Thursday, July 03, 2025
What Is Aphelion? Earth Reaches Its Greatest Distance From the Sun on Thursday - The New York Times
Earth Is About to Reach Its Greatest Distance From the Sun
"Our planet whirls around the sun in an ellipse, rather than a circle. On Thursday the planet will reach its farthest point from its star, known as aphelion.
This article was originally published in 2024 and updated to reflect 2025’s aphelion date and time.
It’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere. But while you indulge in long, balmy days at the beach or elsewhere in nature, you may be surprised to learn that our planet is creeping toward its greatest distance from the sun, a point known as aphelion.
Here’s what to know about this celestial event that happens every year as the summer is underway.
What causes aphelion and when does it happen?
Earth reaches aphelion every July, and this year it occurs on Thursday at 3:55 p.m. Eastern time.
That Earth has an aphelion is a result of its orbit being elliptical, rather than circular. According to Kirby Runyon, a geologist at the Planetary Science Institute, all planets in the solar system travel in elongated circles around the sun, rather than perfect ones. And it’s most likely true for worlds around other stars, too.
The culprit for all of these elliptical orbits is gravity.
“All the planets tend to jostle each other around,” pulling their orbits from perfect circles, Dr. Runyon said. “It’s literally this chaotic tug of war between small amounts of gravitational influence that the planets have on each other.”
Jupiter exerts the most influence because it is the most massive planet in our solar system, he added.
How much an orbit deviates from a perfect circle is measured by its eccentricity. The higher the eccentricity, the more elliptical the orbit. For some bodies in the solar system, this is quite pronounced: Mars, with an eccentricity of 0.094, ranges from 129 to 155 million miles away from the sun. Pluto, whose distance from the sun varies from 2.8 to 4.5 billion miles, is even more eccentric at 0.244.
On the other hand, our home planet has an eccentricity of only 0.017. “Earth’s orbit is fairly circular,” said Larry Wasserman, an astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz. “If you drew it on a piece of paper to scale, you probably wouldn’t notice it was slightly flattened.”
How far are we from the sun at aphelion?
At aphelion, Earth’s distance from the sun is about 94.5 million miles. Six months later, at the start of January in the winter, Earth is at its closest point to the sun at 91.5 million miles. This location is known as perihelion.
From the ground, three million miles may seem like a lot, but it doesn’t amount to much on astronomical scales. The size of the sun in the sky appears about 4 percent smaller at aphelion than at perihelion, an effect that is too small to be noticed without precise instruments, Dr. Wasserman said.
Does aphelion affect temperatures on Earth?
A common misconception is that Earth’s varying distance from the sun is what gives rise to the seasons. It does have a small impact: We get 7 percent less sunlight at aphelion compared with the amount we are exposed to at perihelion, leading to slightly milder summers and winters in the Northern Hemisphere.
But that effect is offset by Earth’s tilt on its axis, meaning that at different points along its orbit the hemispheres slant either toward or away from the sun.
At aphelion, which occurs just weeks after a solstice, the northern half of the planet is leaning toward the sun, resulting in the longer, hotter days of summer even though Earth is farther away.
And at perihelion in January, the Northern Hemisphere tilts away from the sun, making the days shorter and the temperatures colder.
In the Southern Hemisphere, this impact is reversed. Because the hemisphere leans away from the sun when Earth is at aphelion, southern winters are a little cooler than they would be if our orbit were perfectly circular. Then as the planet approaches perihelion in January, the hemisphere’s lean toward the sun, making southern summers slightly warmer.
For planets with more exaggerated eccentricities, the changing distance can have a bigger impact. Sunlight on Mars, for example, can vary as much as 31 percent along its orbit.
It is a coincidence that Earth reaches aphelion close to when its tilt toward the sun is greatest. And this will eventually change, as other planets in the solar system gravitationally yank and squeeze Earth’s orbit in the future. Its eccentricity is currently decreasing, meaning its path around the sun is becoming more circular.
What would happen if there were no aphelion?
If our planetary orbit were a perfect circle, the seasons’ lengths would be exactly the same — right now, spring and summer are a few days longer than fall and winter in the Northern Hemisphere — but not much else would shift. “If, somehow, we snapped our magic fingers and Earth’s orbit became more circular, it’d probably be fine,” Dr. Runyon said.
