Scientists at several federal agencies are losing access to scientific literature published by Springer Nature, which produces the prestigious journal Nature among many other high-profile titles.

That's according to a report Monday by Nature's news team, which is also published by Springer Nature, but is editorially independent.

According to the news outlet, spokespeople for NASA and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) confirmed that agency scientists would no longer have access to Springer Nature journals. A USDA spokesperson said that it "has cancelled all contracts and subscriptions to Springer Nature. The journal [sic] is exorbitantly expensive and is not a good use of taxpayer funds." A government spending database also shows the Department of Energy (DOE) has dropped contracts with the publisher.

When Nature news first reached out to the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—which is the top funding agency for biomedical research in the world—it appeared that its access to Nature journals was not on the chopping block. But, hours later, Andrew Nixon, the top spokesperson for the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the NIH, said: "All contracts with Springer Nature are terminated or no longer active. Precious taxpayer dollars should be [sic] not be used on unused subscriptions to junk science."

The move comes after HHS Secretary and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on a May 27 podcast that prestigious medical journals are "corrupt."

"We’re probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and those other journals because they’re all corrupt," he said. He accused the journals collectively of being a "vessel for pharmaceutical propaganda." He went on to say that "unless these journals change dramatically," the federal government would "stop NIH scientists from publishing there" and create "in-house" journals instead.

Kennedy's criticism largely stems from his belief that modern medicine and mainstream science are part of a global conspiracy to generate pharmaceutical profits. Kennedy is a germ-theory denier who believes people can maintain their health not by relying on evidence-based medicine, such as vaccines, but by clean living and eating—a loose concept called "terrain theory."

Access to top scientific and medical journals is essential for federal scientists to keep up to date with their fields and publicize high-impact results. One NIH employee added to Nature news that it "suppresses our scientific freedom, to pursue information where it is present."

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The Senate Republicans' version of President Trump's tax bill would slash federal spending on health provisions—Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act—by $1.1 trillion by 2034. And in that time, an estimated 11.8 million people would lose their health insurance.

That’s according to an analysis released over the weekend by the Congressional Budget Office. The massive piece of legislation is likely to change as senators are currently running a "vote-a-rama" for rapid-fire amendment proposals.

The bulk of the estimated reductions in health spending come from Medicaid, which will lose more than $1 trillion. Of the 11.8 million people who could lose health insurance, 1.4 million are people without "verified citizenship" or "satisfactory immigration status," the CBO noted.

The overall number of people estimated to lose health insurance is an increase over what was estimated from the House's version of the bill, which was about 10.9 million.

The substantial cuts to Medicaid, a program jointly funded by states and the federal government, largely stem from two features in the bill, The New York Times notes. One is a strict nationwide work requirement, despite the fact that the vast majority of working-aged adults on Medicaid are already working. The new requirements are estimated to cut Medicaid spending by $325 billion over a decade, while a 2023 CBO analysis found that a strict work requirement would not increase employment.

The second Medicaid-gutting feature is restrictions on how states tax medical providers to get more federal contributions for Medicaid—aka provider taxes. In this maneuver, states can add taxes on medical providers, then turn around and use the funds to provide medical providers with higher Medicaid payments. This ostensibly increases a state's spending on Medicaid, allowing it to increase the matching funding from the federal government. The Senate bill would force many states to lower their current tax rates, which would contribute to cutting federal spending by an estimated $375 billion.

The legislation has detractors within the Republican ranks and is also deeply unpopular among Americans. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who this weekend announced he will not seek re-election, harshly criticized the bill after opposing it in a procedural vote. "What do I tell 663,000 people in two years, three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding's not there anymore," he asked Sunday night on the Senate floor.

Polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation earlier this month found that 64 percent of Americans opposed the House version of the bill. But, the bill's unfavorability jumped to 74 percent when people were asked: "What if you heard that if passed, the tax and budget bill being discussed by Congress would increase the number of people without health insurance by about 10 million?"

