Trump's war on science and productivity

[Winehole23]

could also kill a bunch of universities into the bargain

DOGE is national self-wounding on a monumental scale


https://images.ctfassets.net/ou0qvg08mzx4/1oDpdSW9XUE9bU8Foj2Ce9/19f1673f0d7ad894a03c2c6b778aa65c/infographic_NIH_funding.jpg?fm=webp&w=3840&q=75SourcesCongressional Research Service. National Institutes of Health (NIH) Funding: FY1996-FY2023. Updated January 31, 2023. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R43341/45 (https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R43341/45).
National Institutes of Health. Direct Economic Contributions. National Institutes of Health. https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/impact-nih-research/serving-society/direct-economic-contributions (https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/impact-nih-research/serving-society/direct-economic-contributions).
National Institutes of Health. NIH Research Highlights. National Institutes of Health. https://www.nih.gov/research-training/nih-research-highlights (https://www.nih.gov/research-training/nih-research-highlights)
United for Medical Research. Annual Economic Report. https://www.unitedformedicalresearch.org/annual-economic-report/ (https://www.unitedformedicalresearch.org/annual-economic-report/).


Zhou EW, Jackson MJ, Ledley FD. Spending on Phased Clinical Development of Approved Drugs by the US National Institutes of Health Compared With Industry. JAMA Health Forum. 2023;4(7):e231921. Published 2023 Jul 7. doi:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2023.1921.https://wewillcure.com/insights/entrepreneurship/nih-funding-drives-economic-gains-jobs-and-better-health-infographic

[Thread]

Leave a score among them!!!

[SnakeBoy]

Big pharma can fund them

[Winehole23]

Big pharma can fund themthey won't though

[DMX7]

We've spent the last 25ish years living above our means. The bill is coming due. Cuts are going to have to come one way or another before we have a major debt crisis that forces even more painful cuts.

It's quite tragic. Many people are living in denial about it.

[baseline bum]

Big pharma can fund them

That's not the way capitalism works.

[FrostKing]

We've spent the last 25ish years living above our means. The bill is coming due. Cuts are going to have to come one way or another before we have a major debt crisis that forces even more painful cuts.

It's quite tragic. Many people are living in denial about it.
Didn't you hear, we're going Green energy :lol

Europe was about to drop a Trillion in funds to be a cool continent while slashing jobs and nuking industries in the process. Yaaa that cute little pet project is being put to the side.

[baseline bum]

We've spent the last 25ish years living above our means. The bill is coming due. Cuts are going to have to come one way or another before we have a major debt crisis that forces even more painful cuts.

It's quite tragic. Many people are living in denial about it.

Oh fuck off, you don't cut productive parts of the government. You cut bullshit like our national offense spending.

[Winehole23]

We've spent the last 25ish years living above our means. The bill is coming due. Cuts are going to have to come one way or another before we have a major debt crisis that forces even more painful cuts.

It's quite tragic. Many people are living in denial about it.so, you support the El0n/Trump junta?

[Winehole23]

Not sure where I've heard this kind of "ends justify the means" talk before.

Do you believe the ends justify the means, DMX7?

[Winehole23]

"Because of a contingent future probability that is by no means averted by destroying our form of goverment, it is necessary to destroy our form of government right now"

[Winehole23]

Just assuming you're aware of Trump's intention to wreck the revenue side with more tax cuts...

[ChumpDumper]

We've spent the last 25ish years living above our means. The bill is coming due. Cuts are going to have to come one way or another before we have a major debt crisis that forces even more painful cuts.

It's quite tragic. Many people are living in denial about it.This is not what Trump and President Elon are doing.

[Thread]

Oh fuck off, you don't cut productive parts of the government. You cut bullshit like our national offense spending.

Okay, cut said bullshit.

[SnakeBoy]

Oh fuck off, you don't cut productive parts of the government. You cut bullshit like our national offense spending.

Oh fuck off SQW's

[DMX7]

Oh fuck off, you don't cut productive parts of the government. You cut bullshit like our national offense spending.

We're running a $2 trillion deficit and in good economic times. We're going to have to cut both though to what extent is appropriate is debatable.

It's still going to have to be dramatic cuts.

When you say "productive" -- this is pretty vague. You can always make economic arguments for the vast majority of government spending including military. People will say things to the effect of "it creates jobs" or "has an economic multiplier effect" or something like that.

[baseline bum]

We're running a $2 trillion deficit and in good economic times. We're going to have to cut both though to what extent is appropriate is debatable.

It's still going to have to be dramatic cuts.

When you say "productive" -- this is pretty vague. You can always make economic arguments for the vast majority of government spending including military. People will say things to the effect of "it creates jobs" or "has an economic multiplier effect" or something like that.

You're a fucking dumbass, Trump's cutting the NIH funding so he can give his fellow robber barons a giant tax cut.

[DMX7]

You're a fucking dumbass, Trump's cutting the NIH funding so he can give his fellow robber barons a giant tax cut.

Tax cuts or not, steep cuts are going to have to come regardless. Tax cuts will just mean the spending cuts have to be even more aggressive but get used to it unless you want to see us spiral towards bankruptcy. Even the billionaires like Musk know everyone will pay if the government implodes because of the debt spiral.

I know it makes you mad, but I can't wish it away for you.

[ChumpDumper]

Tax cuts or not, steep cuts are going to have to come regardless. Tax cuts will just mean the spending cuts have to be even more aggressive but get used to it unless you want to see us spiral towards bankruptcy. Even the billionaires like Musk know everyone will pay if the government implodes because of the debt spiral.

I know it makes you mad, but I can't wish it away for you.:lol they don't care.

I can't wish that away for you.

[baseline bum]

Tax cuts or not, steep cuts are going to have to come regardless. Tax cuts will just mean the cutting has to be even more aggressive but get used to it unless you want to see us spiral towards bankruptcy. Even the billionaires like Musk know everyone will pay if the government implodes because of the debt spiral.

I know it makes you mad, but I can't wish it away for you.

It's bad faith bullshit to whine about spending when you know 100% Trump is going to blow the deficit to hell just like he did last time just like every single Republican does to deliver tax cuts to the ruling class

[DarrinS]

It's bad faith bullshit to whine about spending when you know 100% Trump is going to blow the deficit to hell just like he did last time just like every single Republican does to deliver tax cuts to the ruling class

My taxes were cut under Trump and Biden kept those cuts. I'm not a billionaire

[DarrinS]

I'm for cutting gain of function research from NIH

[ChumpDumper]

My taxes were cut under Trump and Biden kept those cuts. I'm not a billionaireHe sure didn't pay down the debt like you pretend he will.:lol

[DMX7]

:lol they don't care.

