Cheryl Pomeroy

Retired in Ecuador, former anthropologist & union carpenter, & lifelong Democrat.

[Millie Marconi @MillieMarconnni]

A Japanese immunologist spent 20 years proving that the chemicals trees release into the air walk into your bloodstream, hunt down your stress hormones, and arm your immune system in ways no therapist or pharmaceutical has ever matched, and most of the data has been sitting in Japanese medical journals for two decades waiting to be translated.

His name is Qing Li.

He is a clinical professor at Nippon Medical School in Tokyo and the president of the Japanese Society of Forest Medicine. The Japanese government has been funding his research since 2004, and the body of work he has produced is the reason forest bathing is now an officially prescribed clinical therapy in Japan and Korea.

The story actually starts in 1982, when the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries coined the term shinrin-yoku to describe the practice of slow, mindful walking in a forest. They did it for a practical reason.

Japan was urbanizing fast, stress-related illness was climbing, and the country had thousands of square kilometers of forest sitting unused. The idea was to give people a reason to walk into the trees... They had no idea what was actually happening to the human body during those walks until Qing Li ran the first proper experiment in 2005.

He took twelve healthy adult men on a three-day, two-night trip to a forest park. They walked for a few hours each day. Nothing strenuous. No prescribed routes or breathing exercises. They simply walked slowly through the trees, breathing the air, looking at the forest.

Li drew blood and urine samples before the trip, on the second day, on the third day, on day seven after returning home, and again on day thirty.

The numbers that came back from the lab were not what anyone expected.

The activity of a specific type of immune cell called the natural killer cell, which is the cell your body uses to hunt down cancer cells and virus-infected cells before they can spread, had jumped by roughly 50 percent during the forest trip. The actual number of natural killer cells circulating in the bloodstream had increased significantly.

Three different anti-cancer proteins that those cells produce, called perforin, granzymes, and granulysin, had all risen sharply. And the effect did not disappear when the men went home. The immune boost was still measurable on day seven and was still partially present on day thirty.

Two hours a day in a forest had upgraded the immune system for a full month.

Li ran the same experiment with women a year later and found nearly identical results. Then he ran it with a control group who took a three-day trip through an urban area with the same amount of walking, the same hotel quality, and the same diet.

The urban group showed no measurable change in natural killer cell activity at all. The forest was doing the work, not the vacation.

The mechanism turned out to be a class of airborne molecules called phytoncides. Trees produce these compounds to defend themselves against insects, bacteria, and fungi. Pine, cedar, oak, and cypress trees release them in particularly large amounts, especially in warmer weather and after rainfall.

When you walk through a forest, you are inhaling those molecules into your lungs and absorbing them through your skin, and once inside your body they appear to directly stimulate the production and activity of the very immune cells Li was measuring in his lab.

Roughly 50 percent of the health benefit of a forest walk, according to Li's data, comes from the chemistry of the air itself. The other half comes from what the forest is doing to your nervous system.

This is where it stops being only about the immune system and starts being about stress.

A separate Japanese research team measured cortisol, the body's main stress hormone, in 84 participants across 35 different forest sites. They drew samples before and after a 30-minute walk in each forest and compared them to control walks in matched urban environments. The cortisol levels of the people who walked in the forest were lower than the cortisol levels of the people who walked in the city by a significant margin. Their heart rates were lower. Their blood pressure was lower.

The activity of their parasympathetic nervous system, which is the part responsible for rest and recovery, had gone up. The activity of their sympathetic nervous system, which is the part that drives fight or flight, had gone down.

Then a researcher at the University of Michigan named MaryCarol Hunter ran the cleanest version of this experiment ever done. She recruited participants from a city and told them to take a nature pill three times a week for eight weeks.

They were free to choose the time, the place, and the duration of the nature experience, as long as it was outside, in daylight, and free of phones, conversations, and aerobic exercise. They sent her saliva samples before and after each session so she could measure cortisol changes accurately and rule out the normal daily drop in stress hormones that happens to everyone.

The result was that participants experienced a 21.3 percent drop in cortisol per hour spent in nature, with the biggest payoff happening between minutes 20 and 30 of the walk.

After that, the cortisol kept dropping, but more slowly. The threshold dose for measurable stress relief was just 20 minutes outside in something that looked and felt like nature.

