I wonder how progressives are viewing the fact that they gave credence to a key Trump operative

It’s a big data week for me and today’s post is more of a news information offering rather than a deeper analysis of a topic, which is my usual pattern. However, I discuss in some detail recent appointments to the US Health Administration, some of which were prominent during the early COVID years and received considerable promotion from so-called Left progressives. One of the leading characters in the attack on government restrictions is now Trump’s appointment to the major national health research funding agency and he has vowed to defund any institution that doesn’t follow the ‘freedom’ dictates of the authoritarian regime that Trump is running. I wonder how these progressives are viewing the fact they gave credence to a key Trump operative.

Real Progressives Podcast – May 10, 2025

A few weeks ago, I spoke with Steve from Real Progressives about the increasing isolation of the US under the new Trump Administration.

Here is the edited interview I did for their ‘Macro N Cheese’ segment.

You might find it interesting.

The Truth about the ‘Budget’ Podcast

I also did a recent interview with an Australian podcast – Concept Economy – which aims to bring economic concepts to young people to better educate their understanding.

It was a fairly wide-ranging discussion about the fundamentals of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and my reaction to noted attacks on our work.

A COVID-19 update – can those ‘anti-woke’ progressives sleep at night?

Regular readers will know my position on the COVID-19 pandemic and the early attempts by various vested interests to deny that there was a problem.

In this blog post – Why are the progressive left mixing with the dark right on Covid? (January 12, 2022) – I wrote about the way in which so-called (self-styled) Left progressive voices were advancing ideas that were introduced during the pandemic by the hard Right.

The anti-vax, anti-lockdown and anti-mandate lobby were extremely vocal in the first few years of the pandemic and even now their constant negativity has left a legacy.

In Australia, there are now significant declining rates of influenza vaccinations, which is threatening vulnerable groups at both ends of the age spectrum.

For example, Australia’s Chief Medical Officer said that (Source):

… figures showing vaccination rates in children aged under five dropped from 30.3% in 2023 to 25.8% in 2024.

There was also a steady decline in flu vaccination for those aged 65 and older, from 69.7% in 2022 and 63.6% in 2023, to a low of 61.1% in 2024.

This is directly the result of the campaigns waged during those early COVID years to discredit vaccinations.

During those early COVID years, there were those who purport to represent the ‘Left’ position, lecturing us about how lockdowns and vaccine requirements are a betrayal of the progressive cause and only fascists would support them.

They provided constant social media support for others, who by any assessment, are on the neoliberal right, who also oppose lockdowns and mandates (including being required to wear masks).

Several of these characters, who were regularly receiving social media support from prominent ‘socialist’ commentators, were involved in the creation of a new ‘academic’ venture at a little-known college in Michigan – Hillsdale College – called the “Academy for Science and Freedom”.

The ‘Academy’ claimed in its press release that its mission is to engage in a “free exchange of scientific ideas … in the pursuit of truth” and was inspired by the “worst public health fiasco in history”.

What is Hillsdale College?

This Politico article (May 12, 2018) – The College That Wants to Take Over Washington – tells us that Hillsdale College is a breeding ground for young, right-wing, Christian conservatives.

Just the type that progressive socialists would dream of forming a coalition with!

The College ‘cosied’ up to the Trump Administration and its president was a strong Trump supporter and advertises for funds on Fox News.

It provides a conduit for conservative politicians – speechwriters and other administrative roles.

Its former president, was a vocal critic of “big government” while pushing a conservative Christian morality. He came unstuck, as many of these types do, when his daughter-in-law committed suicide after public allegations that she and the former president were involved in illicit sexual relations over a 19 year period. There were also question marks about whether she had actually committed suicide.

His successor had come from a ‘think tank’ that promoted the construction of a ‘conservative citadel’ which advocated anti-government messages.

Hillsdale has been a major beneficiary of financial support from the infamous Koch Brothers, who in this article (December 15, 2015) – Koch brothers supersize higher-ed spending – were reported as intent on expanding their already considerable financial support for selected US higher education institutions, as an exercise in building:

… a massive organizational network fighting to enact deregulatory government policies and elect conservative political candidates … [and] … promoting free markets and laissez-faire capitalism in the United States.

The brothers also attach “certain strings to their contributions”:

… such as control over curriculum, and more recently, obtaining personal information about students.

.

As COVID was killing millions, Hillsdale and the Koch Network partnered in opposing public health measures designed to attenuate the spread of the virus and rising death rates.

Researchers associated with the US-based – Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) – which investigates “the corruption that undermines our democracy, environment and economic prosperity”, published at the time research showing that a Koch Foundation was bankrolling the new venture at Hillsdale College, which was being primed to oppose protective health policies.

The article (December 22, 2021) – How The Koch Network Hijacked The War On COVID – reports that the “public health fiasco” that the new centre at Hillsdale is attacking include:

… government pandemic measures like mask and vaccine mandates, contact tracing, and lockdowns.

It has recruited several fringe academics including “Scott Atlas, Jay Bhattacharya, and Martin Kulldorff” – who are “connected to right-wing dark money attacking public health measures.”

The Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) was authored by some characters connected to this new Academy.

