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Vox
5 hours ago
- Vox
The crisis in American air travel, explained by Newark airport
Air travel is such a common part of modern life that it's easy to forget all the miraculous technology and communication infrastructure required to do it safely. But recent crashes, including near Washington, DC, and in San Diego — not to mention multiple near misses — have left many fliers wondering: Is it still safe to fly? That concern is particularly acute at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, which has recently experienced several frightening incidents and near misses in as radio and radar systems have gone dark. This has left an under-staffed and overworked group of air traffic controllers to manage a system moving at a frenetic pace with no room for error. Andrew Tangel, an aviation reporter for the Wall Street Journal, recently spoke to Jonathan Stewart, a Newark air traffic controller. In early May, Stewart experienced a brief loss of the systems showing him the locations of the many planes was directing. When the systems came back online, he realized there'd almost been a major crash. According to Tangel, Stewart 'sent off a fiery memo to his managers, complaining about how he was put in that situation, which he felt he was being set up for failure.' Stewart now is taking trauma leave because of the stresses of the job. After many delayed flights, United Airlines just announced that it will move some of its flights to nearby John F. Kennedy International Airport. To understand how we arrived at our current aviation crisis, Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Darryl Campbell, an aviation safety writer for The Verge. Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There's much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. You recently wrote about all these issues with flying for The Verge — and your take was that this isn't just a Newark, New Jersey, problem. It's systemic. Why? You've probably seen some of the news articles about it, and it's really only in the last couple months because everybody's been paying attention to aviation safety that people are really saying, Oh my gosh! Newark airport is losing the ability to see airplanes. They're losing radar for minutes at a time, and that's not something you want to hear when you have airplanes flying towards each other at 300 miles an hour. So it is rightfully very concerning. But the thing is, what's been happening at Newark has actually been happening for almost a decade and a half in fits and starts. It'll get really bad, and then it'll get better again. Now we're seeing a combination of air traffic control problems; we're seeing a combination of infrastructure problems, and they've got a runway that's entirely shut down. And the way that I think about it is, while Newark is its own special case today, all of the problems that it's facing, other than the runway, are problems that every single airport in the entire country is going to be facing over the next five to 10 years, and so we're really getting a preview of what's going to happen if we don't see some drastic change in the way that the air traffic control system is maintained. We heard about some of these issues after the crash at DCA outside Washington. What exactly is going on with air traffic controllers? The first problem is just one of staff retention and training. On the one hand, the air traffic control system and the people who work there are a pretty dedicated bunch, but it takes a long time to get to the point where you're actually entrusted with airplanes. It can be up to four years of training from the moment that you decide, Okay, I want to be an air traffic controller. Couple that with the fact that these are government employees and like many other agencies, they haven't really gotten the cost-of-living increases to keep pace with the actual cost of living, especially in places like the New York and New Jersey area, where it's just gone up way faster than in the rest of the country. This is bad at Newark, but you say it promises to get bad everywhere else too. The cost of living is still outpacing the replacement level at a lot of these air traffic control centers. And the washout rate is pretty high. We've seen the average staffing level at a lot of American airports get down below 85, 80 percent, which is really where the FAA wants it to be, and it's getting worse over time. At Newark in particular, it's down to about 58 percent as of the first quarter of this year. This is an emergency level of staffing at a baseline. And then on top of that, you have — in order to keep the airplanes going — people working mandatory overtime, mandatory six-days-a-week shifts, and that's accelerating that burnout that naturally happens. There's a lot of compression and a lot of bad things happening independently, but all at the same time in that kind of labor system that's really making it difficult to both hire and retain qualified air traffic controllers. These sound like very fixable problems, Darryl. Are we trying to fix them? I know former reality TV star and Fox News correspondent — and transportation secretary, in this day and age — Sean Duffy has been out to Newark. He said this: 'What we are going to do when we get the money. We have the plan. We actually have to build a brand new state-of-the-art, air traffic control system.' To his credit, they have announced some improvements on it. They've announced a lot of new funding for the FAA. They've announced an acceleration of hiring, but it's just a short-term fix. To put it in context, the FAA's budget usually allocates about $1.7 billion in maintenance fees every year. And so they've announced a couple billion more dollars, but their backlog already is $5.2 billion in maintenance. And these are things like replacing outdated systems, replacing buildings that are housing some of these radars, things that you really need to just get the system to where it should be operating today, let alone get ahead of the maintenance things that are going to happen over the next couple of years. It's really this fight between the FAA and Congress to say, We're going to do a lot today to fix these problems. And it works for a little while, but then three years down the road, the same problems are still occurring. You got that one-time shot of new money, but then the government cuts back again and again and again. And then you're just putting out one fire, but not addressing the root cause of why there's all this dry powder everywhere. People are canceling their flights into or out of Newark, but there are also all these smaller accidents we're seeing, most recently in San Diego, where six people were killed when a Cessna crashed. How should people be feeling about that? There's really no silver bullet and all the choices are not great to actively bad at baseline. Number one is you get the government to pay what it actually costs to run the air traffic control system. That empirically has not happened for decades, so I don't know that we're going to get to do it, especially under this administration, which is focused on cutting costs. The second thing is to pass on fees to fliers themselves. And it's just like the conversation that Walmart's having with tariffs — they don't want to do it. When they try to pass it on to the customer, President Trump yells at them, and it's just not a great situation. The third option is to reduce the number of flights in the sky. Part of this is that airlines are competing to have the most flights, the most convenient schedules, the most options. That's led to this logjam at places like Newark, where you really have these constraints on it. Right before all of this stuff happens, Newark was serving about 80 airplanes an hour, so 80 landings and takeoffs. Today, the FAA's actually started to admit restrictions on it, and now it's closer to 56 flights an hour, and that's probably the level that it can actually handle and not have these issues where you have planes in danger.
