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Key Points

• Colorectal cancer diagnoses are rising among younger people, and new research suggests that early-life exposure to colibactin, a toxin produced by certain E. coli strains, may contribute to this trend.
• Researchers found that colibactin-related mutations were 3.3 times more common in early-onset colorectal cancer cases than in late-onset cases.
• Researchers are continuing to study how childhood microbiome factors, including exposure to colibactin-producing bacteria, may influence colorectal cancer risk later in life.

Colorectal cancer, which the Cancer Research Institute explained was “once considered a disease of older age,” is skyrocketing among younger people. According to the institute, 1 in 5 diagnoses now occurs in someone under 55, and the disease is quickly becoming “a leading cause of cancer-related death in young people.” While a number of factors are at play, one study suggests that E. coli could play a major role. 

In 2025, researchers led by a team at the University of California, San Diego published their study in the journal Nature, which outlined how colibactin, a toxin produced by certain strains of E. coli that appears to damage DNA early in childhood, could be fueling this colon cancer crisis.

To identify this connection, the team examined the colorectal cancer genomes of 981 patients with either early- or late-onset colon cancer. They found that colibactin-related mutations were 3.3 times more common in patients with early-onset colon cancer than in those with late-onset.

“These mutation patterns are a kind of historical record in the genome, and they point to early-life exposure to colibactin as a driving force behind early-onset disease,” said Ludmil Alexandrov, the study’s senior author and a professor in the Shu Chien-Gene Lay Department of Bioengineering and the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego, in a press release. “If someone acquires one of these driver mutations by the time they’re 10 years old,” he added, “they could be decades ahead of schedule for developing colorectal cancer, getting it at age 40 instead of 60.”

Alexandrov also explained to NPR that the team found colibactin mutations were far less common in places like rural Africa and Asia, but turned up more often in the U.S. and Western Europe. That, he added, could be due to a number of factors, including the use of antibiotics and childhood nutrition choices, as well as whether someone was breastfed and how they were delivered, either by cesarean section or vaginal delivery. 

“All of these factors are known to substantially affect the microbiome, and there is some evidence they may impact this [colibactin-producing] bacteria, but we really need to investigate each one carefully,” the researcher said. 

It’s important to note that if you do contract this particular strain and have this particular toxin in your body, it doesn’t mean you’ll automatically get colon cancer.

“We don’t have definitive data on whether having the toxin means you will definitely get young-onset colorectal cancer: this study only looked at cancers themselves, not at the bowels of healthy people without cancer,” Trevor Graham, a professor of genomics and evolution and director of the Center for Evolution and Cancer at The Institute of Cancer Research, who was not involved in the study, said in a statement. “So, it’s quite possible that [this certain] E. coli are very common and only a few people with the ‘bad bugs’ will actually go on to get bowel cancer.”

Graham added, “I think it is very likely cancer only occurs in some cases, because even though someone might have the ‘bad bugs’ that cause mutations, those bugs have to cause the right mutations to make a cancer grow.” 

While this strain of E. coli may be a player in the game, it’s only a piece of the ever-growing colorectal puzzle. The Cancer Research Institute noted that several risk factors are at play, not the least of which is genetics. There are, however, things the institute said you can control, including your lifestyle.

“A diet high in processed and red meats and low in fiber, fruits, and vegetables is associated with increased colorectal cancer risk,” the Institute said. It cited The World Cancer Research Fund’s recommendations to limit red meat to 12–18 ounces per week and minimize processed meats to reduce your risk. Additionally, you may want to cut back on alcohol, as the institute also said that “heavy alcohol consumption” can increase risk.

For now, Alexandrov said in the statement that the team is continuing to investigate the issue and exploring whether probiotics could eliminate these and other harmful bacterial strains. The team is also developing early-detection tests that analyze stool samples for colibactin-related mutations and continues to monitor how colorectal cancers are evolving around the world to better understand what we can control in cancer risk. “This reshapes how we think about cancer,” he said. “It might not be just about what happens in adulthood — cancer could potentially be influenced by events in early life, perhaps even the first few years. Sustained investment in this type of research will be critical to the global effort to prevent and treat cancer before it’s too late.”

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Israeli security forces in Kochav Yair, Israel, on Sunday, after a shooting. Credit…Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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“Universal” biological signatures of aging shared across different mammalian species—including humans—could offer new clues to identifying longevity and antiaging treatments or interventions, a new study finds.

