File this under "Strange Bedfellows".
Oct 10, 2025
The Peace Prize (updated)
The way he got emotional telling her‼️ pic.twitter.com/A0J0SlUrmJ
— Meidas_Charise Lee (@charise_lee) October 10, 2025
What Trump will never understand is that you have to stand up against violent assholes (like Trump) in order to qualify for a PEACE PRIZE.
María Corina Machado, Venezuelan opposition leader, wins Nobel Peace Prize
The prize honored Machado, who is in hiding, for keeping “the flame of democracy burning,” but the White House accused the Nobel jury of “placing politics over peace.”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday awarded its 2025 Peace Prize to María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader who has become a symbol of democratic resistance against an increasingly authoritarian regime, even as she has been forced into hiding and barred from holding public office.
The decision, announced in Oslo’s grand City Hall, elevates Machado, known as Venezuela’s “Iron Lady,” from a besieged political figure in her own country to the world stage, joining the ranks of Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi and other laureates who have challenged autocratic rule.
The White House, which had been calling for President Donald Trump to win the prize, did not immediately congratulate Machado, but a spokesman, Steven Cheung, questioned the committee’s motives. “President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars and saving lives,” Cheung said, adding, “The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace.”
Machado’s location remains undisclosed for security reasons, though supporters say she remains in Venezuela despite arrest warrants and government accusations that she has conspired to destabilize the country.
“The Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 goes to a brave and committed champion of peace — to a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness,” the committee said, announcing the award.
Machado reacted with shock when reached by a representative of the Nobel committee a few minutes before her win was announced. “Oh my God … I have no words,” she said, according to a video of the call posted on X by the committee.
“This immense recognition of the struggle of all Venezuelans is an impetus to conclude our task: to conquer Freedom,” Machado wrote on X after the announcement. “We are on the threshold of victory and today more than ever we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our main allies to achieve Freedom and democracy. Venezuela will be free!”
The prize was awarded as the Trump administration — a vocal supporter of Machado — has sharply escalated military tensions with Venezuela, attacking boats in the Caribbean that Trump has said were carrying drug smugglers in international waters.
Trump has previously described Machado as a “freedom fighter.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime ally of Machado, as a senator had signed a letter nominating her for the Nobel Prize last year.
Trump has declared the United States to be in “armed conflict” with drug cartels that are distributing narcotics in the U.S., according to a notification to Capitol Hill that seeks to give legal cover for taking lethal action against traffickers following the military strikes.
The administration has not provided evidence that narcotics were aboard, and the strikes prompted Venezuela to request an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.
Machado, a fierce and longtime foe of Venezuela’s autocratic president, Nicolás Maduro, swept the primaries ahead of the Venezuelan presidential election in 2024 with more than 92 percent of the vote. Her team’s campaign last year represented the most significant political threat against Maduro in more than a decade of authoritarian rule.
Despite a U.S.-brokered deal for competitive elections in Venezuela, Maduro blocked her from running. Still, in the months leading up to the vote, Machado rallied large crowds across the country to motivate Venezuelans to vote for a stand-in for her, Edmundo González, even as the Maduro government repeatedly harassed and arrested her aides and anyone associated with her campaign.
On July 28, 2024, Venezuelans voted overwhelmingly in favor of González, according to a Washington Post review of more than 23,000 precinct-level tally sheets collected by the opposition and the conclusion of other independent monitors.
Maduro claimed victory in the election and refused to release the precinct-level results. In a remarkable logistical feat led by Machado and her team, the opposition managed to prove their own win — collecting the original receipts from more than 80 percent of voting machines nationwide with the help of thousands of regular Venezuelans stationed at polling sites. Some observers described the election as the largest electoral fraud in recent Latin American history.
After leaving one chaotic rally shortly before Maduro’s swearing-in, Machado was knocked from her motorcycle and briefly detained by pro-government forces, her campaign said.
In more than a year since that historic vote, Machado has remained in hiding in Venezuela as the driving force of the opposition. The Maduro government has continued to arrest and jail scores of dissidents and her close allies.
An industrial engineer and daughter of a prominent steel businessman whose company was expropriated by then-President Hugo Chávez, Machado is a staunch conservative. She rose to national recognition as a fierce critic of Chávez and once famously challenged him during his annual address to the assembly in 2012, telling him “expropriating is robbing.” Chávez responded dismissively: “Águila no caza mosca” — “the eagle doesn’t hunt the fly.”