Vox
a day ago
- Science
- Vox
These stories could change how you feel about AI
is an editorial director at Vox overseeing the climate, tech, and world teams, and is the editor of Vox's Future Perfect section. He worked at Time magazine for 15 years as a foreign correspondent in Asia, a climate writer, and an international editor, and he wrote a book on existential risk. Here's a selection of recent headlines about artificial intelligence, picked more or less at random: Okay, not exactly at random — I did look for more doomy-sounding headlines. But they weren't hard to find. That's because numerous studies indicate that negative or fear-framed coverage of AI in mainstream media tends to outnumber positive framings. But as in so many other areas, the emphasis on the negative in artificial intelligence risks overshadowing what could go right — both in the future as this technology continues to develop and right now. As a corrective (and maybe just to ingratiate myself to our potential future robot overlords), here's a roundup of one way in which AI is already making a positive difference in three important fields. Science Whenever anyone asks me about an unquestionably good use of AI, I point to one thing: AlphaFold. After all, how many other AI models have won their creators an actual Nobel Prize? AlphaFold, which was developed by the Google-owned AI company DeepMind, is an AI model that predicts the 3D structures of proteins based solely on their amino acid sequences. That's important because scientists need to predict the shape of protein to better understand how it might function and how it might be used in products like drugs. That's known as the 'protein-folding problem' — and it was a problem because while human researchers could eventually figure out the structure of a protein, it would often take them years of laborious work in the lab to do so. AlphaFold, through machine-learning methods I couldn't explain to you if I tried, can make predictions in as little as five seconds, with accuracy that is almost as good as gold-standard experimental methods. By speeding up a basic part of biomedical research, AlphaFold has already managed to meaningfully accelerate drug development in everything from Huntington's disease to antibiotic resistance. And Google DeepMind's decision last year to open source AlphaFold3, its most advanced model, for non-commercial academic use has greatly expanded the number of researchers who can take advantage of it. Medicine You wouldn't know it from watching medical dramas like The Pitt, but doctors spend a lot of time doing paperwork — two hours of it for every one hour they actually spend with a patient, by one count. Finding a way to cut down that time could free up doctors to do actual medicine and help stem the problem of burnout. That's where AI is already making a difference. As the Wall Street Journal reported this week, health care systems across the country are employing 'AI scribes' — systems that automatically capture doctor-patient discussions, update medical records, and generally automate as much as possible around the documentation of a medical interaction. In one pilot study employing AI scribes from Microsoft and a startup called Abridge, doctors cut back daily documentation time from 90 minutes to under 30 minutes. Not only do ambient-listening AI products free doctors from much of the need to make manual notes, but they can eventually connect new data from a doctor-patient interaction with existing medical records and ensure connections and insights on care don't fall between the cracks. 'I see it being able to provide insights about the patient that the human mind just can't do in a reasonable time,' Dr. Lance Owens, regional chief medical information officer at University of Michigan Health, told the Journal. Climate A timely warning about a natural disaster can mean the difference between life and death, especially in already vulnerable poor countries. That is why Google Flood Hub is so important. An open-access, AI-driven river-flood early warning system, Flood Hub provides seven-day flood forecasts for 700 million people in 100 countries. It works by marrying a global hydrology model that can forecast river levels even in basins that lack physical flood gauges with an inundation model that converts those predicted levels into high-resolution flood maps. This allows villagers to see exactly what roads or fields might end up underwater. Flood Hub, to my mind, is one of the clearest examples of how AI can be used for good for those who need it most. Though many rich countries like the US are included in Flood Hub, they mostly already have infrastructure in place to forecast the effects of extreme weather. (Unless, of course, we cut it all from the budget.) But many poor countries lack those capabilities. AI's ability to drastically reduce the labor and cost of such forecasts has made it possible to extend those lifesaving capabilities to those who need it most. One more cool thing: The NGO GiveDirectly — which provides direct cash payments to the global poor — has experimented with using Flood Hub warnings to send families hundreds of dollars in cash aid days before an expected flood to help themselves prepare for the worst. As the threat of extreme weather grows, thanks to climate change and population movement, this is the kind of cutting-edge philanthropy. AI for good Even what seems to be the best applications for AI can come with their drawbacks. The same kind of AI technology that allows AlphaFold to help speed drug development could conceivably be used one day to more rapidly design bioweapons. AI scribes in medicine raise questions about patient confidentiality and the risk of hacking. And while it's hard to find fault in an AI system that can help warn poor people about natural disasters, the lack of access to the internet in the poorest countries can limit the value of those warnings — and there's not much AI can do to change that. But with the headlines around AI leaning so apocalyptic, it's easy to overlook the tangible benefits AI already delivers. Ultimately AI is a tool. A powerful tool, but a tool nonetheless. And like any tool, what it will do — bad and good — will be determined by how we use it.
