Ben Allen

Exclusive: The acting director of the CDC has delayed publication of a report showing the covid-19 vaccine cut the likelihood of ER visits and hospitalizations for healthy adults last winter by about half, according to two scientists. wapo.st/4tFqKqY

@ctshirts my package arrived heavily damaged. How do I file a claim? The plastic is literally stuck to the shirt

I mostly avoid commenting on what President Trump says from day to day, while pulling no punches in my assessments, whether positive or negative, of his policy. His Iran ultimatums feel different. Making such threats is a policy. If he were to follow through on them, the consequences would be immediate, irreversible, and catastrophic on a world-historical scale. So while some will inevitably insist he should be “taken seriously rather than literally,” or that he is executing a sophisticated “madman” strategy in a complex game of 5-D chess, or that he needs everyone’s steadfast support to maximize his leverage, now rather than later seems the time to say that the actions that he is proposing would be a disaster for our country, both strategically and morally, which makes the remarks themselves a terrible mistake. Simply put, what’s the point of all this? If these are empty threats that we all know he will not carry out, then they are ineffective threats (the Iranians are on X too!), merely making the president and our nation look foolish. If they are not empty threats, then the president is asserting the American position that such actions are acceptable in this situation and ones we are willing to take. We are not living in some quantum thought experiment where he simultaneously is and is not serious. We cannot expect the Iranians, but only the Iranians, will believe him. Whether the threats are empty or not, we should be willing to say: This is wrong. We should not establish a pattern of threatening escalation from a blockaded strait to elimination of a civilization. We should not launch strikes intended to devastate the lives of millions of people and take our nation to total war without indisputable justification, or before the American people have deliberated upon and assented to the path with full understanding of what total war might mean for them. Those principles are vital to our Republic, independent of whether the strategy could “work.” But it’s also worth emphasizing that the strategy is a dead end. This war is actively weakening American power, increasing the danger to American citizens, and frustrating the president’s important efforts at addressing our many domestic challenges. It has closed a strait that was previously open, strengthened the incentive for other nations to pursue nuclear weapons, and in this most recent rhetoric made more plausible their use. Our choices for continuing the war appear to be catastrophic escalation of the air war or extensive deployment of ground troops, neither of which were planned or had support at the outset. Stepping back from these threats and admitting such actions do not offer a path to resolving the conflict may be unpalatable, but it is by far the least unpalatable option available. Let us all hope cooler heads prevail.

trump's proposed 2027 budget. defense up $440.9 billion. most everything else — health, housing, education, labor, agriculture — cut.

Again, a reminder, the amount Trump wants to INCREASE the annual Pentagon budget by would be enough money to lower the age of Medicare eligibility to about 35 years old.

JPM's Michael Cembalest: In the ~160 years after the Civil War, US presidents fired 11 four- and five-star military officers. In Trump's first 14 months, the White House has fired 9 of them.

Among the material pulled from the Holocaust Museum's website were teaching materials about the parallels between Nazism and Jim Crow and a conversation between a Holocaust Survivor and a woman whose father was lynched in Alabama.

A decade ago, there was no building boom in Everett, but in Chelsea next door. Chelsea is closer to Boston and has better transit connections. Then Chelsea imposed 20% IZ. There's been essentially no market rate development since, depriving them of tax revenue and homes.

"The U.S. Forest Service is closing 57 of its 77 research facilities in 31 states under a reorganization plan announced this week, threatening science that looked at how wildfires, drought, pests and global warming are putting pressure on forests." nytimes.com/2026/04/03/cli…

As someone in central North Carolina I just want to say thanks to metro Boston as you’ve done wonders for our economy.

It is insane to now see the Boston's top development officials get in front of the council and say they're "proud" of the "success" of the 20% unfunded IZ mandate! 2022-25 saw the fewet multifam units permitted in a deacde! Asleep at the wheel. youtu.be/pVbyhDPGY98?t=…

The Army Chief of Staff, a combat veteran with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, asked Pete Hegseth why he was blocking the promotions of two Black officers and two female officers who had earned them. Hegseth refused to answer. Then he fired him. Nine U.S. officials told NBC News that Hegseth has blocked or delayed promotions for more than a dozen Black and female senior officers across all four branches of the military. Hegseth has now fired or sidelined more than a dozen generals and admirals. He is an out-of-control, unqualified former TV host and nobody in the Republican Party will say a word about it because they don’t want to make Trump angry. nbcnews.com/politics/natio…

One of the largest spills of untreated wastewater in American history happened while an environmental review process held up sewer line repairs because they were studying risks to a flower and a bat.

The reason for Gen. George's firing, in part: Hegseth for months has pressed Gen. George & Army Secy Dan Driscoll to remove 4 officers -- 2 Black & 2 female -- from a promotions list. George & Driscoll have refused, citing the officers long and exemplary service.

Perhaps the nation's most baffling degrowth regime is New England's ban on itself Hundreds of historic town centers*ban their own buildings*, mandating Sunbelt cinderblock strip mall replacements if anything burns down It is so bizarre that the legislature must intervene

Trump: We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We're fighting wars. It's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these things.

Wow. theatlantic.com/international/…

This is absolutely infuriating and completely idiotic. An estimated 95,000 scientists and researchers have left federal agencies since Trump returned to the White House. These are the people tracking hurricanes, studying pediatric cancer, and modeling the climate tipping points that determine whether we can still prevent catastrophe. We lost them because this administration defunded their work, shuttered their offices, and made clear that finding out the truth is no longer a government priority. NASA’s own administrator just said studying climate change isn’t part of NASA’s mission. The agency that first warned Congress about global warming in 1988 now treats that work as a distraction. Meanwhile, China and Europe are recruiting our scientists, funding their labs, and making long-term bets on the industries of the future while we gut the research infrastructure that took generations to build. We are surrendering global scientific leadership voluntarily, deliberately, and one resignation letter at a time. nytimes.com/2026/03/25/cli…

I know it's boring and repetitive to talk about how grossly evil Trump is, but the fact remains: Trump is grossly evil, in a way that's pretty much unprecedented in this country.

NEW -- Hegseth drops two Black and two female Army officers from promotion list to be a general, prompting allegations of racial and gender bias w/@GregJaffe, @helenecooper, @Adamentous nytimes.com/2026/03/27/us/…