What none of this means is that nature is a substitute for therapy or for medication when someone genuinely needs them. Therapy treats different things than a walk does, and Li himself has been careful in interviews to call forest bathing a complementary intervention rather than a replacement for clinical care.

But what the research has settled is that the human body has a physiological response to being among trees that operates on the same biological systems modern medicine is trying to reach with drugs and clinical protocols, and that response is fast, measurable, and free.

The strangest part of Li's work is the implication he keeps repeating in interviews. The average person now spends more than 90 percent of their life indoors. Their cortisol stays elevated. Their natural killer cells stay sluggish.

Their parasympathetic nervous system rarely gets a chance to take over. The system that was tuned by millions of years of life under a canopy of trees is being asked to run permanently inside a box made of drywall and screens.

Your body has not forgotten what it is supposed to do in a forest. It is waiting for you to walk into one.

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

When Stanley Sears, 50, had a heart attack in Martin County, North Carolina, emergency crews worked on him for half an hour and couldn't stabilize him for the 20-mile drive — because the hospital in his own county was closed.
Martin General shut down in August 2023 when Quorum Health filed for bankruptcy. He didn't make it.
Republicans wrote a $50 billion rural health fund into the One Big Beautiful Bill and sold it as the lifeline.
North Carolina's share is $213 million. And County Manager Drew Batts will tell you flatly that not one dollar of it can reopen Martin General — the money goes to existing organizations, and federal rules cap how much can go to construction.
So the county is now scraping together $1.5 million of its own to buy paramedic units, because their ambulances don't even carry paramedics.
The number is real. The relief isn't. It was designed to be said, not spent.
Watch: https://t.co/B7DyybtRpS

[Occupy Democrats @OccupyDemocrats]

BREAKING: Trump's unqualified new acting spy chief showed up a DAY EARLY, demanding a list of everyone to fire — and asked to take top-secret intel HOME.

Bill Pulte, Trump’s loyalist pick for Acting Director of National Intelligence, isn't even legally qualified to run America's intelligence community. That hasn't stopped him from showing up a DAY EARLY, demanding a list of every employee so he can fire HUNDREDS of them, and asking if he can take the nation's most classified secrets to his house.

According to CNN, Pulte — Trump's acting Director of National Intelligence — stunned ODNI staff by arriving Thursday, a day before Trump said he'd start. He'd already asked for a roster of every single employee so he could "assess whether to fire them," with sources saying he's eyeing CUTS OF HUNDREDS of jobs.

This is a man with ZERO intelligence experience who, before being tapped for the job, didn't even have a security clearance — long considered the bare-minimum prerequisite.

The red flags are everywhere. In his only prior ODNI briefing, Pulte asked if he could bring the President's Daily Brief — among the most highly classified documents in the U.S. government — to his HOUSE. He asked what level of security clearance he had. And he seemed weirdly fixated on whether he gets his own GOVERNMENT PLANE to shuttle between DC, Florida, and Chicago. He even requested a protective security detail before starting the job.

"That was a bit odd," one source noted, with stunning understatement.

So, what actually qualified Pulte in Trump's eyes? Loyalty. As head of the housing finance agency, Pulte sent the DOJ criminal referrals against Democrats who investigated Trump. "President Trump wanted someone who is a true loyalist, who will do what he wants," a source said.

Now Trump has handed him a mandate to gut the intelligence community AND chase his debunked 2020 election fraud lies — a dangerous blurring of the line between foreign and domestic spying that's been forbidden since Watergate.

Even Republicans are alarmed. Intelligence Chairman Tom Cotton issued a rare rebuke. One GOP aide complained about Trump's "consistent curve balls out of left field."

A man fixated on planes and security details, who wants to take secrets home and fire hundreds of professionals, now oversees 18 intelligence agencies.

What could possibly go wrong?

Please like and share this post if you think a LOT could go wrong!

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

KAY: There is no commitment in this MOU for Iran not becoming a nuclear state in the future

REP. MIKE TURNER: It actually expressly states that -- 'the Islamic Republic confirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons'

KAY: Which was the first sentence of the JCPOA, but that was backed up by an inspections regime

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

ICE paid $123 million for a Texas warehouse valued at $11 million. It never detained a single person.

Now it doesn't want it anymore.

That warehouse isn't an outlier. ICE spent close to a $billion dollars buying 11 of these buildings under Kristi Noem, betting that empty industrial space could become a nationwide deportation pipeline.