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The wind power industry has long faced a bit of a frustrating problem. Gigantic blades are more efficient, but they’re also hard to ship. A single blade can be more than a few hundred feet long, and they’re a logistical nightmare to haul down roads and load onto barges to get to their destination turbines. Startup company Radia thinks it has the answer. For the past decade, it has been developing an aircraft of mammoth proportions that would dwarf even the iconic Antonov An-225 Mriya. The WindRunner is huge, goofy, and I hope it becomes a reality.

The world of super-large aircraft has been a much sadder one since 2022. Early that year, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine resulted in the destruction of the sole operational Antonov An-225 in the world. The distinctive Antonov and its sextet of engines had wowed the public for decades and carried the biggest loads that no other plane could haul. Antonov has vowed to rebuild the world’s largest plane, but when it does, the An-225 may no longer hold the crown.

Since then, other planes have been wrangling for the coveted position of “biggest flying object on the planet.” The dual fuselage Scaled Composites 351 Stratolaunch is shorter than a Boeing 747-800 at 238 feet, but its 385-foot wings make it the largest plane in the world by wingspan. Of course, there are also legends like the Airbus A380, the world’s largest passenger aircraft, and the Boeing 747, the Queen of big passenger jets until the A380 arrived at the terminal.

Here’s the Antonov if you’ve forgotten what that beauty looks like:

If the folks at Radia succeed in the construction of the WindRunner, they’ll take the record of the world’s largest aircraft. This beast would be about 100 feet longer than a Boeing 747-800 and still 81 feet longer than the late Antonov An-225. Supposedly, the absolute unit of a plane will also have 12 times the cargo volume of a 747 and the ability to operate at unpaved airstrips.

So, is this thing the real deal? The New York Times recently covered the plane, and that’s how it got my attention. Seemingly, everyone’s been talking about the WindRunner, regardless of whether their publication has a transportation angle or not.

Aviation For Wind Energy

Radia is the brainchild of aerospace engineer and serial entrepreneur Mark Lundstrom. He founded Radia in Colorado in 2016 to explore the intersection of aerospace and energy to find a profitable way to reduce carbon emissions. Here’s the story of Radia from Lundstrom:

Shortly after Radia was founded, a press release came out from two wind turbine manufacturers that compete for every deal globally. They were frustrated that the energy industry knows how to make offshore-sized turbines and deploy them in places like the North Sea but can’t take that knowledge to deploy them onshore where the market is an order of magnitude larger. Their release asked if an aerospace company, engineer, or entrepreneur could help them figure out how to airlift an object that weighs 45 tons and is over 100 meters in length, and land it on a piece of dirt in the middle of a wind farm. I showed up within a week and started working with them. Our massive cargo aircraft WindRunner is our solution to the problem as it can deliver offshore-sized blades onshore and enable what we call GigaWind.

Lundstrom is joined by a large team of aircraft engineers and other engineers from the energy sector.

Radia has a pretty huge marketing push behind its business. The United States Department of Energy projects that by 2050, wind power will have a capacity of 404.25 GW across 48 states. This is compared to a capacity of 113.43 GW in 36 states in 2020. Wind turbine production is only expected to grow.

Generally speaking, larger wind turbines with longer blades are more efficient turbines. In short, this is because longer blades have larger swept areas and can capture more wind. So companies are constructing absolute monsters of turbines with blades over 200 feet long. As of 2024, the world’s largest onshore turbine blade, for the SANY SY1310A, is 430 feet long.

Radia claims that infrastructure is limiting the size of most other turbine blades for onshore applications. The company claims that most road infrastructure struggles with blades stretching 230 feet long. Further, the company says, super large blades have quite a huge diameter, which means that shipping a blade by road would require some clever navigation to avoid obstacles like overpasses. This is why some of the biggest wind turbines that you’ll find will be offshore.

As NewScientist reports, the general idea is that the larger you can make a turbine, the fewer of them you’ll need to reach a given capacity. However, as the publication reports, there are tradeoffs. Consider that, when it’s running, the SANY SY1310A’s blades cover an area of over 800 feet. Of course, then you have to figure out what to do with the structure after its service life ends. All of that aside, NewScientist notes, you still have to figure out how the heck you’re getting those giant blades to a wind farm in the first place.