“Democracy is a precondition for lasting peace. However, we live in a world where democracy is in retreat, where more and more authoritarian regimes are challenging norms and resorting to violence,” the Nobel citation stated. “The Venezuelan regime’s rigid hold on power and its repression of the population are not unique in the world. We see the same trends globally: rule of law abused by those in control, free media silenced, critics imprisoned, and societies pushed towards authoritarian rule and militarization. In 2024, more elections were held than ever before, but fewer and fewer are free and fair.”
The committee made its selection against an unusual backdrop: Trump’s increasingly public campaign to claim the prize for himself, an ambition that in recent days appeared to influence diplomacy in the Middle East. Trump has spoken openly about his desire to win the Nobel Peace Prize but also expressed skepticism that the committee would recognize him.
“No, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do — including Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Iran, whatever those outcomes may be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in June. Trump has cited his role in settling numerous conflicts, at times exaggerating his role or the extent of peace, but in any event has spoken out frequently about his desire to save lives.
Trump’s ambition became a factor in the Gaza ceasefire negotiations that culminated in an agreement reached two days before the peace prize announcement, officials in the region and Washington said.
Several world leaders said they had nominated Trump for the prize. The committee, however, said none had affected its deliberations.
Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said the body is accustomed to lobbying campaigns — both organized and grassroots, political and heartfelt — but that it returns to the prize’s founding principles in making its choice.
“This committee sits in a room filled with portraits of our laureates,” Frydnes said Friday addressing the Trump effort. “That room is filled with both courage and integrity. We base our decision only on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel.”
The timing alone made Trump an unlikely candidate for the Gaza ceasefire deal. The Nobel Committee’s nomination deadline was Jan. 31. When this year’s prize was announced, the Gaza agreement was just hours into being implemented and it was far from clear whether its terms would hold even in the short term.
Still, Nobel observers say that if the ceasefire evolves into a lasting peace framework, Trump would be a contender for the 2026 prize. The committee has frequently recognized Middle East peacemakers, from Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat in 1978 to Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat in 1994. A durable resolution to the Gaza conflict would rank among the most significant diplomatic achievements in recent decades.
In its announcement, the committee struck a pointed tone about the global state of democracy, declaring that Machado’s courage mattered especially “in a world where democracy is in retreat.”
That phrase — and the choice itself — will be seen by some as calibrated to send a message not just to Caracas, but to Washington and capitals worldwide where democratic norms have come under strain.
It may also be interpreted as an implicit rebuke to Trump, whose attacks on democratic institutions have alarmed democracy advocates.
Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 election results, the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, and his Justice Department’s prosecutions of political opponents have drawn comparisons, however imperfect, to the autocratic playbook Machado opposes.
Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, president of the Washington Office on Latin America and a Venezuelan citizen, said the Nobel committee’s decision also sends an important message to Machado, particularly as some in her opposition movement support a Trump administration that is escalating military pressure against Maduro.
“The committee is sending a message that the fight for democracy should always be a peaceful one,” Jiménez said.
Maduro, Venezuela’s socialist strongman, has maintained his fierce grip on power as the once-oil-rich country suffered an economic collapse, humanitarian crisis and the exodus of nearly 8 million people — in one of the largest displacement crises in the world.
As of last week, at least 841 people remain imprisoned for political reasons in Venezuela, according to the human rights advocacy group Foro Penal. Many of those are opposition members who supported Machado’s cause.
“This is a movement. This is an achievement of a whole society,” Machado said in her call with the Nobel committee representative who told her the news. “We are not there yet. We’re working hard to achieve it, but I’m sure that we will prevail.”
Today's Belle
The Trumplefucks refuse to tell us the numbers on the American economy - because they know it's practically nothing but bad news.
But business has to have those numbers in order to make their plans. So they gather the basic data themselves, and it's getting ugly.
In the first half of 2025, GDP growth was 0.1%, and without the AI bubble to drive things, it'd probably be way lower.
Everything Trump touches turns to shit.
Today's Rich
The technique of linking religion to whatever economic &/or political power you're trying to exert is the oldest trick in the book.