Vox
a day ago
- Politics
- Vox
Should women be in combat?
Women weren't allowed to officially serve in combat jobs when Emelie Vanasse started her ROTC program at George Washington University. Instead, she used her biology degree to serve as a medical officer — but it still bothered Vanasse to be shut out of something just because she was a woman. 'I always felt like, who really has the audacity to tell me that I can't be in combat arms? I'm resilient, I am tough, I can make decisions in stressful environments,' Vanasse said. By 2015, the Obama administration opened all combat jobs to women, despite a plea from senior leaders in the Marine Corps to keep certain frontline units male only. Then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter told reporters that, 'We cannot afford to cut ourselves off from half the country's talents and skills.' The policy change meant that women could attend Ranger school, the training ground for the Army Rangers, an elite special operations infantry unit. When Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver became the first women to graduate from the school in 2015, Vanasse taped their photos to her desk and swore she would be next, no matter what it took. She went on to become one of the first women to serve as an Army infantry officer and graduated from Ranger school in 2017. After the Pentagon integrated women into combat jobs, the services developed specific fitness standards for jobs like infantry and armor with equal standards for men and women. Special operations and other highly specialized units require additional qualification courses that are also gender-neutral. To continue past the first day of Ranger school, candidates must pass the Ranger Physical Fitness test, for which there is only one standard. Only the semi-annual fitness tests that service members take, which vary by branch, are scaled for age and gender. Despite that, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has continued to insist that the standards were lowered for combat roles. In a podcast interview in November, Hegseth said, 'We've changed the standards in putting [women in combat], which means you've changed the capability of that unit.' (Despite Hegseth's remark, many women worked alongside male infantry units in Iraq and Afghanistan, facing the same dangerous conditions.) In the same interview, Hegseth said that he didn't believe women should serve in combat roles. In March, Hegseth ordered the military services to make the basic fitness standards for all combat jobs gender-neutral. The Army is the first service to comply: Beginning June 1, most combat specialties will require women to meet the male standard for basic physical fitness, something most women serving in active-duty combat roles are already able to do. Vanasse told Noel King on Today, Explained what it was like to attend Ranger School at a time when some men didn't want to see a woman in the ranks. What is Ranger School? I went to Ranger School on January 1, 2017. I woke up at 3 am that day in Fort Benning, Georgia, shaved my head, a quarter-inch all the way around, just like the men. Took my last hot shower, choked down some French toast, and then I drove to Camp Rogers, and I remember being very acutely aware of the pain that the school would inflict, both physically and mentally. I was also very aware that there was kind of half of this population of objective graders that just kind of hated my guts for even showing up. They hated you for showing up because you're a woman? Back in 2016 and 2017, it was so new to have women in Ranger School. I used to think, I don't have to just be good, I have to be lucky. I have to get a grader who is willing to let a woman pass. I had dark times at that school. I tasted real failure. I sat under a poncho in torrential rain and I shivered so hard my whole body cramped. I put on a ruck that weighed 130 pounds and I crawled up a mountain on my hands and knees. I hallucinated a donut shop in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains and I cried one morning when someone told me I had to get out of my sleeping bag. But I think all of those experiences are quintessential Ranger School experiences. They're what everyone goes through there. And I think the point of the school is that failure, that suffering, it's not inherently bad, right? In a way, I like to think Ranger School was the most simplistic form of gender integration that ever could have happened because if I was contributing to the team, there was no individual out there that really had the luxury of disliking or excluding me. When you wanted to give up, what did you tell yourself? What was going through your head? I don't think I ever considered quitting Ranger School. I just knew that it was something that I could get through and had the confidence to continue. I had a thought going in of What could be so bad that would make me quit? and the answer that I found