Age isn’t just the number of candles on a cake. That’s a representation of your chronological age, while your “biological age” is a measure of how your body’s various tissues and cells are holding up over time—and the two don’t necessarily match. Instead, your biological age may be higher or lower than your chronological age for several reasons, such as your lifestyle choices, a chronic disease if you have one, your genes, and more. Researchers use molecular “clocks” to estimate biological age, such as by looking at changes to our DNA. But some of these biomarkers don’t help explain why aging is occurring.

In the new study, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers analyzed more than 11,000 “transcriptomes”—collections of RNA transcripts that show which genes are being turned on or off in any given cell or tissue at any given time—across various tissues in mice, rats, monkeys, and humans.

What they found was that biological hallmarks of aging in different tissues appear to be highly conserved, meaning they are shared across species, says Alexander Tyshkovskiy, the paper’s lead author and a researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. “The same genes are associated with aging in, for example, liver and heart in rats and humans,” he says.

The hallmarks of aging carried across individual cell types, too, such as liver or blood cells. “Even though the cells have very different functions, very different origin, they still share the same aging-related biomarkers,” Tyshkovskiy adds.

The researchers call this type of aging one’s “transcriptomic age.” Both humans and animals with chronic diseases had a higher transcriptomic age, the researchers found, suggesting it reflects higher levels of cellular damage. And using a large dataset from the U.K. Biobank, the team found that proteins associated with some universal biomarkers also appear to correlate with disease and mortality.*

Overall, the results suggest that aging seems to be a “very systemic process” that affects different tissues, cell types, and species in similar ways, Tyshkovskiy says.

The study is a “major advance,” says David Sinclair, a professor at the department of genetics at Harvard Medical School, who has long studied longevity. Sinclair was not involved with the study.

“[The authors] developed transcriptomic clocks that don’t just estimate age; they measure the progressive loss of cellular function and predict biological decline and mortality risk across mammals,” Sinclair says. The findings could help researchers understand “the underlying process of aging itself, not just the passage of time.”

Tyshkovskiy and his colleagues hope the results will one day lead to potential treatments to slow aging in humans. To that end, the team has developed an online tool called “Transcriptomic Age Calculator Online,” or TACO, to enable other researchers to predict the age of tissue samples using RNA data they may have already collected. For instance, if a researcher has collected tissue from one animal model that was treated with a drug and from another that was not treated, the scientist can measure changes in the biological age between the samples “regardless of the tissue [and] regardless of the species,” says Vadim Gladyshev, the study’s senior author and a professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

The project could help narrow down possible longevity treatments. “Currently in humans, we don’t have a single intervention that extends lifespan,” Gladyshev says. “We think, using these tools, we could identify candidates that can be tested in the future, and maybe some of them will extend lifespan. That is the hope.”

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Police in Ohio are hunting for what are believed to be multiple suspects after a shooting near a festival in Toledo wounded 12 people.

Officers responded around 5:40 p.m. local time to a report about a person shot near Toledo’s Old West End Festival, a two-day event featuring food markets and live music.

“It appears as though there were at least two shooters,” Toledo Deputy Police Chief Joe Heffernan said at a press conference Saturday. “I think they were probably shooting at each other, and what ended up happening was 12 people were struck with bullets.”

Two individuals were wounded critically, Heffernan said. The victims ranged in age from 14 to 61, but were largely in their early 20s, police said. The suspect or suspects remain at large, the deputy chief added.

The police department did not release the identities of the victims.

Officers are reviewing video footage, interviewing individuals impacted by the shooting, and have gathered evidence from the scene of the crime.

“As far as violence, this is over the top,” Lieutenant Dan Gerken of the Toledo police said at the press conference, describing it as one of the worst incidents he’d seen in his career.

Those near the festival also described the chaotic scenes, some of which have been shared on social media.

“We were walking to our car and walked through the corner where it occurred, and my wife said we need to go now,” John Beatrice, who was at the festival around the time of the shooting, told The Independent in a Facebook message. “Unfortunately, we didn’t see the events, other than hearing the gunshots and commotion behind us as we hurried towards our vehicle and made our way out of the area.”

“I was very close to the scene driving,” Facebook user Bob Grand Lubell wrote in response to the TPD’s announcement of the shooting. “It was packed with teenagers at 5:00. Before the shooting, the police presence was very heavy. Still, not enough.”