So, to repeat myself here, Radia’s logic is that land transportation limits the size of onshore turbines, so what if the company took the hassle out of shipping turbine blades? Instead of navigating a blade through tight streets, you just load it onto a plane and fly it directly to a farm. Radia’s plane would permit the shipping of larger blades for onshore developments and thus pave the way for the creation of the biggest turbines and wind farms. This concept is what Radia calls GigaWind.

To be clear, Radia will not build turbines or even blades. The whole idea is that the plane will allow other companies to install the biggest wind farms. The GigaWind thing, which is included in the marketing of the WindRunner, is somewhat confusing since it’s not a product or service that will be offered by Radia.

The WindRunner

Radia’s project is the WindRunner plane. In 2024, here’s what Radia said about the aircraft:

Radia’s WindRunner aircraft, capable of landing on short, semi-prepared runways including those made of packed dirt, will be purpose-built to deliver these large blades and other components directly to onshore wind farm sites – greatly expanding the number of locations available for large turbines and enabling onshore wind to scale. Opportunities include reducing transmission costs and increasing reliability by building wind energy sites closer to demand, creating hybrid wind/solar sites to produce clean power around the clock and throughout the year, and generating the large amounts of clean electricity needed to produce green hydrogen.

The innovative design of WindRunner only requires a 6,000-foot semi-prepared dirt or gravel landing strip at a wind farm to deliver its payload. This also enables it to land at almost any commercial airport around the world. WindRunner will be 356 feet long and its volume is 12 times that of a 747, and an overall length of 356 feet to carry the largest payloads ever moved by air.

Radia plans to produce a fleet of certified aircraft at Radia’s U.S. assembly site. WindRunner is more than halfway through the time required to design, build and certify an aircraft.

Radia says that the WindRunner will have a range of 1,200 miles and cruise at 41,000 feet at Mach 0.6. Further, Radia says that the fuselage, which is designed like a Boeing 747 where the flight deck sits in a pod above the main deck, will have 272,000 cubic feet of cargo volume and a payload capacity of 160,000 pounds. The cargo inside could be as long as 344 long, 24 feet tall, and 24 feet wide. Those wings look sort of stubby because they sort of are compared to the fuselage length. The fuselage is 356 feet, and the wingspan is 261 feet.

The WindRunner is projected to be a big bird for sure, but what about that claim of having 12 times the cargo volume of a Boeing 747? Well, cargo airline Cargolux says that its 747-800F aircraft, the final edition of the 747 Freighter, has a main deck with 24,462 cubic feet of space. Times that by 12 and you get 293,544 cubic feet, or more space than the 272,000 cubic feet claimed by Radia.

Cargolux also runs the older and smaller 747-400F, which has a main hold carrying 21,645 cubic feet of cargo. Times that by 12 and you get 259,740 cubic feet, or less than what Radia claims.

In case you’re curious, the Boeing 747-400 Large Cargo Freighter, also known as the Dreamlifter, has a hold carrying 65,000 cubic feet of Dreamliner parts. Cargo volume goes up significantly as you make a fuselage taller, wider, and longer.

Another massive aircraft is the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy, and the Radia would dwarf its 31,000 cubic foot capacity:

Regardless of whatever Radia used as a base unit for the 12 times claim, Radia’s claim of getting 272,000 cubic feet out of a giant 344-foot hold seems to be achievable. What’s interesting is the specification that the gigantic WindRunner will carry only 160,000 pounds. A Boeing 747-400F can carry around 249,000 pounds, and the bigger -800F hauls 295,000 pounds. The Antonov An-225 carried a whopping 550,000 pounds when it was still in one piece.

However, the low carrying capacity of the WindRunner is probably because of its specific mission to carry wind turbine blades. Still, one of Radia’s goals is to make a ton of money, so it seems like a missed opportunity that the WindRunner won’t be able to carry cargo as heavy as existing freighters can haul. The U.S. military is looking into the feasibility of using WindRunners to carry fighter jets, so maybe that whole money thing won’t be a problem.

