Red0ctober

While taping his Thursday show, host Stephen Colbert made the surprising announcement that CBS is ending his late night show in May.

The live audience at New York's Ed Sullivan Theater booed when he delivered the news that this would be the show's final season.

"Yeah, I share your feelings," he told the audience. "It's not just the end our our show, but it's the end of The Late Show on CBS. I'm not being replaced. This is all just going away."

Health and medical groups around the country are bracing for another grievous blow to America's infrastructure of evidence-based health, this time targeting preventive medicine.

Earlier this week, health secretary and ardent anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abruptly canceled a meeting of the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), a scientifically independent panel of up to 16 volunteer experts that issues rigorous, evidence-based recommendations on preventive care—on everything from colonoscopies to folic acid supplements in pregnancy. The panel uses a highly transparent and rigorous framework, grading recommendations on an A to D scale. Recommendations with an A or B grade are adopted nationwide, and health insurance plans are required to cover them at no cost to patients.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he’s imposing a new 50% tariff on all copper imported into the US. However, it’s unclear when the new tariff would take effect.

“Today we’re doing copper,” he said at a Cabinet meeting, adding that he believed the rate will be 50%.

All 17 experts ousted from the federal vaccine advisory committee have spoken out about the drastic changes that anti-vaccine advocate and current US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made since taking office. Those changes include unilaterally restricting access to COVID-19 vaccines and summarily firing the entire Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which had guided federal vaccine policies for more than 60 years.

"We are deeply concerned that these destabilizing decisions, made without clear rationale, may roll back the achievements of US immunization policy, impact people’s access to lifesaving vaccines, and ultimately put US families at risk of dangerous and preventable illnesses," the fired experts write in an editorial published in JAMA.

With the federal hiring freeze lifting in mid-July, the Trump administration has rolled out a controversial federal hiring plan that critics warn will politicize and likely slow down the process rather than increase government efficiency.

De-emphasizing degree requirements and banning DEI initiatives—as well as any census tracking of gender, race, ethnicity, or religion to assess the composition of government—the plan requires every new hire to submit essays explaining which executive orders or policy initiatives they will help advance.

Once hailed as a triumph of public health, water fluoridation is now under intense attack in the US.

Despite decades of data proving its efficacy at protecting teeth from decay—particularly children's teeth—two states have now banned the use of fluoride in public water, and communities around the country have followed suit or are considering doing the same. The current US health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is known for his anti-vaccine advocacy and for peddling conspiracy theories, has pledged to remove fluoride from US water.

President Donald Trump is demanding the release of Tina Peters, a former election official who parroted Trump's 2020 election conspiracy theories and is serving nine years in prison for compromising the security of election equipment.

In a post on Truth Social last night, Trump wrote that "Radical Left Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser ignores Illegals committing Violent Crimes like Rape and Murder in his State and, instead, jailed Tina Peters, a 69-year-old Gold Star mother who worked to expose and document Democrat Election Fraud. Tina is an innocent Political Prisoner being horribly and unjustly punished in the form of Cruel and Unusual Punishment."

Both fans and foes are getting in on the bidding war for Alex Jones’ media company -- or at least trying to.

Some harbor hopes of continuing Jones’ brand of conservative rants and conspiracy mongering, while others dream of burying it for good. Ultimately, the winner may take all, including even Jones himself, since the company running the auction says there would be nothing stopping a new owner from rehiring “key employees and talent.”

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' Infowars media platform and its assets will be sold off piece by piece in auctions this fall to help pay the more than $1 billion he owes relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, under an order expected to be approved by a federal judge.

The ever changing lore is a wonder unto itself.