“I am deeply concerned about the situation in Toledo tonight,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said on X. “Summer festivals should be safe spaces for families to spend time together without fear of violence. Fran and I are praying for everyone impacted by the incident at the Old West End Festival, and we are confident that law enforcement will locate the suspects involved in this senseless crime.”

Witness Kevin Berry told the Associated Press that the event was the “kick-off to Toledo’s summer festival season.”

Police are asking members of the public to avoid the area, and to report any information to Crime Stoppers at 419-255-1111.

The Independent has contacted the TPD and Lubell for comment.

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“Alex Bores. Wrong on A.I. Wrong for Congress,” one attack ad said.

“Hypocrite,” read another. “Liar,” said one more.

For months, district voters have received a steady barrage of mail, texts, and television spots trained at Mr. Bores, who first joined the State Assembly in 2023 and whose district on the East Side lies inside the congressional district. These messages are part of a multimillion-dollar assault on his candidacy from a super PAC, Leading the Future.

Close to $75 million has flowed to the group from Silicon Valley heavyweights like Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of Palantir, and Greg Brockman, a co-founder of OpenAI. So far, $6.2 million has been spent against Mr. Bores, according to federal filings.

OpenAI’s largest competitor, Anthropic, has argued for more government oversight and a more cautious approach to the development of new A.I. tools. It has backed Mr. Bores from the start, with employees donating at least $186,000 to his campaign.

Far more has flowed to outside groups supporting him. Four super PACs — all with ties to Anthropic or its ideological allies — have spent about $6.5 million defending Mr. Bores or attacking his opponents, according to federal filings.

Chris Larsen, a billionaire crypto investor, spent $3.5 million to help Mr. Bores “when he learned that OpenAI was deliberately targeting” Mr. Bores’s campaign, according to Alex Tourk, a spokesman for Mr. Larsen.

All that money and attention to Mr. Bores has cast a shadow over the race to represent the 12th District, which includes some of New York’s wealthiest neighborhoods: the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, and Midtown Manhattan. Many of his rivals are struggling to compete for attention amid the battle of tech behemoths that has Mr. Bores in the middle.

“I had never heard of him until I saw the ads attacking him,” said Michael Paluszek, a 40-year resident of Stuyvesant Town.

Mr. Paluszek shifted his support from another candidate once he learned more about Mr. Bores, and he plans to volunteer and “own the corner of East 14th Street and Avenue A,” at the district’s southernmost reaches.

“That’s going to be my corner,” he said. “I’m going to compete.”

Mr. Bores said that his interest in A.I. stemmed from his experience working at these companies and his understanding of how they work. He said he had already heard from members of Congress who were excited to work on the issue if he is elected, and he had a stock reply for them: Don’t wait for him.

“I’m not going to be there for eight months,” he said. “Take it. I have no pride of ownership.”

His expertise on the subject will be an asset for Democrats, he said. Despite the assertions of his opponents, he said, his focus as a legislator has never been on giving one company an advantage over another. Sometimes he reads the inflammatory texts the PACs have sent and wonders how they could possibly be ascribed to him.

“A lot of people that come to this from the A.I. safety angle or A.I. regulatory angle, we were the first people to say: ‘Hey, this is really powerful and that’s why we think there needs to be regulation, but it can also be used for good,’” he said.

Mr. Bores did not set out to be an A.I. expert. As a student at Cornell University, Mr. Bores wanted to become a lawyer focused on international trade and labor rights. That remained his goal as he excelled at debate, protested Nike’s use of sweatshops, and won an elected seat on the university’s board of trustees. Friends described Mr. Bores as an intensely focused striver.

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Assemblyman Alex Bores represents a district on Manhattan’s East Side that lies in the 12th Congressional District, where he is running to succeed Representative Jerrold Nadler. Credit…Anna Watts for The New York Times

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Just more than a decade ago, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) picked up the signal of something entirely new: a ripple in the fabric of spacetime. About 1.3 billion light-years away, two massive black holes had merged, and the resulting shockwave—a gravitational wave—was strong enough for LIGO to detect the moment it washed over Earth.

Since then, gravitational-wave researchers have focused on fine-tuning their instruments to detect more of these fleeting ripples. Each confirmed, or high-quality candidate event, is added to a running tally in a catalog maintained by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration, a network of four gravitational-wave detectors: the two LIGO stations in the U.S., the Virgo station in Italy, and the Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector (KAGRA) in Japan. The newest entries on the collaboration’s list—a record-breaking 161 events spotted between April 2024 and January 2025—have researchers excited for a new era of discovery, an “age of gravitational astronomy.”