At the same time, the projected lighter weight of the aircraft may help it with its other statistic: The takeoff roll. A fully loaded Boeing 747-800F may take 10,465 feet or so to take off. The Radia, which will be significantly longer than the 747-800, is said to be able to lift off the ground from an unpaved airstrip in only 6,000 feet. I would pay money to see something the length of this thing manage to leave terra firma in just over a mile.

Presumably, this also means that the Radia will have some sort of hot rod engines under its high wings. Unfortunately, Radia hasn’t said anything about installed power. As you’ve probably already noticed by now, Radia has also issued only renders of the aircraft. That being said, Radia said that it’s not trying to reinvent the wheel here. It’s said that the plane will be built with conventional methods and technologies. The “innovation” is just that the plane will be extraordinarily huge.

Maybe You’ll See One Someday?

Radia sees a market for a whole fleet of WindRunners. These won’t be flying regular cargo, but the expectation is that the wind turbine industry will become so huge that just one aircraft won’t do.

Radia says that it’ll officially unveil the WindRunner at the Paris Air Show next week. Then, the company hopes to have at least one of these birds in the sky by the end of the decade.

It seems like what Radia is proposing here is theoretically possible. It sounds like something this huge has no business getting off the ground, but that’s also what some people said about greats like the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 747. I’m skeptical, but maybe I’ll be proven wrong. Will Radia go into the history books as a record-breaker? It’s too early to tell, but you bet I’m going to be watching.

The post A Company Wants To Build A Humongous Plane 100 Feet Longer Than A Boeing 747 With 12 Times The Cargo Space, And For A Very Specific Reason appeared first on The Autopian.

A federal jury found Monday that businessman Mike Lindell defamed Eric Coomer, a former employee of Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, and is ordering him to pay roughly $2 million in damages.

This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at cpr.org.

That amount falls far short of the $62.7 million award requested by Coomer, in part because the jury rejected a number of the claims that Lindell and two of his companies, MyPillow and FrankSpeech, were responsible for comments made by others on platforms he controlled.

“We’re thrilled with the verdict,” said Coomer’s attorney, Charles Caine. He described having mixed emotions, “in the sense that (Coomer)’s been through a lot and he’s still going to be looking over his shoulder.” 

“Generally, what this verdict says is … individuals who are singled out can get vindication in the courthouse. And hopefully this serves as deterrence for individuals working on our elections from being targeted.”

Caine said he doesn’t expect the verdict to stop broader election conspiracy theories from flying around, but hopes that it will keep people spreading them from targeting individuals by name.

In remarks after the verdict, Lindell focused on the fact the jury did not find his company, MyPillow, liable for defamation. 

“This is a huge victory for our country,” he said in a live broadcast on his LindellTV platform from the courthouse steps. “The big win is: you cannot attack USA companies and expect it’s going to work.”

Lindell said he plans to appeal the damages award. He has claimed he’s currently in debt.

Lindell is among the chorus of conservative media fixtures who in the months and years after the 2020 election repeated the false claim that Coomer and Dominion used their election equipment to flip votes to Joe Biden. He also hosted an online news outlet, FrankSpeech, that amplified those claims.

Coomer has sued a number of conservative news outlets, right wing figures and President Trump’s campaign. As part of a settlement, Newsmax retracted its coverage of Coomer. Salem Media, the owner of 710 KNUS in Denver, also recently posted a retraction and apology to Coomer but has not announced a settlement. 

For his case against Lindell, Coomer’s lawyers focused on 10 statements the MyPillow CEO made — or were made on FrankSpeech — they argued were defamatory. They also tried to show Lindell had opportunities to doubt or reconsider the claims made about Coomer, but continued to publicly insist that Coomer helped steal the 2020 election.

In the end, the jury found just three of the statements — two made by Lindell and one made by someone else at an event broadcast on FrankSpeech — met the bar for defamation.

