Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has fired a top official with the National Institutes of Health who blew the whistle on internal clashes over vaccine research in the early months of the Trump administration.

On Wednesday, Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo received a letter from Kennedy — which CBS News reviewed — informing her that her role leading NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, had been terminated. He did not cite a cause beyond his constitutional authority to do so. Last month, in an exclusive interview with CBS News, Marrazzo said she had been silenced when she and her colleagues pushed back against NIH officials appointed by President Trump who questioned the importance of childhood flu vaccines and canceled long-running clinical trials.

Storefront in Berkeley (of course it is Berkeley).

Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20251002200413/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/arts/design/trump-eisenhower-king-charles-sword.html

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, today hailed the success of his bold air quality policies which have led to the capital’s air pollution levels falling to within the legal limit for the first time.  

In 2019, leading experts at Kings College London estimated that without additional action it would take 193 years for London to meet legal limits, but Sadiq has achieved this aim in just nine years – 184 years early.  

New air quality data from Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), published today, reveals that London met the Air Quality Standards regulations for the first time in 2024 (1). This is assessed through modelling and Defra’s approved air quality monitoring networks (2).

Sadiq has achieved this important milestone almost 200 years ahead of predictions, demonstrating the transformative impact of his bold policies to improve London’s air quality and protect Londoners’ health and the environment. Since he took office in 2016, following the implementation of his ambitious policies, such as ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone), levels of toxic NO2 at roadsides has nearly halved (3).

In London, around 4,000 premature deaths per year were previously attributed to toxic air (4) and a recent report from the Royal College of Physicians estimates that air pollution costs the UK more than £27 billion per year (5). Air pollution increases the risk of developing asthma, lung cancer, heart disease and stroke, and there is growing evidence that air pollution exposure increases the risk of developing dementia (6). Reaching this milestone of achieving legal limits, years ahead of where we would have been without action, shows that bold policy can produce important benefits.

Despite huge pressure from many different quarters, from politicians to vested interests, the Mayor pressed on with expanding the ULEZ to all of London and it's proven to be even more effective at cutting air pollution than previously predicted.    

If you’ve wandered onto social media in the last week, chances are good that an algorithm seemingly designed to reward snuff films served you a video of a gruesome killing. Among the clips is footage of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska being brutally, fatally stabbed on the Charlotte Light Rail by Decarlos Brown Jr., who faces both a first-degree murder charge and a federal charge for committing an act of death on a mass transit system.

Over the past few days, the right has sought to capitalize on Zarutska’s horrific murder, arguing that Democrat-controlled cities are hotbeds of violence and lawlessness and using it as further evidence of the wisdom of the Trump administration’s decision to dispatch National Guard troops to Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Chicago, and Boston in the name of law and order. In the case of the murder in Charlotte, the right has zeroed in on a particular target: public transit. “The problem is a lot of people, unlike the rich liberals, they can’t ride Uber, they don’t have a vehicle, they have to take public transportation, and public transportation has become an epidemic of violence and homelessness across the country,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told Fox News’s Sean Hannity. Those same liberals, Duffy said, “hate cars” and “want us all to ride public transportation.”

Duffy’s argument isn’t subtle: Use mass transit, and you’ll get yourself killed. There’s just one problem: He couldn’t be more wrong. According to one recent study, car travel is 10 times as deadly as travel by mass transit. Another report from the nonprofit National Safety Council finds that, for every 100 million miles traveled by passengers, rates of car deaths were 17 times greater than deaths from train travel, and 50 times greater than deaths from bus travel.

California could pay hundreds of millions of dollars to cover maintenance costs at Valero Energy Co.’s refinery in Benicia in an effort to stave off the plant’s closure, according to Bloomberg. 

The outlet reported that California legislators are in talks to spend between $80 million and $200 million in state funds on the facility, which was built in 1968 and is the sixth-largest refinery in California. 

Valero, which is headquartered in San Antonio, said in April that it was considering closing the plant, six months after state and local regulators handed it a record setting fine.

Old Grudge

There's an old wives' tale that Hitler doesn't care for cyclists.