I can't wish that away for you.

No, I think most care including Musk. A government crippled by a debt crisis will have to cut funding for his beloved projects like SpaceX. He is also a businessman that knows how to cut costs.

[ChumpDumper]

No, I think most care including Musk. A government crippled by a debt crisis will have to cut funding for his beloved projects like SpaceX. He is also a businessman that knows how to cut costs.Which of his SpaceX contracts is Elon canceling?

How much did he pay in taxes to help out with the debt?

[baseline bum]

No, I think most care including Musk. A government crippled by a debt crisis will have to cut funding for his beloved projects like SpaceX. He is also a businessman that knows how to cut costs.

Jesus fucking Christ what a dipshit you are to think Musk cares about the national debt.

[Winehole23]

Jesus fucking Christ what a dipshit you are to think Musk cares about the national debt.No way Musk will get in the way of the permanent extension of the 2017 tax cuts that will blow up the deficit -- again

[Winehole23]

kneecapping the IRS with mass firings during tax season will put a stitch in US revenue -- worsening the fiscal imbalance

[DMX7]

Which of his SpaceX contracts is Elon canceling?

Who said they needed to be canceled? Not everything is being eliminated.


How much did he pay in taxes to help out with the debt?

How am I supposed to know? Undoubtedly a lot more than you.

[ChumpDumper]

Who said they needed to be canceled? Not everything is being eliminated.
How convenient. I guess your Elon decided spending your tax money on your Elon is great!



How am I supposed to know? Financial disclosures for federal appointees are usually public.

Why not for your Elon?

[DMX7]

How convenient. I guess your Elon decided spending your tax money on your Elon is great!

He's not my Elon but he sends military satellites into space much much cheaper than the government payed with the other supplier.

He also bailed out NASA when Boeing dropped the ball on returning astronauts from the International Space Station.



Financial disclosures for federal appointees are usually public.

Why not for your Elon?

Are you sure those disclose all your tax payments?

[ChumpDumper]

He's not my Elon but he sends military satellites into space much much cheaper than the government payed with the other supplier.

He also bailed out NASA when Boeing dropped the ball on returning astronauts from the International Space Station.So whatever your Elon does is OK with you and you'll take your Elon's word about your Elon and everyone else.


Are you sure those disclose all your tax payments?
I guess we'll never know.

Your Elon definitely has all your tax information now. You approve.

[DMX7]

So whatever your Elon does is OK with you and you'll take your Elon's word about your Elon and everyone else.

Ughhh... is that what I wrote? :lol


I guess we'll never know.

You're the one who brought it up. You should know.

[ChumpDumper]

Ughhh... is that what I wrote? :LOL You don't take your Elon at his word?

Pick a lane.


You're the one who brought it up. You should know.
Wouldn't matter if that information was in there. Your Elon's financial disclosure is a state secret. And you're fine with it.

[Winehole23]

they hate knowledge and science and want to replace it Republican folklore


Johns Hopkins Plans Staff Layoffs After $800 Million Grant Cuts (https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/johns-hopkins-federal-funding-foreign-aid-cut-ca841d31)
Local and international health research efforts are already winding down as the university braces for even more potential cuts

[Winehole23]

it's penny wise for pound foolish to dismantle NIH



National Institutes of Health grants generated almost $95 billion in economic activity nationwide according to ajust-released report (https://www.unitedformedicalresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/UMR_NIH-Role-in-Sustaining-US-Economy-FY2024-2025-Update.pdf) by United for Medical Research.


The report, which is published annually, found that NIH awarded $36.94 billion in external grants to researchers across all 5o states and the District of Columbia in fiscal year 2024.

Its analysis shows that those grant awards supported 407,782 jobs and $94.58 billion in new economic activity nationwide, the largest figure in the history of the report. That translates to a return on investment of $2.56 for every $1 in awards.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2025/03/12/nih-grants-fueled-95-billion-in-economic-activity-finds-new-report/

[Winehole23]

UMass rescinding all graduate admissions in 2025


https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:g3bic4rl4ndeelszgbqkk2el/bafkreie3iclgpykejbq3sgcjxozyggs566ypolz5wprob2nr2 tjlj7k2aq@jpeg

[Winehole23]

ideological streamlining along Trumpist lines at NIH


https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:kb7asicbolhe7ch3scmxhiv5/bafkreifamn25ppjhs2lphggukkvfzllsc5rj2nxdflmgo5hlg wa3zzhohe@jpeghttps://www.importantcontext.news/p/i-believe-it-nih-director-pushes

[DarrinS]

ideological streamlining along Trumpist lines at NIH

https://www.importantcontext.news/p/i-believe-it-nih-director-pushes

That's a shame

[Winehole23]

That's a shamewe've never had patriotic state ideology and brute-force, top-down censorship of the whole of government along ideological lines

nor have we ever had POTUS use the public fisc to extort any person or institution who doesn't want to do things his way

[DarrinS]

we've never had patriotic state ideology and brute-force, top-down censorship of the whole of government along ideological lines

nor have we ever had POTUS use the public fisc to extort any person or institution who doesn't want to do things his way

Getting rid of DEI policies is a good thing. Sorry for your loss

[ChumpDumper]

Getting rid of DEI policies is a good thing. Sorry for your loss

Hiring vets bad?

[Winehole23]

Getting rid of DEI policies is a good thing. Sorry for your loss"Getting rid of your civil rights is a good thing"

"Sorry for your loss"

[DarrinS]

Team blue was wrong about so many things. Russiagate. Covid. Hunter laptop. Biden's cognition. Don't listen to anything they say.

[Winehole23]

"Smug paternalism and resegregation of the US government are the solution to woke"

"Cry harder"

[Winehole23]

Team blue was wrong about so many things. Russiagate. Covid. Hunter laptop. Biden's cognition. Don't listen to anything they say.combing your hair in the mirror

while holding a microphone

[DarrinS]

combing your hair in the mirror

while holding a microphone

No accountability

[Winehole23]

you weren't even here for four years, how would you know what any particular poster said about anything

[ChumpDumper]

No accountability

What are you held accountable for?

Let us know what you're personally responsible for here.

$50 LED bulbs?:lol

You're credible!

