Science & Health

President Trump is positioning the upcoming Artemis II moon mission as a potential centerpiece of his second-term legacy, according to a New York Times report by Peter Baker. The mission, scheduled to launch this week, will send four astronauts farther from Earth than any humans have traveled since the Apollo program ended more than 50 years ago.

Trump's enthusiasm for space exploration marks a dramatic reversal from his 2015 campaign stance. When asked about space during a New Hampshire campaign stop, Trump dismissed the subject, saying: "Right now, we have bigger problems — you understand that? We've got to fix our potholes." By the time he entered office, however, he had embraced space exploration as integral to American greatness, and no president since Kennedy and Johnson has pushed NASA as aggressively.

Trump's ambitions extend well beyond Artemis II. Shortly after Jared Isaacman became NASA administrator in January, Trump called to ask about Mars missions and nuclear rockets, inquiring: "Are we doing something in the 2028 window for Mars? What do you think about the nuclear rocket?" Isaacman indicated that Trump envisions sustained lunar presence and infrastructure rather than brief visits. Trump emphasized: "We better be doing more than getting rocks this time."

Trump's public attention to the Artemis II launch has been notably limited. Though the four astronauts were seated in the gallery during his February State of the Union address, Trump did not acknowledge them or mention the mission. He has said little about it in recent days despite the launch's imminence.

Trump's space agenda faces fiscal constraints. The Trump administration proposed cutting NASA funding by 24 percent last year, a reduction that would have terminated more than 40 missions. Though Congress protected the Artemis program through budget legislation, nearly 4,000 NASA employees are departing through federal workforce reductions.

Questions remain about Trump's sustained commitment to the long-term program. Retired astronaut Cady Coleman expressed concerns about losing experienced personnel, while Apollo 17 moon walker Harrison H. Schmitt stressed the importance of presidential leadership. Schmitt noted: "You have to have the White House and the president acting as the spokesman for it. There's just no question about that."

Last summer, Lorena Alvarado Hill received a series of unexpected medical bills.

A teacher’s aide in Melbourne, Florida, Hill is a single mom who works shifts at J.Crew on the weekends to send her daughter to college. Hill and her mother, who lives with her, had been enrolled in an insurance plan through HealthFirst.

Hill paid nothing toward the premiums for the government-subsidized plan, which previously had covered her scans and other appointments.

Then the bills came.

Hill was on the hook for a $2,966.93 MRI, as well as more than half a dozen doctor visits costing about $200 or $300 each. Without that kind of money on hand, Hill said, she put a few of the bills on payment plans and tried to figure out what had gone wrong.

She discovered, to her surprise, that her insurance had been canceled for “non-payment of premiums.”

The Medical Service

A health insurance plan purchased through the Affordable Care Act federal exchange, healthcare.gov.

The Bill

A monthly premium bill for 1 cent, which in the following months increased incrementally to 5 cents.

The Billing Problem: Small Bill, Big Consequences

Premium subsidies for ACA plans are automatically recalculated every time coverage is changed because of a life event, such as marriage, a change of job, or a child turning 26. In June, Hill removed her mother from the family’s group plan because she turned 65 and became eligible for Medicare and Medicaid.

The change triggered a recalculation of Hill’s monthly premium contribution, increasing it from $0 to 1 cent. She said she thought the amount was so small that she couldn’t pay it with her credit card.

Hill acknowledged she had received some bills that noted, “You may lose your health insurance coverage because you did not pay your monthly health insurance premium.”

But she said that her doctors collected the usual copayments during subsequent visits and that her insurance broker told her not to worry, reassuring her that the plan was “active.” Hill figured the 1-cent monthly premium was probably a rounding error that couldn’t result in termination, she said.

On Nov. 22, she got a letter marked “Important: Your health insurance coverage is ending.” It listed the last day of coverage as July 31, nearly four months before.

“I panicked,” Hill said. “I didn’t sleep that night.”

She made an appointment the next day with her broker, who called HealthFirst for clarification. The news was even worse: Not only had her insurance been canceled, but the 5-cent bill could be sent to a collection agency.

Hill takes out loans to pay her daughter’s college expenses. “I couldn’t have my credit ruined,” she said.

Others have lost their coverage over owing small amounts, said Sabrina Corlette, co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University. “This woman’s situation is not so unusual with the enhanced subsidies,” she said.

The American Rescue Plan, passed in 2021, increased the amount of government assistance available to ACA plan holders. Those enhanced subsidies, which Congress let expire at the end of last year, meant enrollees with lower incomes had to pay little or nothing toward their premiums.

The Biden administration found that, in 2023, about 81,000 subsidized ACA insurance policies were terminated because the enrollee owed $5 or less. Nearly 103,000 more were canceled for owing less than $10.

To prevent that kind of coverage loss, most likely hitting people with little income, Biden administration health officials gave insurers the flexibility to allow ACA enrollees to retain coverage if they owed less than $10, or less than 95% of premium costs.

Insurers were required to keep insurance active for a 90-day “grace period” to give enrollees time to respond. That’s why Hill’s doctors initially took her copayments and sent no bill, as if nothing had changed.

That Biden administration “flexibility” rule took effect Jan. 15, 2025, though not every insurer opted to offer leniency to those owing small amounts.

The Trump administration removed the rule on Aug. 25, eliminating the protection entirely in the name of combating fraud and abuse.

The Resolution

Alarmed by the cancellation, the thousands of dollars in bills, and the threat of collections over 5 cents, Hill researched insurance law and fought back.

She filed a complaint in December with HealthFirst and the Florida Department of Financial Services asking for a write-off of her 5-cent balance and retroactive restoration of her policy, citing state and federal laws that seemed to apply to her situation.

In particular, she wrote, “creditors are not required to collect, and consumers are not required to pay, credit-card balances of $1.00 or less,” adding that “all major insurers and payment processors in Florida follow a 1-cent write-off policy.”

She noted that HealthFirst’s policy was to respond to complaints in 30 days.

Thirty days came and went, but Hill said she heard nothing in response — and new bills from her canceled policy kept coming.

Despite her frustration, Hill said, all her doctors were contracted with HealthFirst, so she reenrolled for 2026.

Lance Skelly, a spokesperson for HealthFirst, initially said the case “is still in the appeals/grievance process.” In a follow-up email, he said HealthFirst had followed the law in canceling Hill’s policy.

“Stepping back from what’s legal, this is just ridiculous,” Corlette said.

Weeks after a reporter’s query to the insurer, Hill said she looked at her billing statements for all the medical services she received in 2025 and was pleasantly surprised that the balances owed had been adjusted to $0.

But she said she would also like HealthFirst to cover what she had paid and still owed toward the bills she’d put on payment plans.

The Takeaway

Even small bills can have major consequences.

With the automation of more health billing decisions, irrational results have become increasingly common.

“One cent?!” Hill said. “No human would do this!”

