February 25, 2025

Now, on to the news…

The New England Journal of Medicine, the world’s most prestigious medical journal, has—like so many institutions—capitulated to transgender activists, writes Manhattan Institute Fellow Leor Sapir. “NEJM’s coverage of this controversial field has abandoned even the pretense of objectivity, declining to hold researchers to scientific standards or air alternative views that would advance scientific knowledge,” he observes.

In one example, the journal published a study in 2023 about hormonal treatments for transgender-identified adolescents that claimed to find improved mental-health outcomes among its hundreds of participants. “A closer look at the study’s data, however, shows nothing of the sort,” Sapir explains. “The boys in the study experienced no improvement. The girls’ improvement was so marginal and of such questionable clinical value that the authors used dubious statistical methods to hide their true results.” And two teens in the study killed themselves after starting the hormones. But rather than retract or correct the study, NEJM’s website merely states that its editing process often requires extensive revisions.

Read more about how the journal’s commitment to “social justice” has overtaken its pursuit of accuracy in medical science.

Leaked chat logs from the National Security Agency reveal a disturbing reality: discussions of sex, kink, polyamory—even castration—among employees of America’s intelligence services. A current and former NSA employee shared the internal messages, dating back two years, with Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Christopher F. Rufo and investigative reporter Hannah Grossman.

“These NSA chat logs suggest the presence of at least hundreds of gender activists within the intelligence services who cannot distinguish between male and female, and who believe that discussing castration, polyamory, and ‘gangbangs’ is an appropriate use of public resources,” they write.

Read more about their explosive discovery here.

The Institute of Education Sciences, which administers Department of Education research contracts, “has abused what should be a nonpartisan mandate and pushed progressive political agendas through research and training programs,” argues Manhattan Institute Paulson Policy Analyst Neetu Arnold. She has the details here.

As pot legalization has spread to half the country, “usage, addiction, and mental-health issues are surging, while a violent new black market, dominated by foreign gangs, has emerged, underselling the legal industry,” writes City Journal Senior Editor Steven Malanga. Read his comprehensive report on the failure of legalization here.

“A reason why universities want to hire radicals is that hyper-liberal ideas have been dominating public discourse for at least a generation. The people who hire radicals have been socialized by such ideas. They believe that ‘disciplines’ like ‘queer of color critique’ can exist. There’s no hope for them.”

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Lewis, commenting on fellow-to-faculty programs seeding academia with activists

Photo credits: Rick Meyer / Contributor / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images