But if something made Earth’s orbit grow more eccentric, the consequences could be catastrophic. Seasons in the Southern Hemisphere would become too extreme — summers would be unbearably hot, and winters would be intolerably cold. This could lead to crop failures and freezes.
“If it got really bad,” Dr. Runyon said, “advanced civilization would not be possible.”
For now, be thankful our planet is in a sweet spot.
Katrina Miller is a science reporter for The Times based in Chicago. She earned a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago."
How the Risks of Drinking Increase in Older Age
How the Risks of Drinking Increase in Older Age
“Alcohol consumption poses greater risks for older adults, even with the same amount of drinks. Older adults have less muscle mass and retain less water, increasing blood alcohol concentration and the risk of intoxication and severe injury from falls. Additionally, alcohol can exacerbate chronic conditions, interact negatively with medications, and worsen hangovers.
Alcohol can present health problems for even light or occasional drinkers.
Drinking is harmful to your health at any age. But as you get older, the risks become greater — even with the same amount of drinks.
Alcohol affects “virtually every organ system in the body,” including the muscles and blood vessels, digestive system, heart and brain, said Sara Jo Nixon, the director of the Center for Addiction Research & Education at the University of Florida. “It particularly impacts older adults, because there’s already some decline or impact in those areas.”
“There’s a whole different set” of health risk factors for older drinkers, said Paul Sacco, a professor of social work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore who studies substance use and aging. People might not realize that the drinks they used to tolerate well are now affecting their brains and bodies differently, he said.
Alcohol can present new problems in older age — particularly at 65 and up — for even light or occasional drinkers. Older adults tend to have less muscle mass and retain less water in their tissues compared with younger people, which can increase blood alcohol concentration, said Aaron White, a senior advisor at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. This means it takes fewer drinks for older people to feel intoxicated, and heightens the risk of severe injury from falls.
According to Dr. Nixon’s research, older people also show deficits in working memory at lower blood alcohol concentrations than younger drinkers. In another study Dr. Nixon worked on, some older adults in driving simulations showed signs of impairment after less than one drink.
Drinking alcohol can increase the risk of developing chronic conditions like dementia, diabetes, cancer, hypertension and heart disease. But it can also worsen outcomes for the majority of older adults already living with chronic disease, said Aryn Phillips, an assistant professor of health policy and administration at the University of Illinois Chicago who studies alcohol and aging.
Drug interactions also come into play. Mixing alcohol with prescription medicines that older adults commonly take, such as those for treating diabetes or hypertension, can make the medications less effective or cause harmful side effects, like ulcers or an irregular heart beat. Benzodiazepines, when combined with alcohol, can slow breathing and act as a powerful sedative. Even over-the-counter medication can be dangerous. Aspirin, which some older people take to reduce cardiovascular disease risk (despite the potential side effects), can lead to severe gastrointestinal bleeding, which older people are already at higher risk for, said Michael Wheeler, a professor of nutrition science at East Carolina University who researches alcohol-induced liver disease.
Some older adults also contend that hangovers worsen with age. While there’s no strong scientific evidence supporting this, the hangovers may seem worse because alcohol can exacerbate other symptoms of aging, like poor sleep, Dr. White said.
How to Reduce Your Risk
Experts said alcohol use among older adults appears to have risen in recent years, though national trends are difficult to track outside of self-reported surveys. A federal survey from 2023 found that 12 percent of adults 65 and older — about seven million people — reported drinking at least four or five drinks in a sitting in the previous month.
After decades of mixed messaging around alcohol’s health harms and benefits, recent studies have made it clear that no amount of alcohol is good for you. Still, Dr. Sacco acknowledged that “drinking has meaning for people,” and whether to moderate or quit altogether “is a call that you have to make in consultation with your doctor and your loved ones.”
But what is a “safe” amount of drinking for the older set? That’s difficult to say. The available studies attempting to establish exactly how much alcohol it takes to drive up health risks in older populations use different benchmarks for moderate drinking, making it tricky to draw a consensus. “Even as an expert in this field, I understand the confusion,” Dr. Wheeler said.