In one of the defamatory statements, made May 9, 2021, Lindell urged Coomer to turn himself in and inform on the alleged election-stealing operation. 

“I mean, you are disgusting, and you are treasonous.  You are a traitor to the United States of America,” said Lindell.

In a second defamatory comment made after Coomer filed his lawsuit, Lindell lashed out again. 

“Eric Coomer, you are a criminal.  Eric Coomer, your lawyers better look out.  I’m not putting up with this,” he said in an interview on FrankSpeech. “You’ve been a part of the biggest crime this world has ever seen.”

Lindell’s attorneys argued Coomer’s reputation was already deeply damaged well before their client ever mentioned him. And on the stand, Lindell continued to insist he believes in Coomer’s wrongdoing. Legally, believing a false claim is true is a defense against defamation. He’s also insisted that many of his remarks about Coomer were about the defamation lawsuit itself and not election stealing.

Coomer’s name entered the echo chamber of post-election conspiracy theories in November, 2020. A Colorado-based podcaster, Joe Oltmann, claimed that he’d snuck onto a call by radical leftist protesters before the election and heard someone identified as “Eric, the Dominion guy” reassure the other participants that he’d guaranteed Trump would not win. Oltmann, who has never provided a recording of the call, went on to conclude the speaker was Coomer, a claim he made widely on right-wing media after the election.

Coomer said the continued harassment and threats from Lindell and others forced him to leave a 15-year career in an industry he loved and that the real-world consequences of their falsehoods have been devastating.

Appearing Monday ahead of the verdict on his latest online platform, LindellTV, Lindell struck a defiant tone as the jury deliberated.

“No matter what comes out of this courthouse, I’m not stopping,” he said of his questions about what he perceives as voting irregularities across the nation. 

Lindell complained that he and his lawyers weren’t allowed to present a full defense, including election conspiracies. He argued that his remarks about Coomer should be protected by free speech and that legal challenges to the contrary amount to attempted censorship.

But Lindell conceded he wasn’t feeling confident about the outcome of the case. He said the questions asked by the jury were “kind of discouraging.”

“We need a win here,” he said.

The Colorado Sun’s Jesse Paul contributed to this story.

This story was produced by the Capitol News Alliance, a collaboration between KUNC News, Colorado Public Radio, Rocky Mountain PBS and The Colorado Sun, and shared with Rocky Mountain Community Radio and other news organizations across the state. Funding for the Alliance is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Critics warn that the United States may soon be taking on more nuclear safety risks after Donald Trump fired one of five members of an independent commission that monitors the country's nuclear reactors.

In a statement Monday, Christopher Hanson confirmed that Trump fired him from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Friday. He alleged that the firing was "without cause" and "contrary to existing law and longstanding precedent regarding removal of independent agency appointees." According to NPR, he received an email that simply said his firing was "effective immediately."

Hanson had enjoyed bipartisan support for his work for years. Trump initially appointed Hanson to the NRC in 2020, then he was renominated by Joe Biden in 2024. In his statement, he said it was an "honor" to serve, citing accomplishments over his long stint as chair, which ended in January 2025.

It's unclear why Trump fired Hanson. Among the committee chair's accomplishments, Hanson highlighted revisions to safety regulations, as well as efforts to ramp up recruitment by re-establishing the Minority Serving Institution Grant Program. Both may have put him in opposition to Trump, who wants to loosen regulations to boost the nuclear industry and eliminate diversity initiatives across government.

In a statement to NPR, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly suggested it was a political firing.

"All organizations are more effective when leaders are rowing in the same direction," Kelly said. "President Trump reserves the right to remove employees within his own Executive Branch who exert his executive authority."

On social media, some Trump critics suggested that Trump lacked the authority to fire Hanson, arguing that Hanson could have ignored the email and kept on working, like the Smithsonian museum director whom Trump failed to fire. (And who eventually quit.)

But Hanson accepted the termination. Instead of raising any concerns, he used his statement as an opportunity to praise those left at NRC, who will be tasked with continuing to protect Americans from nuclear safety risks at a time when Trump has said that he wants industry interests to carry equal weight as public health and environmental concerns.