[Winehole23]

America’s long-term growth is at stake. Congress is weighing sweeping FY2026 cuts (https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Fiscal-Year-2026-Discretionary-Budget-Request.pdf) to fundamental science, including $18 billion from the National Institutes of Health and $5 billion from the National Science Foundation.


The proposed dismantling of NSF (https://www.forbes.com/sites/johndrake/2025/05/09/the-national-science-foundation-is-being-dismantled-what-the-economy-needs-is-more-investment/) raises an urgent question: do these cuts actually save money or merely delay spending until the bill gets larger? The answer is clear: these cuts will cost the economy billions.

How do we know this? New macro-empirical research finds that every dollar invested in non-defense public R&D yields $1.40–$2.10 in economic output, and since World War II, government funding has driven roughly 20% of U.S. productivity.

In this post, I explore why public investment in research matters, explain how the evidence was gathered and examine the political forces that keep America from investing more.

Bottom line: the proposed NIH and NSF cuts alone would eventually strip at least $10 billion per year from U.S. output.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johndrake/2025/05/19/trumps-nih-and-nsf-cuts-could-cost-the-us-economy-10-billion-annually/

[Blake]

Team blue was wrong about so many things. Russiagate. Covid. Hunter laptop. Biden's cognition. Don't listen to anything they say.

You voted for a felon.

[Allan Rowe vs Wade]

Covid was trump not biden

[Blake]

Covid was trump not biden

They'll tell you it was Fauci, not Trump.

[baseline bum]

Team blue was wrong about so many things. Russiagate. Covid. Hunter laptop. Biden's cognition. Don't listen to anything they say.

Yeah motherfucker team 15 cases and dropping to zero was right about Covid. Team inject disinfectant and shine UV light through the skin was right on Covid.

[ChumpDumper]

Team blue was wrong about so many things. Russiagate. Covid. Hunter laptop. Biden's cognition. Don't listen to anything they say.

What was actually on Hunter's laptop, Darrin?

[Winehole23]

abandoning basic scientific research will make us poorer and sicker


A recent United for Medical Research report (https://www.unitedformedicalresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/UMR_NIH-Role-in-Sustaining-US-Economy-FY2024-2025-Update.pdf) shows that in fiscal year 2024, research funded by the NIH generated $94.58 billion in economic activity nationwide, a 156% return on investment. Further, the report shows that NIH funding supported 407,782 jobs nationwide. According to the NIH’s own figures (https://www.nih.gov/sites/default/files/about-nih/impact/Impact-of-NIH-Research-Serving-Society.pdf), patents derived from work it has funded produce 20% more economic value than other U.S. patents.

These economic returns — including a return on investment that would thrill any startup or stock investor — cannot begin to capture the impact on individuals, families and communities in terms of increased longevity and higher quality of life.

While it is hard to precisely quantify human health improvements resulting from NIH-funded research, there are proxy measures. As one example, a study published in JAMA Health Forum (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2807184) found that NIH funding supported the development of 386 of 387 drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration from 2010-19. Many of the approved drugs address the most pressing human health concerns of our time, including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, infectious diseases and neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.

Many other NIH-funded advancements represent what is now considered common knowledge, such as the relationship between cholesterol and cardiovascular health, or standard practice, such as screening newborns for serious diseases that may be treatable with early medical intervention. But each of these fundamental aspects of contemporary medicine had to first be discovered, tested and proved. They represent what NIH funding can do — and the type of paradigm-shifting advancements in medicine that are now very much at risk.

Consider the biotechnology industry as one such paradigm shift. In the 1970s, Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer were the first scientists to clone DNA and to transplant genes from one living organism to another (https://www.sciencehistory.org/education/scientific-biographies/herbert-w-boyer-and-stanley-n-cohen/). This work launched the biotechnology industry.

Two decades later, the NIH and the Department of Energy began a 13-year effort to sequence the human genome, including through university-based research grants. In 2003, the consortium of researchers produced a sequence accounting for 92% (https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/educational-resources/fact-sheets/human-genome-project) of the human genome. In 2022, a group of researchers primarily funded by the NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute produced a complete human genome sequence (https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/first-complete-sequence-human-genome). This work paved the way for insights into inherited diseases, pharmacogenomics (how genetics affect the body’s response to medications) and precision medicine (https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/precision-medicine/what-doctors-wish-patients-knew-about-precision-medicine).

NIH funding has also led to major breakthroughs in cancer treatments. In 1948, Sidney Farber demonstrated the first use of a chemotherapy drug (https://www.cancer.org/cancer/understanding-cancer/history-of-cancer/cancer-treatment-chemo.html), aminopterin, to induce remission in children with acute leukemia. Before Farber’s research, which was funded in part by the NIH (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18860765/), children with acute leukemia were unlikely to survive even five years (https://ashpublications.org/blood/article/90/11/4243/174760/Fifty-Years-of-Studies-of-the-Biology-and-Therapy).

Over the years that followed, other modes of cancer treatment such as immunotherapy emerged, first as novel areas of inquiry, followed by drug development and clinical trials. NIH funding supported, among others, the development of CAR T cell therapy (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10225594/), which genetically modifies a patients’ own T-cells (https://www.cancer.org/cancer/managing-cancer/treatment-types/immunotherapy/car-t-cell1.html) to fight cancer. CAR T cell therapy has improved outcomes for many patients with persistent blood cancers (https://patienteducation.asgct.org/disease-treatments/car-t-basics), and clinical trials are ongoing to discover other cancers that might be treatable with CAR T cell therapies.

For decades, scientists knew that breast cancer could run in families and hypothesized a genetic role. In the 1990s, teams of scientists — supported at least in part by NIH funding — tracked down the BRCA1 (https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/science.7545954) and BRCA2 (https://www.nature.com/articles/378789a0) genes responsible for inherited predispositions to breast and other cancers. Today, many people undergo testing for BRCA gene mutations to make informed decisions about prevention, screening and treatment.

These kinds of advancements, along with improvements in detection and screening, have meaningfully reduced cancer mortality rates. After hitting a smoking-related peak in 1991, U.S. mortality rates from all cancers dropped by 34% as of 2022 (https://www.cancer.org/content/dam/cancer-org/research/cancer-facts-and-statistics/annual-cancer-facts-and-figures/2025/2025-cancer-facts-and-figures-acs.pdf), according to the American Cancer Society. For children with acute leukemias, who had effectively no long-term chance of survival just 75 years ago, the numbers are even more dramatic. The five-year survival rate (https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/leukemia-in-children/detection-diagnosis-staging/survival-rates.html) is now approximately 90% for children with acute lymphocytic leukemia and between 65% and 70% for those with acute myelogenous leukemia.

