I would like to introduce you to the patron saint of pressure. His name is dr. Isaac silveira, hes a named chair, very fancy professor at harvard. He says he just created something that never existed before on the face of the earth. And he and his postdoctoral researcher, they made this brand new thing using this little device which is small and doesnt look that mighty but i think weve gotten a image of it here. This device is called a diamond anvil cell. Its basically like a vice where the two sides of the vice are specially polished specially coated synthetic diamonds and inside the vice grip they can create inside that little device they have figured out a way to produce almost unimaginable pressure. 72 Million Pounds of pressure per square inch. That is greater pressure than the pressure at the center of the earth. In that tiny little device. And by inventing a way to squeeze stuff that hard, they say, these researchers from this lab at harvard, they say they have created a whole new thing on earth. The first element in the periodic table is hydrogen. In normal circumstances, hydrogen is a gas. If you cool it to low temperatures hydrogen becomes a liquid. If you cool it down more than that it can become a solid. But if you take that solid and put it into professor silveras magic squeezing device you, according to what they say, according to what they think they have just done, they think they have figured out a way to compress hydrogen so much with more pressure than we can exert at the center of the earth, you can compress it so much that hydrogen turns into a metal. And at harvard, professor silvera and his postdoctoral fellow, a guy named ranga dias, they say they successfully did that. They created a new metal. It took, like, 40 years of work but for the first time in the history of the universe they made this new thing. They made hydrogen metal. They made metallic eid general. Harvard just published the news about it today. In an interview with professor silvera it was really exciting. Ranga was running the experiment and we thought he might get there but when he called me and said the sample is shining i went running down there and it was. Metallic hydrogen. The next big step will be to figure out whether Metallic Hydrogen stays a metal once you remove it from that incredibly High Pressure environment. They are predicting that it will stay a metal. If that happens, they think there could be all sorts of different applications for this new metal that never existed on earth before. They think it could be, for example, the worlds most powerful rocket fuel. They say it would radically change everything that is powered by strong magnets, including things like mri machines. They think it could be the worlds most important superconductor. So if you made power lines out of this new metal, theoretically you could convey electricity from one side of the country to the other without losing any of it in transit. But whether or not any of those applications work out, its also just exciting theres a new thing under the sun. Theres a new metal. Theres a brand new thing that never existed in the universe until ranga dias and professor Isaac Silvera figured out how to squeeze hard enough to make it happen. So behold, new patron saints of pressure. The sample is shining. And pressure turns out to be one of the most important things that we have all learned as a country, that we have all learned in the news in this first week since we swore in a new president , since we started sliding in american politics into a tirescreeching outofcontrol fullspeed uturn. One of the important things we learned this week as we started to go through this radical change as a country that as fast as things seem like they are changing and as radical as these changes in direction seem, pressure matters. Pressure still works. At least some of the time. On inauguration day, a mem blow went out to all the employees at the department of health and Human Services and that memo told them that without exception people in that agency were no longer allowed to make any correspondence to Public Officials. No more correspondence to Public Officials including members of congress and governors, for example. And people who work at that agency started telling members of congress, im sorry, were banned from speaking with you. Im sorry, i cant go to that meeting with you. Im sorry, i know youve made this request of a federal agency for information but i cant answer that because i have been banned from speaking with members of congress. Weve been told were not allowed to provide information to members of congress or other elected officials. Democratic members of congress, including congressman Elijah Cummings and congress man Frank Pallone went nuts in response to this gag order. They wrote to the white house about it. News coverage of the gag order geared up. The new administration had no explanation, no defense for what they had done. And now you know what happened . They rescinded it. Now there has been a new memo to health and Human Services employees rescinding the earlier order telling them nothing theyve received should in any way preclude or in any way interfere with them addressing elected representatives. Either in person or in writing. And now the white house itself is disavowing ever having asked for that in the first place. That wasnt us, that had nothing to do with us. Must have been a typo. Same thing at the usda. We reported tuesday night that the 2000 scientists of our nations Agricultural Research service, those scientists have been told theyre no