#1,063: While You Were Being Misinformed . . .
Whether it be the god’s honest truth or nothing more than conspiratorial fiction, there are a lot of folks out there who believe that much of the choloshes drek (Yiddish for, roughly, disgusting crapola) that’s being broadcast in the country - e.g. headline-capturing events going on in Venezuela, Minneapolis, Portland, Oregon and the Trump Kennedy Centre, murder victims being portrayed as the responsible party in their deaths- have a lot to do with keeping the ongoing Epstein Files out of the news. To update and to modernize a bon mot from our old friend Mark Twain: “If you don’t read, watch or listen to the news, you’re uninformed. If you do manage to read, watch or listen to it, you’re likely misinformed.”
Some of these journalistic diversions will grab our attention for weeks; some for months; some for only G-d knows how long. Take such current stories and situations as Venezuela+Maduro+Oil; Greenland+Denmark+NATO; and ICE/Renee Nicolle Good/bald-faced lies; they are all on our minds. The last of these involve ICE - the regime’s version of Die Geheime Staatspolizei (Eghad!: does this mean that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is the second coming of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler or that Deputy White House Chief of Staff [and Its ideologue-in-chief] Stephen Miller is the rebirth of Joseph Goebbels? As much as I revile both Sec. Noem and Mr. Miller [who is referred to by his colleagues in the White House as “The Prime Minister’] I pray the answer is “no.”)
Am I crazy, or have the “Epstein Files” taken far more than a back seat to just about everything else in the first two weeks of 2026? If so, I’m sure no one at the White House is complaining; this is the last thing they want on their plate as people’s attention begins turning towards election season. I guess, in their minds, the less press prominence the entire Jeffrey Epstein/Donald Trump/pedophilic sex ring/public figure imbroglio receives, the better it will be for their beloved Pouter Pigeon. (n.b. For those who may have forgotten, the term “Pouter Pigeon” it was a nasty epithet used nearly a century ago to describe Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. I wrote about the nickname and the man back in August 2025. See my essay Pouter Pigeon: The Art of the Kneel.)
But it’s not just Epstein et al that is missing from the news; so too are some stories and happenings that could actually bring a glimmer of hope to an otherwise disconsolate, disconnected world. Take as an example, a stunning, unanimous decision handed down just last week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. This court, which hears appeals from the U.S. District Courts for the Districts of Maine, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico and Rhode Island, ruled that the administration could not make drastic cuts to the federal funding supporting much of the country’s medical and scientific research. Their unanimous decision reaffirmed a lower court’s ruling from early 2025. In last week’s decision, the three-judge panel found that . . . one of the Trump administration’s earliest attempts to kneecap universities, through proposed reductions to grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was unlawful. As noted in the New York Times, “The [original] proposal brought an outpouring of opposition from hundreds of universities and hospitals, which warned that the cuts could cost them billions,` and make it impossible to continue studies in areas like cancer, genetics, gerontology, and infectious diseases”
Without getting too technical, the sharp (inhumane) cuts took aim at the pre-negotiated rates in thousands of federal grants that set aside money for overhead costs in medical research. Huh? Here’s how it’s supposed to work: Whenever and wherever “academic” (as opposed to “corporate”) medical research is undertaken, there must be funding provided for such things as facility upkeep, laboratory technology, and support staff. Ever wonder who takes care of the animals who are used in early-stage research? Every research facility most house (or have a working relationship with) a vivarium (that’s Latin for ‘place of life’) which feeds, houses and tends to the health of all the various animals (dogs, cats, birds, primates, etc.) who will partake in research. Simply stated, you do not want to use a sick animal in research; it can easily invalidate the results. What the administration has, as early as 2017, sought to do, is to cap these overhead reimbursement costs at no more than 10% of the total grant. The first time this proposal hit the House floor, it was summarily rejected. In the main, these overhead costs have classically come in at more than 25%. In other words, what the regime was seeking to do was essentially put a gigantic roadblock into medical research. Since this ruling came down just 24 hours after the abduction of Venezuelan President Maduro and Felon47’s announcement about taking over the country’s oil industry, it only ran, as Grandpa Doc would have had it, “On page 47, just beneath the truss ads.”