The unwashed masses have been conditioned to believe they're not allowed to criticize god, and that they can't resist the awesomeness of his awesomely awesome power, so everybody should just shut up and knuckle under.
If you can convince them that you're actually one with that all-powerful being, you can shit on their heads, and they'll instinctually say, "Thanks for the hat, boss.".
Je suis l’État, et l’État c’est moi.
So here's the WaPo piece:
The Washington Post reviewed leaked audio from four off-the-record lectures the tech investor delivered in San Francisco over the past month that fused beliefs about religion and technology.
Tech billionaire Peter Thiel recently warned that Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and critics of technology or artificial intelligence are “legionnaires of the Antichrist” in private lectures on Christianity that connected government oversight of Silicon Valley to an apocalyptic future, according to recordings reviewed by The Washington Post.
In the four, roughly two-hour lectures, which began last month and culminated Monday at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Thiel laid out his religious views to a sold-out audience told to keep the contents “off-the-record,” according to an event listing. He argued that those who propose limits on technology development not only hinder business but also threaten to usher in the destruction of the United States and an era of global totalitarian rule, according to the recordings.
“In the 17th, 18th century, the Antichrist would have been a Dr. Strangelove, a scientist who did all this sort of evil crazy science,” Thiel said in his Sept. 15 opening talk, according to the recordings. “In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science. It’s someone like Greta or Eliezer,” he said, referring to Thunberg and Eliezer Yudkowsky, a prominent critic of the tech industry’s approach to AI.
Thunberg has criticized global capitalism as a driver of environmental degradation while Yudkowsky advocates for limiting AI research to prevent the technology from surpassing human intelligence. Thiel previously funded Yudkowsky’s work but said in his Sept. 15 lecture that he is now embarrassed by the association and that the AI critic and others like him have become “deranged,” according to the recordings.
Thiel’s lectures come at a time of rising Christian nationalism in the United States. Christians have varying interpretations of the biblical Antichrist, but the figure is often understood to be an opponent of God who appears during the end-times.
The Post sent Thiel, through a spokesperson, a detailed list of questions about his remarks in the lectures, but Thiel declined to comment.
Yudkowsky said in a statement “my understanding is that authorities from multiple Christian denominations have stated that Thiel’s views, identifying the Antichrist with proposals to regulate the AI industry, are not deemed by them to be compatible with conventional Christian belief.” Spokespeople for Thunberg did not return a request for comment.
The Post reviewed audio recordings of all four of Thiel’s lectures, titled “The Antichrist: A Four-Part Lecture Series.” A review of a sample of the audio by Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert and professor at the University of California at Berkeley, indicated they were probably authentic and not manipulated by AI. Reuters previously reported some passages from Thiel’s lectures.
Thiel, an early investor in Facebook and co-founder of data analytics firm Palantir, has long espoused libertarian views, arguing that politics, bureaucracy and regulations have led to economic stagnation in the U.S. and Europe.
But the recent lectures appear to mark an intensification of this ideology and attempt to pitch it on a grander scale. The recordings offer new detail about how the billionaire seems to place those who would critique or regulate tech developers into a religious good-vs.-evil worldview, where the future of all creation depends on giving innovators free rein.
Silicon Valley leaders have escalated their fight against regulating AI since President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Thiel has close ties to administration officials including Vice President JD Vance, White House science adviser Michael Kratsios and David Sacks, White House AI and crypto czar. As one of the industry’s most influential leaders, his effort to cast resisting oversight of technology development as a religious battle could intensify the industry’s crusade.
Thiel said in his third lecture, on Sept. 29, that only a religious argument could inspire the proper response to the threat of a growing web of global rules, according to the recording.
“There are a lot of rational reasons I can give why the one-world state’s a bad idea: Turn the planet into a prison; I think the tax rates would be very high,” he said, according to the recording. “But I think if you strip it from the biblical context, you will never find it scary enough. You will never really resist.”
The billionaire’s lectures were also notable as a forceful display of religiosity in an industry that has historically been secular. Christianity has recently become a significant presence in some influential tech circles, in part because of ACTS 17 Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to spreading Christian principles inside the tech industry that organized the Thiel lectures.
Those with tickets were required to attend the full series of four talks in addition to respecting the off-the-record policy, the event listing said. Thiel hinted in his third lecture on Sept. 29 that the restriction was intended to draw more attention to his ideas, according to the recording. “It’s a pretty good marketing shtick if you want everyone to hear about something, not to let anyone into the room,” he said. “I’m not bragging, but I’m not totally incompetent.”
