement of Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors. Musk, for one, realizes electric vehicles are the future of the industry. He may not want competitors to Tesla, but pulling the plug on incentives for these vehicles would hand the industry to China. China has monopolized the supply chain for them with its chokehold on component parts and batteries. Without help to compete fairly, Detroit, South Carolina and every other place that makes cars here will be doomed.
- Keep asking U.S. farmers to fix climate change. Trump and many of his appointees have maintained that global warming is a hoax. But farmers across America — among the president’s strongest supporters — know better. They deal with a warming climate every day: droughts and longer dry periods, catastrophic weather events, flooding that disrupts shipping to markets. Farmers aren’t ones to complain, but they are the world’s best problem-solvers. Under Biden administration policies, farmers are now creating ways to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane (50 percent of which comes from agriculture ). And they’re making money doing it!
- We don’t trade, we make things together. Trump has promised lots of tariffs . Tariffs make sense when a country is trying to gain advantage — as China is doing with electric vehicles. But with our allies the U.S. doesn’t “trade” as much as make things together (like cars with Canada). Much so-called U.S. trade is in intermediate goods, referring to a component of a finished product. This co-production system is especially important to the Manufacturing Belt of the Midwest . Materials and parts for the average “made in America” automobile cross an international border more than seven times. Tariffs on this “trade” would just hurt U.S. consumers and manufacturers alike.
- Make education after high school free for every American. Trump won voters without a postsecondary education, who are frustrated about not being able to make economic ends meet. The new administration can do one thing to guarantee them economic security: help them get an education past high school. Jobs that pay decently today require it. Studies have found that 99 percent of all decent-paying jobs created since the Great Recession require some form of post-high school technical or higher education. There are models out there, like the Tennessee Reconnect program and Michigan’s Kalamazoo Promise and No Worker Left Behind programs. These programs show if you eliminate the bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo in favor of the simple promise of paying for education that delivers a good-paying job, it works!
- Keep the blue wall happy. The so-called “Blue Wall” states — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — were decisive in November’s election. These are all Great Lakes States where polls show residents care most about protecting their mighty waters. Voters in the region support continued funding of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, the multibillion-dollar clean-up of Great Lakes waters that has led to revitalization of industrial communities .
- Hook up rural America. High-speed internet access allows small businesses to operate from anywhere, and young people and adults to learn remotely. But much of rural America is still unplugged from full participation in today’s economy. Nearly one-quarter of rural residents lack access to fixed, high-speed broadband service. The Trump administration can deliver a better life for “red America” by accelerating the nation’s push to get everyone connected.
- Even America needs allies. Just as investing in our own people and production at home will make America stronger, America is stronger with partnerships with countries that share our values of freedom and fair play. If the U.S. pushes allies away, it will effectively push them right into the lap of China, which is very eager to help them build ports and manufacture computer chips, or anything else!
In ads that splashed across the TV screens of heartland residents last fall, Trump promised to fix an economy that was “broken” by the Biden-Harris administration. If his goal, now in office, is to meaningfully deliver on that promise to heartland voters who put him back in the White House, he’ll follow this advice.
John Austin is a senior fellow with the Eisenhower Institute at Gettysburg College, a nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, and coordinator of the Heartlands Transformation Network .