Short Takes – 6-20-25

Senate Parliamentarian Advises Several Provisions in Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill” Are Not Permissible, Subject to Byrd Rule. Budget.Senate.gov Ranking Member press release. Pull quote: ““Tonight, the Senate Parliamentarian advised that certain provisions in the Republicans’ One Big, Beautiful Betrayal will be subject to the Byrd Rule – ultimately meaning they will need to be stripped from the bill to ensure it complies with the rules of reconciliation. As much as Senate Republicans would prefer to throw out the rule book and advance their families lose and billionaires win agenda, there are rules that must be followed and Democrats are making sure those rules are enforced,” said Ranking Member Jeff Merkley. “We will continue examining every provision in this Great Betrayal of a bill and will scrutinize it to the furthest extent.””

How Rand Paul got sidelined by fellow Republicans. Politico.com article. Pull quote: “Paul has made clear repeatedly he isn’t planning to vote for the party-line tax and spending bill anyway, giving leadership few reasons to try and play nice. Yet the decision by senior Senate Republicans to undermine a committee chair in such a way marks a dramatic departure from standard Senate procedure. It also reflects the extent to which Paul has become an ideological island, despite him holding a committee gavel thanks to the chamber’s rules around seniority.”

NIH launching long-term health studies of East Palestine train crash. TheHill.com article. Trump Administration funded program. Pull quote: “The project aims to evaluate the impacts of exposure to chemicals of concern in East Palestine and its surrounding communities in the short and long term. The studies will also focus on public health tracking and surveillance of the community’s health conditions, the agency said.”

We may finally know how Tylenol works — and it's not how we thought. LiveScience.com article. Pull quote: “Previous research found that AM404 can act in the central nervous system — the brain and spinal cord. But the new study, published June 4 in the journal PNAS, reveals that AM404 also affects the peripheral nervous system, where pain signals originate.”

Unprecedented pentacoordinate oxygen cluster isn’t so new after all. ChemistryWorld.com article. Chem Geeky article. Pull quote: “Dreuw, who’s now at Heidelberg University in Germany, says he was surprised by the peculiarity of the Shanxi team’s structure: ‘But when you think about it, then it’s immediately clear that this should be stable.’ Advances in computational tools mean scientists can now efficiently search for minima across the full potential energy surface, something that was unrealistic back in 2006 [when a similar construct was apparently incorrectly characterized]. ‘Now you have programs where you can sample whole ensembles … and find structures that you had not expected, such as this one,’ Dreuw adds.”