It can be tempting to dismiss the notice of a tiny debt, but it’s important to take it seriously. Contact the insurer and get a human involved.

And while insurance policies have grace periods allowing coverage to remain in place if you miss a payment, some are not very long. For subsidized ACA marketplace plans, the period is 90 days, but others last just 30 or 45.

Missing one payment can mean losing coverage. So it’s important to keep a close eye on premiums to make sure they’re paid.

Bill of the Month is a crowdsourced investigation by KFF Health News and The Washington Post’s Well+Being that dissects and explains medical bills. Since 2018, this series has helped many patients and readers get their medical bills reduced, and it has been cited in statehouses, at the U.S. Capitol, and at the White House. Do you have a confusing or outrageous medical bill you want to share? Tell us about it!

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

President Donald Trump’s first surgeon general denounced his latest pick for surgeon general, MAHA influencer Casey Means, on the grounds that she “doesn’t meet” the basic requirements for the job — an assessment seemingly shared by every living previous surgeon general.

“The role of surgeon general has centuries of precedent and requirements, and she doesn’t meet them,” Trump’s first surgeon general Jerome Adams told The Washington Post in an article published Sunday. Describing his objections as “operational, not personal,” Adams pointed out that if confirmed Means would not even be a member of the physicians corps but rather would be appointed through a provision that applies to health service workers. That alone would be unprecedented for a surgeon general, and perhaps explains why no previous surgeon general has come to Means’ defense.

“The irony would be the nation’s doctor wouldn’t even be in the corps as a doctor,” Adams told the Post.

For these and other reasons, Means’ appointment has not moved forward despite the social media influencer having been nominated almost 11 months ago.

“She doesn’t have the experience, she doesn’t have the background, she doesn’t have the credibility, she has no public health background,” Richard Carmona, who served as surgeon general under President George W. Bush, told The Washington Post.

Ironically Trump’s original pick to be surgeon general in his second term, Janette Nesheiwat, was pressured into withdrawing her nomination because some questioned whether she had embellished her credentials. Yet Nesheiwat also supported vaccines, leading to pressure against her from supporters of Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. which ultimately caused her to withdraw her nomination.

“I thought [Nesheiwat] was sufficiently qualified for the role,” Adams told The Post. In response to Adams’ criticisms, Means’ brother and White House official Calley Means denounced Adams as “a lightweight” lacking in intelligence, then adding with a misspelling that Adams’ supposed lack of intelligence is “obvious to litterally [sic] everyone.” Adams replied to the Post by saying, “We can and should have vigorous debates about how to improve America’s health. But lowering the discourse to crass ad hominem attacks comes across as childish and defensive.”

Although Means is being embraced by the Christian right for her opposition to established medicine, she is not a traditional Christian fundamentalist. As Salon’s Amanda Marcotte wrote in May, “Trump's new pick for the nation's top doctor, though she does not have a medical license, favors the occult-speak popular in the 'wellness' influencer world where she makes her money. As Kiera Butler and Anna Merlan at Mother Jones documented, Means veers 'in a more new age direction' in her 'medical' writing." Yet although Means is not explicitly affiliated with the Christian right, they embrace her because of her anti-feminist politics.

"Along with her shrines-and-moons talk, Means also wrote that she had shed 'my identity as a feminist,' giving up on wanting 'equality in a relationship' to instead embrace 'a completely different and greater power: the divine feminine," Marcotte wrote. "It's woo-woo, but ultimately no different than the message promoted by conservative Christians: that a woman's role is as a man's helpmeet, not his equal."

With such passionate backing, Means’ confirmation has been particularly contentious, prompting a sharp exchange of words last month between Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) about the larger role of liberal policies in American health care.

"No, I support a national healthcare program which would cut the —" Sanders said shouting over Mullin as Mullin attacked Sanders for supporting President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

"I'm sorry, it's my time," Mullin told Sanders.

"But you're attacking me!" Sanders replied

"Nah, I'm pointing' out facts!" Mullin retorted. "You can say what you want I'm just pointing' out facts."

Sanders shot back, "No. You're pointing out lies.” Later, when Mullin apologized for having “ranted too long” and Sanders said “Yes you did,” Mullin replied “I'm sorry, I didn't ask your opinion on that. If I cared about your opinion I would ask you. But I don't care about your opinion. You're part of the system. You're part of the problem.”

If you think people with opposite political ideologies are wired differently than you, a recent study in the scientific journal Politics and the Life Sciences reveals you may be correct.

In a study titled “Differential brain activations between Democrats and Republicans when considering food purchases,” authors Amanda S. Bruce, John M. Crespi, Dermot J Hayes, Angelos Lagoudakis, Jayson L. Lusk, Darren M. Schreiber and Qianrong Wu studied 65 politically engaged adults in the Kansas City area. The University of Kansas Medical Center and the University of Exeter professionals analyzed the 40 Democrats and 25 Republicans with an fMRI scanner as they had to spend $50 on groceries like varieties of milk and eggs differentiated by price, production method or both. As the patients pondered their choices, the fMRI measured concentrations of blood flow to different brain regions, thereby determining which ones were activated as people made their selections.

The finding was astonishing: When they broke down their food selection data using statistical models that predicted participants’ party affiliation, they found that their models succeeded between 76 percent and 94 percent of the time, far more than usual methods for prediction. Even though Democrats and Republicans did not differ widely in the actual groceries they chose to purchase, the underlying brain activity that went into the decision-making process diverged considerably between the two groups.

“While the food purchase decisions were not significantly different, we found that brain activation during decision-making differs according to the participant’s party affiliation,” the authors wrote. “Models of partisanship based on left insula, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, precuneus, superior frontal gyrus, or premotor/supplementary motor area activations achieve better than expected accuracy.”

Covering the story for PsyPost, journalist Karina Petrova explained that the data also managed to surprise the scientists.

“The researchers pointed out a few unexpected absences in the brain data,” Petrova wrote. “They did not see any differences in the amygdala, an emotion-processing center of the brain that has featured prominently in older studies of political ideology. The team suggested this is likely because choosing eggs or milk provides cognitive information but does not trigger the intense emotional reactions seen in experiments involving political faces or physical threats.”

This is not the first study to suggest deep psychological underpinning behind individuals’ political choices. In a 2021 paper in the scientific journal Political Psychology, researchers from Cal Poly Pomona and Eureka College conducted two studies to ascertain any links between a person’s political ideology and their openness to non-expert opinions on science. Their goal was to assess how people feel not just toward scientists but also “nonexpert” voices. To do this, surveyed individuals were shown a spectrum of opinions ranging from credible to non-credible and asked to either rate one higher than the other or deem “both sides” equally believable. They found that conservatives were more likely to either equate expert and non-expert opinions and to hold less favorable views of non-experts than experts.

