Long-Term Unemployment Is Back:
More than 1 in 4 workers without jobs have been unemployed for at least half a year, new data shows.That number is a post-pandemic high and a level typically only seen during periods of economic turmoil.
In all, more than 1.9 million Americans had been unemployed “long term” in August, meaning they have been out of work for 27 weeks or more, a critical cliff when it comes to finding a job. That’s more than double the 1 million people who were in a similar position in early 2023.
The pickup in months-long unemployment coincides with broader cooling in the labor market. Although the overall unemployment rate, 4.3 percent, is near longtime lows, many employershave frozen hiring as they wait to see how new tariffs and other economic policies will affect business (Biden’s fault). Layoffs are rising, too, with weekly claims for unemployment insurance reaching the highest level since October 2021.
This. Is. Not. Good. I mean, ICE isn’t about to hire a bunch of people who have actual credentials when there are so many pardoned January 6 rioters to choose from.
In a matter of months, the Trump administration has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in cancer-related research grants and contracts, arguing that they were part of politically driven D.E.I. initiatives, and suspended or delayed payments for hundreds of millions more. It is trying to sharply reduce the percentage of expenses that the government will cover for federally funded cancer-research labs. It has terminated hundreds of government employees who helped lead the country’s cancer-research system and ensured that new discoveries reached clinicians, cancer patients and the American public. And the president’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year calls for a more-than-37-percent cut to the National Cancer Institute — the N.I.H. agency that leads most of the nation’s cancer research — reducing it to $4.5 billion from $7.2 billion. Adjusting for inflation, you have to go back more than 30 years to find a comparably sized federal cancer-research budget.
President Trump made a less ambitious attempt to defund America’s scientific research system during his first term, proposing a 22-percent across-the-board cut to the N.I.H. in his inaugural budget and seeking to reduce institutions’ reimbursement rates for some of their overhead expenses. Congress flatly rejected both efforts.
But a very different attitude toward American science now prevails on the right wing of American politics. The Covid epidemic is largely responsible. Caught between a deadly pandemic and the government’s oppressive countermeasures, many Americans sought someone to blame. A variety of vaccine skeptics, antigovernment MAGA types and wellness influencers and a discrete cohort of doctors and medical experts offered them a candidate: the scientific establishment. Their collective disaffection soon congealed into a powerful political force of its own, and a fringe movement to undermine the credibility of America’s scientists went mainstream.
This force has become institutionalized in Trump’s second administration. Defending the government’s ongoing cuts to scientific research last May, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent vaccine skeptic who now leads the Department of Health and Human Services, told Congress that the N.I.H. was plagued by “corruption.” Trump’s N.I.H. director, Jay Bhattacharya, a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, a scientific treatise assailing America’s Covid policies, made his name attacking the agency that he is now running.
Trump himself defended the cuts to biomedical research in a testy exchange with a Time magazine reporter last spring. “I could give you a list of abuse and waste and fraud,” he said, “and you don’t have any interest in hearing it.” But neither he nor anyone inside his administration has spoken explicitly about its intention to radically rethink how America funds and directs cancer research, let alone laid out a plan for doing so.
Trump said it best:
Didja see that NY Governor Kathy Hochul has finally endorsed Zohran Mamdani? (Endorsing with faint praise and more than a little criticism, I might add.) She gets zero kudos from me. Just means she knows he’s gonna win, and that she wants to run for reelection. That’s it.
Hannah Einbinder Is My New Heroine. First of all, she kills on ‘Hacks’. But here’s why I salute her today:
Einbinder has publicly denounced the Israeli government’s actions in the Gaza war, the United States government’s support for Israel, and the detention of Mahmoud Khalil.
In 2025, while accepting the HRC Visibility Award, Einbinder delivered a speech, stating: “As a queer person, as a Jewish person and as an American, I am horrified by the Israeli government’s massacre of well over 65,000 Palestinians in Gaza. I am ashamed and infuriated that this mass murder is funded by our American tax dollars. It should not be controversial to say that we should all be against murdering civilians.” She added: “I see it as antithetical to our deepest Jewish traditions to fall in line and not question the actions of a state enacting atrocities in our name. Israel’s actions are not in the name of Jewish safety and it is the very conflation of Israel’s actions with the Jewish people that continues to endanger Jews.”
In May 2025, Einbinder signed a letter criticizing the film industry’s “passivity” during the ongoing Gaza genocide
On September 14, 2025, Einbender received an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. She concluded her acceptance remarks stating “Go Birds, fuck ICE, and free Palestine.”
That’s the Holy Trinity, right there.
Quick: What Do These Numbers Represent?
- 940,071 pounds of sulfur dioxide
- 69,745 pounds of nitrogen oxides
- 166,760 pounds of carbon monoxide
- 5,976 pounds of particulate matter
- 871 pounds of ammonia
- 124 pounds of hydrogen sulfide
- 111 pounds of carbonyl sulfide
- 102 pounds of hydrogen cyanide
If you guessed the chemicals released during Delaware City Refinery’s latest violation, you would be correct.
Matt Meyer Does The Right Thing On COVID Shots.
With the Trump administration appearing to limit who is eligible for updated COVID-19 vaccines, Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer has issued an order that lets virtually anybody who wants the shot to get one.
Meyer’s so-called ‘’standing order” permits pharmacists to vaccinate anyone who wants a shot as long as they meet criteria based on recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Family Physicians or American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
“The standing order is effectively a prescription that we’ve written for every Delawarean,” Meyer told WHYY News.
“Among our responsibilities is saving lives and protecting communities. And when science tells us we have these incredible medicines that sometimes took generations of some of the smartest human beings to develop, we should use that to save lives. And I want Delawareans to know that we are committed to making sure every resident has access to safe, effective and tested vaccines.”
Meyer, in conjunction with the state Division of Public Health, also called on the state Board of Pharmacy, which meets this week, to confirm the order. That way pharmacists can have extra assurance that they won’t face any repercussions for administering the shots, Meyer said. (As in, none of this ‘pre-existing conditions’ bullshit that RFK Jr. has tossed around.)
Hey, you don’t want the shot? Be my guest.
Karl Baker’s list of this week’s meetings you might want to attend. Another public service from Spotlight Delaware.
What do you want to talk about?