n't have a chance.

Apparently some activist judge in Utah is ordering the state to redraw the congressional map that would take one away from the GOP. So, it's sort of a technical argument about who can do what with redistricting, but looks like the order will take one away from the GOP. So the GOP majority in the House looks like it's going to go down by one and it's already razor thin. That might make a difference.

All right. Well, as I mentioned, RFK Jr. is saying, I guess he said on an interview today, that they're getting very close to revealing the true causes of autism. Now, I don't know if they're going to claim they found all the true causes. I don't know if that's the claim. Might be weaker than that. We'll see. And that there will be regular regulatory action about those causes of autism.

And this is what RFK Jr. said. He said this is a crisis. There is not a single cause. So if you thought he was going to say, oh, it's those childhood vaccinations, probably not because he says it's not a single cause. He says there are many aggregation of causes. We're now developing sufficient evidence to ask for regulatory action on some of those or recommendations. So we're really going to find out something radical and interesting.

I assume that the reason he has some certainty about some things but not others is that there's data that looks credible about some of this stuff. So what do you think? How much of it do you think will be vaccinations and how much of it do you think will be diet and how much of it will be pollutants? I don't know. I don't think you could make a good guess on this at all. It could really be a surprise. It really could. So, we'll see.

And apparently there's other drama at the CDC. So, the director, Susan Monarez, has been ousted by RFK Jr. because she was pushing for the COVID vaccine. Now, I don't understand that story because my understanding is that Secretary Kennedy has okayed more of the COVID vaccine. So, I'm trying to fit these two stories together because they appear to be opposites. So, I don't know which is true. I do think it's true that the director is ousted. I do think it's true that she was pro-COVID vaccines, but let me tell you what Kennedy posted about his own accomplishments.

All right, so this is part of the same story. So Kennedy told us that he promised us four things. One, to end COVID vaccine mandates. Now ending the mandate. I didn't even know there was a mandate. Did you? What mandate? Was there a mandate for school children? Still, I wasn't even aware there was a mandate, so I don't even know what he's talking about. But he said he would end COVID vaccine mandates, and apparently he has.

He said he would keep vaccines available to people who want them, especially the vulnerable. Now, if he's keeping the vaccines available to people who want them, wouldn't that suggest that he does not have definitive data that they're dangerous to some part of the population? I guess how in the world is that possible that he doesn't have data that would suggest he should cancel the COVID vaccines? Do you think it's coming or that he's still studying it or do you believe that the data on all things COVID is unreliable? Because that's where I've been for a long time. Yeah. I don't know if you could say they're safe or not safe. The only thing you could say for sure is I wouldn't trust any of the data. No matter which way it pointed, I wouldn't trust any of it. No matter what it said. So, I'm a little confused on that.

And he said that he would demand placebo-controlled trials from companies which apparently he has. Now that doesn't mean that there are no things that had placebo controlled trials already. There were things so apparently he likes those things. But I will tell you if you don't know this, those randomized controlled placebo trials, that doesn't mean it's true, you know that, right? Because the way you can fake those is by what data you decide is good enough to be in your study. So there's always this filter where you go, well, you know, the first two weeks of the data, we collected a little bit differently, so why don't we take that out? Yeah, we'll just take out the first two weeks and then suddenly the data points in the opposite direction. So there are ways that even the finest of controlled trials could be completely fraudulent. That's a real thing that happens.

And he said he promised to end the emergency. What was the emergency? I guess it was an emergency classification that allowed them to do the vaccine mandates. So he got rid of that. So, I don't know what mandates there were. Unless he's talking about school children. Is that the only one or were there some mandates for maybe government people? Maybe the military. I don't think there were any. There were no mandates for the military still. Were there? Or maybe he's taking credit for getting rid of them.

But the FDA has now issued marketing authorization for the COVID shots for those who are at higher risk. So, how do you square in your mind that RFK Jr. is the most famous vaccine skeptic we know? Not just the COVID shots, but vaccine skeptic in general. He's the most famous vaccine skeptic and he's in charge of looking at all the data and deciding if the COVID vaccine is too dangerous to justify whatever benefits you might get from it, if any. And at this point, he does not seem poised to ban it. Does that mean that he hasn't finished looking at it? Or does that mean that he looked at it and he's satisfied that the data is sufficiently good that it's useful for some classes of people who are higher risk?

Wouldn't that blow your mind? It looks like he must think the data suggests that it's better to take it than not take it for some categories of people. Now, he does say that you should only do it if your doctor says to do it. So, he's not saying that you should just go to the drugstore and get it. I feel like he's saying, but only if your doctor says you should get it. So, it's some acknowledgment that there's an extra risk involved, but maybe there's some category of people he believes the data supports getting it. I don't know.

Apparently in Michigan there were teachers who were required to take a test to grade their levels of whiteness. Wall Street Apes was talking about this on X. So there was a public school teacher who had been there for 31 years and she quit because she was unwilling to stand in a circle to rate her level of whiteness. And I guess the problem was that the black students were struggling in their schools. And so they wanted to figure out how their whiteness was affecting that.