throughout the school was, Nothing. Did you ever feel like they had lowered the standards for you compared to the men who were alongside you? No. Never. I did the same thing that the men did. I did the same Ranger physical fitness test that all the men took. I ran five miles in 40 minutes. I did 49 pushups, 59 situps, six pullups. I rucked 12 miles in three hours with a 45-pound ruck. I climbed the same mountains. I carried the same stuff. I carried the same exact packing list they did, plus 250 tampons for some reason. At no point were the standards lowered for me. Whose idea was it for you to carry 250 tampons? It was not mine! It was a misguided effort to have everyone very prepared for the first women coming through Ranger School. In Ranger School, there's only one standard for the fitness test. Everybody has to meet it, and that allows you to get out of Ranger School and say, 'Look, fellas, I took the same test as the men and I passed.' Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is saying that Army combat jobs should only have one standard of fitness for both men and women. And there's part of me that thinks: Doesn't that allow the women who meet the standards to be like, look, We met the same standards as the men. Nothing suspicious here, guys. I think gender-neutral standards for combat arms are very important. It should not be discounted how important physical fitness is for combat arms. I think there's nuance in determining what is a standard that is useful for combat arms, right? But it's an important thing. And there have been gender-neutral standards for combat arms. In things like Infantry Basic Officer Leader Course, which is the initial basic training for officers going into the infantry, there are gender-neutral standards that you have to meet: You have to run five miles in 40 minutes, you have to do a 12-mile ruck. All of those standards have remained the same. Pete Hegseth is specifically referring to the Army Combat Physical Fitness test, and to a certain extent I agree, it should be gender-neutral for combat arms. But I think there's nuance in determining what exactly combat arms entails physically. Secretary Hegseth has a lot to say about women, and sometimes he says it directly and sometimes he alludes to it. What he often does is he talks about lethality as something that is critically important for the military. He says the Army in particular needs more of it, but he never really defines what he means by lethality. What is the definition as you understand it? There's a component of lethality that is physical fitness and it should not be discounted. But lethality extends far beyond that, right? It's tactical skills, it's decision-making, it's leadership, it's grit, it's the ability to build trust and instill purpose and a group of people. It's how quick a fire team in my platoon can react to contact. How well my SAW [Squad Automatic Weapon] gunner can shoot, how quickly I can employ and integrate combat assets, how fast I can maneuver a squad. All of those things take physical fitness, but they certainly take more than just physical fitness. There's more to lethality than just how fast you can run and how many pushups you can do. To an average civilian like myself, I hear lethality and I think of the dictionary definition, the ability to kill. Does this definition of lethality involve the ability, physically and emotionally and psychologically, to kill another person? Absolutely. And so when Secretary Hegseth casts doubt on the ability of women to be as lethal as men, do you think there's some stuff baked in there that maybe gets to his idea of what women are willing and able to do? Yes, possibly. I think the [secretary's] message is pretty clear. According to him, the women in combat arms achieved success because the standards were lowered for them. We were never accommodated and the standards were never lowered. What's your response, then, to hearing the Secretary of Defense say women don't belong in combat? It makes me irate, to be honest. Like, it's just a complete discounting of all of the accomplishments of the women that came before us. Do you think that if Secretary Hegseth could take a look at what you did in Ranger School, and he could hear from you that there were no second chances, there were no excuses, there was no babying, the men didn't treat you nicer just because you were a woman, do you think he'd change his mind about women serving in combat? I'd like to think he would, but I've met plenty of people whose minds couldn't be changed by reality. I'd love it if he went to Ranger School. He has a lot of opinions about Ranger School for someone who does not have his Ranger tab. What is a Ranger tab, for civilians? A Ranger tab is what you receive upon graduating Ranger School, which means you have passed all three phases and you are now Ranger-qualified in the military. You have that. And the Secretary of Defense doesn't.