These examples represent a fraction of the tremendous progress that has occurred through decades of compounding knowledge and research. Reductions in NIH funding now threaten similar breakthroughs that are the prerequisites to better care, better technology and better outcomes in the most common health concerns and diseases of our time.

It is not research alone that is threatened by NIH funding cuts. Researchers, too, face new uncertainties. We have heard firsthand the anxiety around building a research career in the current environment. Many young physician-scientists wonder whether it will be financially viable to build their own lab in the U.S., or to find jobs at research institutions that must tighten their belts. Many medical residents, fellows and junior faculty are considering leaving the U.S. to train and build careers elsewhere. Losing early-career researchers to other fields or countries would be a blow to talent for biomedical research institutions nationwide and weaken the country’s ability to compete globally in the biomedical sector.

The effects of decreased NIH funding might not be immediately visible to most Americans, but as grant cancellations and delays mount, there will be a price. NIH funding produces incredible results. Cuts will set scientific research back and result in losses in quality of life and longevity for generations of Americans in years to come.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-05-28/national-institutes-of-health-biotechnology-cancer-genetics-donald-trump

[Winehole23]

Judge William Young puts Trumplandia on blast:


A federal judge in Boston on Monday said the termination of National Institutes of Health grants for research on diversity-related topics by President Donald Trump (https://www.reuters.com/topic/person/donald-trump/)'s administration was "void and illegal," and accused the government of discriminating against racial minorities and LGBT people.

U.S. District Judge William Young during a non-jury trial said the NIH violated federal law by arbitrarily canceling more than $1 billion in research grants because of their perceived connection to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.



"This represents racial discrimination and discrimination against America's LGBTQ community," said Young, an appointee of Republican former President Ronald Reagan. "Any discrimination by our government is so wrong that it requires the court to enjoin it and at an appropriate time, I'm going to do it."

Referring to the termination of grants for research related to issues involving racial minorities, the judge said he had in four decades on the bench "never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable."

"You are bearing down on people of color because of their color," the judge said, referring to Trump's administration. "The Constitution will not permit that."


https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/federal-judge-says-trump-cuts-nih-grants-are-illegal-politico-reports-2025-06-16/

[Winehole23]

(in passing, "DEI" isn't an "improper ideology," it encompasses a range of constitutionally protected political viewpoints -- Trump's various "anti-DEI" EOs are pure viewpoint discrimination)

[Winehole23]

“I understand that the extirpation of affirmative action is today a valid government position. I understand that. Affirmative action had various invidious calculus based upon race. I understand that. That’s not a license to discriminate,” Young, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, said in the battle over President Donald Trump’s sweeping cuts to National Institutes of Health research grants.

Young said he sees “no evidence” that DEI initiatives in question were supporting unlawful discrimination.

“Point me just anywhere in this record where it’s pointed out that any particular grant or group of grants is being used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race. From what I can see, it’s the reverse,” Young said.

[Winehole23]

fuckin AI

Trump's brute force censorship of naughty words



Duke appears to have lost NIH grants because they used the prefix "trans" in reference to disease transmission, transgenic genetic material, translational studies, or signal transduction www.dukechronicle.com/article/2025...

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:kiyv7vxcplepqxft4d6qd6zt/bafkreigqdns3s345kwzqncx2u37sdig4r2ofomqr3f22telip ff5vtxlga@jpeg

[BadMotorscooter]

Yeah motherfucker team 15 cases and dropping to zero was right about Covid. Team inject disinfectant and shine UV light through the skin was right on Covid.


you still think it came from bats, dumbshit?

[Winehole23]

you still think it came from bats, dumbshit?latest multi-year study says inconclusive

do you have your mind made up already?

[ChumpDumper]

you still think it came from bats, dumbshit?

What's your conspiracy theory here?

[BadMotorscooter]

What's your conspiracy theory here?

WW3 still gonna start under Trumps presidency and do you think all illegals arent criminals? You gonna finally answer a question, chump?

[ChumpDumper]

WW3 still gonna start under Trumps presidency and do you think all illegals arent criminals? You gonna finally answer a question, chump?

Prove that I said all of that.

You won't.

You're afraid to answer my question.

c:lolward

[Winehole23]

except where tarted up as a state felony, crossing a border without authorization is an administrative violation, not a criminal one

associating crossing a border with criminality is a generational propaganda effort -- using the word "illegals" means you swallowed it uncritically, BM

[Winehole23]

Indianapolis lost federal matching funds for replanting trees in the city because of the word “diversity” in biodiversity.www.indystar.com/story/news/e...

[Winehole23]

in our recently submitted grants we had to change (https://bsky.app/profile/janellebelle.bsky.social/post/3lssch5qjmc2e) “traumatic brain injury” to “concussive brain injury” and “male and female mice” to “male and non-male mice” because traumatic and female are now verboten words that can get our grants killed. It’s insanity.

[Winehole23]

yikes


"Numbers released in May by the National Science Foundation (NSF) indicate that if Congress approves the cuts to the agency proposed by the White House, the number of early-career researchers it supports could fall by 78%" (@science.org)

[Blake]

WW3 still gonna start under Trumps presidency and do you think all illegals arent criminals? You gonna finally answer a question, chump?

All illegals aren't felons. You simp for a felon.

[Winehole23]

Republican Senators are starting to become aware of the damage their constituencies will face because of Trump's NIH impoundment, and are starting to beg

Katie Britt's home state of Alabama gets nearly a third of its revenue from the federal government


Republican Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama is sounding the alarm about “the slow disbursement rate” of National Institutes of Health funding included in the March spending bill signed by President Donald Trump.


Britt, who serves as chair of the Senate Appropriations homeland subcommittee, led a letter Friday with 13 of her GOP colleagues to White House Budget Chief Russ Vought, urging the Office of Management and Budget to “fully implement” the stopgap government funding package enacted earlier this year.

“Suspension of these appropriated funds — whether formally withheld or functionally delayed — could threaten Americans’ ability to access better treatments and limit our nation’s leadership in biomedical science,” Britt and her colleagues warned. “It also risks inadvertently severing ongoing NIH-funded research prior to actionable results.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/25/britt-leads-letter-urging-trump-administration-to-release-delayed-nih-funds-00476872

[Winehole23]

They also expressed their confidence in Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and NIH director Jay Bhattacharya, writing, “Our shared goal is to restore public trust in the NIH precisely because its work is focused on results, accountability, and real-world impact.”