“From my understanding traditional conservatism is all about individualism, so more weight is given to an individual’s experience with any given phenomenon,” Dr. Alexander Swan, assistant professor of psychology at Eureka College and a co-author of the paper, told this journalist when he interviewed him by email for Salon Magazine at the time. “This experience is fueled by our innate sense of intuition — what feels right to me? What makes sense?” While liberals also sometimes succumbed to this mindset, Swan argued that modern conservatism often requires adherents to reject ideologically inconvenient science; climate change denial is rampant, for example, because acknowledging that it is man-made “would impact the capitalistic pursuit.”

Dr. Randy Stein, assistant professor of marketing at Cal Poly Pomona and another co-author of the paper, had a similar observation to this author.

“Keep in mind, political ideology is something you can pick,” Stein told this journalist for Salon. “Trumpist/populist conservatism is pretty open as far as pushing ‘don’t believe what the media tells you’ and ‘don’t believe experts’ type thinking, so it’s going to be more attractive to those who think that way.”

By contrast, earlier this month liberal commentator Amanda Marcotte speculated to The New Republic’s Greg Sargent on his “Daily Blast” podcast that Trump supporters stick by him despite his numerous flaws and failures out of a “sunk cost fallacy” mindset.

"I think at the end of the day, the most important psychology that keeps these people on board is just that admitting that Trump is bad or wrong or a failure is admitting that all those people who, for a decade, have been telling you that you made a mistake were right,” Marcotte told Sargent. “And what's weird is the longer this drags on, the harder it is for them to let go without some kind of offramp. And I will say, if there ever was an offramp, I do kind of think the Iran war might be it — because again, they don't want another [George] Bush."

In January, the Trump administration announced that it had completed its dismantling of yet another Biden-era climate program. This time, the target was the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, which Democrats had injected with almost $400 billion to support ambitious new clean energy projects.

The Biden administration pursued climate policy primarily by having Congress pass massive subsidies for solar power, wind energy, and electric vehicles. But much of the infrastructure needed to push the U.S. further away from fossil fuel dependence — like new nuclear power plants, high-voltage transmission lines, and battery factories — needed more than the tax credits at the core of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act to get off the ground. The Loan Programs Office was meant to fill that gap by making prudent loans to ambitious projects that the private sector saw as too risky. With its $400 billion windfall, the once-obscure office became the largest energy lender in the world.

That ambition apparently put the office in the crosshairs of Trump’s Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright. He said the Biden administration “rushed [loans] out the door in the final months after Election Day,” and said he had rooted out projects that “do not serve the best interest of the American people.” Wright claimed to have scrubbed or “revised” around 80 percent of the Biden administration’s $100 billion loan portfolio, and he teased plans to advance new loans that would support President Donald Trump’s anti-renewable-energy agenda. He even rechristened the office as the “Energy Dominance Financing” program — a reference to Trump’s catchphrase for his fossil-fuel-friendly energy policy.

The truth, however, bears little resemblance to Wright’s combative rhetoric. Former federal officials and sources who have worked with the Loan Programs Office say that the program has survived the Trump-era purge in something close to its Biden-era form — and that it is still supporting the buildout of clean energy. Wright has vastly overstated his revisions and left untouched projects that will support emissions-free energy at the country’s utilities, including major transmission upgrades and nuclear power plants.

(The anonymous sources quoted below requested anonymity to avoid retaliation or because they have ongoing work with the federal government; the Department of Energy declined to answer questions or make Wright and other program leaders available for interviews.)

Republicans finally pushing back against 'problematic' signature Trump issue

Republicans finally pushing back against 'problematic' signature Trump issue

The quiet about-face by the Trump administration may signal a recognition that carbon-free energy can play a major role in managing the electricity price hikes that have angered voters in recent years.

“It sounds like the Trump administration seems to be responding to the energy affordability politics in a way that is, if not constructive, at least acknowledges that steel needs to get in the ground,” said Advait Arun, a policy analyst at the Center for Public Enterprise, a nonprofit that supports government-led economic development. “There are ways to reframe all these projects for their agenda.”

Here’s how the Loan Programs Office typically works: A utility or startup approaches the Department of Energy proposing to build a new power plant, transmission line, or battery factory. Once the applicant is approved, it borrows money from the U.S. Treasury at a lower rate than it could get from private banks, and the Department of Energy guarantees the loan. If the project falls through, the Department pays back the Treasury with the money appropriated by Congress. If the project succeeds, the government grows its pool of funding for future loans.

This program was first established during George W. Bush’s presidency in 2005, to help spur clean energy development. But under Bush’s successor, President Barack Obama, the Loan Programs Office became a magnet for controversy. That’s because the authority lent around $500 million to the solar cell manufacturer Solyndra, which later collapsed, leading the government to lose almost its entire investment. Republicans seized on the episode as evidence of the program’s failure — despite the fact that the loan authority also financed success stories such as Tesla, and its overall loss rate of 3 percent is much lower than that of many private sector lenders. The controversy was largely a distant memory by 2022, when Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act gave the office almost $400 billion — around 10 times its initial mandate — in guarantee authority to invest in battery startups, new renewables, and grid upgrades to support a clean energy transition.

But the office was slow to deploy its new authority, and former officials later said it suffered from an excess of post-Solyndra caution and bureaucracy. This led to long negotiations and risk analysis around every individual loan. A report from three former Energy Department staffers later found that the “executive branch machinery … defaulted to caution, process, and reactive strategies.” It took more than a year for the office to develop a fast-track process for major utility loans, and many deals weren’t completed until after Trump’s 2024 win. The projects that Wright claimed were “rushed out the door” had in fact suffered from too much due diligence, in the eyes of many observers, rather than too little.

When Secretary Wright arrived in D.C., he jammed up the program even more. The Loan Programs Office had three different leaders in the first six months of the Trump administration, lost more than half its staff to Elon Musk’s workforce reduction efforts, and halted almost all communication with borrowers.

“Moving any application through any milestone would require political appointee approval as part of a new consolidation of decision rights, and approvals were not granted,” said Jen Downing, who served as a senior adviser at the Loan Programs Office under the Biden administration and stayed on for the first few months of the Trump administration, in a letter to Congress last summer. Downing, who left the office last May and is now a partner at the clean tech investing firm Ara Partners, told lawmakers that the new Trump administration leadership spent months examining almost every loan made under Biden, in an apparent search for wrongdoing or poor lending decisions.

Wright did nix a few major loans such as the Grain Belt Express, a wind power transmission line in Missouri opposed by Republican senator Josh Hawley. But former Energy Department staffers said that many of the $30 billion in loans that Wright claimed to have shut down were in fact cancelled by the borrowers themselves, which is typical for risky and complex projects. Many withdrew even before Trump’s election, including a battery recycling plant project that fell apart due to market conditions.

“The number is fake,” said Jigar Shah, who led the Loan Programs Office under Biden. “I think in some ways, it’s to convince Trump that they’re shutting down loans.”

