Weekly civic intelligence report · v2.2
The Trump administration awarded a no-bid contract for research into vaccines and autism, a discredited link. This represents both procurement irregularity and promotion of vaccine skepticism.
A-score 31.35: No-bid contract violates procurement rules (rule_of_law:3.5), represents regulatory capture by anti-vaccine interests (capture:4), corruption in awarding contracts without competition (corruption:4.5), and threatens public health through legitimizing discredited science (civil_rights:3). Policy mechanism with federal scope yields 1.15×1.1 modifiers. Precedent severity elevated (1.1) for normalizing procurement violations. B-score 32.45: Extremely media-friendly (9) given vaccine controversy history, high outrage potential (8), strong pattern match (8) to Trump's known vaccine skepticism. Strategic layer shows mismatch between scientific consensus and policy (7), narrative alignment with anti-establishment positioning (6). High intentionality (9/15) given Trump's documented vaccine-autism statements. D-score: -1.10 indicates near-perfect balance between constitutional damage and distraction value.
MIXED EVENT: Monitor for: (1) actual contract execution and research design; (2) impact on vaccine confidence and public health outcomes; (3) whether this becomes template for other science-policy decisions; (4) media cycle duration vs. substantive policy implementation. Track both procurement reform advocacy AND whether controversy obscures other health policy changes.