Dr. Nixon advised that adults 65 and older should consume no more than one drink per day and no more than seven per week. (The N.I.A.A.A. does not establish guidelines around alcohol consumption, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines moderate drinking for adults of all ages as two drinks or less per day for men, and one drink or less per day for women.)
All the experts emphasized that older people should pay close attention to their bodies’ response to alcohol, and to stop drinking or cut back if they feel like it’s affecting them more physically or cognitively.
“If you’re not currently drinking, don’t start,” Dr. Phillips said. And if you do drink, be honest with your doctor about your consumption, and do it in a safe environment, knowing that your tolerance may not be what it used to be, she added.
“The answer doesn’t have to be abstinence,” Dr. Nixon said. But healthy aging “probably does not include multiple drinks a day for most people.”
We Know Exactly Where the Supreme Court’s Change of Heart Has Come From
We Know Exactly Where the Supreme Court’s Change of Heart Has Come From
“The Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. CASA, limiting nationwide injunctions, is seen as a partisan move to empower a Republican president. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent argues this ruling allows arbitrary power, disproportionately impacting the poor and unrepresented. The author suggests this decision, coupled with other actions like masked ICE officers, contributes to a culture of impunity and a potential American-style presidential dictatorship.
The heart of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent in Trump v. CASA is that the Constitution does not permit the exercise of arbitrary power and is certainly not a document that gives to any single individual the authority to rewrite the law.
This may seem to be a strange dissent to issue in a case that deals narrowly with the legality of nationwide injunctions, the practice by which federal courts block the application of laws and executive orders for the entire nation as a way of issuing temporary relief pending further appeal. But this particular case regarding nationwide injunctions had to do with the Trump administration’s order overturning birthright citizenship, a right established in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment and reaffirmed in subsequent legislation and jurisprudence.
In 1898, the Supreme Court held that birthright citizenship applies to every person born in the United States. The only exceptions are those people who do not fall under the jurisdiction — which is to say, the laws — of the United States. In 1868, at the time the amendment was ratified, that meant foreign diplomats and members of Native tribes.
The children of everyone else are citizens if they are born on American soil. Driven by his nativist vision for the United States, President Trump sought to subvert this, with an executive order limiting birthright citizenship to only those with at least one parent who is a citizen or lawful permanent resident. The order, issued on the president’s first day back in office, was set to take effect on Feb. 19.
This was an outright attack on the Constitution. However much Donald Trump and Stephen Miller might want it to be otherwise, undocumented immigrants are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States — they can be arrested and tried in criminal courts, for instance — and thus their children, who are also subject to that jurisdiction, are American citizens if born on American soil.
The blatant illegality of the president’s executive order meant immediate legal backlash. Several states and parties filed lawsuits and a federal court quickly held that the executive order was plainly unconstitutional, freezing it nationwide.
Now, even skeptics of the nationwide injunction — such as myself! — would have to admit that this is a case where, given the stakes and the circumstances, it would be wise to prevent the president’s order from taking effect pending further litigation and review. Not so the Supreme Court.
In a decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a six-justice majority held that a nationwide injunction was not an appropriate method of relief, and that those affected by the executive order would have to either file suit themselves or join a class action. The court issued a 30-day hold for the president’s executive order, so that plaintiffs would have time to file in court. In her opinion, she also affirmed that courts can grant “complete relief” that affects third parties. It is possible, then, that plaintiffs can achieve the results of a nationwide injunction without use of the practice itself.
And yet, it still should be said here that this is a strange vehicle for the conservative majority to tackle the question of nationwide injunctions. There were ample opportunities under President Biden to do so, and the Biden White House even asked the court to consider the issue. It said no.
As far as I can tell from the outside, none of the nationwide injunctions issued under Biden seemed to test the court’s patience. The conservative majority seemed content to allow district courts to operate as normal. It is only now, under President Trump, that the conservatives have had a change of mind. And they’ve done so in the context of an executive order that exemplifies this president’s lawlessness and open contempt for the Constitution.
It is generally not polite, in writing about the court, to note the partisan affiliations of the justices. But here I think it’s appropriate, since for as much as there are real merits to ending nationwide injunctions, it is also difficult to escape the conclusion that a Republican-appointed majority with an expansive view of executive power is working, again, to give as much freedom of action to a Republican president, in this case, the Republican president who secured their supermajority.
