The White House has announced a new era in women’s health, and I would very much like it to survive contact with a budget. Today, Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the creation of a Women’s Health Division at the National Institutes of Health within 90 days, alongside a White House task force co-chaired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Susie Wiles. The research priorities include endometriosis, chronic pain, cardiovascular disease, maternal health, and menopause. These are serious needs, and better research could make an enormous difference in people’s lives.
The order also directs the new division to coordinate with NIH’s existing Office of Research on Women’s Health, which was established in 1990. This is useful context for anyone getting the impression that the federal government discovered women sometime between breakfast and the signing ceremony.
There is another detail tucked into the order: it revokes Biden’s 2024 women’s health research executive order and the 2023 memorandum establishing his White House initiative on the subject. Some of the work may change under the new arrangement, but the prior work did, inconveniently, exist. Presidential credit apparently requires a little demolition before the ribbon cutting.
The practical question is what follows. AP reports that the order includes no specific funding goals, and the text makes implementation subject to available appropriations. HHS is directed to cover the task force’s administrative costs, but that is a different matter from a sustained research investment. A woman waiting for answers about debilitating pain can’t pay her specialist with the minutes from an interagency meeting, however impressively everyone’s name is arranged at the top.
I want this effort to produce useful science and better care. That means watching the funding, the people doing the research, and whether discoveries reach patients. The ceremony has already received its applause. The work still has to earn it.
Farther from the Rose Garden, a different kind of promotional language is running into something rather larger than a footnote.
In reporting published today, KUOW’s John Ryan examines the toll of Northwest cruises on whales and the climate. Last month, the Norwegian Joy arrived in Sitka with an endangered fin whale across its bow. People book these voyages to experience a living coast; the industry owes that coast more than a starring role in the brochure.
There are efforts to reduce collisions. MSC brought a marine mammal observer aboard one ship to study whale behavior, and cruise lines say crews slow down when whales are spotted. But experts say many collisions go unnoticed or unreported, and most of the Inside Passage has no speed limits. The Marine Mammal Commission points to 10-knot limits as the most effective speed restrictions for reducing fatal and serious strikes on large whales.
An itinerary is a human invention. A whale shouldn’t have to die because someone scheduled the next buffet too far down the coast. Mandatory protections deserve more weight than an industry’s assurance that it cares deeply about the scenery.
Meanwhile, Russia is attacking the infrastructure Ukrainians need to get through winter, while Washington has chosen to waive major new measures intended to pressure Moscow.
Zelenskyy said today’s attacks struck 28 substations and other critical energy facilities. AP reports that more than half a million people were deprived of electricity, heat, and running water. He also said Ukraine again lacked advance warning from its partners; Trump and Marco Rubio maintain that the United States hasn’t stopped intelligence sharing.
The sanctions decision is clearer on paper. Trump’s October 16 executive order waives major sanctions, restrictions, and tariffs under the Russia and Iran sanctions law he signed in September. Existing sanctions under the earlier executive orders specified in the document remain in place. This is a substantial retreat from the new law’s pressure on Russia, rather than the disappearance of every sanction.
Signing a law and then waiving its teeth is certainly one way to keep the presidential pen employed. It is harder to see what reassurance that offers a family listening for missiles.
An attack on the power grid reaches into every ordinary task that depends on it, from keeping food cold to warming a room where a child sleeps. Those consequences deserve to remain in the foreground when Washington discusses leverage. The success of a peace policy has to be measured in what people can safely do tomorrow, including whether they can turn on the heat.
On the actual Homefront, my husband and I are mostly better, with just a little congestion hanging around like a guest who has watched you put your pajamas on and still hasn’t left. Ezra, however, is in round two. He has been running a fever, his face is operating as a snot factory, and he has recently added a touch of conjunctivitis to his collection. Today’s doctor visit confirmed pink eye, an ear infection, and the flu, which seems like an unnecessarily ambitious workload for one baby. Somehow, he remains the happiest baby there ever was. Even when he’s lying feverish on my chest while we wait for the Tylenol to kick in, I can feel his little happiness. My poor, tough little guy is such a blessing.
He has also reached the stage he has apparently been waiting for his entire life: putting on socks and shoes and running around outside. There are sticks, plants, and an entire world he would like to personally inspect. His enthusiasm for getting out the door suggests that he has been enduring indoor life as a temporary administrative inconvenience.
Our heat pump is fully installed, which would be a more satisfying sentence if it were not now throwing an error code. We are still a little cold, and an HVAC diagnosis is expensive, so we are hoping one of the many knowledgeable people in our lives can help us solve the problem before we have to rake out more money. I had pictured this particular home improvement producing warm air, but so far it has produced an alphanumeric riddle.
Ember is also a bit unlucky, though her brother has rather unnecessarily taken the lead. She has an ear infection and, according to the doctor, the remnants of the flu. Her flu test came back negative, and she has been cleared to return to school once she has been fever-free for 24 hours. She is very ready. Today she settled under a blanket with learning games and pretended to be at school, a commitment to attendance I have to admire. If enthusiasm counted toward enrollment, she would already have tenure.
Her older brother has his first engineering club today, which he is very excited about. This morning also featured a last-minute discovery that his helmet was at his mom’s, information he released approximately ten minutes before we needed to have a functioning transportation plan. There are electric scooters at both houses, and allegedly one helmet, although I reserve the right to discover another one here later. He’s so much like me that I can’t even enjoy being properly indignant.
His mom rescued the morning with a ride and took him to engineering club this evening, and my husband handled pickup. A sick Ezra and I negotiated a total of about an hour and a half of sleep last night, so I decided my contribution to road safety would be staying off the road. Between all that and the doctor visits, this report is arriving a little later than planned.
We also cleared brush yesterday and made room for fruit trees. I was tired for that, too, but there’s something wonderful about seeing a long-running project finally begin to come together. After so much work, we have space where something can grow.
That’s the Homefront: a baby delighted by sticks, a little girl attending school in spirit, an aspiring engineer with a developing approach to logistics, and a heating system communicating exclusively in riddles. If that were the whole world, life would feel considerably more manageable. Unfortunately, the administration insists on strutting its not-so-hot stuff, and apparently somebody has to keep track of it.
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The fruit trees now have somewhere to go. We remain cautiously optimistic that the heat pump will eventually develop a similarly clear sense of purpose.
Desperation move