The vaccine panel hand-selected by health secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to drop federal recommendations for seasonal flu shots that contain the ethyl-mercury containing preservative thimerosal. The panel did so after hearing a misleading and cherry-picked presentation from an anti-vaccine activist.

There is extensive data from the last quarter century proving that the antiseptic preservative is safe, with no harms identified beyond slight soreness at the injection site, but none of that data was presented during today's meeting.

The significance of the vote is unclear for now. The vast majority of seasonal influenza vaccines currently used in the US—about 96 percent of flu shots in 2024–2025—do not contain thimerosal. The preservative is only included in multi-dose vials of seasonal flu vaccines, where it prevents the growth of bacteria and fungi potentially introduced as doses are withdrawn.

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The Trump phone was announced last week with a claim that the device would be made entirely in America, and people were rightly skeptical. Trump Mobile's $500 T1 Phone "is a sleek, gold smartphone engineered for performance and proudly designed and built in the United States for customers who expect the best from their mobile carrier," the Trump Organization said in a press release.

But with electronics supply chain experts casting doubt on the feasibility of designing and building an American-made phone in a short span of time, Trump Mobile's website doesn't currently promise an American-made phone. The website says the T1 is "designed with American values in mind," that it is "brought to life right here in the USA," and that there are "American hands behind every device."

The Trump Mobile website previously said, "Our MADE IN THE USA 'T1 Phone' is available for pre-order now." The phone was initially supposed to be available in August, but the date was changed to September, and now the website simply says it will be available "later this year."

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All 17 experts ousted from the federal vaccine advisory committee have spoken out about the drastic changes that anti-vaccine advocate and current US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made since taking office. Those changes include unilaterally restricting access to COVID-19 vaccines and summarily firing the entire Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which had guided federal vaccine policies for more than 60 years.

"We are deeply concerned that these destabilizing decisions, made without clear rationale, may roll back the achievements of US immunization policy, impact people’s access to lifesaving vaccines, and ultimately put US families at risk of dangerous and preventable illnesses," the fired experts write in an editorial published in JAMA.

Kennedy dismissed the entire committee on June 9, accusing the former members of lacking public trust and being "plagued with persistent conflicts of interest," despite the committee's transparent disclosure and conflict of interest policies.

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Cybersecurity practitioners are voicing concerns over a recent executive order issued by the White House that guts requirements for: securing software the government uses, punishing people who compromise sensitive networks, preparing new encryption schemes that will withstand attacks from quantum computers, and other existing controls.

The executive order (EO), issued on June 6, reverses several key cybersecurity orders put in place by President Joe Biden, some as recently as a few days before his term ended in January. A statement that accompanied Donald Trump's EO said the Biden directives "attempted to sneak problematic and distracting issues into cybersecurity policy" and amounted to "political football."

Pro-business, anti-regulation

Specific orders Trump dropped or relaxed included ones mandating (1) federal agencies and contractors adopt products with quantum-safe encryption as they become available in the marketplace, (2) a stringent Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF) for software and services used by federal agencies and contractors, (3) the adoption of phishing-resistant regimens such as the WebAuthn standard for logging into networks used by contractors and agencies, (4) the implementation new tools for securing Internet routing through the Border Gateway Protocol, and (5) the encouragement of digital forms of identity.

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Despite touting ambitious goals of making America healthier, the Trump administration on Monday revealed in court documents that it is backpedaling on a ban on cancer-causing asbestos.

Last year, under the Biden administration, the Environmental Protection Agency took a long-awaited step to ban the last type of asbestos still used in the US—chrysotile asbestos, aka "white asbestos." While use of chrysotile asbestos was on the decline, the dangerous mineral has lingered in various gaskets, brake blocks, aftermarket automotive brakes and linings, other vehicle friction products, and some diaphragms used to make sodium hydroxide and chlorine.

With the ban, the US joined over 50 other countries around the world that had already banned its use due to health risks. Generally, asbestos is known to cause lung cancer, mesothelioma, ovarian cancer, and laryngeal cancer. Asbestos exposure is linked to more than 40,000 deaths in the US alone each year, the EPA noted at the time.

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