Last week’s decision upheld an earlier decision from this past April made in the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, which permanently barred the regime from capping the funding referred to above, and the proposal remained stalled throughout the remainder of 2025. Of course, what the Republican right hopes and prays is that when - and if - it reaches the top of the judicial food chain, that SCOTUS will overturn this past week’s decision, thus lessening the amount of funding for future medical research. Then too, there is the possibility that SCOTIS will issue a Stare decisis (Latin for “to stand by things decided”) decision, thus allowing the lower court’s ruling to stand. That would be the best of all possible worlds, however, one never knows. Afterall, the chances are that at least a couple of members of the nation’s highest court - as well as many, many members of Congress - have relatives who have suffered from oncological, neurological or gerontological issues that are currently being researched. If they have more empathy and compassion for their ailing family members than loyalty to their boss, perhaps they will do the right thing.
Speaking of congress, there’s another story that could give a glimmer of hope . . . but is off the front pages due to stories about ICE, Venezuelan oil, Greenland and the possibility of the regime attacking protest-beset Iran. What story? Well, simply stated, a move by an increasingly angry Congress to undo thousands of cuts to federal science programs that IT called for last year when planning the government’s current budget. Why would Republicans in Congress even consider going against their Führer . . . I mean leader? Because members of both the House and Senate - both Democratic and Republican - are getting sick and tired of the executive branch cutting not just federal spending on medical research, but cutting out Congress in toto from asserting its constitutionally-mandated job of dealing with all things fiscal and budgetary.
Am I just daydreaming? Well, for those of us who still read, watch and/or listen to professional sources of news, we know that just the other day, the Senate Appropriations Committee (Chaired by the frequently-reliable Susan Collins [R-ME), released a bipartisan package of bills that largely scraps their beloved Pouter Pigeon’s planned cuts . . . especially in the area of medical research. (It should be noted that Senator Collins, who has long had her own personal medical issues, has long shown great interest in healthcare issues, particularly those dealing with Alzheimer’s Disease (she is a founder and co-chair of the Congressional Task Force on A.Z.) , Diabetes (she chairs the Senate Diabetes Caucus) and Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases.
Seemingly overnight, Congress is racing to undo thousands of cuts to federal science programs that Felon#47 called for last year when planning the 2026 budget. As originally conceived, the White House budget sought an overall cut in scientific and medical research funding to $154 billion from $198 billion - a plunge of 22%. This would have been the largest reduction in federal spending on science since WWII, when Washington and the unraveling of nature’s secrets began their partnership. But just this week, Senator Collins and her committee released a bipartisan package of bills that largely scraps much of ITs planned cuts. According to analysts in the know, if the proposed budgets hold up in the weeks ahead, Congress will wind up setting aside roughly $188 billion for federal research - a drop of only 4% from the most recent annual budget. Some analysts actually foresee a possible rise of more than 2% in the budget category known as basic research, generally described as “. . . the blue-sky variety that produces fundamental strides and spinoffs in fields such as health care and A.I.”
This is, of course, potentially great news . . . a Congress working in a bipartisan fashion for the good of the public. Why it is happening seems obvious . . . at least to me. In a word: midterm elections. When it comes to medical and scientific research, few people are untouched; most of us know someone - be it a family member, friend, neighbor or worker - who could benefit from the miracles being performed in the world of clinical and/or scientific research. I know that personally, as one who has been closely allied with medical research and medical ethics for more than 3 decades, the idea of taking a meat cleaver to research gives me a lethal dose of apoplexy.
So why aren’t we seeing, hearing or reading good news when it comes our way? Why are there so few who are unaware that both parties in Congress are working together to keep funding dollars available even while doing their best to renew subsidies for the Affordable Care Act? I really do not have an answer. What I do know is that come November, we need a vast turnover in both the House and Senate. We need to ensure that we get closer and closer to a veto-proof Congress and that when the next Supreme Court Justice decides to hang up the gavel, that he/she will not be replaced by a troglodyte. Goodness knows, our appeals courts are already chock full of Federalist Society philistines.
If there is ever to be better news out there, it will be because we picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off and became far more engaged in civic accountability.
Copyright©2026 Kurt Franklin Stone