longer allowed to post any public information, including scientific information. Nothing that the public could see. A gag order on everything from all of those scientists to anything that might make it to the public. That gag order on those 2000 scientists made it to the press, white house got asked about it, pressure started building and hey, look, they took it back, they caved. They sent a followup message to the usda scientists saying the original order was hereby rescinded adding for good measure the Agricultural ResearchService Values and is committed to maintaining the free flow of information between our scientists and the American Public. Yeah, they are now. After the American Public found out they were trying to cut that off and the American Public got mad about it and said so and then they caved. Same thing happened at the Environmental Protection agency. We reported a couple of nights ago that theyd been directed to take down the page at the epa web site. That includes not just information about epa Climate Change programs but includes the epas climaterelated data. Tons and tons and tons of giant data sets on climate and all sorts of scientists rely on that with all sorts of research. After being told to take down that whole site after it was reported that epa employees had been ordered to take that down. Naturally, a, outrage, b, questions, c, pressure, and, d, ultimately they caved. They backed down. The Trump Administration has walked back plans to scrub Climate Change references from the epa web site. Naturally the white house spokesman is denying the Trump Administration ever wanted that page taken down totally disavowing any order to remove that information. So maybe the Climate Change data sets at the epa, maybe those will stay up. Tom stier, the environmentalist billionaire in california says just for good measure he has copy it had web site and all of its data sets now anyway just in case so if they take it down hes got a spare. In case we need it. But still maybe they wont take it down. Its also just happened at the v. A. One of the first things the new administration did was issue a blanket hiring freeze for the entire federal government. That sounds like a great thing if you dont believe the government does anything useful. But even if you like the idea of hiring freezes in general, ask american veterans, ask them if its a good idea to have a hiring freeze at the v. A. At the v. A. Where the whole key to fixing the v. A. And staffing it up well enough so it can meet the demand for Veterans Health care so veterans are not waiting too long to see their doctors and get into counseling, all those things that led to the v. A. Scandal. The whole key to that actually is staffing up the v. A. Theyve got tens of thousands of positions they are trying to fill. They are recruiting health care staff, they are recruit people to work at the v. A. In all levels of v. A. Service and its the linchpin, that hiring initiative is the linchpin for getting that organization where it needs to be to serve americas veterans. This was Paul Rieckhoff from america and afghanistan veterans of american after the hiring freeze was announced. Imagine youre a nurse considering working at either v. A. Or a private health company. V. A. Just got hit with a hiring freeze. Where would you go . Right. Exactly. Veterans groups were livid about how much that blanket hiring freeze was going to set back efforts at the v. A. To get that agency together and veterans groups and their supporters erupted. And honestly the white house had no idea how to answer their questions or their concerns or how to respond to the ensuing pressure. The White House Press secretary stood at the podium and said for the progresses that have plagued the v. A. Hiring more people is not the answer. And the whole Veterans Community and everybody who knows anything about the v. A. Responded in concert, actually, yes, it is the answer. That is what were trying to do to fix the v. A. We all agree on that. So now having been exposed both for the bad idea and their ignorance about its consequences, theyve caved. Pressure worked. The department of Veterans Affairs has Just Announced that it is proclaiming itself exempt from the hiring freeze. But only for specific positions necessary to meet Public Safety responsibilities. This is the memorandum they put out about that, their exempted positions include medical officer, physicians assistant, nurse, optometrist, podiatrist, dental officer, chiropractor, psychologist, therapist, social worker, dietitian, occupational therapist, physical therapist, pharmacist, dental hygienist, laundry worker, food service worker, pest control. Housekeeping aide. Maintenance mechanic, tractor operator, materials handler, cemetery representative, tools and parts attendant. Also occupation category 3502 which is laborer. So, yeah, hiring freeze applies to everybody. Except for every job title the Veterans Administration can name which they are proclaiming exempt from this stupid hiring freeze. When veterans erupt and veteran supporters erupt and the press erupts and the by a they did in the face of that insult and they create as much pressure around that as they did this week turns out a lot of exemptions can be found for what was otherwise proclaimed to be a blanket policy with no exceptions. Well, now, tonight its happened again. Keeps happening, you might have heard yesterday that even though the deadline to sign up for Health Insurance, the Enrollment Period for getting into a new Health Insurance plan comes to an end on tuesday and