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<\/picture> <\/div>\nWar crimes cover-up? <\/strong>Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is finding his way into trouble due to his handling of the legally suspect Caribbean boat strikes, which have killed over 80 people so far.<\/p>\n The Washington Post\u00a0<\/em>reported on Friday that Hegseth gave verbal orders to kill everybody aboard a vessel believed to be carrying drugs off the coast of Trinidad back on September 2<\/a>. At the time of the strike, there appeared to be two survivors clinging to the wreckage; the Special Operations commander overseeing the mission ordered another strike to kill the two men.<\/p>\n Now, lawmakers are trying to investigate those who made and carried out the orders; the Trump administration seems likely to scapegoat those below Hegseth, like Adm. Frank M. Bradley (the Special Ops commander). It also seems like legislators are not going to buy the Trump administration’s arguments on the legality of the boat strikes. The Justice Department says<\/a> we are in a “non-international armed conflict” with cartel groups\u2014deemed terrorist organizations\u2014and that service members who carry out attacks are immune from prosecution, but it’s not clear that anyone is going to buy these far-fetched arguments.<\/p>\n The White House press secretary, who has been engaged in some Hegseth-culpability erasure (saying that Bradley “worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed”), is “throwing us, the service members, under the bus,” one official told<\/a> the Post.\u00a0<\/em>Another characterized it as “‘protect Pete’ bullshit.”<\/p>\n RFK Jr.’s vaccine committee meets:\u00a0<\/strong>This week, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)\u2014assembled by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2014will meet and make recommendations for how the childhood immunization schedule might be changed.\u00a0“Decisions by the group are not legally binding, but they have profound implications for whether private insurance and government assistance programs are required to cover the vaccines,” reports<\/a>\u00a0The New York Times.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Many are apoplectic about this, but the actual suggested changes appear likely to be relatively minor this time around: The committee will likely consider changing the recommendations surrounding the Hepatitis B vaccine, which is administered to all infants right after birth. It’s unlikely that there will be a massive public health fallout from this: Hep B is rather rare (though serious), and there’s really no reason to be immunizing all\u00a0<\/em>infants. If mothers have failed to receive prenatal care, their Hep B status would be unknown, but otherwise all mothers are routinely tested during pregnancy. (And even if this vaccine has been around for a while and is widely regarded as safe, parents should not be pressured into giving their newborn children unnecessary vaccines.) Other policy changes contemplated by the ACIP seem designed to restore parental confidence in vaccines, like whether vaccines should increasingly be offered as separate shots rather than as combination products.<\/p>\n Some folks in the RFK-universe have also expressed concern about the use of aluminum salts as adjuvants\u2014substances that are added to enhance the immune system response\u2014in vaccines and whether the aluminum could be linked<\/a> to autism. There’s not a ton of great data supporting this, but it’s likely the ACIP will also discuss adjuvants.<\/p>\n The American public’s post-COVID crisis of faith in public health authorities\u2014which is warranted, from my perspective\u2014has led to a few devastating outcomes, like a current surge in pertussis cases and deaths<\/a> that appear linked to vaccine refusal, and cyclical measles outbreaks<\/a>. But some of the committee’s instincts strike me as rather good: People must be met where they’re at, and public health authorities should recognize that there’s not necessarily a strict binary between “refuse all vaccines” and “follow health authorities to a tee.” Many people fall somewhere in the middle, especially post-COVID, and public health officials must recognize the damage they did when they didn’t treat the public like adults who could make their own choices for themselves.<\/p>\n Scenes from New York:\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>The strangest\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/em>headline<\/a> (and that’s saying something): “School Integration Has Lost Steam. Will Mamdani Revive It in New York?”<\/p>\n The article’s central claim is that school integration was never really completed. Beware that this is all actually a stalking horse for leveling students and abolishing programs that help the smartest learn at a faster pace. (“Already, Mr. Mamdani has taken one concrete step that advocates say could help address the issue, saying that he would phase\u00a0out a gifted and talented program<\/a> for kindergartners that has been criticized for admitting low numbers of Black and Latino children.”)<\/p>\n Also, all this aside, is\u00a0integration\u00a0<\/em>really the thing most worth fixing about our nation’s (and this city’s) public schools? What about improving school quality<\/em>\u2014phonics instruction, for starters\u2014which would presumably help all people, regardless of race? The racial makeup of a school doesn’t matter nearly as much as the school simply being decent.<\/p>\n
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