“The extraordinary sensitivity of our detectors now allows us to capture three or four gravitational wave signals every week,” said Ed Porter, a researcher at the AstroParticle and Cosmology Laboratory, overseen by the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Paris City University, in a statement. “This ever-growing wealth of data, which an entire community of scientists and astronomers is working to analyze and study, has taken us from the era of initial discoveries into that of precision gravitational astronomy.”

These recent weekly signals form about 75 percent of the total number of confirmed gravitational-wave events observed by the LVK network; the total is now up to 390. Having more observations of these unusual cosmic events gives researchers the ability to study phenomena and locales of the universe that are too faint or far away to detect through other methods, as well as to better understand the nature and evolution of black holes and a diverse assortment of other fundamental questions in astrophysics.

Among the exciting findings from the latest batch of gravitational-wave detections are GW240615, for which scientists were able to triangulate the exact location of the event’s source; GW250114, which offered the clearest signal ever recorded, with a signal-to-noise ratio of 76.9; and GW241011 and GW241110, which, scientists say, collectively support the existence of “second-generation black holes” that form solely from the mergers of smaller black holes.

“It is another hint that the Universe may still be hiding important pieces of the story of how black holes are born, evolve, and merge,” said Mario Spera, a Virgo Collaboration researcher at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Italy, in the same statement. “And this picture will become richer, and more surprising, with every new gravitational-wave catalog by LVK.”

The 161 new entries provide enough data to keep scientists busy for years, but the LVK Collaboration says there is a lot more to come—especially as researchers continue optimizing the detectors to make them even more sensitive to spacetime ripples.

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VICTOR de SCHWANBERG/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

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The Trump administration unlawfully barred applicants from 39 travel-ban countries from receiving decisions on asylum, work permits, green cards, and citizenship applications, a US federal judge ruled on Friday.

The decision came on the same day that the US Senate voted to pass legislation to fund Donald Trump’s controversial immigration crackdown.

Chief US district judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, ruled that the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had adopted a series of unlawful policies targeting people from 39 African, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries.

His ruling came in a lawsuit filed in March by a coalition of immigrant service organizations and labor unions challenging a suite of policies adopted starting in November by USCIS, which is part of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), amid the US president’s anti-immigration agenda.

Those measures placed a hold on processing immigration benefit applications from people in the 39 countries subject to Trump’s full or partial travel bans, which he has justified on vetting and security grounds. Green cards grant foreign nationals permanent resident status in the US.

The DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

McConnell, who was appointed by Barack Obama, said those policies “threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo.”

The judge wrote: “USCIS’s hold on adjudications cannot be attributed to anything that these individuals did wrong; rather, it arises solely by the happenstance of their birth.“

He said the immigrants at issue had adhered to the legal processes that the US Congress had enacted and USCIS had adopted by regulation, yet had been “stuck waiting, for months on end, for benefit requests that USCIS refuses to adjudicate”.

“But the rule of law has to apply to everyone equally and, as evident here, USCIS has neither ‘followed the law’ nor ‘done things the right way’,” McConnell wrote, adding: “Indeed, the agency has violated the very immigration laws that Congress has charged it with administering, as well as the administrative laws that govern the agency’s actions.”

The New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) applauded the judge’s decision.

“Every person seeking safety, stability, and opportunity deserves a fair chance to have their case heard under the law. Today, a federal judge reaffirmed what we already knew: that the Trump administration violated the law, and did so with anti-immigrant malice. By shutting down access to asylum and preventing thousands of immigrants from receiving a decision on their immigration applications solely on the basis of which country they come from, the Trump administration acted against statute and against the rule of law,” said Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of NYIC, in a statement. “Their unlawful actions left thousands of families in limbo, cut people from life-saving protections, and undermined the rule of law by attempting to bypass the immigration system established by Congress.”

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Travelers in a waiting area at Kabul international airport in Afghanistan on 2 October 2024. Photograph: Francois LOCHON/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images

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Hmmmm … Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, Epstein!

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President Trump is routinely called powerful and also weak. He holds an iron grip on the G.O.P., helping to dispatch such perceived enemies as Senators Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn, and Representative Thomas Massie.

