If you read Twitter, and probably Bluesky, if anyone reads that, Republicans are in a War On Science and the proof is (1) being Republican and (2) Robert F. Kennedy Jr., former darling of Democrats and once pushed to run EPA by President Obama, is in their camp.
Except he didn’t take his allies against science with him. They are still firmly anti-science progressives, which means they still vote Democrat, and they are still cheering every time science is suppressed.
Like right now, when they are all cheering that one of 92 Federal courts in the United States, one they picked to file in specifically because it is in San Francisco, arguably the nation’s most far-left and anti-science hub, agreed with them that USDA – sorry, Trump, they claim Trump personally told the head of USDA to treat genetically engineered crops like any other food(2) – should not have treated foods that have been genetically optimized(3) the same as regular food.
Because these groups only employ lawyers and fundraisers, no science [is] needed, they think a product with a gene replaced by a gene from the same food, except from a different region (American chestnut, Aquadvantage salmon) should be banned.
Sorry, “needs more testing”, [is] the mantra of science deniers.
It must be Republicans. Or not.
No one confuses Friends of the Earth with Republicans but the political party that once tried to get warning labels on GMOs counts on their votes. Environmental groups are staying quiet on vaccines right now – political strategy for allies is if you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all – but that is a long way from the old days when Kennedy and Wakefield were paid to go on cruises devoted to undermining vaccines, and the cruises were all attended by wealthy elites on the left. (1) Friends of the Earth repeated the progressive mantra that weedkillers ‘turns frogs gay’, as the Berkeley professor they and groups like Pesticide Action Network pay to give talks to school children scaring them about science said.
Actually, the best thing that could happen to genetic engineering and weedkillers is if Kennedy starts claiming they turn frogs gay again. Then Democrats would have to start defending science, instead of denying it but saying they don’t deny it, they are just “anti-corporate.”
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Like they used to say about vaccines.
NOTES:
(1) Or do we think the organic industry is Republican also?
(2) Except organic, which the corporate funders of Friends of the Earth keep exempt from regular USDA inspections, and make sure their lobbyists and marketing people control what the definition of “organic” is, including the dozens and dozens of synthetic ingredients exempted while still being organic, plus the toxic pesticides they’re allowed to continue to use.
(3) Except not genetically modified using Mutagenesis, literal chemical and radiation baths to force mutations, that are in thousands of products, including ones certified “Organic.”