Congress backed the plan with a budget that jumped from $8 billion to $28 billion.

Border czar Tom Homan promised 100,000 detention beds by the end of 2025.
Now the agency is reversing course on 7 of those warehouses, worth more than $700 million combined — either selling them outright or handing them off to other federal agencies.

The agency isn't backing off mass detention. It's just shifting the money.

ICE now plans to buy detention space directly from the private prison companies it already contracts with — likely GEO Group and CoreCivic, its two largest private detention contractors.

The same Inspector General investigating where the first $billion went hasn't said a word about where the next one's headed.

Who's getting fired for a $123 million mistake?

#DemsUnited

[Jay Bookman @jaysbookman]

The Texas screwworm story is a version of this. The Reflecting Pool fiasco is a version of this. The Iranian war is a very large and ongoing version of this.
Everywhere you look, incompetence is having its natural consequences, with more to come. Much more, I'm afraid.

[Really American 🇺🇸 @ReallyAmerican1]

Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth’s crusade to purge women and people of color from our Armed Forces has never been subtle.

But today, a New York Times exposé revealed exactly how far he’s gone to dismantle the careers and achievements of our finest servicemen and women.

More than a dozen military insiders — both active duty and those already purged — spoke to the Times anonymously to unmask a horrific ongoing attack.

They detailed a process used by Hegseth and his team to halt senior officer advancements for reasons completely unrelated to merit, job performance, or fighting wars.

Hegseth’s efforts are part of a quest to advance his white-and-male centered worldview, facts, history, and actual service be damned.

In the absence of any such evidence, insiders confirmed that he has used his position to withhold promotions from qualified, decorated veterans. The Times cited several enraging examples:

• Last fall, Hegseth ordered Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll to remove two Black and two female officers from a 29-person promotion list. Driscoll repeatedly refused, citing their decades of exemplary service. In March, Hegseth bypassed him, removed their names, and sent the modified list to the White House.

• In total, Hegseth has removed 32 officers from Air Force and Navy one- and two-star promotion lists. He also pulled the only Black officer and the only female officer from a Marine Corps list, leaving their promotions in limbo.

• Vice Adm. Sara Joyner, a highly decorated three-star fighter pilot, saw her advancement stalled over a 2021 Navy recruiting ad where she said, "I’m not just a girl with a dream. I’m a sailor with one." Hegseth deemed the line a "big problem." Joyner has since retired.

• Rear Adm. Stephen D. Barnett was recommended for a promotion after successfully managing the aftermath of a massive Navy fuel spill in Hawaii. Hegseth blocked his advancement after Barnett participated in a Navy-sponsored Pride event back in 2018.

It is an outrage to watch a media personality whose greatest battles have been with hangovers intentionally harm the careers of people who risked everything to keep America safe. Hegseth’s actions are insult to all who have served and a risk to national security.

[Image: REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov]

[Democracy Forward @DemocracyFwd]

BREAKING: Judge orders FBI to review and release thousands of records related to the Epstein Files.

We knew the Trump-Vance admin’s attempt to delay this process was unlawful and absurd – today the court agreed with us.

[Democracy Docket @DemocracyDocket]

BREAKING: Georgia House Republicans won't redraw the state's maps during a special session that was set to begin today.

"Changes to Georgia's maps should take place only when members of the General Assembly and citizens have been given ample opportunity to...engage in meaningful discussion."

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

A Fulton County judge just threw out a GOP lawsuit that sought to put far-right observers inside Georgia's election-night operations center - the facility where statewide vote totals are received and published.

Judge Melynee Leftridge's dismissal order states the plain fact that ends the argument: no polling, voting, scanning, tabulation, verification, or adjudication of voted ballots takes place at the Emergency Operations Center. All of that happens at the county level, where poll watchers and State Election Board members already have statutory access to observe it.

The lawsuit was filed by Greg Dolezal, a Republican lieutenant governor candidate who earlier this year called on the State Election Board to seize control of Fulton County's elections based on what Leftridge's order and Democracy Docket both characterize as nonexistent claims of voter fraud. Dolezal is currently in a close primary runoff. Election skepticism is the center of his campaign.

The plaintiffs on this suit also included members of the MAGA-controlled State Election Board. The goal wasn't transparency - the facility they wanted access to doesn't do the things they claimed to need to observe. The goal was presence. Partisan observers inside the room where the state's numbers come together on election night, with no legal basis and no statutory requirement to let them in.