Vox
2 days ago
- Health
- Vox
RFK Jr. is looking in the wrong place for autism's cause
covers health for Vox, guiding readers through the emerging opportunities and challenges in improving our health. He has reported on health policy for more than 10 years, writing for Governing magazine, Talking Points Memo, and STAT before joining Vox in 2017. Let's start with one unambiguous fact: More children are diagnosed with autism today than in the early 1990s. According to a sweeping 2000 analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a range of 2–7 per 1,000, or roughly 0.5 percent of US children, were diagnosed with autism in the 1990s. That figure has risen to 1 in 35 kids, or roughly 3 percent. The apparent rapid increase caught the attention of people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who assumed that something had to be changing in the environment to drive it. In 2005, Kennedy, a lawyer and environmental activist at the time, authored an infamous essay in Rolling Stone that primarily placed the blame for the increased prevalence of autism on vaccines. (The article was retracted in 2011 as more studies debunked the vaccine-autism connection.) More recently, he has theorized that a mysterious toxin introduced in the late 1980s must be responsible. Now, as the nation's top health official leading the Department of Health and Human Services, Kennedy has declared autism an 'epidemic.' And, in April, he launched a massive federal effort to find the culprit for the rise in autism rates, calling for researchers to examine a range of suspects: chemicals, molds, vaccines, and perhaps even ultrasounds given to pregnant mothers. 'Genes don't cause epidemics. You need an environmental toxin,' Kennedy said in April when announcing his department's new autism research project. He argued that too much money had been put into genetic research — 'a dead end,' in his words — and his project would be a correction to focus on environmental causes. 'That's where we're going to find an answer.' But according to many autism scientists I spoke to for this story, Kennedy is looking in exactly the wrong place. Three takeaways from this story Experts say the increase in US autism rates is mostly explained by the expanding definitions of the condition, as well as more awareness and more screening for it. Scientists have identified hundreds of genes that are associated with autism, building a convincing case that genetics are the most important driver of autism's development — not, as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has argued, a single environmental toxin. Researchers fear Kennedy's fixation on outside toxins could distract from genetic research that has facilitated the development of exciting new therapies that could help those with profound autism. Autism is a complex disorder with a range of manifestations that has long defied simple explanations, and it's unlikely that we will ever identify a single 'cause' of autism. But scientists have learned a lot in the past 50 years, including identifying some of the most important risk factors. They are not, as Kennedy suggests, out in our environment. They are written into our genetics. What appeared to be a massive increase in autism was actually a byproduct of better screening and more awareness. 'The way the HHS secretary has been walking about his plans, his goals, he starts out with this basic assumption that nothing worthwhile has been done,' Helen Tager-Flusberg, a psychologist at Boston University who has worked with and studied children with autism for years, said. 'Genes play a significant role. We know now that autism runs in families… There is no single underlying factor. Looking for that holy grail is not the best approach.' Doctors who treat children with autism often talk about how they wish they could provide easy answers to the families. The answers being uncovered through genetics research may not be simple per se, but they are answers supported by science. Kennedy is muddying the story, pledging to find a silver-bullet answer where likely none exists. It's a false promise — one that could cause more anxiety and confusion for the very families Kennedy says he wants to help. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a news conference at the Department of Health and Human Services in mid-April to discuss this agency's efforts to determine the cause of autism 'epidemic' that wasn't Autism was first described in 1911, and for many decades, researchers and clinicians confused the social challenges and language development difficulties common among those with the condition for a psychological issue. Some child therapists even blamed the condition on bad parenting. But in 1977, a study discovered that identical twins, who share all of their DNA, were much more likely to both be autistic than fraternal twins, who share no more DNA than ordinary siblings. It marked a major breakthrough in autism research, and pushed scientists to begin coalescing around a different theory: There was a biological factor. At the time, this was just a theory — scientists lacked the technology to prove those suspicions at the genetic level. And clinicians were also still trying to work out an even more fundamental question: What exactly was autism? For a long time, the criteria for diagnosing a person with autism was strictly based on speech development. But clinicians were increasingly observing children who could acquire basic language skills but still struggled with social communication — things like misunderstanding nonverbal cues or taking figurative language literally. Psychologists gradually broadened their definition of autism from a strict and narrow focus on language, culminating in a 2013 criteria that included a wide range of social and emotional symptoms with three subtypes — the autism spectrum disorder we're familiar with today. Along the way, autism had evolved from a niche diagnosis for the severely impaired to something that encompassed far more children. It makes sense then, that as the broad criteria for autism expanded, more and more children would meet it, and autism rates would rise. That's precisely what happened. And it means that the 'epidemic' that Kennedy and other activists have been fixated on is mostly a diagnostic mirage. Historical autism data is spotty and subject to these same historical biases, but if you look at the prevalence of profound autism alone — those who need the highest levels of support — a clearer picture emerges. (There is an ongoing debate in the autism community about whether to use the terminology of 'profound autism' or 'high support needs' for those who have the most severe form of the condition.) In the '80s and '90s, low-support needs individuals would have been less likely to receive an autism diagnosis given the more restrictive criteria and less overall awareness of