To return to Justice Jackson’s dissent, she notes that by ending the practice of nationwide injunctions in this particular circumstance, the majority has empowered a lawless president to violate the rights of American citizens, who then have no particular relief other than what they can get in a slow-moving judicial process. The majority, Jackson argues, is missing the forest for the trees. The nature of the Constitution, from the original document to its amendments, is that it is a brief against the exercise of arbitrary power. And here is the Supreme Court blessing a president’s exercise of arbitrary power as if the executive were the sovereign lord of the nation and not a mere servant of the Constitution.
It’s worth quoting at length from Jackson’s dissent:
The majority’s ruling thus not only diverges from first principles, it is also profoundly dangerous, since it gives the executive the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate.
“The founders of the United States of America,” she continues, “squarely rejected a governing system in which the King ruled all and all others, including the courts, were his subordinates. In our Constitution-centered system, the people are the rulers and we have rule of law.”
The majority, Jackson argues, has created a law-free zone of arbitrary power which is “unlikely to impact the public in a randomly distributed manner.”
“Those in the good graces of the executive,” she writes,
have nothing to fear; the new prerogative that the executive has to act unlawfully will not be exercised with respect to them. Those who accede to the executive’s demands, too, will be in the clear. The wealthy and the well connected will have little difficulty securing legal representation, going to court, and obtaining injunctive relief in their own name if the executive violates their rights. Consequently, the zone of lawlessness the majority has now authorized will disproportionately impact the poor, the uneducated, and the unpopular — i.e., those who may not have the wherewithal to lawyer up, and will all too often find themselves beholden to the executive’s whims.
It is hard to know for certain whether the Republican majority understands the legal world it’s building and the power it has given to the president. My view, like Jackson’s, is that it is laying the groundwork for the exercise of arbitrary power, unaccountable save for the next election — an American-style presidential dictatorship.
What I Wrote
I wrote my column this week on masked ICE officers and how their assertion of the right to anonymity is an extension of the president’s belief in his own impunity:
As a federal agent, an ICE officer is a public servant whose ultimate responsibility lies with the people. And the people have the right to know who is operating in their government. If an ICE officer does not want to risk identification — if he does not want the public he serves to hold him accountable for his actions — then he can choose another line of work.“
Wednesday, July 02, 2025
Tuesday, July 01, 2025
Trump and the Supreme Court's War on Birthright Citizenship ft. Sherrily...
United States v. Wong Kim Ark
The Supreme Court held that citizenship as prescribed in the Fourteenth Amendmentextends to U.S.-born children of foreign subjects or citizens who, at the time of the child’s birth, are permanent residents and are carrying on business in the United States. Such children acquire U.S. citizenship at birth, but this does not apply if the parents are in the United States in any diplomatic or official capacity. (Read the opinion United States v. Wong Kim Ark here .)
The person named in the case, Wong Kim Ark, was born in San Francisco in 1873 to laborers of Chinese descent. His parents were Chinese subjects but maintained a permanent domicile in San Francisco. After arriving back from a temporary visit to China in 1895, Wong Kim Ark was detained at the port of San Francisco and refused permission to land. This was due to the Chinese Exclusion Act , which came into force in 1882, in general forbidding Chinese persons from entering the United States and Chinese residents from naturalizing as citizens. Wong Kim Ark contended that he was a U.S. citizen as prescribed by the Fourteenth Amendment due to his birth in the United States, and therefore the Chinese Exclusion Act did not apply to him. The government argued that since Wong Kim Ark’s parents were Chinese subjects, he did not fall under U.S. jurisdiction and so failed the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” qualification of the Amendment in conferring citizenship at birth.
In a majority opinion delivered by Justice Gray, the Court first noted that there is no statutory definition of a citizen, except the inclusionary clause in the Fourteenth Amendment stating that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens. The Court therefore relied on common law to interpret this and other clauses concerning citizenship. The main principle that the Court chose to draw was from Calvin’s Case , a 17 th century English common law case that held a person born within the territory of a King owes him allegiance, and is therefore the King’s subject. The Court then referenced a series of commentaries and cases in both English and U.S. common law that showed subsequent decisions sinceCalvin’s Case have been consistent with this principle. Persons born within the United States have always been in general assumed to be British subjects, and later U.S. citizens. In particular, this treatment was applied equally to those born to non-citizen parents, except in cases where a child was born in territory occupied by a foreign invasion or where the parents are foreign diplomats or officials.