everybody waits until the deadline. Everybody waits until the very last minute until they sign themselves up. You might have heard last night the new administration had yanked the ads and Public Service announcements telling people that that deadline is on tuesday and people only have a few days left to sign up. I mean, these guys have not repealed obamacare. The Affordable Care act is still in effect. Signing up for a new health plan during the open Enrollment Period, thats still the way we americans get Health Insurance. It doesnt benefit the Trump Administration in any way if individual americans miss that deadline and have to go without Health Insurance. It doesnt help the trump folks but it does hurt individual americans. As of last night, their plan was to yank those ads, yank those psas, even the ones they already paid for. They said they would rather waste the money and spend the money to run no ads, yank the ads, spend the money anyway but not run the ads so just so fewer americans would end up with Health Insurance. Which is on its face outrageous. It therefore created outrage. It therefore created questions that the white house had a very hard time answering about why they were wasting americans taxpayer money for the specific purpose of making fewer americans have Health Insurance. And so tonight say it with me now they caved. They caved in the face of that pleasure reversing course, Trump Administration will continue obamacare outreach. Oh, pressure works. Pressure doesnt always work. Let me quote that super psyched postdoc in the harvard pressure physics lab the sample is shining. This is an Interesting Data sample. Weve got case after case after case after case from just the first week of them being in office they tried to do something and took it back when people rose up against it, when they had no answer for the criticism. When they could not bear the pressure. Pressure sometimes works. And now we get a couple of very interesting, very big tests of that new principle we have discovered about our new president and this new administration. A couple really big tests. One of them, of course, is the wall. When the new president signed his build the wall order a couple days ago, we were not exactly sure if it was another one of these symbolic Campaign Promise style orders he has put out this week. These things that make it look like hes acting and keeping a Campaign Promise but its an order that has no effect, like today, for example, he made a big show out of signing an executive order that basically says were going to make the military way huge herb, were going to have more ships, more troops, more planes, were going to increase the size of the military. Its need to know he wants that but him signing an order saying the military is about too get way bigger, thats the equivalent of me proclaiming that i am seven feet tall and an astronaut and i can grab a charcoal brickette and squeeze it with my grip and make synthetic diamonds that theyll use at harvard to make metal hydrogen. I can say that stuff. I can tell you im miss america. It might be neat to learn that i want to be those things, because i said them, but you cant do that just by saying it. The new president proclaimed in this executive order today that he is making the military bigger. Thats something he cannot do. Even with a big sharpie signature. Thats Something Congress has to do because it costs money. What he called an executive order on making the military bigger, thats essentially apparently a short hand nonofficial version of what his budget request will be. Which is a nice heads up. But its not an order, he doesnt need to sign it let alone at a big ceremony where it seems like he might be making the extra ships right there. Its just theater. That was nothing. One of the things we have learned with this new president is that he sometimes makes a big deal out of doing nothing. He signs stuff, big sharpie signature, makes a big show out of doing stuff that is substantively meaningless. He doesnt have the power to order it by executive order or its so unclear that nobody in the agent sill acts on it or has plans to. Hes proclaimed he has done a bunch of things that dont affect the great changes he claims to be affecting. When he signed that order on building the wall on the southern border, we didnt know if it was going to be an aspirational statement about something he wants. We didnt know whether it was going to be those or a nuts and bolts thing. We now know he is directing the start of the construction of a wall on the border but turns out he didnt persuade mexico to pay for it. So that request for a wall which is what it is it now becomes a request to congress to please come up with a way to charge the american taxpayers for the cost of building that wall, which is not what he said in the campaign he was going to do. This is what is going to be one of the next big tests to see how they deal with pressure because the pressure on this was foreseeable, it has already begun, theres International Pressure already, the president of mexico cancelling his planned visit to the United States, seeing his Approval Ratings at home skyrocket as he stands up to and says no and snubs the u. S. President. Theres pressure in the american streets, protests already, americans particularly in border states saying do not put a wall on that border. Now that we know the plan is to have the American People pay for it with taxpayer dollars, that does Mean Congress will have to vote on an appropriation of taxpayer funds to pay for that wall and that makes every Con