But, they added, "Withholding or suspending these funds would jeopardize that trust and hinder progress on critical health challenges facing our nation. Ultimately, this is about finding cures and seeing them through to fruition.”

The NIH is the top funder of biomedical research in the country. The University of Alabama at Birmingham is also a major recipient of NIH funding and is the top employer in Britt’s home state.

[Winehole23]

with this one neat trick, US cancer research can be almost totally eliminated



That new policy is the 'multi-year funding' policy. In short, the Trump administration has required many research grants to be fully funded up-front, with funds from this fiscal year. In the past, these grants were typically funded year-by-year, spreading out the cost of, say, a five year grant over five years of NIH appropriations. Now such multi-year grants (https://www.politico.com/newsletters/future-pulse/2025/06/11/nih-forward-funding-scheme-00398712) must be funded with funds from this year — fiscal year 2025 (FY25).

The new policy means that the number of grants that can be funded this year will drop dramatically. And that will decimate US biomedical science labs across the country, and set back medical research and cures for disease by years. Many more labs will be facing the equivalent of bankruptcy as a result of this policy.
The multi-year funding policy has been in discussion internally at NIH for months. It may have started with a good-faith effort by NIH civil servants trying to get money out the door to spend the budget, but it now appears to have been weaponized by the Trump administration, by requiring a large number of grants to be funded this way. The effects of this policy have now come out to the public clearly: on July 24th, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) published its funding strategy for the rest of this fiscal year.

Last year's percentage of funded grants was nearly 10%. Now, the NCI payline has gone down to 4%. That means out of 100 grant submissions, only four will receive funding. No scientist, no matter how good a writer and no matter how good their ideas and data, can reliably write a grant that will beat out 96% of other submitted grants.


If you are a Principal Investigator with a well-scored grant, just waiting for council review, and you think you are sure to receive an award, you should think again.



The previous 10% payline was crushing; it meant only 1 out of every 10 grants submitted was chosen competitively for funding. The new 4% payline, by comparison, is a nuclear bomb dropped on cancer funding. As one university scientist said, "A payline under 5% means it's not worth my time to apply. My lab will close down, and I'll stop doing research." And the problem is not just at NCI: other institutes are similarly planning to fund many fewer grants this year.
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/alert-the-trump-administration-is

[Winehole23]

vicious destruction of public goods



As I first reported on June 26th (https://michaelrlowry.substack.com/p/critical-hurricane-forecast-tool), the U.S. Department of Defense initially gave a five-day notice that the critical satellite data – regularly used by forecasters to assess and predict the location and intensity of hurricanes – would be shut off at the end of June. After swift pushback from other government agencies, including from NASA’s Earth Science Division Director, for what amounted to a no-notice announcement, the Navy postponed the decommission date until the end of July.


Navy officials say they are restricting data access to these three juggernaut weather satellites – some in operation since 2005 – to mitigate a significant cybersecurity risk to the their High-Performance Computing environment. The moratorium notice issued June 30th (https://ospo.noaa.gov/data/messages/2025/06/MSG_20250630_0345.html), however, did not explain how the urgent IT security issue would be resolved through July as critical data continued to flow to NOAA and other end users like the National Hurricane Center.


The loss of data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) instrument aboard each of the three defense satellites is significant and devastating to U.S. hurricane forecasters and to tropical cyclone forecast agencies around the globe.


The Navy’s Office of Information confirmed the July 31st decommission date with me last Wednesday in the following statement:


“We can confirm that the Navy’s Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center will no longer contribute to processing and disseminating Defense Meteorological Satellite Program data on July 31, 2025, in accordance with Department of Defense policy. DMSP is a joint program owned by the U.S. Space Force and scheduled for discontinuation in September 2026. The Navy is discontinuing contributions to DMSP given the program no longer meets our information technology modernization requirements.”


When I asked officials to elaborate on what’s changed about their IT modernization requirements that would suddenly prevent data dissemination, the Navy’s spokesperson said they had nothing further to provide on the matter.
https://michaelrlowry.substack.com/p/navy-set-to-unplug-critical-hurricane

[Winehole23]

Trump 2.0 is disappearing and degrading US data


Government data is at risk. Federal funding for the main statistical agencies — like the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Commerce Department — has been tight for years.

But since the Trump administration took office in January, t (https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/02/18/trump-federal-data-disappear-businesses)hreats to the availability and comprehensiveness of federal data (https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/02/18/trump-federal-data-disappear-businesses) have reached a new level, impacting everything from national health and crime statistics to key economic reports.

Last September, Drew DeSilver, an analyst at the Pew Research Center, clicked onto the Office of Personnel Management’s FedScope database (https://www.fedscope.opm.gov/) to find out what percentage of the federal workforce was Black or Latino. (He published the finding (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/07/what-the-data-says-about-federal-workers/)s (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/07/what-the-data-says-about-federal-workers/) earlier this year.)

After the Trump administration took office, he checked the database again and got a rude awakening.

“The diversity module, which included all the racial and ethnic breakdowns — that has disappeared,” DeSilver said. That, combined with the fact that the database hasn’t been updated since the administration took office (the latest data is for September 2024), makes it more difficult to figure out how massive federal job cuts initiated by DOGE (https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/05/21/government-job-cuts-have-disproportionate-effect-on-black-federal-workers) are impacting Black and Latino workers.

OPM did not respond to questions about FedScope or about workers of color in the federal workforce by Marketplace’s deadline for this story.

Denice Ross, who served until December 2024 as U.S. Chief Data Scientist, said this is part of a broad pattern across federal statistical agencies: “The targeted, surgical removal of data sets, or elements of data sets, that are not aligned with the administration’s priorities.”

Ross is now at the Federation of American Scientists and has been tracking these changes. Her current projects to monitor and advocate for federal data under the Trump administration are America’s Data Index (https://dataindex.us/) and America’s Essential Data (https://essentialdata.us/).

She offered multiple examples of databases that have been altered or taken down entirely.

“The Office of Personnel Management: the race and ethnicity category has been removed in response to the president’s agenda to remove mentions of DEI.