the disorder, meaning that people with severe autism likely represented most of the roughly 0.5 percent of children diagnosed with autism in the 1990s. (One large analysis from Atlanta examining data from 1996 found that 68 percent of kids ages 3 to 10 diagnosed with autism had an IQ below 70, the typical cutoff for intellectual disability.) By 2025, when about 3 percent of children are being diagnosed with autism, about one in four of those diagnosed are considered to have high-support needs autism, those with most severe manifestation of the condition. That would equal about 0.8 percent of all US children — which would be a fairly marginal increase from autism rates 30 years ago. Or look at it another way: In 2000, as many as 60 percent of the people being diagnosed with autism had an intellectual disability, one of the best indicators of high-support needs autism. In 2022, that percentage was less than 40 percent. As a recently published CDC report on autism prevalence among young children concluded, the increase in autism rates can largely be accounted for by stronger surveillance and more awareness among providers and parents, rather than a novel toxin or some other external factor driving an increase in cases. Other known risk factors — like more people now having babies later in their life, given that parental age is linked to a higher likelihood of autism — are more likely to be a factor than anything Kennedy is pointing at, experts say. 'It's very clear it's not going to be one environmental toxin,' said Alison Singer, founder of the Autism Science Foundation and parent of a child with profound autism. 'If there were a smoking gun, I think they would have found it.' The 'dead end' that's actually given us a clearer understanding of autism's complexity While Kennedy has fixated on vaccines and environmental influences, scientists have gained more precision in mapping human genetics and identifying the biological mechanisms that appear to be a primary cause of autism. And that not only helps us understand why autism develops, but potentially puts long-elusive therapies within reach. It began with an accident in the 1990s. Steven Scherer, now director of the Center for Applied Genomics at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, began his career in the late 1980s trying to identify the gene that caused cystic fibrosis — in collaboration with Francis Collins, who went on to lead the Human Genome Project that successfully sequenced all of the DNA in the human genome in the early 2000s. Scherer and Collins's teams focused on chromosome 7, identified as a likely target by the primitive genetic research available at the time, a coincidence that would reorient Scherer's career just a few years later, putting him on the trail of autism's genetic roots. After four years, the researchers concluded that one gene within chromosome 7 caused cystic fibrosis. Soon after Scherer helped crack the code on cystic fibrosis in the mid-1990s, two parents from California called him: He was the world's leading expert on chromosome 7, and recent tests had revealed that their children with autism had a problem within that particular chromosome. That very same week, Scherer says, he read the findings of a study by a group at Oxford University, which had looked at the chromosomes of families with two or more kids with autism. They, too, had identified problems within chromosome 7. 'So I said, 'Okay, we're going to work on autism,'' Scherer told me. He helped coordinate a global research project, uniting his Canadian lab with the Oxford team and groups in the US to run a database that became the Autism Genome Project, still the world's largest repository of genetic information of people with autism. They had a starting point — one chromosome — but a given chromosome contains hundreds of genes. And humans have, of course, 45 other chromosomes, any of which conceivably might play a role. So over the years, they collected DNA samples from thousands upon thousands of people with autism, sequenced their genes, and then searched for patterns. If the same gene is mutated or missing across a high percentage of autistic people, it goes on the list as potentially associated with the condition. Scientists discovered that autism has not one genetic factor, but many — further evidence that this is a condition of complex origin, in which multiple variables likely play a role in its development, rather than one caused by a single genetic error like sickle-cell anemia. Here is one way to think about how far we have come: Joseph Buxbaum, the director of the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, entered autism genetics research 35 years ago. He recalls scientists being hopeful that they might identify a half dozen or so genes linked to autism. They have now found 500 genes — and Buxbaum told me he believed they might find a thousand before they are through. These genetic factors continue to prove their value in predicting the onset of autism: Scherer pointed to one recent study in which the researchers identified people who all shared a mutation in the SHANK3 gene, one of the first to be associated with autism, but who were otherwise unalike: They were not related and came from different demographic backgrounds. Nevertheless, they had all been diagnosed with autism. Researchers analyze the brain activity of a 14-year-old boy with autism as part of a University of California San Francisco study that involves intensive brain imaging of kids and their parents who have a rare chromosome disruption connected to autism. The study, the Simons Variation in Individuals Project, is a genetics-first approach to studying autism spectrum and related neurodevelopmental disorders. Michael Macor/San Francisco Chronicle via The Associated Press Precisely how much genetics contributes to the development of autism remains the subject of ongoing study. By analyzing millions of children with autism and their parents for patterns in diagnoses, multiple studies have attributed about 80 percent of a person's risk of developing autism to their inherited genetic factors. But of course 80 percent is not 100 percent. We don't yet have the full picture of how or why autism develops. Among identical twins, for example, studies have found that in most cases, if one twin has high-support needs autism, the other does as well, affirming the genetic effect. But there are consistently a small minority of cases — 5 and 10 percent of twin pairs, Scherer told me — in which one twin has relatively low-support needs while the one requires a a high degree of support for their autism. Kennedy is not wholly incorrect to look at environmental factors — researchers theorize that autism may be the result of a complex interaction between a person's genetics and something they experience in utero. Scientists in autism research are exploring the possible influence when, for example, a person's mother develops maternal diabetes, high blood sugar that persists throughout pregnancy. And yet even if these other factors do play some role, the researchers I spoke to agree that genetics is, based on what we know now, far and away the most important driver. 