Mandy Oaklander | November 14, 2026

The CDC has long existed to help protect us from infectious diseases and other health threats, writes Nikki Romanik, who previously served in the White House, in a new piece for TIME. Congress, she says, should take four steps to ensure that Americans can trust the CDC’s expertise, no matter who is in charge.

TODAY’S TOPICS

Inside an ER doctor’s barn
How to take politics out of the CDC
Boom times for psychedelic treatments

AT HOME WITH AN EXPERT

The doctor will see the goats now

Dr. Jerry Balentine, an emergency physician and president and CEO of the New York Institute of Technology, does a lot of dirty work on the weekends. His chores include fence repairs, squash harvesting, and delivering baby goats: 28 of them last winter.

In the photo above, he’s unloading 40 bales of hay for the Nigerian Dwarf goats at Shady Farm, the homestead outside of Woodstock, N.Y., that he runs with his wife, Victoria. She turns their milk into cheese; the goats also pitch in by clearing brush.

Balentine used to live in cities, where even his downtime was more intellectual than physical. Farm life gives him more balance. “You can lose yourself in a physical task while enjoying all the animals and nature around you,” he says. His advice for readers without livestock: Treat a chore as a chance to learn something. “It’s never too late to pick up a new challenge or learn new skills.” —Angela Haupt

SATURDAY READ

Congress must protect the CDC from politics

By Dr. Nikki Romanik

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Washington, DC, on Sept. 4, 2025. Alex Wroblewski—AFP via Getty Images

Democrats and Republicans in the new Congress will disagree about plenty in health policy. However, they should agree that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should be a scientific agency whose judgments hold steady no matter who occupies the White House. In January, Congress will have the chance to write that principle into law.

For decades, the scientific independence of America’s public health agencies rested on a bipartisan understanding. Presidential administrations disagreed about health policy, sometimes profoundly, but their health secretaries generally respected the expertise and established processes of agencies like the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration.

Earlier administrations of both parties—including those of Republican Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and Democratic Secretary Xavier Becerra—faced charges of political interference, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and some had merit. But I would argue that none have even approached the scale and scope of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s interventions. The safeguards that existed were administrative policies, and a new secretary can discard them.

Read the full story here.

WHAT WE’RE READING

The number of babies born in the U.S. with syphilis has climbed alarmingly, a new study shows, perhaps because of declines in federal aid for prenatal care, writes Laine Bergeson for CIDRAP.
AI is changing the job hunt, but in-person networking still has an edge. Cathy Bussewitz at the AP shares tips for making meaningful connections.
The U.S. government will invest millions of dollars to research and develop psychedelic treatments, such as ibogaine, as mental health treatments, the Washington Post reports.

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