A Republican secretary of state held the line. A Fulton County judge threw it out. The machinery of accountability still works, when people use it.

[Chuck Schumer @SenSchumer]

Trump has now spent $2.6 billion in tax-payer money to kill offshore wind projects. 

These projects represented thousands of good union jobs, billions in economic development, and millions of homes worth of desperately needed electricity. 

And any blackouts in NY will now rest squarely on the shoulders of Donald Trump.

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

Debbie Hart runs the Exeland Depot, the only food store for 30–40 minutes in rural northern Wisconsin — and a lot of her customers pay with SNAP. A new USDA rule under Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins requires SNAP retailers to stock far more perishable food by November 2026, the kind of inventory that spoils on the shelves of a tiny rural store.
The USDA's own impact analysis estimates roughly 5,000 stores will lose the ability to accept SNAP — more than double the usual annual attrition. This comes after 3.5 million people already lost SNAP benefits under the "One Big Beautiful Bill." A rule sold as healthy-food access, by the government's own math, cuts off the poor and rural communities it claims to help.
Watch: https://t.co/8ht4cIrzGx

[ProPublica @propublica]

.@DavidArmstrongX was diagnosed with cancer and learned one of his drugs sold for almost $1,000 per pill—despite the fact it cost pennies to make.

What he found out helps explain why our healthcare system is the most expensive in the world.

Listen now: https://t.co/vjViI51Gg4

[Democracy Docket @DemocracyDocket]

DECIDED: A North Carolina court approved an agreement between Republicans and the state election board that formalizes the use of jury questionnaires to identify suspected noncitizens on the rolls.

As a result, the deal could lead to wrongful voter purges and expose eligible voters to legal probes. https://t.co/gT0XXyKBXT

[Democracy Docket @DemocracyDocket]

🚨BREAKING: Election denier billionaire Rick Jackson won Georgia’s GOP runoff for governor.

Jackson has echoed Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election and pushed for new GOP gerrymanders.

He’ll face Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) in November.
https://t.co/PjL69DmkiF

[Dr Tom Montgomery @DrTOMontgomery]

#Ocean
"Supreme stupidity" is no exaggeration:

Destroying the Ocean Observatories Initiative would be a momentous act of harm to US interests.

Senators are now fighting back, and have written to the NSF to reverse course on its plan.

In their letter, the senators cited the approaching El Niño – a periodic Pacific warming that disrupts weather patterns and supercharges marine heat waves – as evidence the cuts are particularly ill-timed.

“The loss of this deep-water observation system would threaten our ability to prepare for and monitor future El Niño events,” they wrote, warning coastal communities, fishermen and emergency responders would be left without crucial information.

“In a time of strained resources, the NSF is wasting time and money to destroy its own scientific infrastructure.”

My team of marine scientists use data from the OOI regularly and it is complete nonsense to suggest that there is any other system in place which can match its capabilities.

[Scott MacFarlane @MacFarlaneNews]

NEW: House Judiciary & Oversight Cmte staff visited Bryan federal prison camp in Texas, where Ghislaine Maxwell is held

Per committee Dem leaders: "Bureau of Prisons leadership repeatedly shut down our lines of questioning or could not provide basic information about our central concerns, including Ms. Maxwell’s extraordinary treatment, allegations of sexual assault at the facility, and retaliation against inmates who tried to blow the whistle"

[Scott MacFarlane @MacFarlaneNews]

NEW: House Judiciary Cmte Democrats launch probe into alleged "slush fund" used by Kash Patel to pay bonuses to some agents

Dems allege significant $ went to Patel "Payback Squad", which pursued political targets

They say fund constitute "gross mismanagement of public funds"

[Headquarters @HQNewsNow]

Mike Collins, the new Republican Senate candidate for Georgia:

—Praised college students making monkey gestures and noises at a Black woman
—Employed a chief of staff who was in a white nationalist group chat
—Denies the results of the 2020 election
—Has been the subject of a House Ethics committee investigation

[Marc E. Elias @marceelias]

A federal judge Tuesday rejected the Trump Justice Department’s attempt to defend Ohio’s restrictive new voting law, finding its proposed filing redundant, disconnected and too late to help the court ahead of a major hearing next week. https://t.co/GTWdiIxWkQ