The Court was also interested in the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. It pointed to the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which was passed by the same Congress that adopted the Fourteenth Amendment, stipulating citizenship for “all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed.” From this the Court reasoned that “the opening sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment is throughout affirmative and declaratory, intended to allay doubts and to settle controversies which had arisen, and not to impose any new restrictions upon citizenship.” Further, the Court noted the general principle that “[t]he jurisdiction of the nation within its own territory is necessarily exclusive and absolute. It is susceptible of no limitation not imposed by itself.” The Court therefore interpreted that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” qualification of the Fourteenth Amendment applies to children of foreign citizens in the United States, except in recognized exceptions of occupied territory and foreign diplomats having immunity from jurisdiction. Combined with the principle of citizenship being conferred through territoriality, which was well-established before the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court decided Wong Kim Ark must have been a citizen from birth.
A dissenting opinion by Chief Justice Fuller, which Justice Harlan joined, disagreed with the majority’s view that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended as a continuation of the English common law rule stemming from Calvin’s Case . In particular, the dissent viewed children born to U.S. citizens born overseas as more deserving of being natural-born citizens than those born in the United States to non-citizen parents, and yet they are not afforded the Constitution’s protection. Further, the dissent argued that the “and not subject to any foreign power” provision in the Civil Rights Act of 1866 showed that Congress intended to exclude children of foreign citizens from the Fourteenth Amendment, as they would be subjects of the same foreign power as their parents.
Authored by : Xiang Long, Cornell Law School
Monday, June 30, 2025
Opinion | How to Wreck the Nation’s Health, by the Numbers - The New York Times
How to Wreck the Nation’s Health, by the Numbers
Illustration by Javier Jaén
By Steven H. Woolf Graphics by Taylor Maggiacomo
"Dr. Woolf is a physician and a professor of family medicine and population health at Virginia Commonwealth University.
After decades as a physician studying the factors that determine our risks of getting sick and how long we live, I am convinced that the actions of the Trump administration will cost lives. Researchers like me know the data. For years we have warned that Americans have shorter life expectancies and higher disease rates than people in other high-income countries.
Now, the poor health of Americans is about to get worse.
While Robert F. Kennedy Jr., America’s health secretary, makes a spectacle of his plans to make America healthier (a laudable goal), in actuality, the administration is kneecapping the very infrastructure that would make that feasible and is instead enacting policies that will compromise health.
The Department of Health and Human Services has terminated thousands of grants, including funding for pandemic prevention, and research grants related to cancer, vaccines and chronic diseases. The loss of research funding will delay medical discoveries. Though the agency publishes a weekly list of terminated grants, the full scope of funding cancellations has been obscured, especially at the National Institutes of Health, the major funder of medical research. A database created by Harvard researchers, Grant Watch, has helped to fill in the gaps.
Grants terminated by the Department of Health and Human Services
Sources: HHS TAGGS; Grant Watch
Note: Data as of June 29.
The administration has upended the operation of almost every agency that deals with our health and medical care, leaving behind fewer staff members and programs to address critical needs, and changing policies in ways that could endanger us all. Regulations to protect health and safety are being lifted. Experts who monitor health threats have been fired. Medical schools are threatened. Congress is poised to make huge cuts to Medicaid, which would leave millions of Americans without health care coverage and force closures of health clinics, many in rural areas.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not defending the status quo. There is plenty of waste and inefficiency to fix in health care and research, and fresh approaches can help. But dismembering health agencies won’t improve efficiency. Real change comes from streamlining programs to better serve the public, not from closing programs and walking away.
The ripple effects of the havoc at health agencies will eventually reach you. The air you breathe could become more polluted because the administration is permitting factories to resume emitting toxins. Your drinking water could contain lead because the administration is closing lead abatement programs. Bacterial contamination of your food may increase since food safety workers have been fired. There may be fewer primary care doctors in your community because the administration is cutting funding for training programs. Cutting-edge treatments may be unavailable because the N.I.H. has terminated clinical trials.