NOAA’s billion-dollar disaster data set has been terminated, because it’s talking about climate. CDC’s National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System, removing questions related to sexual orientation and gender identity. And that’ll make it harder to understand how diseases are impacting those populations.”

Steve Pierson, director of science policy at the American Statistical Association, cited another example in the same vein: “Sexual orientation or gender identity answer options have been removed from the National Crime Victimization Survey, which comes out of the Bureau of Justice Statistics,” he said.

Ross and her colleagues have been documenting the trend.

“Since Jan. 20, we’ve identified over 400 changes to federal forms and surveys, specifically to comply with administration priorities, such as erasing gender identity and DEI.”

There’s another way federal data is being undermined, said Steve Pierson: across-the-board job cuts initiated by DOGE starting at the beginning of the Trump administration, which Pierson estimates led to 15% to 40% staff attrition at some statistical agencies.

“The biggest impacts so far have been just the reductions of force, which are collateral damage,” said Pierson, leaving fewer trained statisticians to sample, survey, and analyze results for error, seasonal, or regional variation. (ASA is monitoring individual actions to change federal databases and data collection here (https://www.amstat.org/the-nations-data-at-risk-year-two-ongoing-monitoring).)

This, combined with funding cuts, is starting to impact core economic data, like the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer price index, said Michael Strain at the American Enterprise Institute.

“We’ve seen the government do less field surveys to come up with the official measure of consumer price inflation, and that’s just because they don’t have adequate funding,” he said. “If the government slightly mismeasures consumer price inflation, that can mean spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Social Security payments that it shouldn’t be spending.”

Strain said maintaining the quality and integrity of federal economic data “is something that I am very concerned about. High-quality government data is extremely important to financial markets, business decisions, households’ decisions.”
https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/07/28/federal-data-has-been-disappearing-under-trump

[Winehole23]

vicious destruction of public goods


https://michaelrlowry.substack.com/p/navy-set-to-unplug-critical-hurricaneI heard DOD restored this at the 11th hour, so good on them for that

[Winehole23]

Trump's war on data looks feels and superstitious, but what it's really about is circumscribing the ability of non-political institutions to define reality -- Trump thinks he should get to define it without any interference from pesky scientists and statisticians


More children ages 1 to 4 die of drowning than any other cause of death. Nearly a quarter of adults received mental health treatment in 2023, an increase of 3.4 million from the prior year. The number of migrants from Mexico and northern Central American countries stopped by the U.S. Border Patrol was surpassed in 2022 by the number of migrants from other nations.

We know these things because the federal government collects, organizes and shares the data behind them. Every year, year after year, workers in agencies that many of us have never heard of have been amassing the statistics that undergird decision-making at all levels of government and inform the judgments of business leaders, school administrators and medical providers nationwide.

The survival of that data is now in doubt, as a result of the Department of Government Efficiency’s comprehensive assault on the federal bureaucracy.

Reaction to those cuts has focused understandably on the hundreds of thousands of civil servants who have lost their jobs or are on the verge of doing so and the harm that millions of people could suffer as a result of the shuttering of aid programs.

Overlooked amid the turmoil is the fact that many of DOGE’s cuts have been targeted at a very specific aspect of the federal government: its collection and sharing of data. In agency after agency, the government is losing its capacity to measure how American society is functioning, making it much harder for elected officials or others to gauge the nature and scale of the problems we are facing and the effectiveness of solutions being deployed against them.

The data collection efforts that have been shut down or are at risk of being curtailed are staggering in their breadth. In some cases, datasets from past years now sit orphaned, their caretakers banished and their future uncertain; in others, past data has vanished for the time being, and it’s unclear if and when it will reappear. Here are just a few examples:

The Department of Health and Human Services, now led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., laid off the 17-person team (https://www.newscientist.com/article/2474698-us-government-fired-researchers-running-a-crucial-drug-use-survey/) in charge of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which for more than five decades has tracked trends in substance abuse and mental health disorders. The department’s Administration for Children and Families is weeks behind on the annual update of the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, the nationwide database of child welfare cases, after layoffs effectively wiped out the team that compiles that information. And the department has placed on leave (https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/01/prams-maternal-mortality-cdc-layoffs/) the team that oversees the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, a collection of survey responses from women before and after giving birth that has become a crucial tool in trying to address the country’s disconcertingly high rate of maternal mortality (https://www.propublica.org/series/lost-mothers).

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has eviscerated divisions that oversee the WISQARS database on accidental deaths and injuries — everything from fatal shootings to poisonings to car accidents — and the team that maintains AtlasPlus, an interactive tool for tracking HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to stop requiring oil refineries, power plants and other industrial facilities to measure and report their greenhouse gas emissions (https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-epa-greenhouse-gas-reporting-climate-crisis), as they have done since 2010, making it difficult to know whether any of the policies meant to slow climate change and reduce disaster are effective. The EPA has also taken down EJScreen, a mapping tool on its website that allowed people to see how much industrial pollution occurs in their community and how that compares with other places or previous years.

The Office of Homeland Security Statistics has yet to update its monthly tallies on deportations and other indices of immigration enforcement (https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/immigration-enforcement/monthly-tables), making it difficult to judge President Donald Trump’s triumphant claims of a crackdown; the last available numbers are from November 2024, in the final months of President Joe Biden’s tenure. (“While we have submitted reports and data files for clearance, the reporting and data file posting are delayed while they are under the new administration’s review,” Jim Scheye, director of operations and reporting in the statistics unit, told ProPublica.)

And, in a particularly concrete example of ceasing to measure, deep cutbacks at the National Weather Service are forcing it to reduce weather balloon launches (https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025/04/16/national-weather-service-buyouts-staff-shortages-trump-administration/), which gather a vast repository of second-by-second data on everything from temperature to humidity to atmospheric pressure in order to improve forecasting.

Looked at one way, the war on measurement has an obvious potential motivation: making it harder for critics to gauge fallout resulting from Trump administration layoffs, deregulation or other shifts in policy. In some cases, the data now being jettisoned is geared around concepts or presumptions that the administration fundamentally rejects: EJScreen, for instance, stands for “environmental justice” — the effort to ensure that communities don’t suffer disproportionately from pollution and other environmental harms. (An EPA spokesperson said the agency is “working to diligently implement President Trump’s executive orders, including the ‘Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.’” The spokesperson added: “The EPA will continue to uphold its mission to protect human health and the environment” in Trump’s second term.) The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment.

