Public Herald

An award-winning nonprofit investigative #newsroom & film production team publishing exclusive reports and documentaries about the world. Podcast @newsCOUP

[Public Herald @PublicHerald]

DEP discretion manufactured what it considered safe, not necessarily establishing, by way of public input or congressional approval, regulations that would best apply for safe discharges of radium to public waterways linked to fracking https://t.co/wlonpEuoEZ

[Public Herald @PublicHerald]

Ohio Is Left Holding Pennsylvania's Fracking Radioactive Waste Bags After Facilities Contaminated Waterways, Over 2M Gallons Sent in 2025 w/ 2M+ Expected in 2026 https://t.co/pCkSm9H063

[Public Herald @PublicHerald]

Twenty-Six Days Later:
DEP Logs Cleanup at
Eureka — Still No Radium Tests, & Company Now Floats Lower Spill Totals

"There's a lot of radium associated with all this and if it doesn't get put somewhere safe people are going to get hurt."

https://t.co/HcAdCFnNjc

[Public Herald @PublicHerald]

Eureka was not just treating waste. By law, it was operating an unpermitted disposal facility — a direct violation of Pennsylvania’s Solid Waste Management Act...Across 30 pages, nowhere does DEP mention radioactivity...it's a public health cover-up https://t.co/seyPgsLA3i

[Public Herald @PublicHerald]

Breaking: Eureka Resources Spill Thousands of Gallons of Radioactive Wastewater Into West Branch of Susquehanna River https://t.co/IiYqpZ9YKi

“We were constantly having to fix those tanks from leaking. This never should have happened. Someone needs to shut them down…”

[Patrick Farnsworth @LastBornPodcast]

Now on the main feed, my interview w/ @JoshuaPribanic + @amymitchellart from @LongCovidAP. They discuss their groundbreaking new book, A National Treatment and Research Agenda for Long Covid.

https://t.co/OJ4fwJFjBo

[Patrick Farnsworth @LastBornPodcast]

Now available to all members (free and paid), my interview w/ @JoshuaPribanic & @amymitchellart, discussing #LongCovid, #viralpersistence, & the groundbreaking new @LongCovidAP book, A National Treatment and Research Agenda for Long Covid.

https://t.co/efOzxJGZpI

[Financial Times @FT]

While Doge’s website claims $170bn in savings, an FT investigation shows that only a sliver of that figure can actually be verified https://t.co/4TtNy16oMV

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

Since winning in 2022, John Fetterman has lost his closest advisers, including three of his top spokespeople, his legislative director, and his chief of staff.

Former and current staffers paint a picture of an erratic senator who has become almost impossible to work for, and whose mental health situation is more serious and complicated than previously reported. No one is saying every issue (say, his respectful relationship with Trump) stems from his mental health—but it’s become harder to tell which ones do.

Fetterman’s staffers, his truest believers, now question his fitness to be a senator. They worry he may present a danger to the Democratic Party and maybe even to himself.

[Kevin Hall @KevinH_PhD]

After 21 years at my dream job, I’m very sad to announce my early retirement from the National Institutes of Health. My life’s work has been to scientifically study how our food environment affects what we eat, and how what we eat affects our physiology. Lately, I’ve focused on unravelling the reasons why diets high in ultra-processed food are linked to epidemic proportions of chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity. Our research leads the world on this topic.

Given recent bipartisan goals to prevent diet-related chronic diseases, and new agency leadership professing to prioritize scientific investigation of ultra-processed foods, I had hoped to expand our research program with ambitious plans to more rapidly and efficiently determine how our food is likely making Americans chronically sick.

Unfortunately, recent events have made me question whether NIH continues to be a place where I can freely conduct unbiased science. Specifically, I experienced censorship in the reporting of our research because of agency concerns that it did not appear to fully support preconceived narratives of my agency’s leadership about ultra-processed food addiction.

I was hoping this was an aberration. So, weeks ago I wrote to my agency’s leadership expressing my concerns and requested time to discuss these issues, but I never received a response. Without any reassurance there wouldn’t be continued censorship or meddling in our research, I felt compelled to accept early retirement to preserve health insurance for my family. (Resigning later in protest of any future meddling or censorship would result in losing that benefit.) Due to very tight deadlines to make this decision, I don’t yet have plans for my future career.

The NIH has been a wonderful place because it allows scientists to take risks, form unique collaborations, and do studies difficult to conduct elsewhere. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished and I’m fortunate to have had such wonderful colleagues and scientific collaborators. I hope to someday return to government service and lead a research program that will continue to provide gold-standard science to make Americans healthy.