But on Wednesday, a handful of House Republicans voted to try to rein in the president’s war-making capacity in Iran. Republicans in the Senate have resisted his “weaponization” fund and refused to kill the filibuster, an obstacle to passing the SAVE Act. And a judge ordered his name to be pulled from the Kennedy Center.

So, powerful or weak? Jonathan Bernstein, a political scientist and writer of the Good Politics/Bad Politics newsletter on Substack, makes sense of this apparent contradiction in a written conversation with John Guida, an editor in Times Opinion. It has been edited for length and clarity.

John Guida: President Trump presents a conundrum. He seems both powerful and weak. His record in Republican primaries appears formidable.

Jonathan Bernstein: First of all, his dominance within the Republican Party is a bit overrated. For one thing, a lot of his primary-endorsement successes are pretty hollow. He often, as he did in the Texas Senate race, waits until a leader emerges. He clearly was the main actor in purging Thomas Massie, but it’s not clear in those other cases whether he was the main actor or if other party leaders — especially those in Republican-aligned media, such as local talk-show hosts — were the key players.

It’s hard to compare Trump to other presidents because they generally didn’t try to do such things — for good reason; it risks a lot of blowback. In other words, bullying can get Trump some things that other presidents don’t get, but only at costs that other presidents haven’t had to bear.

Guida: So you think his winning is both overblown and in pursuit of questionable goals. But you have written that he is also losing “a lot” — “far more than any other modern president.” How do you make sense of this?

Bernstein: All presidents lose. Trump loses more often, on more things, than most. I usually begin by following the analysis of Richard Neustadt, the presidency scholar who wrote the 1960 classic “Presidential Power.” Neustadt advised presidents to increase their influence by building a strong presidential reputation and by doing what they can to be popular with voters. Trump has consistently done neither.

The most important tool to achieve those things, for Neustadt, is information. Presidents have more access to useful information than anyone they deal with. Trump, by all accounts, ignores it. Instead, he’s built his second presidency around the goal of keeping himself, as much as possible, from not having to confront information that might contradict his impulses. And that leaves him unable to negotiate deals with friends or enemies abroad, or to adjust his policies at home to account for realities other politicians must live in.

Guida: Could you give examples of where you see Trump losing? You’ve often noted this in his dealings with Congress, right?

Bernstein: Just this week, he had several setbacks. The House embarrassed him with a war powers vote that would end the war in Iran — and then immediately after that, they took a procedural vote to move ahead with support for Ukraine. That’s extraordinary. In the modern House, the majority maintains strict control over the agenda, but a handful of Republicans were willing to defect and basically give Democrats agenda control on both of these foreign policy issues. Normally, a president would have found a way to defuse that revolt, but he’s so alienated some of those Republicans, and his word is so worthless, that he’s not really able to, even if he tried.

Then over on the Senate side, Republicans revolted against his “weaponization” slush fund and against his ballroom. They removed funding for ballroom security from the spending bill they’re working on.

Congress is important, but this is going on everywhere — especially in the courts, where Trump’s Justice Department has squandered the presumption of trust that judges have always had for administration statements. Misleading, if not lying to the courts — or to Congress, bureaucrats, state-level politicians, or foreign nations — might yield some short-term victories. Maybe. But over time, it’s a losing move. Reputation matters.

Guida: The conventional story of Trump 2.0 is that Republicans in Congress have done nothing to oppose the president and have instead enabled his agenda. You are suggesting that this narrative is not true, or at least not complete.

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Daniel Ribar for The New York Times

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As more than 50,000 residents of Garden Grove, Calif., returned home on Tuesday and Wednesday after a narrowly averted chemical crisis at an aerospace plant, a rupture at a separate chemical tank in Washington State claimed two lives and left nine people missing and presumed dead.

The back-to-back incidents are among several high-profile disasters at chemical plants in the past year. And a Trump administration proposal to roll back federal regulations that are meant to guard against such accidents means they could become more frequent, threatening surrounding communities and on-site workers.

Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed repealing a 2024 rule that tightened safeguards that were designed to prevent explosions and the release of toxic chemicals at chemical plants and refineries. The rollback, which is opposed by California’s attorney general, would reduce requirements for facilities to implement safer technologies, involve employees in safety planning, and conduct third-party audits after an accident. The plan would also erase a mandate that facilities consider climate-related disasters such as floods when making emergency plans.