It was signed at a conference organised by the American Institute of Economic Research (AIER), which receives funding from “anti-regulation” groups and is deeply tied up with the Mont Pelerin Society and “the Koch-backed Cato Institute” as outlined in – How The Koch Network Hijacked The War On COVID (December 22, 2021).

The GBD recommended that governments should:

… allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.

In other words, governments should have let the virus rip through the population and only placed protections on the most vulnerable – aged care residents, and the like.

The authors claimed, for example:

… nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent testing of other staff and all visitors.

It was all predicated on their belief that we would reach herd immunity through natural infection.

Non-vulnerable citizens, accordingly should “immediately be allowed to resume life as normal … Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching … sports, should be resumed … Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home .. Restaurants and businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume.”

The implication was that once infected, the disease would cause little sickness and then immunity would offer on-going protection.

Once a skilled, aged care worker, for example, had become ill and recovered they could step back in the workplace dealing with the most vulnerable because they had become immune to the disease.

Except, of course, reinfection within a relatively short period has become a characteristic of Covid, which has compromised the whole notion of herd immunity.

Meanwhile millions have died from Covid, who would not have died any time soon, and that pattern of mortality continues even though it is now harder to get regular data.

And increasing numbers of people are exhibiting chronic Long Covid which has derailed their lives.

Millions of workers are now ‘disabled’ as a result and their working lives are over.

While the GBD appeared to have ‘academic weight’ because it was signed at the official sounding American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), which is located at Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

However, as the – Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) – noted, the reality was that it:

… arose out of the world of right-wing dark money and corporate interests, and many of its signatories aren’t verified. AIER … is a Koch-tied libertarian think tank …

Now all that is history.

But I wonder what those so-called progressive voices that supported all this stuff back in the early days of COVID thought when they saw Trump appoint one of the key GBD players – Jay Bhattacharya – as the new director of the National Institute of Health in the US.

There he was with Bobby Kennedy and Martin Makary – after being appointed.

He has told the press that he will defund universities that do not conform to his version of ‘academic freedom’.

In this Independent article (December 6, 2024) – Trump’s team weighs withholding massive research grants from universities that are too ‘woke’: Report – interprets this attack on universities as:

… punishing those that apparently don’t adequately embrace perspectives championed by conservatives.

He is in a sort of weird payback mode:

Bhattacharya wants to take on what he views as academic conformity in science, which pushed him aside over his criticism of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including his opposition to school closures and mask mandates to stop the spread of the virus.

Remember back in 2020 when the pandemic first emerged, Bhattacharya claimed only “40,000 Americans would be killed by the pandemic”.

The number now exceeds “1.2 million” and is rising.

Of course, adding so-called “nonresearch factors in medical-research grant decisions” has been deeply opposed by the science community and is likely to retard progress in discovering knowledge that will advance human health.

Makary is opposed to “broad vaccine mandates”.

So how do these ‘progressives’ feel now they see their COVID resistance leader who they relentlessly supported via social media, in books and Op Eds, now part of the US Administration’s health team that is defunding health research, providing misinformation about vaccines (see Kennedy’s claims about the measles vaccine) and more.

The case of measles is an example.

The Independent article cited above noted that;

Mr Kennedy, who became the nation’s top health official in February as part of the new Trump administration, has for decades helped sow doubts regarding the safety and efficacy of vaccines, contributing to a decline in vaccination rates.

Here are two interesting graphs showing the incidence of the measles infection in the US from 1950 to 2025.

The data is not continuous up to 1988 (observations for 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980 and 1985) then continuous.

The first graph shows the dramatic drop in cases to almost zero from the 1970s.

What happened?

This article from the Infectious Diseases Society of America Foundation – Measles vaccination: Know the facts – notes that:

Measles is a highly contagious viral infection that frequently causes a severe flu-like illness accompanied by a rash. Complications occur in 3 in 10 who get measles, and young children are especially vulnerable …

Before the vaccine was available in 1963, nearly every child got measles by age 15. The disease sickened 3 million to 4 million people and led to about 500 deaths and 48,000 hospitalizations every year in the U.S. …

Due to a highly effective vaccination program, measles was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, a historic public health achievement. However, outbreaks related to vaccine hesitancy have been occurring worldwide in recent years. In the U.S., more than 700 cases of measles have been reported so far in 2025, more than double the cases reported in all of 2024.

The second graph show the situation since 2010, with spikes during Trump’s first administration and a new “ongoing measles outbreak” since the start of this year (Source).

The data shows that:

From 1 January to 20 March 2025, 17 States have reported a total of 378 cases of measles, including two deaths – the first deaths related to measles in the United States in a decade. The majority of cases are in children who are unvaccinated or have unknown vaccination status, and the overall hospitalization rate is 17%.

That incidence has now climbed to close to 900.

A news report (April 4, 2025) – Measles vaccination rate may be even lower than estimated, leaving kids vulnerable amid outbreak – reported “that nearly a third of young children who were eligible to be vaccinated against the disease did not get their first shot on schedule.”

So how do these progressives feel having vehemently supported the views of these characters during the early years of COVID?

That is enough for today!

(c) Copyright 2025 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.