Out of the 356 drugs that were approved from 2010 to 2019 ...
N.I.H. funding contributed to 354 of them, totaling $187 billion.
Only 2 were privately funded.
Source: Cleary et al., JAMA (2023)
The logic is baffling. Even though the United States faces a mental health crisis, especially among youth, the Trump administration is slashing funding for programs on mental illness, addiction, domestic violence and suicide prevention. It’s no longer offering specialized support to L.G.B.T.Q. callers to the national suicide prevention hotline, and it’s cutting nearly 600 contracts for the Department of Veterans Affairs. It canceled funding for a desperately needed program that expanded the number of mental health professionals in our children’s schools, which had won bipartisan support in Congress after the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death in children, but the administration has all but eliminated the injury prevention center working on efforts to prevent deaths from poisoning, car accidents and drownings.
Diseases that are preventable and rare in modern countries may now pose a threat in the United States. The measles outbreak is our first warning. Other vaccine-preventable diseases will increase if politicians like Mr. Kennedy continue to cast experts aside, roll back immunization guidelines and sow doubt about their safety.
All this under the banner of “Make America Healthy Again.” In a dangerous sleight of hand, Mr. Kennedy goes before cameras to make a big deal about food dyes and bizarre claims about autism while his department erases programs to address the nation’s leading chronic diseases. For example, smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States. If this administration’s goal is truly to make America healthier, why has it effectively shuttered the nation’s top office on smoking? Mr. Kennedy rightly promotes the importance of healthy eating, but the administration is cutting funding for food assistance. He warns about the dangers of pesticides, but the administration is reportedly reconsidering a ban on asbestos and is moving quickly to relax other regulations meant to protect Americans from toxins.
Planned cuts by the Trump administration would defund research on the leading causes of death
| cause of death | annual deaths | primarily researched by | proposed funding cut |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heart disease | 681,000 | National Institute on Body Systems* | -39% |
| Chronic lower respiratory diseases | 145,000 | ||
| Diabetes | 95,000 | ||
| Cancer | 613,000 | National Cancer Institute | -37% |
| Stroke | 163,000 | National Institute on Neuroscience and Brain Research* | -40% |
| Alzheimer's | 114,000 | National Institute on Aging | -40% |
| Drug overdoses | 97,000 | National Institute of Behavioral Health* | -38% |
| Suicide | 49,000 | ||
| Covid, flu and pneumonia | 95,000 | National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases | -36% |
Sources: HHS.gov; CDC WONDER
Note: Annual deaths as of 2023. Proposed funding cut figures are based on the difference between 2025 and 2026 budget proposals. Institutes with asterisks are proposed consolidations of existing N.I.H. institutes.
Organizations like the American Medical Association are beginning to speak out, but their comments are largely restricted to specific issues such as Medicaid or immunization guidelines. The threat to the health of Americans is larger than one issue. It’s about more than Medicaid. It’s about more than vaccines. It’s about the totality of the administration’s agenda. It’s the cumulative effects of the entire basket of policies that put Americans at greatest risk.
Physicians like me know from the data that lives will be lost as a consequence. More than 6,000 health professionals (myself included) have warned the public about their concerns in an open letter. Yet institutions of all kinds seem to be cowering to Mr. Trump, afraid of being punished or prosecuted for questioning his wishes. The administration has defied the courts and gone after law firms and universities, and is unlikely to spare medicine. Just as it has pressured the media to alter the news, the government is now challenging medical journals to alter what they publish.
Times like these call on us to speak the truth. On matters of life and death, physicians like me have an added duty to warn patients and the public. People may feel that a shakeup in Washington is long overdue. But too many Americans, including our leaders, take their health for granted, assuming that the infrastructure to prevent disease and save their lives will always be there, that America will always lead the world in science and that systems to keep their children safe will always exist. None of this can be counted on, especially now.
About this data
For this analysis, The New York Times used data from the lists of terminated grants provided by the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as a crowdsourced list of grant terminations by Grant Watch. In cases where grants could be included under several categories, grants are listed under the category corresponding to the central focus of the research."