Links for you. Science:

New biosensor can detect airborne bird flu in under five minutes
Censor, purge, defund: how Trump is following the authoritarian playbook on science and universities
DOGE Fired NIH Employees Who Worked on Lab Leak Prevention
‘Health Security Is At Risk’: Inside the Purge of HHS. Employees are grappling with buyout offers as public health crises mount. “Somebody has to stay to help clean up the mess that they’re most likely going to make,” one said.
Elisabeth Vrba: Palaeontologist who studied how environments and evolution interact.
NIH set to replace chief of staff with former Massie aide

Other:

How Silicon Valley boys came to rule politics (excellent)
Trump’s Crazed Midnight Tirade Over Musk’s Unpopularity Shows Weakness
The Successful Presidents Curse. We need Democratic leaders who can solve the Trump-related crises of their time, not the problems of decades past.
Cunning Plans
Musk’s Empire Is Looking Even More Shaky
Musk’s Tweet-Fueled Bubble May Be About to Burst
GOP governor is suddenly protective of Medicaid program he tried to kill
The Court of Appeals Just Shut Down Trump’s Bid to End Birthright Citizenship
What Made the Irish Famine So Deadly. The Great Hunger was a modern event, shaped by the belief that the poor are the authors of their own misery and that the market must be obeyed at all costs.
Just Being A Bit More Crass About It
Elon Musk’s self-destruction: The cost for Donald Trump of keeping the world’s richest man by his side is growing
When the media take MAGA liars at their word. Whether it’s cluelessness or complicity, it’s toxic to democracy.
USAID employees told to burn or shred classified documents. An organization representing foreign service workers said it was “alarmed” by the directive because there could be documents “relevant to ongoing litigation.”
Why I Left the Washington Post. Owner Jeff Bezos wants to transform the Opinions section of the paper, where I worked for forty years. After the publisher killed my column disagreeing with that move—it appears here in full—I decided to quit.
Elon Musk Finally Admits Social Security Is on the Chopping Block
DOGE Likely Can’t Evade Freedom of Information Law, Court Rules
Remembering Kevin Drum: My friend and colleague, who died this month, was not only a pioneer blogger but also a journalist who should have won the Pulitzer Prize.
Be Prepared: Trump is sabotaging the economy, but we shouldn’t assume public opinion will follow automatically.
The Viral ‘Debate’ Video That Proves Most MAGA Voters Are a Lost Cause
DOGE Is Courting Catastrophic Risk. Musk has turned a dangerously flawed view of “waste” into a philosophy of government.
The Entire World Is Pissed at Trump—and It May Cost the U.S. Big Time
Kayfabe
The Long Tail Of Failed Leadership: In the vacuum, Republicans got their act together and backed Democrats into a corner. Dems now enter a government shutdown fight unprepared. (late to this, but I don’t think this is a failure from Democratic leadership’s perspective: all along, they have been clear they think–for a certain definition of ‘thinking’–that the best strategy is to make symbolic gestures and let Republicans own all of the problems. This would have been a good strategy in 2017, but is inadequate to 2025)
Musk Shares Claim That Stalin and Hitler Didn’t Murder Millions: ‘Public Sector Employees Did’
These Are the 10 DOGE Operatives Inside the Social Security Administration
Egg Prices Soar as Easter and Passover Approach (Trump take egg)
White House pulls nomination of Dave Weldon as CDC director hours before hearing