Other Biden-approved projects have survived, like a $1.45 billion loan to a solar panel manufacturer in Georgia called QCells, which has continued without interruption. In the case of a loan for a mine at Nevada’s Thacker Pass, which was supposed to produce lithium for electric vehicle batteries, the department doubled down and took an equity stake in the project, rather than cancelling the loan.

The new leader of the loan office is Greg Beard, a former executive at the private equity firm Apollo who also ran a crypto mining company. Thus far, Beard has only advanced projects that began under Biden. That includes the office’s most recent announcement of a massive $26.5 billion loan to Southern Company, the regional utility that serves Georgia and Alabama. The loan will fund upgrades at the utility’s new nuclear power plant in Georgia, new long-duration batteries that can store solar power, and upgrades to 1,300 miles of transmission lines.

That said, the final version of the loan also substitutes 5 gigawatts of new gas power in place of a solar project that was included under the Biden-era version of the deal, according to former Loan Programs Office officials. But this change isn’t as big a deal as it might sound; the utility was always planning to build both solar and natural gas as part of its response to surging power demand, and it will still build both. The only thing that changed between administrations is which power plants will receive low-cost federal financing. The Trump administration’s three other announced loans are also holdovers from Biden. They have little to do with fossil energy, despite Trump’s repeated promises to revive coal and oil. They include a new transmission line and the restart of another nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.

“I do think that it’s in many ways a branding exercise,” said another former Department of Energy official who worked in the loan division.

Beard has said he wants to use the office to “make energy more affordable,” “win AI,” “bolster the grid,” and “get us out from under the China strategy to dominate certain critical minerals.” But it’s unclear how much appetite utilities have for the reconfigured program. The Energy Department has held roadshow meetings with data center developers, courting hyperscalers such as Meta with the promise that they will build nuclear power for data centers on federal land. Beard told CNBC that he has a pipeline of around 80 projects waiting to move forward, but that’s less than half of the 191 projects that were in the pipeline in December of 2024, as Biden prepared to leave office.

Shah said that was in part due to the fact that Beard has applied similar standards to those he maintained in his private sector job at Apollo. Beard has suggested he wants all applicants to provide corporate guarantees for their debt, which makes it hard for many projects to qualify.

“Not only are they sending the signal that they’re canceling loans, but then the other side, they’re sending a signal that they’re only going to approve projects that a New York private equity firm would finance,” said Shah. Sources familiar with the program say that the office has already received at least one major new loan application, which is related to nuclear energy, but it’s still in the early stages. The loan office is also trying to coordinate multiple utilities to purchase nuclear reactor parts in bulk.

Thanks to a change in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the major tax law signed by President Trump last summer, the program can now directly support fossil generation such as natural gas. This federal loan support was illegal under the Biden administration, when projects had to reduce greenhouse gases. But it’s far from clear that Wright and Beard could succeed in repurposing the loan program for pure fossil fuel finance, if that’s their goal. Interest in new coal plants is almost nonexistent, and there is plenty of other capital available for new natural gas generation, including from data center developers themselves. A more likely outcome is that the revamped office will continue to support a handful of deals for “clean firm” energy projects that Trump and Wright find appealing, like nuclear, as well as critical minerals production.

Spokespeople for the Department of Energy and the Energy Dominance Financing office, as the loan program has been renamed, declined to answer questions or make Beard available for an interview.

Experts say that even if the deal flow in the office slows down, there’s still a silver lining for the energy transition. More important than the exact shape of the new loans is the fact that Congress did not slash the program altogether, as it did with other Inflation Reduction Act programs such as the electric-vehicle tax credits and the Environmental Protection Agency’s “green bank.” Still, the long-term future of the program is uncertain. When Republicans in Congress modified the loan office with Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, they also added an expiration date. Unless lawmakers choose to renew the program, the last date that the office can make loans is September 30, 2028.

Even so, the fact that two presidents with opposite views on climate policy have both made use of the program may bode well for its survival.

“I still think that the program is an important tool,” said a consultant in the energy field who has interacted with the loan office. “The technology areas that the current administration is prioritizing, all of those sort of squarely fit into the boundaries or the authorities that exist.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/trump-biden-chris-wright-loan-programs-office/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

When President Donald Trump appointed Robert Kennedy Jr. as his Secretary of Health and Human Services, the presidential nephew was criticized for his many pseudoscientific beliefs, among them his support for raw milk.

Now an e. coli outbreak in California has been linked to the raw milk-based products made by one of Kennedy’s own allies.

“As of March 13, 2026, seven individuals from three states have been infected with the outbreak strain of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) O157, including five California residents,” reported the California Department of Public Health on Sunday. “Four illnesses are in children under the age of five. Two individuals have been hospitalized, including one from California. No deaths or cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a severe complication of STEC infection that can cause organ failure and even death, have been reported.”

The press release added that the people infected with e. coli all indicate “that RAW FARM brand raw cheddar cheese is the likely source of recent infections. A voluntary recall of RAW FARM brand raw cheddar cheese has been recommended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). However, as of March 18, 2026, RAW FARM has not voluntarily removed the cheese from the market.”

Indeed, Raw Farm president Aaron McAfee posted an Instagram video on Friday in which he declared “this has been a great week. This is the necessary steps we have to take to show the FDA, CDC, CDPH and CDPA that we are not linked to the outbreak they are alleging. And I’m really happy with how things are going.”

He also claimed that his company is cooperating with FDA investigators, insisting that “all the tests are negative” for E. coli in their products such as the raw cheese.

Last year, when Kennedy was being appointed and confirmed to his Cabinet post, his relationship with McAfee garnered increased attention. Critics pointed out that raw milk can contain bird flu virus and other pathogens linked to serious diseases like e. coli and others that cause miscarriages, kidney diseases and even death. Despite these concerns, Kennedy asked McAfee to apply for a job as the FDA’s raw milk standards and policy adviser as well as draft proposals to federally certify raw dairy farms.

“If the FDA says raw milk is now legal and the CDC comes through and says it advises drinking raw milk, that’s a recipe for mass infection,” warned Angela Rasmussen, a virologist and co-editor-in-chief of the medical journal Vaccine and an adjunct professor at Stony Brook University in New York, at the time.

By May of last year, after Kennedy had already assumed office, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wa.) accused Kennedy in a statement of being dishonest and irresponsible with the public’s health.

“RFK Jr. is a shameless liar and, candidly, an insane conspiracy theorist,” Murray wrote on X at the time. “He’s fired the people who monitor bird flu. He’s fired food safety inspectors. He’s firing NIH clinical staff—and he’s cutting cancer research. This grifter is making America LESS healthy & LESS safe.”

Kennedy’s is also a well-known critic of vaccines, including the polio vaccine, a position that baffled that vaccine manufacturer’s son when he spoke with this journalist for Salon Magazine in 2024.

Dr. Peter Salk said his father would be "really puzzled" by anti-vaxxer ideology, especially as his father gave away his vaccine for free because he believed vaccines were a beneficial technology that people should embrace.