'We need to figure out how other types of genetics and also environmental factors affect autism's development,' Scherer said. 'There could be environmental changes…involved in some people, but it's going to be based on their genetics and the pathways that lead them to be susceptible.' While the precise contours of Health Department's new autism research project is still taking shape, Kennedy has that researchers at the National Institutes of Health will collect data from federal programs such as Medicare and Medicaid and somehow use that information to identify possible environmental exposures that lead to autism. He initially pledged results by September, a timeline that, as outside experts pointed out, may be too fast to allow for a thorough and thoughtful review of the research literature. Kennedy has since backed off on that deadline, promising some initial findings in the fall but with more to come next year. RFK Jr.'s autism commission research risks the accessibility of groundbreaking autism treatments If Kennedy were serious about moving autism science forward, he would be talking more about genetics, not dismissing them. That's because genetics is where all of the exciting drug development is currently happening. A biotech firm called Jaguar Gene Therapy has received FDA approval to conduct the first clinical trial of a gene therapy for autism, focused on SHANK3. The treatment, developed in part by one of Buxbaum's colleagues, is a one-time injection that would replace a mutated or missing SHANK3 gene with a functional one. The hope is that the therapy would improve speech and other symptoms among people with high-needs autism who have also been diagnosed with a rare chromosomal deletion disorder called Phelan-McDermid syndrome; many people with this condition also have Autism spectrum disorder. The trial will begin this year with a few infant patients, 2 years old and younger, who have been diagnosed with autism. Jaguar eventually aims to test the therapy on adults over 18 with autism in the future. Patients are supposed to start enrolling this year in the trial, which is focused on first establishing the treatment's safety; if it proves safe, another round of trials would start to rigorously evaluate its effectiveness. 'This is the stuff that three or four years ago sounded like science fiction,' Singer said. 'The conversation has really changed from Is this possible? to What are the best methods to do it? And that's based on genetics.' Researchers at Mount Sinai have also experimented with delivering lithium to patients and seeing if it improves their SHANK3 function. Other gene therapies targeting other genes are in earlier stages of development. Some investigators are experimenting with CRISPR technology, the revolutionary new platform for gene editing, to target the problematic genes that correspond to the onset of autism. But these scientists fear that their work could be slowed by Kennedy's insistence on hunting for environmental toxins, if federal dollars are instead shifted into his new project. They are already trying to subsist amid deep budget cuts across the many funding streams that support the institutions where they work. 'Now we have this massive disruption where instead of doing really key experiments, people are worrying about paying their bills and laying off their staff and things,' Scherer said. 'It's horrible.' For the families of people with high-needs autism, Kennedy's crusade has stirred conflicting emotions. Alison Singer, the leader of the Autism Science Foundation, is also the parent of a child with profound autism. When I spoke with her, I was struck by the bind that Kennedy's rhetoric has put people like her and her family in. Singer told me profound autism has not received enough federal support in the past, as more emphasis was placed on individuals who have low support needs included in the expanding definitions of the disorder, and so she appreciates Kennedy giving voice to those families. She believes that he is sincerely empathetic toward their predicament and their feeling that the mainstream discussion about autism has for too long ignored their experiences in favor of patients with lower support needs. But she worries that his obsession with environmental factors will stymie the research that could yield breakthroughs for people like her child.
Vox
2 days ago
- Politics
- Vox
Trump just threw one of his most powerful allies under the bus
is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court. On Thursday evening, President Donald Trump publicly split with the Federalist Society, the powerful conservative lawyers' group that he relied on to select judges in his first term. Thanks in no small part to Trump, a majority of the Supreme Court justices are associated with the Federalist Society, as are dozens or even hundreds of other federal judges. But now, Trump apparently regrets his earlier partnership with the Society. SCOTUS, Explained Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. 'I am so disappointed in The Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave me on numerous Judicial Nominations,' Trump posted on Truth Social. He blames his decision to ally with the Society on the fact that he was 'new to Washington' when he first became president, 'and it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges.' He also names Leonard Leo, the co-chair of the Society's board, a 'sleazebag' who 'probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions.' It's a bold move by Trump, because the Federalist Society derives much of its power from the fact that so many of its members have lifetime appointments to the federal bench. Promising conservative lawyers want to join — and pay dues — to the Society because it was seen as a pipeline to power. And the fact that its members have been able to shape policy on everything from abortion to race to student loans made it the premier right-wing legal group. That's not to say Trump will destroy the Society's grip on the judiciary. In fact, he may have inadvertently strengthened it. Older Federalist Society judges and justices may be less likely to retire under Trump now that they know that he's unlikely to rely on the Society to choose their replacement. And sitting Federalist Society judges and justices may view the Trump administration's legal arguments with greater skepticism. Trump's breakup with the Federalist Society isn't particularly surprising. At a recent Federalist Society conference on executive power, many of the speakers denounced Trump's incompetence and