State Senator Shares What He Has Done for Orange County at Town Hall
Skoufis gave four town halls between July 28 and 31: in the Town of Cornwall, City of Middletown, City of Port Jervis, and Town of Chester. He has held a town hall every year of his 13 years in government except during one year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Skoufis represents all of Orange County except Newberg and Montgomery.
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New York Times
2 hours ago
- New York Times
Targeting a Vaccine
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, isn't just a vaccine skeptic. He especially dislikes one type of vaccine: those that use mRNA technology, such as the first Covid shots. He has canceled nearly $500 million to make mRNA immunizations and a bird-flu vaccine that Moderna was developing. This is a relatively new technology, and it's worth remembering the moment the shots debuted for widespread use in late 2020. Three hundred thousand Americans had died from Covid. (The number eventually exceeded a million, the most of any country.) Most schools were still closed. White-collar workers were still mostly remote. Americans were in a mental health crisis. When I got my jab, I hadn't eaten in a restaurant for a year. The vaccines ended all that. Kennedy says they're no good, and he's halting government support for them. For today's newsletter, I asked Apoorva Mandavilli, who covers vaccines for The Times, to explain what's happening. What is an mRNA vaccine? Some vaccines use a weakened version of a bacterium or virus to provoke an immune response and train your body's defenses. Others use a piece of the virus that the body can easily recognize as foreign. MRNA has the instructions for making only one small part of a virus. It directs the body's cells to make that fragment, which then sets off an immune response. What is Kennedy's argument about mRNA? Kennedy echoes many people's discomfort with the speed at which the vaccines were developed. But mRNA vaccines had been studied for more than 20 years before Covid struck. His criticisms also go further than most. He has said the vaccines are ineffective because they don't prevent infection. He has also said they're dangerous, at one point referring to them as the 'deadliest' vaccines ever made. And what does the evidence show? Like all vaccines, the Covid mRNA shots have some side effects. Anecdotally, thousands of people reported problems. But extensive studies in the U.S. and elsewhere found only a few serious ones. For example, the vaccines can cause heart problems in a small fraction of young men, and one study said there were seven severe cases of shingles for every million shots administered. This is comparable to the safety record of most other vaccines. It's not surprising that we've heard more about Covid vaccines, because they were given to billions of people worldwide. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
mRNA mayhem
Good morning!🙋🏼♀️ I'm Nicole Fallert. BRB, checking out Instagram's new features. RFK Jr. is canceling mRNA vaccine development Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. revealed his agency will be cutting funding to mRNA development, the vaccine technology used in the two most common COVID-19 vaccines licensed in the U.S. What we're talking about: Messenger RNA works by instructing the body's immune system to recognize the virus and creating fighting antibodies to attack it. These vaccines contain only a fraction of the virus, so unlike some vaccines, they can't give people the disease they're trying to prevent or trigger allergies. Fort Stewart shooting is latest US military base attack in recent years An Army sergeant shot and wounded five fellow soldiers Wednesday at the Fort Stewart military base in Georgia, the latest in a growing number of violent, and sometimes deadly, incidents at U.S. military bases over the years. Officials did not provide further details on what led to the incident, but Army Brig. Gen. John Lubas said the suspect, Quornelius Radford, 28, used a personal handgun, not a military firearm. Fellow soldiers responded swiftly, tackling him to the ground. Other military bases have also experienced mass shootings in recent years. More news to know now What's the weather today? Check your local forecast here. Trump's tariffs take effect Thursday President Donald Trump's higher tariff rates of 10% to 50% on dozens of trading partners kicked in Thursday, testing his strategy for shrinking U.S. trade deficits without massive disruptions to global supply chains, higher inflation and stiff retaliation from trading partners. U.S. Customs and Border Protection began collecting the higher tariffs at 12:01 a.m. ET after weeks of suspense over Trump's final tariff rates and frantic negotiations with major trading partners that sought to lower them. Meanwhile, costs from Trump's tariff war are mounting for a wide swath of companies, including bellwethers Caterpillar, Marriott, Molson Coors and Yum Brands. USA TODAY breaks down the tariffs. Texas Democrats evacuate amid bomb threat Some of the Texas Democrats who fled their state to try to block Republicans' redistricting efforts were evacuated from an Illinois hotel where they were staying over a bomb threat. Texas House Rep. John Bucy III, one of the Democrats at the hotel, told USA TODAY that many legislators were still asleep when the alarm went off in the morning and that the group gathered outside. He said it took about two hours before everything was cleared up and they were allowed to safely reenter. Today's talkers Why are people tossing sex toys onto the court at WNBA games? The latest toss of a sex toy came during Tuesday night's game between the Indiana Fever and the Los Angeles Sparks at Arena in L.A. With two minutes remaining in the second quarter, the neon green toy landed on the court in the lane near Fever forward Sophie Cunningham, who earlier in the week went on social media to plead with fans not to throw things on the floor and posted another reaction after the game. Sparks guard Kelsey Plum took it upon herself to get rid of it by kicking it into the stands. It's the third such incident in the past two weeks where a sex toy was thrown on the court of a WNBA game — and the league is issuing warnings and ejecting fans. Photo of the day: Meet Plesionectes longicollum Paleontology researchers in Europe have identified Plesionectes longicollum, a new species of ancient marine reptile that existed nearly 183 million years ago. What did the newly discovered Jurassic sea monster eat? Nicole Fallert is a newsletter writer at USA TODAY, sign up for the email here. Want to send Nicole a note? Shoot her an email at NFallert@
USA Today
5 hours ago
- USA Today
RFK Jr. defunds mRNA vaccine research. His anti-vax policies will kill people.