Laura Lindberg, a Rutgers public health professor, lamented the threatened pregnancy-risk data at the annual conference of the Population Association of America in Washington last week. In an interview, she said the administration’s cancellation of data collection efforts reminded her of recent actions at the state level, such as Florida’s withdrawal in 2022 from the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey after the state passed its law discouraging classroom discussion of sexual orientation. (The state’s education secretary said the survey was “inflammatory” and “sexualized.”) Discontinuing the survey made it harder to discern whether the law had adverse mental health effects among Florida teens. “States have taken on policies that would harm people and then are saying, ‘We don’t want to collect data about the impact of the policies,’” Lindbergsaid. “Burying your head in the sand is not going to be a way to keep the country healthy.” (HHS did not respond to a request for comment.)

Making the halt on data gathering more confounding, though, is the fact that, in some areas, the information at risk of being lost has been buttressing some of the administration’s own claims. For instance, Trump and Vice President JD Vance have repeatedly cited, as an argument for tougher border enforcement, the past decade’s surge in fentanyl addiction — a trend that has been definitively captured by the national drug use survey that is now imperiled. That survey’s mental health components have also undergirded research on the threat being posed to the nation’s young people by smartphones and social media, which many conservatives have taken up as a cudgel against Big Tech.

Or take education. The administration and its conservative allies have been able to argue that Democratic-led states kept schools closed too long during the pandemic because there was nationwide data — the National Assessment of Educational Progress, aka the Nation’s Report Card — that showed greater drops in student achievement in districts that stayed closed longer (https://www.propublica.org/article/pandemic-covid-education-test-scores-schools-students). But now NAEP is likely to be reduced in scope as part of crippling layoffs at the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, which has been slashed from nearly 100 employees to only three, casting into doubt the future not only of NAEP but also of a wide array of long-running longitudinal evaluations and the department’s detailed tallies of nationwide K-12 (https://nces.ed.gov/statprog/handbook/ccd.asp) and higher education enrollment (https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/InstitutionByName.aspx?goToReportId=1&sid=1310a469-930d-4a9e-b133-c60c11500a41&rtid=1). The department did not respond to a request for comment but released a statement on Thursday saying the next round of NAEP assessments would still be held next year.

Dan Goldhaber, an education researcher at the University of Washington, cast the self- defeating nature of the administration’s war on educational assessment in blunt terms: “The irony here is that if you look at some of the statements around the Department of Education, it’s, ‘We’ve invested X billion in the department and yet achievement has fallen off a cliff.’ But the only reason we know that is because of the NAEP data collection effort!”

Shelly Burns, a mathematical statistician who worked at NCES for about 35 years before her entire team was laid off in March, made a similar point about falling student achievement. “How does the country know that? They know it because we collected it. And we didn’t spin it. We didn’t say, ‘Biden is president, so let’s make it look good,’” she said. “Their new idea about how to make education great again — how will you know if it worked if you don’t have independent data collection?”
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-doge-data-collection-hhs-epa-cdc-maternal-mortality

[Winehole23]

is this cancel culture?


https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:njhuquor23vkkeamltaxdsnz/bafkreid3h2entqfyj7r6mvs6o4uae62hvljy6fiurbdku3fz7 duaxcgva4@jpeg

[velik_m]

Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose

The Trump administration has asked NASA employees to draw up plans to end at least two major satellite missions, according to current and former NASA staffers. If the plans are carried out, one of the missions would be permanently terminated, because the satellite would burn up in the atmosphere.

The data the two missions collect is widely used, including by scientists, oil and gas companies and farmers who need detailed information about carbon dioxide and crop health. They are the only two federal satellite missions that were designed and built specifically to monitor planet-warming greenhouse gases.

It is unclear why the Trump administration seeks to end the missions. The equipment in space is state of the art and is expected to function for many more years, according to scientists who worked on the missions. An official review by NASA in 2023 found that "the data are of exceptionally high quality" and recommended continuing the mission for at least three years.

...

The missions are called Orbiting Carbon Observatories because they were originally designed to measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But soon after they launched, scientists realized that they were also accidentally measuring plant growth on Earth.

Basically, when plants are growing, photosynthesis is happening in their cells. And that photosynthesis gives off a very specific wavelength of light. The OCO instruments in space measure that light all over the planet.

"NASA and others have turned this happy accident into an incredibly valuable set of maps of plant photosynthesis around the world," explains Scott Denning, a longtime climate scientist at Colorado State University who worked on the OCO missions and is now retired. "Lo and behold, we also get these lovely, high resolution maps of plant growth," he says. "And that's useful to farmers, useful to rangeland and grazing and drought monitoring and forest mapping and all kinds of things, in addition to the CO2 measurements."

For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and many private agricultural consulting companies use the data to forecast and track crop yield, drought conditions and more.
...
The cost of maintaining the two OCO satellite missions up in space is a small fraction of the amount of money taxpayers already spent to design and launch the instruments. The two missions cost about $750 million to design, build and launch, according to David Crisp, the retired NASA scientist, and that number is even higher if you include the cost of an initial failed rocket launch that sent an identical carbon dioxide measuring instrument into the ocean in 2009.

By comparison, maintaining both OCO missions in orbit costs about $15 million per year, Crisp says. That money covers the cost of downloading the data, maintaining a network of calibration sensors on the ground and making sure the stand-alone satellite isn't hit by space debris, according to Crisp.

"Just from an economic standpoint, it makes no economic sense to terminate NASA missions that are returning incredibly valuable data," Crisp says.

...


https://www.npr.org/2025/08/04/nx-s1-5453731/nasa-carbon-dioxide-satellite-mission-threatened

[Winehole23]

Just going to point out in passing that by winding down mRNA development, RFK Jr. is leaving probably vaccines for AIDS and two cancers on the shelf, to say nothing of COVID vaccines proven safe in nation-level cohort studies

Mind-boggling aversion to technical breakthrough, lots of people will suffer and die needlessly

[Winehole23]

partisan streamlining appears as a solution to arbitrary RIFs


The 1 December memo says the changes are meant to help the agency cope with a reduced workforce. Some of NSF’s eight directorates reportedly have lost as many as one-third of their program officers through buyouts, early retirements, and voluntary departures. Scientific staff spend a considerable amount of time finding outside reviewers to assess grant applications and then assembling a panel of experts to discuss those written reviews in more detail. The final step in the merit-review process is a one-page summary of the strengths and weaknesses of each project that includes a recommendation to fund or decline the proposed research.

https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-pares-down-grant-review-process-reducing-influence-outside-scientists

[Winehole23]

Congress bestirring itself to resist Trump's illegal impoundments


The U.S. Congress has delivered another rebuke of President Donald Trump’s plans to slash this year’s budgets of several science agencies. Today, lawmakers hammering out final bills covering the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA science, and Department of Energy (DOE) research programs unveiled an agreement to spend very close to current levels.