"His whole commitment was protecting the population from infectious diseases," Salk told this journalist at the time.

President Donald Trump directed the Pentagon and other federal agencies to begin releasing government files related to UFOs and unidentified anomalous phenomena – called UAP – in February 2026, following years of pressure from Congress, military whistleblowers and the public.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is fielding pressure from the White House to relax his controversial approach to vaccine policies as the midterms near, but his most steadfast supporters are pressing for more aggressive action — like restricting covid-19 vaccines and pesticide use — to carry out the Make America Healthy Again agenda.

The tensions risk fraying Kennedy’s dynamic MAHA coalition, potentially driving away critical supporters who helped fuel President Donald Trump’s 2024 election win.

The movement’s grassroots membership includes suburbanites, women, and independents who are generally newer entrants to the GOP and laser-focused on achieving certain results around the nation’s food supply and vaccines.

Promoting healthy foods tops their list and will be at the center of the White House’s pitch to voters during the midterm election cycle.

“President Trump’s mass appeal partly lies in his willingness to question our country’s broken status quo,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement. “That includes food standards and nutrition guidelines that have helped fuel America’s chronic disease epidemic. Overhauling our food supply and nutrition standards to deliver on the MAHA agenda remains a key priority for both the President and his administration.”

At the same time, with most Americans opposing efforts to undermine vaccines, the White House has cooled on Kennedy’s aggressive policies to curb vaccines and MAHA’s interest in tamping down environmental chemicals that are linked to disease.

The result: Republicans are realizing just how demanding the MAHA vote can be. Moms Across America leader Zen Honeycutt warned that Republicans are facing their biggest setback yet with the MAHA movement, after Trump signed an executive order to support production of glyphosate, a herbicide the World Health Organization has linked to cancer.

“It has caused the biggest uproar in MAHA,” Honeycutt said during a CNN interview in late February.

A White House Warning

Trump’s top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, cautioned in December that an embrace of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine policies could cost politicians their jobs this year.

Eight in 10 MAHA voters and 86% of all voters believe vaccines save lives, his poll of 1,000 voters in 35 competitive districts found.

“In the districts that will decide the control of the House of Representatives next year, Republican and Democratic candidates who support eliminating long standing vaccine requirements will pay a price in the election,” a memo on the poll stated.

The White House has since shaken up senior staffing at HHS, including removing Jim O’Neill from the deputy secretary role and his job as acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in which he curtailed the agency’s childhood vaccination recommendations. Ralph Abraham, a vaccine skeptic who as Louisiana’s surgeon general suspended its vaccination promotion program last year, stepped down as the CDC’s principal deputy director in late February.

Jay Bhattacharya, a doctor who said in congressional testimony that he doesn’t believe vaccines cause autism, is now running the CDC in addition to directing the National Institutes of Health.

Though Trump himself has frequently espoused doubts and mistruths about vaccines, polling around anti-vaccine policy has undoubtedly shaken the White House’s confidence during a tough midterm election year, said former U.S. Rep. Larry Bucshon, an Indiana Republican and retired doctor who left Congress last year.

Bucshon said Republicans can’t risk alienating voters, especially parents of young children who might be moved by Democratic attack ads on the topic at a time when hundreds of measles cases are popping up across the U.S.

“That’s the reason you’re seeing the White House get nervous about it,” Bucshon said. “This is just the political reality of it.”

Kennedy built some of his MAHA following with calls to end federal approval and recommendations for the covid vaccines during the pandemic. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a federal panel of outside experts who were handpicked by Kennedy to develop national vaccine recommendations, is expected to review and possibly withdraw its recommendation for covid shots. Its February meeting was postponed and is now scheduled for March 18-19, when the panel plans to discuss injuries from covid vaccines, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon confirmed on March 11.

“I’m not deaf to the calls that we need to get the covid vaccine mRNA products off the market. All I can say is stay tuned and wait for the upcoming ACIP meeting,” ACIP Vice Chair Robert Malone said on MJTruthUltra, a conservative account on the social platform X, before the meeting was postponed. “If the FDA won’t act, there are other entities that will.”

No Fury Like Scorned MAHA Moms

Bipartisan support is also extremely high — above 80% — for another core tenet of the MAHA agenda: eliminating the use of certain pesticides on crops.

But MAHA leaders were incensed when Trump issued a Feb. 18 executive order promoting the production of glyphosate, a chemical used in weed killers sprayed on U.S. crops and which Kennedy has railed against and sued over because of its reported links to cancer.

“There’s gonna be ups and downs, and there is zero question that this week was a down,” Calley Means, a senior adviser to the health secretary and a former White House employee, told a MAHA rally in Austin, Texas, on Feb. 26. “I am not going to gaslight or sugarcoat it: This glyphosate thing was extremely disappointing. Bobby’s disappointed.”

Despite deep unhappiness from MAHA followers, Kennedy endorsed Trump’s executive order defending access to such pesticides.

“I support President Trump’s Executive Order to bring agricultural chemical production back to the United States and end our near-total reliance on adversarial nations,” Kennedy wrote on social media.

Without offering policy changes, Kennedy promised a future agricultural system that “is less dependent on harmful chemicals.”

White House officials are now trying to downplay the executive order.

“The President’s executive order was not an endorsement of any product or practice,” Desai said in a statement.

But that’s done little to dampen criticism from leading MAHA influencers who had hoped, with Kennedy’s influence in the administration, that the chemical would be banned.

Some Democrats see an opening.

Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine earned cheers from MAHA loyalists for co-sponsoring legislation with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to undo the executive order.

“The Trump Admin. cannot keep paying lip service to #MAHA while propping up Big Chemical like this and choosing corporate profits over Americans’ health,” Pingree said on X.

Vani Hari, a prominent MAHA influencer who promotes healthy eating, responded on X with a “HELL YES.”

‘Eat Real Food’

The White House and Kennedy are refocusing their messaging to emphasize one of the most popular elements of the MAHA platform: food.

At the start of the year, Kennedy unveiled new dietary guidelines that emphasize vegetables, fruits, and meats while urging Americans to avoid ultraprocessed foods.

Kennedy has leaned into his new “Eat Real Food” campaign, launching a nationwide tour in January. Ahead of the late-February MAHA rally, he stopped at a barbecue joint in Austin where he took photos with stacks of smoked ribs and grilled sausages. Large “Eat Real Food” signs have been provided for crowds of supporters to hold up during major announcements at HHS’ headquarters this year.

Focusing on nutrition will please MAHA moms, suburban swing voters, and conservatives alike, said Michael Burgess, a physician and former Republican representative from Texas.

“They keep them happy by talking about the food pyramid,” Burgess said. “That’s an area where there is broad, bipartisan support.”

Indeed, Fabrizio’s poll shows equal support — 95% — among respondents who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris and those who voted for Trump for requiring labeling of harmful ingredients in ultraprocessed foods.