The billionaire spoke for nearly eight hours across the four private lectures about his theories of the role of technology in society and the world, according to the recordings, citing sources ranging from the Bible and theological and philosophical texts to Japanese anime.
He acknowledged that technology could have negative effects on people and society but argued that constraining its development would be more harmful.
“Maybe these things are good or bad — stopping them seems far, far worse,” he said, according to the recordings. “If the internet or the AI deranges some people but we have to shut it down altogether, that feels like out of the frying pan into the fire — a cure that’s far worse than the disease.”
A threadbare patchwork of state laws imposes limits on AI development, requiring California companies to safety-test products and preventing Texas companies from discriminating against protected classes. Despite a flurry of activity in Washington in recent years, no federal law has passed.
Thiel argued that critiques of technology and calls for stricter regulation by Thunberg and others appear to echo biblical interpretations of an Antichrist who will win power by offering the world “peace and safety” from apocalyptic destruction, according to the recordings. He previously cited Thunberg in a June interview with the New York Times
Thiel also accused Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom, who is known for popularizing the idea that humanity will eventually invent a potentially dangerous “superintelligence,” of advocating for restrictions on technology that will hold society back, according to the recordings.
In an interview, Bostrom said his views are “complex” and have evolved to focus more on the positive potential of AI. “Maybe he needs a new casting agency for his demonology,” Bostrom said of Thiel.
Thiel, whose net worth is around $27 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, also used his private talks to criticize financial regulations. He said such rules were a sign that a singular world government has begun to emerge that could be taken over by an Antichrist figure who could then use it to exert control over people.
“It’s become quite difficult to hide one’s money,” Thiel said, according to the recordings. “An incredible machinery of tax treaties, financial surveillance and sanctions architecture has been constructed.” Wealth gives the “illusion of power and autonomy,” Thiel added, according to the recordings, “but you have this sense it could be taken away at any moment.”
Thiel has deep ties to the Trump administration and was early among tech figures to endorse the president’s first run for office in 2016. He did not donate to any Republican politicians in 2024 but was part of a network of tech elites who helped install Vance, a mentee, as vice president.
Thiel has donated to GOP candidates this year, giving $850,000 to the joint fundraising committee of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), according to federal election filings.
In his lectures and the Q&As that followed each one, Thiel offered views on whether figures including President Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping, former president Joe Biden and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates were Antichrist-like figures, according to the recordings.
Biden and Xi were not charismatic enough, Thiel said, according to the recordings, and while he declared Gates a “very, very awful person,” the investor said he was not “remotely able to be the Antichrist.”
Thiel’s comments about Trump were more complex, according to the recordings. “If you, in a sincere, rational, well-reasoned way are willing to make the argument that Trump is the Antichrist, I will give you a hearing,” he said. “If you’re not willing to make that argument, maybe you have to be open to possibility that he’s at least relatively good.”
A spokesman for Thiel, Jeremiah Hall, said: “Peter doesn’t believe Trump is the Antichrist. His challenge was for Trump’s liberal critics to make that case if they want Peter to hear them out, and he knows that in practice they can’t and won’t do so.” The White House did not return a request for comment.
Thiel also talked about other powerful figures in technology. He accused fellow tech investor Marc Andreessen of “pure Silicon Valley gobbledygook propaganda,” according to the recordings, in Andreessen’s 2023 essay titled “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto” that predicted AI would rapidly transform society in many positive ways.
Thiel had kinder words about Tesla CEO Elon Musk, according to the recordings, calling the entrepreneur, who has recently praised Christianity, one of the “smarter, more thoughtful people” he knows.
The investor said he recently encouraged Musk to renege on his 2012 commitment to the Giving Pledge movement co-founded by Gates, which asks wealthy people to commit the majority of their fortune to charitable causes, according to the recordings.
“$200 billion — if you’re not going to be careful — is going to left-wing nonprofits that are going to be chosen by Bill Gates,” Thiel said he warned Musk, according to the recording, painting the philanthropist as among the malevolent forces besetting technologists.