And the things that they thought would affect their level of whiteness was how many people they referred for discipline and you know whether or not that was a balanced number. And she said she had a higher percentage of black students that were referred for discipline. So that made her more white. And also the lateness. So if she marked the black kids late, that would be extra whiteness. And she said, I was told to decrease the number of detentions that were issued for a certain race, obviously black. They showed up late because culturally it's acceptable for them.

Now, isn't that the racist thing? Imagine being in a training class where the class is told that black people are allowed to be late because it's culturally acceptable to them. Isn't that racist? Or do I not know what racist is? I mean, the point of saying that they're more likely to be late because they're black. That's racist, right? Am I hallucinating now? Like, this is just crazy.

Anyway, so I don't know what that story is about. Probably was interesting at one point.

So, are you watching Israel and Gaza and all the hospital bombing stuff? So probably the single most predictable thing about Israel getting into any kind of military conflict is that whoever they're fighting against will definitely say that they bombed a hospital intentionally. Now, I'm out there and I don't know, is there some military doctrine that suggests that bombing a hospital is a good idea if you're trying to really conquer a population? Has anybody ever heard of that? Why would Israel intentionally bomb a hospital?

Now obviously sometimes they say oh it's because beneath the hospital Hamas has some major facility and if we can't leave them forever so we'll just warn the hospital tell them to get out of there and then we'll bomb it. But does that explain all the hospitals? Yeah.

So I went to Grok and asked him a few questions because I wondered how big a thing this was. First of all, there's a reported 36 hospitals in Gaza, or that's how many there were at the start of the conflict. 36. Doesn't that seem like a lot of hospitals for that one little strip of land? I feel like I'm having a hard time understanding the size of Gaza because I keep thinking it's tiny. But then 36 hospitals that's pretty serious.

Allegedly 31 of the 36 have been damaged or destroyed in the conflict. 31 out of 36. But you know damage is a big difference between damaged and destroyed. And the World Health Organization says that only 19 of the 36 remain operational which would be better than I thought. When we see pictures of Gaza, we never see a building that's still standing and functional, right? The only pictures I see are complete devastation. So, I'm kind of still impressed that half of the hospitals are still in some kind of business. How do they even have electricity? It's kind of surprising. I mean, my sense of what it's like there doesn't line up with there's still 19 hospitals that have electricity and they're functioning. I mean, albeit with shortages on supplies, but so do you believe that Israel has a military reason to bomb a hospital? You know, not counting the special cases where they think Hamas is below the hospital. I don't know. I guess I don't have evidence that would suggest that that makes sense as any kind of a military strategy, but if somebody tells me, "Oh, yeah, that's a classic military strategy." If it is, then I might change my mind. But I've never heard that. Have you? Let me know if you've heard it.

All right. Well, certainly they're trying to depopulate Gaza. That's no secret.

Well, according to Breitbart News, Trump has implemented his 50 percent super tariff on India for buying Russian oil. Now, India's being kind of tough about this. But they'll still have to pay the tariffs. I mean, they're not going to get around it. So, I wonder if this will work. It's not going to work right away if it does work. But if this takes like a big bite out of the entire Russian economy, and it might, maybe enough that they all notice, I don't know, it's a pretty big deal because India is the number two buyer of energy from Russia. And if this shuts it down, because it makes it too expensive for India to do it, if that shuts it down, it's going to be a big impact on Russia. But I don't know if it's big enough to make a difference.

But I'll point out that Trump is once again monetized a problem. So now Trump has found a way to make money from selling weapons to Ukraine that will be paid for by Europeans. And now he's making all kinds of tariff revenue from India buying Russian oil that they shouldn't be buying. So he just monetized it. The more he monetizes it, the better his negotiating position gets because he's not losing people. He's making money.

Let's end this tomorrow. Whatever. You guys do what you want to do. Obviously, Ukraine wants to fight and Russia wants to fight and we've tried everything we can do, but now we'll just monetize it. I don't hate that. I do not hate that, the monetizing part.

Apparently there's a technology that's been spun up already successfully to turn sand into batteries. So, it's a gigantic container that they fill with sand because sand can hold heat really efficiently. And in Finland, they just fill this with heat and it just stores it and somehow they can release it to heat homes. So, it's a sand battery, but all it stores is heat. It doesn't store electricity, but they're working on having it store heat, which they would use a separate technology to turn back into electricity. So, my suggestion for Gaza is to turn it into a battery. There's a lot of sand there. It's very hot.

And according to Interesting Engineering there's now a new method that some US-China team — there's a US-China scientific team. Why is it even legal for our scientists to be working with Chinese scientists? Is it because we're picking up all these great ideas from the Chinese scientists? Or is it possible that maybe China is stealing our ideas by working with our US scientists? I didn't know there were any US-China teams, but anyway, they allegedly figured out how to turn plastic into fuel at 95 percent efficiency in the transition. So they can take this toxic plastic waste and at a room temperature process they say they can turn it into a variety of chemicals and fuels. It's a one-step conversion which means that it might be economical. Can you imagine that? If they find a way to turn plastic into energy, that would be cool, wouldn't it?

All right, everybody. It's a newsy day, but I just ran through it quickly because I know you need to get some more stuff done today. And I hope you enjoyed listening to the news and my bad opinions about stuff. And I'll see all the rest of you back here tomorrow, same time, same place. And locals, my beloved local subscribers, I'm going to see you privately in 30 seconds.