warned that it would prevent conservatives from achieving lasting policy victories during this administration. Some argued that Trump's signature economic policy, his tariffs, are illegal. And Trump is right that Leo, and by extension, the Federalist Society and its judges, have 'separate ambitions' that do not always align with Trump or the MAGA movement. While the Federalist Society certainly has plenty of members who are staunch MAGA loyalists, many of its judges still adhere to the more libertarian and less explicitly authoritarian approach that dominated the Republican Party before Trump took it over. Speakers at the recent Federalist Society conference spoke openly about plans to diminish Trump's power and shift authority toward the judiciary. Nor did the Federalist Society's judges rally behind Trump's failed attempt to overturn former President Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election. Some of them even actively pushed back – Trump-appointed Judge Stephanos Bibas's opinion rejecting one of Trump's attempts to overturn that election begins with the line 'free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy,' and rejects Trump's claims due to a lack of 'specific allegations and then proof.' In his Thursday night post announcing that he and Leo are never getting back together, Trump pointed to a recent decision by the US Court of International Trade, which struck down an array of Trump's second-term tariffs, as a triggering event. Notably, one of these three judges, Timothy Rief, is a Trump appointee. So it appears that one of the most fruitful partnerships in the conservative legal movement's history is now over. This divorce is likely to diminish both Trump's power and that of the Society in the long run. Trump is likely to pay a big price for breaking with one of America's most powerful institutions The Federalist Society is America's most powerful legal organization in large part because it has such a comprehensive network of right-leaning and right-wing lawyers. Top law students often join the Federalist Society because the Society can help place them in clerkships with some of the most prestigious judges. The Society's events give young lawyers a chance to network with senior members of their profession who can connect them with other hard-to-obtain job opportunities. And, because senior lawyers often have a decades-long relationship with the Society, the Society can easily vet them for ideological loyalty if they seek a political appointment such as a federal judgeship. Related The Federalist Society is surprisingly ambivalent about Trump This network also means that the Federalist Society has historically provided a valuable service to Republican presidents. If a federal judicial vacancy arises in, say, Idaho, the president and his top advisers are unlikely to know which members of the Idaho bar are both highly skilled and ideologically committed to the GOP's goals. But the Federalist Society has both a student and a lawyers' chapter in Idaho. So it can identify highly qualified right-wing candidates for the bench and pass that information on to the White House. Without access to this network, Trump is likely to struggle to identify nominees as quickly as he did in his first term, and there are already signs that he's relying on alternative networks to find his second term judges — a shift that may diminish the Society's influence in the long run, because lawyers hoping for a political appointment will no longer gain an advantage by joining it. When Trump announced his first slate of second-term nominees in early May, for example, half of them were lawyers in GOP-controlled state attorney general's offices. These offices might provide Trump with a stream of loyal nominees in red states, but it is unclear how he will identify judicial candidates in blue states where elected officials are unlikely to fill their offices with lawyers sympathetic to the MAGA movement. Trump's split with the Federalist Society may prove to be one of the most consequential legal developments of his second term. The Federalist Society also provides right-of-center lawyers with a forum where they can debate their disagreements and often achieve consensus. Once such a consensus is reached, moreover, Federalist Society events help popularize that consensus among legal conservatives, while also communicating to ambitious young lawyers which policy positions they need to hold in order to secure the Society's aid when those lawyers seek political appointments. This means that judges chosen by the Society tend to have uniform views on a wide range of legal questions, even if those views are unusual within the legal profession as a whole. The Federalist Society, for example, has long popularized a theory known as the 'unitary executive,' which would give the president full control over all federal agencies, even if Congress tried to give those agencies' leaders a degree of independence. This theory played a central role in the Republican justices' shocking decision in Trump v. United States (2024), which established that the president has broad authority to use his official powers to commit crimes. If Trump stops drawing from the Federalist Society when he selects judges, in other words, his second-term nominees are likely to hold views that diverge from those of many sitting Republican judges, even if those nominees might broadly be described as 'conservative.' And that could set back the conservative cause. Before the Federalist Society's founding, for example, President Richard Nixon picked four justices that he believed to be conservative. But three of them joined the Court's abortion rights decision in Roe v. Wade (1973), and Nixon-appointed Justice Lewis Powell wrote a seminal opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), which kept affirmative action alive for several decades. It's also possible that many sitting Federalist Society judges and justices will view Trump with greater skepticism now that he's no longer aligned with an organization that they closely identify with. Because the Federalist Society has been a central part of many lawyers' and judges' professional life for decades, these senior professionals often identify strongly with the Society and react negatively to perceived slights against it. In 2020, for example, the US Judicial Conference Committee on Codes of Conduct withdrew a proposal to discourage federal judges from belonging to ideological bar associations like the Federalist Society after that proposal triggered widespread backlash among judges aligned with the Society. When it comes to Trump, many of the lawsuits challenging his tariffs are backed by conservative legal organizations that historically have aligned with the Federalist Society; his attacks on the Federalist Society could make such organizations more likely to challenge him.