The story (which is not new) is that, in the early days of National Socialism, Hitler was once roaring and ranting at the Jews at a public meeting in Munich.

Screamed the pudgy little horror: "WHO stabbed Germany in the back? THE JEWS! Who grew rich while the Fatherland starved? THE JEWS! Who engineered the Treaty of Versailles? THE JEWS! Who fomented rebellion in the German Navy? THE JEWS!"

Thunderous applause.

Then up got a mild, bespectacled little bloke who said, "Yes, that's right, the Jews and the cyclists!"

"Why the cyclists?" bawled the Fuehrer.

"Why the Jews?" retorted his questioner.

I now read that in France the Gestapo are attacking the cyclists as being carriers of anti-German propaganda. They have forbidden them to ride abreast in the streets of Paris as this...

Daily Mirror Aug 24, 1940

A misguided proposal to give state DOTs yet more “flexibility” in spending federal dollars is one more example of how the desire for bipartisanship on transportation too often leads to bad policy and outcomes. This proposal would almost certainly result in more money being transferred into wasteful highway spending, especially in states that are currently failing to produce good outcomes with the massive “flexibility” that they already have. Why give these low performers more in exchange for nothing in return?

Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) have put forth a bipartisan proposal intended to be included in the upcoming 2026 transportation law. The Senators’ proposal is very straightforward, increasing the amount of flexibility in highway formula programs from 50 percent up to 75 percent. What does that mean? States could transfer more money from one program to another, giving them yet more discretion and Congress even less control. All under the banner of “streamlining” the federal program and providing more accountability (while actually reducing accountability and oversight.)

In June, Rep. Eric Burlison, a Missouri Republican serving on the House Oversight Committee, appeared on BlazeTV’s Prime Time with Alex Stein, where he discussed his belief that giants once existed. Burlison told Stein he was scheduled to be at “NephCon 2025,” a conference focused on fringe topics including the biblical Nephilim —figures in Genesis that some interpret as the giant offspring of angels and human women.

He credited Timothy Alberino’s podcast with sending him “far down the rabbit hole,” eventually reaching claims that the Smithsonian Institution is hiding evidence, the bones of past giants that lived on the Earth. Burlison suggested that, as a member of the Oversight Committee, he could investigate the Smithsonian.

The Trump administration is seeking a $1 billion settlement from the University of California, Los Angeles, a White House official said Friday, after the Department of Justice accused the school of antisemitism and other civil rights violations.

UCLA is the first public university to be targeted by a widespread funding freeze over allegations of civil rights violations related to antisemitism and affirmative action.

President Donald Trump’s administration has frozen or paused federal funding over similar allegations against elite private colleges. In recent weeks, the administration has struck deals with Brown University for $50 million and Columbia University for $221 million but has explored larger settlements, such as in its ongoing battle with Harvard University.

The Trump administration had suspended $584 million in federal grants for UCLA, the university said this week. On July 29, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division issued a finding that UCLA violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “by acting with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students.”

Joel and Kathryn Friedman, both 71, are counting the days until they can sell their home and move into a 55-plus community.

The retired empty-nesters have been ready to downsize for years, but are reluctant to sell their five-bedroom, 5,000-square-foot Southern California house [mansion] in large part because of at least $700,000 in capital gains taxes they estimate they'd have to pay.

Since 1997, home sale profits over $500,000 (for married couples) and $250,000 (for single filers) have been subject to a capital gains tax of up to 20%. That threshold hasn't changed since 1997, meaning that — between inflation and soaring home prices pushing an ever higher number of houses above that limit — many more home sellers have to pay the tax now than when it was first implemented.

The Friedmans are among a growing number of older homeowners discouraged by the tax from selling their valuable properties. Housing economists say that dynamic has exacerbated a shortage of family-sized homes on the market, especially in expensive places like California.

The Friedmans' house is too big for them, and maintenance costs are only rising, Joel said. "There are a million reasons why we'd like to move, but we're not because the tax is just burdensome," he said.

But that could change — there's bipartisan support in Congress for raising the federal tax threshold to boost home sales in a stagnant market.