Trump is keenly aware that Kennedy’s MAHA movement is key to his political survival. At a Cabinet meeting in January, Kennedy rattled off a list of his agency’s efforts researching autism and tackling high drug prices.

Trump leaned in at the table.

“I read an article today where they think Bobby is going to be really great for the Republican Party in the midterms,” Trump said, “so I have to be very careful that Bobby likes us.”

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Psychologist Mary Trump, Donald Trump's 60-year-old niece and the daughter of his late brother Fred Trump Jr., often argues that the president suffers from poor mental health and is pushing destructive policies because of it. Other Donald Trump critics, meanwhile, are arguing that the president not only has mental health issues — he is also causing the mental health of others to suffer.

In an article published by The Guardian on March 8, journalist Ash Sanders details the link between feelings of depression and Trump's second presidency.

Author Ann Cvetkovitch, Sanders notes, is warning that "political depression" is on the rise in the United States.

"Political depression might look like traditional depression — the same hopelessness, despair and shutdown — but its source is different," Sanders explains. "It doesn't come from within, at least not primarily, Cvetkovitch wrote in her 2012 book, 'Depression: A Public Feeling.' It comes from the violence, collapse or unjustness of the world around us. In recent years, political depression has infiltrated the public discourse, the private consciousness and the therapist's office. Two-thirds of respondents in a 2024 LifeStance Health survey said they talk about politics or elections with their therapists. Therapists, too, are noticing an influx of clients seeking support for political stress…. In recent years, political depression has infiltrated the public discourse, the private consciousness and the therapist's office."

Sanders continues, "Two-thirds of respondents in a 2024 LifeStance Health survey said they talk about politics or elections with their therapists. Therapists, too, are noticing an influx of clients seeking support for political stress…. Studies show political stress takes a very real toll on people’s mental and physical health."

Sanders points to Utah resident Rebecca McFaul, who has family in Minneapolis, as an example of someone experiencing "political depression." McFaul described her response to recent violence during Minneapolis immigration raids as "a certain kind of terror and horror at it all."

According to Brett Ford, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto in Canada, politics are a source of chronic stress.

Ford told The Guardian, "Chronic stressors are large-scale, they don’t have clear endpoints, they feel out of your hands, and they reliably evoke negative emotions…. Negative emotions are a really consistent predictor of political engagement and action."

Last month, Justin and Amy Miller packed their vehicles with three kids, two dogs, a pet bearded dragon, and whatever belongings they could fit, then drove 2,000 miles from Wisconsin to British Columbia to leave President Donald Trump’s America.

The Millers resettled on Vancouver Island, their scenic refuge accessible only by ferry or plane. Justin went to work in the emergency room at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, where he became one of at least 20 U.S.-trained nurses hired since April.

Fear of Trump, some of the nurses said, was why they left.

“There are so many like-minded people out there,” said Justin, who now works elbow to elbow with Americans in Canada. “You aren’t trapped. You don’t have to stay. Health care workers are welcomed with open arms around the world.”

The Millers are part of a new surge of American nurses, doctors, and other health care workers moving to Canada, and specifically British Columbia, where more than 1,000 U.S.-trained nurses have been approved to work since April. As the Trump administration enacts increasingly authoritarian policies and decimates funding for public health, insurance, and medical research, many nurses have felt the draw of Canada’s progressive politics, friendly reputation, and universal health care system.

Additionally, some nurses were incensed last year when the Trump administration said it would reclassify nursing as a nonprofessional degree, which would impose strict federal limits on the loans nursing students could receive.

Canada is poised to capitalize. Two of its most populous provinces, Ontario and British Columbia, have streamlined the licensing process for American nurses since Trump returned to the White House. British Columbia also launched a $5 million advertising campaign last year to recruit nurses from California, Oregon, and Washington state.

“With the chaos and uncertainty happening in the U.S., we are seizing the opportunity to attract the talent we need,” Josie Osborne, the province’s health minister, said in a statement announcing the campaign.

Fears Realized

Amy Miller, a nurse practitioner, said she and her husband were determined to move their children out of the country because they felt Trump’s second term would inevitably spiral into violence.

First, the Millers got nursing licenses in New Zealand, but when the job search took too long, they pivoted to Canada.

Justin was offered a job within weeks.

Amy found one within three months.

So they moved. And just a few days later, the Millers watched with horror from afar as their fears came true.

As federal immigration forces clashed with protesters in Minneapolis on Jan. 24, federal agents fatally shot an ICU nurse, Alex Pretti, as he filmed a confrontation and appeared to be trying to shield a woman who was knocked down. Video of the killing showed border agents pinning Pretti to the ground before seizing his concealed, licensed handgun and opening fire on him.

The Trump administration quickly called Pretti a “domestic terrorist” who intended to kill federal agents. That allegation was disputed by eyewitness videos that circulated on social media and spurred widespread outrage, including from nurses and nursing organizations, some of whom invoked the profession’s duty to care for the vulnerable.

“I don’t want to say it was expected, but that’s why we are here,” Amy Miller said. “Even our oldest kid, she was like: ‘It’s OK, Mom, because we are not there anymore. We are safe here.’ So she recognizes that, and she’s not even in middle school yet.”

Both the U.S. and Canada have a severe need for nurses. The U.S. is projected to be short about 270,000 registered nurses, plus at least 120,000 licensed practical nurses, by 2028, according to recent estimates from the Health Resources and Services Administration. In Canada, nursing job vacancies tripled from 2018 to 2023, when they reached nearly 42,000, according to a recent report from the Montreal Economic Institute, a Canadian think tank.

When asked to comment, the White House noted that industry data shows the number of nurses licensed in the U.S. increased in 2025. It dismissed accounts of nurses moving to Canada as “anecdotes of individuals with severe cases of Trump derangement syndrome.”

“The American health care workforce is the finest in the world, and it continues to expand under President Trump,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said. “Employment opportunities in the American health care system remain robust, with career advancement and pay that far exceed that of other developed nations.”

‘A Sense of Relief’

It is unknown precisely how many American nurses have moved north since Trump returned to office, because some Canadian provinces do not track or release such statistics.

British Columbia, which has done the most to recruit Americans, approved the licensing applications of 1,028 U.S.-trained nurses from when the province’s streamlined application process took effect in April 2025 through January, according to the British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives. In all of 2023, only 112 applicants from the U.S. were approved, the agency said. In 2024, it was 127.

Increased interest from American nurses was also confirmed by nursing associations in Ontario and Alberta, as well as by the nationwide Canadian Nurses Association.

Angela Wignall, CEO of Nurses and Nurse Practitioners of British Columbia, said American nurses used to move north because they had fallen in love with Canada (or a Canadian). But more recently, she said, she had met nurses who feared the White House would spur violence and vigilantism, particularly against families that included same-sex couples.