"My focus over the last five years has been to prepare the agency for anticipated change in the energy sector, while preserving the independence, integrity, and bipartisan nature of the world's gold standard nuclear safety institution," Hanson said. "It has been an honor to serve alongside the dedicated public servants at the NRC. I continue to have full trust and confidence in their commitment to serve the American people by protecting public health and safety and the environment."

Trump pushing “unsettled” science on nuclear risks

The firing followed an executive order in May that demanded an overhaul of the NRC, including reductions in force and expedited approvals on nuclear reactors. All final decisions on new reactors must be made within 18 months, and requests to continue operating existing reactors should be rubber-stamped within a year, Trump ordered.

Likely most alarming to critics, the desired reforms emphasized tossing out the standards that the NRC currently uses that "posit there is no safe threshold of radiation exposure, and that harm is directly proportional to the amount of exposure."

Until Trump started meddling, the NRC established those guidelines after agreeing with studies examining "cancer cases among 86,600 survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan during World War II," Science reported. Those studies concluded that "the incidence of cancer in the survivors rose linearly—in a straight line—with the radiation dose." By rejecting that evidence, Trump could be slowly creeping up the radiation dose and leading Americans to blindly take greater risks.

But according to Trump, by adopting those current standards, the NRC is supposedly bogging down the nuclear industry by trying to "insulate Americans from the most remote risks without appropriate regard for the severe domestic and geopolitical costs of such risk aversion." Instead, the US should prioritize solving the riddle of what might be safe radiation levels, Trump suggests, while restoring US dominance in the nuclear industry, which Trump views as vital to national security and economic growth.

Although Trump claimed the NRC's current standards were "irrational" and "lack scientific basis," Science reported that the so-called "linear no-threshold (LNT) model of ionizing radiation" that Trump is criticizing "is widely accepted in the scientific community and informs almost all regulation of the US nuclear industry."

Further, the NRC rejected past attempts to switch to a model based on the "hormesis theory" that Trump seemingly supports—which posits that some radiation exposure can be beneficial. The NRC found there was "insufficient evidence to justify any changes" that could endanger public health, Science reported.

One health researcher at the University of California, Irvine, Stephen Bondy, told Science that his 2023 review on the science of hormesis showed it is "still unsettled." His characterization of the executive order suggests that the NRC embracing that model "clearly places health hazards as of secondary importance relative to economic and business interests."

Trump’s pro-industry push could backfire

If the administration charges ahead with such changes, experts have warned that Trump could end up inadvertently hobbling the nuclear industry. If health hazards become extreme—or a nuclear event occurs—"altering NRC’s safety standards could ultimately reduce public support for nuclear power," analysts told Science.

Among the staunchest critics of Trump's order is Edwin Lyman, the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. In a May statement, Lyman warned that "the US nuclear industry will fail if safety is not made a priority."

He also cautioned that it was critical for the NRC to remain independent, not just to shield Americans from risks but to protect US nuclear technology's prominence in global markets.

"By fatally compromising the independence and integrity of the NRC, and by encouraging pathways for nuclear deployment that bypass the regulator entirely, the Trump administration is virtually guaranteeing that this country will see a serious accident or other radiological release that will affect the health, safety, and livelihoods of millions," Lyman said. "Such a disaster will destroy public trust in nuclear power and cause other nations to reject US nuclear technology for decades to come."

Since Trump wants regulations changed, there will likely be a public commenting period where concerned citizens can weigh in on what they think are acceptable radiation levels in their communities. But Trump's order also pushed for that public comment period to be streamlined, potentially making it easier to push through his agenda. If that happens, the NRC may face lawsuits under the 1954 Atomic Energy Act, which requires the commission to “minimize danger to life or property,” Science noted.

Following Hanson's firing, Lyman reiterated to NPR that Trump's ongoing attacks on the NRC "could have serious implications for nuclear safety.

"It's critical that the NRC make its judgments about protecting health and safety without regard for the financial health of the nuclear industry," Lyman said.

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