Musk did not respond to a request for comment. Spokespeople for Andreessen and Gates did not respond to requests for comment. Reuters previously reported some of Thiel’s comments on Trump and Musk.
Thiel has long been a devout Christian, but in recent times he and other prominent Silicon Valley figures have been more vocal about their faith. The movement has gained momentum since Trump’s reelection and has become entangled with the rapid development of artificial intelligence, which some see as a potentially all-powerful technology raising deep questions about humanity.
ACTS 17, the Christian nonprofit that organized Thiel’s talks, is an acronym for Acknowledging Christ within Technology and Society. Its name also refers to the New Testament book of Acts, in which the apostle Paul travels to Athens, where he debates the Christian Gospel with philosophers.
The group’s founder, Michelle Stephens, is married to Trae Stephens, an investor at Thiel’s venture capital firm, Founders Fund, and a co-founder of military tech company Anduril.
Stephens has said that she got the idea for ACTS 17 at a 40th birthday party for her husband in 2023. At the celebration, she has said in interviews, Thiel gave a speech about Christ and miracles, prompting her to realize that ministering to elites is just as important as Christian teachings about ministering to the poor.
Stephens introduced Thiel at his first lecture on Sept. 15 as “one of the great capitalists” and also “great Christians of our time,” according to the recording. Protesters gathered outside the event, according to local news reports, with some dressed as devils or holding signs that accused Thiel himself of being the Antichrist.
When asked for comment, Stephens asked The Post to “respect” the event’s off-the-record policy and did not comment further.
Garry Tan, chief executive of the start-up incubator Y Combinator and a member of ACTS 17, has hosted events in his San Francisco home — a converted church — about the intersection of Christian faith, science and technology over the past year.
One gathering hosted by Tan in June featured Pat Gelsinger, former CEO of chipmaker Intel, and was organized by ACTS 17, according to a social post by Gelsinger. “Such a deep discussion on the ‘Holy Shift’ across life, AI, leadership and faith,” he wrote.
A spokesperson for Playground, a venture capital firm where Gelsinger is a general partner, declined to comment.
Tan said he thought Thiel’s comparison of potential overregulation of AI to the Antichrist was “thought-provoking” and a “somewhat tongue-in-cheek” use of the concept. “These are useful mental frameworks for how technology interacts with society,” he said.
Overregulation of nuclear power has worsened the climate crisis, he added. “What if we do that to the age of intelligence? The future won’t repeat, but it will rhyme.”
Oct 9, 2025
New Thinking
This young woman should be in a policy position.
She ran for Ag Commissioner in North Carolina. She got beat, but she talks sense.
The Resistance
- Are we united in this effort?
- Is the movement growing?
- Are our tactics proliferating?
- Is disapproval of the regime increasing?
Belle Explains
We took an oath to declare dangers when we found them. We’re doing that again today.
By Jerome Adams, Richard Carmona, Joycelyn Elders, Vivek Murthy, Antonia Novello and David Satcher
The writers are all former U.S. surgeons general.
As former U.S. surgeons general appointed by every Republican and Democratic president since George H.W. Bush, we have collectively spent decades in service as the Nation’s Doctor. We took two sacred oaths in our lifetimes: first, as physicians who swore to care for our patients and, second, as public servants who committed to protecting the health of all Americans.
Today, in keeping with those oaths, we are compelled to speak with one voice to say that the actions of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are endangering the health of the nation. Never before have we issued a joint public warning like this. But the profound, immediate and unprecedented threat that Kennedy’s policies and positions pose to the nation’s health cannot be ignored.
Despite differences in perspectives, we have always been united in an unwavering commitment to science and evidence-based public health. It is that shared principle that led us to this moment.
Over recent months, we have watched with increasing alarm as the foundations of our nation’s public health system have been undermined. Science and expertise have taken a back seat to ideology and misinformation. Morale has plummeted in our health agencies, and talent is fleeing at a time when we face rising threats — from resurgent infectious diseases to worsening chronic illnesses.
Repairing this damage requires a leader who respects scientific integrity and transparency, listens to experts and can restore trust to the federal health apparatus. Instead, Kennedy has become a driving force behind this crisis.
HHS is the one of the largest civilian agencies in the federal government, with a nearly $2 trillion budget and oversight of programs and agencies that touch every American family and business: Medicare, Medicaid, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and more. It requires steady, ethical leadership grounded in science.