“Some of them were living in fear of the administration, and they shared a sense of relief when crossing the border,” Wignall said. “As a Canadian, it’s heartbreaking. And also a joy to welcome them.”

Vancouver Island, which has a population of about 860,000, has gained 64 U.S.-trained nurses since April, including those at Nanaimo Regional, said Andrew Leyne, a spokesperson for the island’s health agency.

One of the nurses was Susan Fleishman, a Canadian who moved to the U.S. as a child, then worked for 23 years in American emergency rooms before leaving the country in November.

Fleishman said hateful rhetoric from Trump has fueled an angry division that has permeated and soured American life.

“It wasn’t an easy move — that’s for sure. But I think it’s definitely worth it,” she said, happily back in Canada. “I find there is a lot more kindness here. And I think that will keep me here.”

Brandy Frye, who also worked for decades in American ERs, said she moved to Vancouver Island last year after waiting to see whether Mark Carney would become Canada’s prime minister. Carney’s rise was widely viewed as a rejection of Trumpism.

Meanwhile, Frye said, the California hospital where she worked had been stripping words associated with diversity and equity out of its paperwork to appease the Trump administration. She couldn’t stand it.

“It felt like a step against everything I believe in,” Frye said. “And I didn’t feel like I belonged there anymore.”

Like many of the American nurses who have moved to Vancouver Island, Frye was first wooed to the area by a viral video that was meant to attract tourist dollars but ended up doing much more.

About a year ago, Tod Maffin, a social media content creator and former CBC Radio host, invited Americans to the port city of Nanaimo for a weekend event designed to offset the impact of Trump’s tariffs on the local economy.

Maffin said about 350 people attended the April event.

“A lot of them were health care workers looking for an escape route,” Maffin said. “They were there to help support our economy but also to look into Canada.”

Maffin saw an opportunity. He repurposed the event website into a recruiting tool and launched a Discord chatroom to help Americans relocate.

Maffin said he believes the campaign helped about 35 health care workers move to Vancouver Island. Volunteers in more than 30 other Canadian communities have since duplicated his website in an effort to attract their own American nurses and doctors.

“There are communities across Canada where the emergency room closes at night because one nurse is out. That’s how thin staffing is,” Maffin said.

“One new nurse in a small town, or in a midsized city like Nanaimo,” he said, “makes a difference.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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The Moon crossed the Sun’s path on February 17, causing what is known as an annular solar eclipse. The Sun was not covered completely, but the Moon blocked enough of its light to leave a fiery ring. Unless you’re deep in the southern hemisphere, you won’t have noticed.

Editor's Note: This article originally misstated that only organic arsenic can appear in groundwater, when in fact inorganic arsenic can enter groundwater too.

A new report by Slate contextualized President Donald Trump’s unique relationship with McDonald’s by explaining presidents in general have been fixated on junk food.

In October Americans learned that Trump regularly consumes a “hideous Franken-burger” (per The Daily Beast) which consists of “a Filet-O-Fish, a Quarter Pounder, and a Big Mac” before combining two of them (per Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters). Slate’s Talib Visram elaborated that Trump regularly consumes “two Filet-O-Fishes, two Big Macs, and a chocolate shake (but no fries; everything in moderation).” He will add some lunchtime variety with an occasional “well-done steak with ketchup and a salad with blue cheese dressing.” One constant, though, is that he will drink “a dozen Diet Cokes” every day.

While Trump’s extreme enjoyment of McDonald’s stands out, other presidents have had idiosyncratic junk food fixations. President Joe Biden was well-known to consume large quantities of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches with orange Gatorade, perhaps making him a culinary kin to President Ronald Reagan and the Gipper’s famous love of “Jelly Belly” jellybeans. President George W. Bush enjoyed not just any regular pizza but “cheeseburger pizzas, which his chef helpfully explained is ‘every ingredient of a cheeseburger on top of a margherita pizza.’”

Even more extreme than Trump, Biden, Reagan and Bush one can look at early 20th century Republicans like Presidents Theodore Roosevelt (who drank a gallon of coffee, or “bathtub,” per day, according to his son) and William H. Taft (who ate 8,000 calories per day and was America’s heaviest president at 350 pounds). Taft would start his day with a 12-ounce steak for breakfast, followed by eight other types of meat including “lamb chops, roast turkey, salmon filet, turtle soup, lobster stew, possum and sweet potatoes—all before dessert,” Visram wrote.

Perhaps the most eccentric junk food craze occurred in the 1970s, when presidents enjoyed mixing unhealthy condiments with cottage cheese. Presidents Richard Nixon (ketchup) and Gerald Ford (A.1. Sauce and sliced red onions, washed down with two lunchtime martinis) were both guilty of those impeachable gustatory offenses. Compared to these “treats,” one can view the normally-unhealthy cherry pies and almond cakes preferred respectively by Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as health foods.

This is not to say America has not had any presidents who were health-conscious. President Barack Obama’s “version of the fast-food banquet may have been his dinner of Vietnamese noodles in Hanoi with Anthony Bourdain” wrote Visram while his ideological antithesis, fellow Democratic President Andrew Jackson, “loved the Native American staple kanuche, or hickory-nut soup.” President Dwight Eisenhower kept himself literally regular with prune whip, and Visram wrote that President Woodrow Wilson foreshadowed the modern era’s “supplements and paleo diets” with his “special diet with elixirs and powders, and a breakfast of two raw eggs stirred into grape juice.”

On one occasion, Visram argued that a president may have been literally killed by a seemingly-healthy snack (iced milk and cherries), and then added he may have instead died by drinking the healthiest of all beverages (water).

“[President] Zachary Taylor’s binge of iced milk and cherries, after a long speech on a hot day, might have been what killed him,” Visram wrote. “For a century and a half, the meal was thought to have been poisoned—though after his body was exhumed, the prevailing theory became contaminated water.”

This refers to the theory that Taylor died from arsenic poisoning, but that would not have involved contaminated water. Writing about Taylor’s possible assassination for Salon in 2023, this author explained that Taylor became controversial in 1850 (one year into his first and only term) because he opposed aggressively expanding slavery into the Mexican territories the US had recently acquired in the Mexican-American War. He unexpectedly took sick after eating the normally-healthy snack of cherries and drinking iced milk at a 4th of July celebration, with doctors eventually deciding the fruit-and-dairy combination infected him with cholera morbus. His symptoms included “severe stomach pains, sharp pains on the side of his chest, vomiting, diarrhea, fevers, sweating, thirst, chills and fatigue.” Taylor eventually died and was replaced by his vice president, Millard Fillmore, who was well-known to sympathize with the Southern position on slavery.