It's ridiculous that Kennedy is in this position following a lifetime of gargling conspiratorial and dangerous health nonsense, but his actions are now deadly serious. In his ongoing crusade to make America sicker and dumber, Health and Human Services Secretary (I bristle every time I type that title) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has axed about $500 million in vital mRNA vaccine research funding. It's the latest salvo in Kennedy's war against science, and it's about as predictably stupid as any of the Neanderthal-brained things he has done since President Donald Trump foisted him on the American public. (My apologies to any Neanderthals offended by the comparison.) You might recall being fortunate beyond measure to receive mRNA vaccine shots during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Nobel Prize-winning vaccine development saved millions of lives globally and was hailed by Trump himself as a 'medical miracle.' 'This may be the most dangerous public health judgment that I've seen' Messenger RNA, or mRNA, vaccines are far more nimble and easier to produce and alter than traditional vaccines, so continued development is seen as crucial ‒ not just for future pandemics but for everything from responding to bioterrorism attacks to cancer prevention. Michael Osterholm, head of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told NPR this when asked about Kennedy's mRNA funding decision: 'This may be the most dangerous public health judgment that I've seen in my 50 years in this business. ... It is baseless, and we will pay a tremendous price in terms of illnesses and deaths.' Every day RFK Jr. is in charge is a bad day for science In a New York Times report, University of Pennsylvania immunologist Scott Hensley, who has been researching an mRNA flu vaccine, said: 'This is a bad day for science.' That can be said about every day as long as we have a wholly unqualified anti-vaccine nutter like Kennedy in charge of America's health. And remember, as with all things RFK Jr., his 'concerns' and 'fears' about mRNA vaccines are wholly unfounded and not supported by science. They are safe and have been studied for decades. It's ridiculous that Kennedy is in this position following a lifetime of gargling conspiratorial and dangerous health nonsense, but his actions are now deadly serious, and they're often cloaked by the daily insanity spun up by Trump himself, from tariffs to migrant cruelty to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Out go the smart people, in come the vaccine skeptics In June, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replaced them with people he handpicked (that's a red flag if I've ever seen one), including several vaccine skeptics. Now they're reexamining your children's vaccine schedule and echoing baseless fears heard in anti-vax circles for years. Kennedy is also reportedly considering getting rid of all members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which gives guidance to doctors and health insurers on preventive medicine. Dr. Thomas Lew, an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and frequent contributor for USA TODAY Opinion, told CBS News: "This will greatly damage all the work we've done in preventative care, making people sicker, and driving up costs and premiums. To put it mildly, this is extremely concerning ‒ and doing the opposite of making America healthy.' Kennedy is so bad for health that he's being sued by major medical groups Kennedy has removed the COVID-19 vaccine from the recommended immunization schedule for healthy children and pregnant women, prompting a lawsuit from leading medical groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Physicians. At the end of March, the highly respected top vaccine regulator at the Food and Drug Administration was forced out, and wrote in his resignation letter: 'It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.' Food inspections? Hand washing? What's next to come under RFK Jr.'s ax? Whether through Trump's magical branding skills or Republican malpractice or both, Kennedy was able to take on enough of a veneer of credibility to become health secretary. But he is still the same raw-milk-guzzling, roadkill-eating, vaccine-alarmist dipstick he was for all those years when his gibberish was nothing more than a punchline for jokes about conspiracy-addled loons. And he is now doing things that are making us fundamentally less safe, whether by sowing doubt about vaccines, derailing medical research or curbing food safety inspections. Kennedy's policies are almost certainly going to kill people A year ago, if you asked me and many other sane people to come up with the most irresponsible public figure to put in charge of America's health, we would have said RFK Jr. And here we are, staring down radical changes inspired not by science but by suspicion and opportunistic hearsay. The ineptitude and absurdity of the Trump administration can be almost laughable at times. But I'm convinced people will die because of Kennedy's policies, weirdo worldviews and actions. And I'm not laughing a bit. Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @ and on Facebook at
