What we might call the modern anti-science movement, starting with efforts to hide the obvious linkage between tobacco and cancer, and the rise of “climate skepticism”, has grown in scale enormously in the past half century. With the cross-pollination of dollars from the fossil fuel industry, the anti-abortion right and the war on trans youth, a politically motivated and morally bankrupt industry of experts-for-hire has been generating counter arguments for legal battles at unprecedented rates. 

There is an emergency in Florida right now, but you wouldn’t know it if you opened the average news website. While it’s hard to pinpoint exactly which institutional failing made it possible for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to implement a near-total ban on gender-affirming care for all ages across the state, I suspect at least some of the blame should land at the feet of the very same media that has since completely failed to cover it.