By contrast, Kennedy has spent decades advancing dangerous and discredited claims about vaccines — most notoriously, the thoroughly discredited theory that childhood vaccines cause autism. He has promoted misinformation about the HPV vaccine, which protects against cervical cancer, and he has repeatedly misrepresented the risks of mRNA technology and coronavirus vaccines, despite their lifesaving impact during the pandemic.
This year, as the United States faced its worst measles outbreak in more than 30 years, Kennedy de-emphasized vaccination and directed agency resources toward unproven vitamin therapies. The result: months-long outbreak, three preventable deaths and the first measles-related child death in the U.S. in over two decades.
More recently, Kennedy removed every member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replacing its scientific experts with individuals who often lacked basic qualifications, some of whom are vaccine conspiracy theorists. The new committee has already begun casting doubt on the hepatitis B vaccine for newborns, despite decades of data affirming its effectiveness and strong safety profile.
Discrediting vaccines undermines one of the most important public health tools in American history. Thanks to widespread immunization, we eradicated smallpox, eliminated polio in the U.S. and prevented an estimated 1.1 million deaths and 508 million infections among children born between 1994 and 2023. Operation Warp Speed, initiated under President Donald Trump, brought lifesaving mRNA vaccines to the world in record time.
Yet Kennedy continues to ignore science and the public’s wishes. Most recently, HHS proposed new warning labels on products containing acetaminophen (Tylenol), citing a supposed link between prenatal use and autism. This move has been widely condemned by the scientific and medical communities, who have pointed out that the available research is inconclusive and insufficient to justify such a warning. In an extraordinary and unprecedented response, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other leading health organizations issued public guidance urging physicians and patients to disregard HHS’s recommendation. Instead of helping pregnant women make informed decisions during a critical period in their lives, Kennedy’s decisions risk causing confusion, fear and harm.
Rather than combating the rapid spread of health misinformation with facts and clarity, Kennedy is amplifying it. The consequences aren’t abstract. They are measured in lives lost, disease outbreaks and an erosion of public trust that will take years to rebuild.
It is essential to note that good science and public health require not only evidence but also people — the scientists, public health professionals and civil servants whose expertise protects millions of Americans. Yet under Kennedy’s leadership, the HHS workforce has been badly damaged. He has silenced and sidelined hundreds of scientists, public health officials and medical professionals, creating an atmosphere of fear and distrust. Many of the nation’s top public health professionals — people we have worked with during crises — have resigned or retired early. They describe a culture of intimidation, where scientific findings are censored, evidence is disregarded and career officials are pressured to rubber stamp conclusions that are not backed by science.
The shooting at CDC headquarters in Atlanta this year only deepened the crisis. As former commanding officers of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, we know that caring for your people is the sacred duty of a leader. Yet, in the face of tragedy, Kennedy denigrated CDC staff as corrupt and repeated conspiracy theories that contribute to the targeting of the very staff he is charged with protecting. We will not soon forget the heartbreaking calls we received from CDC employees, expressing how scared and betrayed they felt for simply doing their jobs to serve the American people.
It’s worth reminding ourselves what Kennedy puts at risk. The FDA approves lifesaving drugs and holds pharmaceutical companies to high standards of safety and effectiveness. NIH pursues and funds cutting-edge research. CDC leads in emergencies from pandemics to opioids to natural disasters. Agencies at HHS spearhead efforts to address issues regarding mental health, substance-use disorders, primary care shortages and health insurance coverage for millions of seniors, disabled individuals, and low-income Americans. Mismanaging HHS endangers America’s health, undermines national security and damages our economic resilience and international credibility.
America’s public health systems are essential to the well-being of the nation. We are clear-eyed about the fact that these systems need to be improved, including paying more attention to areas such as disease prevention, mental health and chronic illness. But reform must be grounded in truth, transparency and scientific evidence. Without this foundation, we risk not only halting progress but reversing it — costing lives in the process.
Secretary Kennedy is entitled to his views. But he is not entitled to put people’s health at risk. He has rejected science, misled the public and compromised the health of Americans. The nation deserves a health and human services secretary who is committed to scientific integrity and can restore morale and trust in our public health agencies. Having served at senior levels in government, we know that politics are complicated. But this is bigger than politics. It’s about putting the health of Americans first.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)