Trickle Up Economics

“At the beginning of January, Matthew Memoli was a relatively little-known flu researcher running a small lab at the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health. Then the Trump administration handpicked him to be the acting director of the $48 billion federal agency, a role in which he oversaw pauses in award payments, the mass cancellation of grants, the defunding of clinical trials, and the firing of thousands of employees” … now he and his close collaborator are “set to be awarded up to $500 million for their in-house [RFK Jr approved] vaccine research.” Katherine J. Wu in The Atlantic (Gift Article) with just one relatively small example the new swamp of corruption. ‘It’s All Cronyism Going Forward.’

+ The Verge: Grifters thrive under Trump’s scam-friendly administration. “The president has created his own money-fleecing spin on Reagonomics — instead of promising trickle-down wealth, it’s trickle-down opportunities for fraud.”

+ WaPo U.S. pushes nations facing tariffs to approve Musk’s Starlink, cables show.