Because Fillmore’s ascension seemed suspiciously-timed to benefit the pro-slavery faction, many conspiracy theorists speculated that Taylor may have actually been poisoned with arsenic. Taylor’s body was exhumed in 1991 and arsenic was discovered in his remains, although details remain controversial such as the quantity of arsenic in Taylor’s body, the study’s methodology and whether the arsenic itself was organic or inorganic. That last difference is critical because the type of arsenic which contaminated water in 1850 Washington DC (per Visram’s description) could have been either organic or inorganic — and except in very rare cases, organic arsenic does not lead to death. Inorganic arsenic, by contrast, is a commonly-used lethal poison.

"Arsenic is a metalloid that is present in all parts of the environment," Dr. Laura M. Labay, a forensic toxicologist and the Chair of the NAME Toxicology Committee, told this reporter for Salon in 2023. "For example it may be found in the water, soil and sediment." This reporter added at the time that “organic arsenic is naturally present in food like crustaceans and fish, and these forms are relatively non-toxic. ‘They will be rapidly excreted unchanged in the urine,’ Labay explained. In contrast, inorganic arsenic is highly toxic — and that is the one you want to avoid.”

While McDonald’s is not as unhealthy as arsenic, Trump nevertheless stands out among presidents because his penchant for McDonald’s is still dangerous, especially in a man turning 80 in July. Additionally, there is the irony that Trump’s economic policies may have made it harder for his supporters to share his love of McDonald’s. A Financial Times report in May found that McDonald's same-store sales in the U.S. dropped by 3.6 percent compared with the last analogous quarter because Trump’s tariffs dented consumer confidence.

"Soft data (sentiment) turning into hard data (sales) 'McDonald’s has posted the biggest drop in US sales since the height of the Covid-19 pandemic five years ago as uncertainty caused by Donald Trump’s tariffs weighs heavily on consumer sentiment,'" explained economic analyst Barry Ritholdz in a statement sharing the report.

Economic strategist Marko Kolanovic was more succinct on the social platform X, "In a recession, people prefer to eat at Microsoft."

The dealings that have been revealed between Cambridge Analytica and Facebook have all the trappings of a Hollywood thriller: a Bond villain-style CEO, a reclusive billionaire, a naïve and conflicted whistle-blower, a hipster data scientist turned politico, an academic with seemingly questionable ethics, and of course a triumphant president and his influential family.

Americans love dogs.

Led by Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, four Democratic senators on Wednesday outlined plans to reduce the costs of prescription drugs after President Donald Trump claimed he would do so—only to allow Big Pharma companies to delay negotiating lower prices and secure “zero commitments” from top executives on making lifesaving medications more affordable for millions of Americans.

“There is no greater fraud than Donald J. Trump when it comes to lower drug prices,” Wyden (D-Ore.) said. “Our doors are wide open to anybody who wants to take the bold next step forward on lowering drug costs for Americans.”

Along with a “flash report” on Trump’s “broken promises” regarding his pledge to bring drug prices down “to levels nobody ever thought was possible,” Wyden sent a Dear Colleague letter to Democratic senators regarding his committee’s plans to follow through with lowering costs.

“Finance Committee minority staff will dedicate substantial time and effort this year to developing the next generation of healthcare solutions that lower costs for American families,” Wyden wrote. “These solutions will rein in Big Pharma’s outrageous price increases, lower costs for consumers, guarantee predictability for patients, and reduce wasteful government spending that pads the profits of big corporations. Alongside the co-signers of this letter, I invite you to be a part of this bold vision.”

The letter, co-signed by Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), notes that “the only concrete drug pricing policy Trump enacted within the past year was a price hike for the biggest blockbuster cancer drugs on Earth, giving an $8.8 billion windfall to the pharmaceutical industry.”

In contrast, the senators wrote, the Senate Finance Committee will develop policies to incorporate international pricing models into the Medicare drug price negotiation framework, including by allowing Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to consider international prices as a factor or penalize drugmakers when pricing for US customers exceeds international benchmarks.

“Democrats are determined to bring prices down, and we’re willing to work with anyone to find concrete ways to do it.”

The committee will also work to end Republican “blockbuster drug bailouts from negotiation,” like the ones included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that shielded several high-priced drugs—including the cancer drug Keytruda—from Medicare price negotiations.

“The Republican budget bill contained a nearly $9 billion sweetheart deal that benefits the biggest drug companies by delaying or exempting some lifesaving medications from negotiation,” reads the Democrats’ flash report.

Gallego said that “when Big Pharma gets richer off the back of a grandmother struggling to pay for cancer medication, the system is broken.”

“That’s what this is all about: Big Pharma execs sitting in their fancy corner offices profiting off of sick, working-class Americans,” the senator said. “We are not going to accept an America where millions of families live in fear of getting sick and needing to fill a prescription. We are going to fight and fight hard for a healthcare system that does what Donald Trump never did: actually lower costs for working families.”

The lawmakers emphasized that even if manufacturers are forced to lower drug prices, patients are not currently guaranteed to directly benefit, because as much as 45% of the $5.4 trillion the US spends on healthcare annually is “absorbed by middlemen such as insurers, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), and drug distributors.”

“Healthcare middlemen profit when drug costs are high because they make money off of drug margin or payments that are linked to the price of a drug, ripping off patients who pay more than they should. Medicare Part D and the patients it serves should stop footing the bill for inflated drug prices and instead pay for drugs in a more transparent manner that reduces middleman margin,” wrote the senators.

The Finance Committee will develop policies to eliminate abuses in the prescription drug supply chain including “egregious drug price markups,” and to ensure that patient cost-sharing on drugs more closely aligns with the costs to plans and PBMs.

Finally, the Democrats said they would work to fix the “unmitigated disaster” that Trump and Kennedy have been “for innovation and drug development,” as the administration has proposed slashing the National Institutes of Health budget by 40% and has cut off access to treatment for an estimated 74,000 patients who were enrolled in NIH clinical trials.

The Finance Committee, they said, plans to create new incentives for innovation and drug development, including through the tax code.

In their flash report, the Democrats wrote that while failing to force Big Pharma to the negotiating table to save money for Americans, Trump “has been parading Big Pharma executives through the White House, claiming to be cutting cost-saving deals with these corporations.”

“One look under the hood reveals the truth: Trump is giving them a pass on tariffs, while receiving zero commitments about how they will lower costs for taxpayers and patients,” they wrote. “Donald Trump is getting fleeced by Big Pharma CEOs, and Americans are going to foot the bill.”

Welch said that the president “loves to talk a big game and make promises to working families about lowering prescription drug prices. But in reality, his administration is handling this like a PR problem: They’ve got to keep moving and talking about it, but then do nothing to really address the crisis.”

“Democrats are determined to bring prices down, and we’re willing to work with anyone to find concrete ways to do it,” said Welch. “We’re going to lower healthcare costs and ensure everyone can access affordable, lifesaving, and pain-relieving medication.”

Donald Trump can change the temperature of a room with a sentence. One minute he is certain, the next he is backtracking. One day he is threatening, the next he is hinting at a deal. Even before anything concrete happens, people brace for his next turn.