[Freedom of the Press Foundation @FreedomofPress]

It’s a sad day in America when student journalists must resign or write anonymously because they fear government reprisals.

This is the opposite of free speech.
https://t.co/cBYP90dunc

[Marc Johnson @SolidEvidence]

Persistent infections are training grounds for pathogens.

People worry about ‘gain of function’ work, but failing to continue treating the 40+ million people in the world living with HIV would be the largest and most dangerous gain of function ‘experiment’ in history.
24/

[Freedom of the Press Foundation @FreedomofPress]

"Professors and editors can grapple with the ethics of publishing secrets the government itself discloses, but the law should have no role in the decision."
https://t.co/Ke2KNRodr1

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

REPORT: Gaza’s Government Media Office says Israel has carried out a “systematic campaign” to destroy all alternative energy sources in the Strip, with more than 4,000 facilities and homes with solar systems wiped out.

Solar power had become a lifeline for Gaza’s hospitals, water wells, desalination plants, schools, bakeries, and homes — amid more than 550 days without electricity due to siege and war. The office called this an “effort to eliminate what remains of life-sustaining resources across all provinces of Gaza.”

The destruction, it said, was part of an Israeli effort to “return Gaza to the Stone Age,” citing explicit threats from Israel’s defense minister to eliminate energy infrastructure.

Authorities said the strikes constitute a war crime and demanded urgent international action.

[Public Herald @PublicHerald]

•New Yorker contributing writer Eliza Griswold, who wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning book that describes the health harms oil and gas waste posed to one southwest Pennsylvania community
•And at The New York Times, investigative reporter Ian Urbina, who wrote 10 in-depth and eloquent pieces in his 2011-2012 “Drilling Down” series. Among many other stunning reveals, his reporting exposed how Pennsylvania was enabling copious amounts of the oil and gas industry’s radium to be discharged into the waterways that numerous Pennsylvania communities draw their drinking water from.

[Public Herald @PublicHerald]

Public Herald colleague Justin Nobel has issued a call for journalists on @sejorg to seize the opportunity to cover TENORM ☢️: “If you are a reporter who covers climate change, I ask you to focus for a moment on…” https://t.co/Xp8W3flRb8

[Public Herald @PublicHerald]

Those of us who’ve covered this story during fracking’s beginnings are listed here to call on for guidance & support:

“Responsibility to report — There are other journalists on this beat:
•Martha Pskowski, Kiley Bense and Dylan Baddour with Inside Climate News, covering all threads of the oil and gas waste spiderweb
•Sharon Kelly, Julie Dermansky and Nick Cunningham at DeSmog, covering everything from the industry’s hidden documents to radioactive fracking waste in Argentina, and in Dermansky’s case, photographing the stuff
•Mark Olalde, ProPublica, and Nick Bowlin, Capital & Main, who teamed up to cover a multitude of problems posed by injection wells
•Joshua Pribanic and Melissa Troutman at Public Herald, who have been on the beat longer than anyone

[Amy Mitchell @amymitchellart]

March is my COVID anniversary month.
I've had long COVID since March 2020. 5 years is too long.
There are no biomarker tests or treatments for Long COVID.
Since March 2024, over a year, I've tested positive for #COVID. 1 year is too long.
There are no antivirals or monoclonal antibodies for chronic COVID. Paxlovid and a few other treatments have temporarily caused negative test results. But my insurance won't cover an extended course of Paxlovid, leaving me without treatment.

#LongCOVID is chronic COVID.
We need tests, treatments, and #AntiviralsNow.
We have waited long enough.

#LongCovidAwareness
#LongCovidAwarenessDay2025

Image is a year of used COVID tests, dated on the back. From March 2024 to March 2025. Positive red lines are still visible on upright tests.

[Amy Mitchell @amymitchellart]

@AnciraBecky Time to Change The Agenda: A National Treatment & Research Agenda for Long Covid 📕⏱️
New book by @LongCovidAP @LCAPCURE
Free to download or available to purchase for small donation.
https://t.co/9yshqCeX54

[LCAP (Long Covid Action Project) @LongCovidAP]

Urgent Action Needed: Introducing LCAP’s Groundbreaking Book on Long Covid for #LongCovidAwarenessDay2025 @NIH

"This book is more than a call to action — it’s a blueprint for change" ✅ https://t.co/J9uXXpxVr4

#LongCovidAwarenessMonth
#LongCOVIDAwarenessWeek
#CureLongCovidNow