Without the rule, many of these details would be left to the discretion of individual companies and their safety culture. And that, experts say, means that accidents will keep happening.

“There is just not enough of that kind of planning that goes on,” says Philip Price, a retired senior research scientist and chemist in Maryland, who has worked on chemical incident investigations.

The rule hasn’t been repealed yet; a call for public comment on the proposal to repeal it just closed. The rule itself hasn’t yet been fully implemented, however, says Emma Cheuse, an attorney for the environmental law nonprofit Earthjustice, which opposes the rollback.

“Some of the key provisions in the rule have compliance deadlines that were going to kick in in May 2027, so EPA is proposing to undo and weaken provisions in advance of those requirements,” Cheuse says.

The Trump administration has argued that the 2024 stipulations that require disclosures about hazardous chemicals have made chemical facilities more vulnerable to attacks and that the rule has been costly and burdensome for businesses.

The twin crises in the past week have sparked questions over safety rules for chemical plants and processing facilities. The one in southern California began at the GKN Aerospace Transparency Systems plant on May 22, when temperatures spiked inside a tank containing around 7,000 gallons of methyl methacrylate, raising the risk that the liquid, which is used in making plexiglass, would volatilize into a gas and cause a massive explosion. In a press conference on May 25, Orange County Fire Authority officials said that a valve in the tank’s cooling system failed, leading to the potential explosion. Methyl methacrylate can cause damage to the skin and respiratory system. Andrew Whelton, an engineering professor at Purdue University, who has developed monitoring and response plans after chemical accidents, explains that because of the chemical’s nature, some people who are exposed to even small amounts will develop serious allergic reactions.

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Every evening at about 6:30 p.m., I pour my toddler a sippy cup of cold milk and we curl up on the couch next to my husband. “Mama sit!” he says, his way of asking to sit on my lap as he enjoys his milk and a movie of his choosing. It’s a joyful moment of family time, a carefree and cozy break at the end of our busy days.

When I learned that the Food and Drug Administration paused its quality testing on milk, my mind immediately went to our sweet family ritual. It rocked me. The testing pause comes after we learned that bird flu is spreading in dairy cows, traces of the killed virus in our commercial milk supply, which was another development that caused a spike in my anxiety and a late-night message to our pediatrician. I wondered what exactly this pause in testing meant, in the literal sense, and how long it would go on. I worried I would now spend that precious family time concerned about what was in my kid’s milk.

This particular threat is just one of many. From increasing grocery prices, shuttering Head Start programs, abortion bans that make pregnancy more dangerous, bringing back measles, not to mention the threat of gun violence in schools — there are many large ways that the Trump administration has made parents’ lives more difficult — and comparatively, concern over a sippy cup of milk might seem small.

But that smallness is part of what makes this new concern feel so particularly insidious.

Milk is a drink that, for many children, becomes an extension of the comforting bond they formed with their parent through breast- or bottle-feeding, a bridge from baby- to toddlerhood. I relish my son’s faint, milky breath before bedtime, and when I read about the FDA pause, my initial panic came in part from the fear that this tether to his early moments would be severed too soon.

These seemingly small issues like the milk testing are the ones that make the everyday lived experience of parenting feel less safe — and less joyful. It’s death by a thousand cuts.

Brittney Pagone, a former nurse and current stay-at-home mom who runs the Instagram page PAMoms4Change, felt a similar panic. The news alarmed her so much, she says, that she no longer plans to wean her nearly 1-year-old daughter, opting to breastfeed for longer rather than switching to whole milk. This is a privilege, she knows; she has both the time and the ability to breastfeed her daughter, two things many moms don’t have.

The confusion Pagone felt with this news, she says, is just another part of parenting under the current Trump administration, which is currently brewing plans to boost the national birth rate. Pagone finds the administration’s push for families to have more children, at the same time eliminating the safety nets that make it feasible, utterly infuriating.

The decision to breastfeed longer than she’d planned isn’t the only one Pagone has felt forced into because of the Trump administration. Her family recently took a vacation that was close enough to Texas that she requested her infant be vaccinated for measles early.

Meanwhile, the president, who has contemplated giving people $5,000 per child to encourage larger families, has taken to billing himself as the “fertilization president.” And as we struggle to navigate what feels like an increasingly dangerous environment for our children, the government goads us to have more.

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Experts are reassuring, but for moms like me, the FDA pause on milk testing is just one more way parenting feels less safe — and less joyful — right now.

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