The three appropriations bills (https://appropriations.house.gov/news/press-releases/committee-releases-conferenced-cjs-ew-and-interior-bills) were negotiated by a panel of senators and members of the House of Representatives. The proposed spending package would shrink NSF’s $9.06 billion budget by 3.4% this year, or $300 million, compared with Trump’s request for a 55% reduction. Its research account would hold steady at $7.18 billion and its education programs, which Trump sought to essentially eliminate, would receive $938 million. However, that total is $180 million less than NSF received in 2025.


At NASA, science missions would receive $7.25 billion, $84 million less than this year. That 1.1% dip compares with the 47% cut to its programs that Trump wanted. The space agency’s education activities, which Trump sought to eliminate, would receive $143 million, the same as last year.
https://www.science.org/content/article/congress-set-reject-trump-s-major-budget-cuts-nsf-nasa-and-energy-science

[Winehole23]

Congress rolls back Trump's draconian cuts to science funding


The U.S. Congress is moving to reverse President Donald Trump’s proposed steep cuts to federal science programs, signaling strong bipartisan resistance to what would have been the largest reduction in scientific funding since World War II.In his budget proposal, President Trump sought to reduce overall federal science spending from $198 billion to $154 billion, a 22 percent cut that alarmed researchers, universities, and science advocacy groups across the country.However, the Senate Appropriations Committee has released a bipartisan package of spending bills that largely abandons those proposed reductions. If approved, the legislation would allocate approximately $188 billion for federal research, representing a modest 4 percent decrease compared to the previous fiscal year—far less severe than the administration’s proposal.Notably, funding for basic scientific research could actually increase by more than 2 percent under the Senate plan. This stands in sharp contrast to the Trump administration’s proposal, which aimed to cut basic research funding by more than one-third.https://internationalnewsandviews.com/congress-reverses-trump-science-budget-cuts-federal-research-funding-394920-2/

[velik_m]

U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s since Trump took office

Some 10,109 doctoral-trained experts in science and related fields left their jobs last year as President Donald Trump dramatically shrank the overall federal workforce. That exodus was only 3% of the 335,192 federal workers who exited last year but represents 14% of the total number of Ph.D.s in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) or health fields employed at the end of 2024 as then-President Joe Biden prepared to leave office.

The numbers come from employment data posted earlier this month by the White House Office of Personnel Management (OPM). At 14 research agencies Science examined in detail, departures outnumbered new hires last year by a ratio of 11 to one, resulting in a net loss of 4224 STEM Ph.D.s. The graphs that follow show the impact is particularly striking at such scientist-rich agencies as the National Science Foundation (NSF). But across the government, these departing Ph.D.s took with them a wealth of subject matter expertise and knowledge about how the agencies operate.

...


https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-government-has-lost-more-10-000-stem-ph-d-s-trump-took-office

[Winehole23]

civilizatonal suicide

[velik_m]

‘We’re no longer attracting top talent’: the brain drain killing American science

...
The magazine looked at 14 research agencies, including NIH, and found that the number of employees departing outstripped new hires by 11 to one.

The brain drain is prompting existential fears that American science, a powerhouse of the US economy and of global public health, is being deprived of its lifeblood. The source of young researchers – the next generation of scientists who are the fount of new ideas and innovation – is being throttled.

“The talent pool is developed by letting young people flourish among like-minded, excited scientists,” said John Prensner, a pediatric brain cancer doctor who leads a research laboratory at the University of Michigan. “If that ceases, then that intellectual discovery, that drive to make the next great insight into cancer or other challenges, will be planted in another country’s soil.”

The NIH drives scientific progress globally across biomedical and behavioral sciences, including defenses against infectious diseases and possible future pandemics. It pushes at the frontier of new therapies geared to the genetic makeup of individual patients, and can claim numerous breakthroughs in cancer treatment, vaccinations and much more.

Without the NIH driving innovation at its core, the US would cease to have the largest biomedical ecosystem in the world.

...

So Dickinson redirected her energies abroad. She began applying for posts in Spain and Germany, in the end landing a spot at a prestigious program at a Barcelona infectious disease research institution.

For the foreseeable future, she sees her future in Europe. “It’s important for me to feel I can be myself in my science, and that’s just not possible right now in the US,” she said.

She is not alone. A growing number of young American scientists are quitting the country for positions in Europe, Australia or Asia. Universities across Europe have been swift to exploit the opportunity, openly enticing young Americans to join the exodus and seek “scientific asylum” with them.

The response has been overwhelming. Aix-Marseille University, which launched one of the first European programs to lure people from the US, was inundated by hundreds of applications from early-career researchers hoping to flee the US.

The outflow of young scientists has been exacerbated by deep cuts to NIH training programs, which acts as a breeding ground of the US’s future top scientists. At least 50 training programs, targeted at undergraduates through early-career lab researchers, have been shut down under the Trump administration.
...

In the long run, the damage done to the next generation of researchers threatens to harm not just scientific knowledge itself, but also the US economy. NIH funding supports basic biomedical research out of which new drugs and other commercial spin-offs emerge.

As such, it provides the foundations for the almost trillion-dollar US pharmaceutical industry. A 2018 study of the 210 new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the six years to 2016 found that all of them had been developed out of early basic research funded by NIH.

“We are leaving discoveries on the table,” warned Donna Ginther, an economics professor at the University of Kansas who is an authority on the science labor market. “Those discoveries are the ones that in 10, 20 years will contribute to economic growth, improved health, human longevity. That’s what we are choking off.”



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/19/trump-science-funding-cuts

[velik_m]

U.S. science agency moves to restrict foreign scientists from its labs

In the past few weeks, hundreds of foreign scientists working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) campuses in Boulder, Colorado, and Gaithersburg, Maryland, have been barred from their labs on evenings and weekends unless escorted by a federal employee. Those from certain countries could lose access altogether as soon as the end of next month. The changes are part of proposed rules aimed at increasing security that would limit, to 3 years, the maximum length of time visiting international researchers can work at NIST.

The institute’s researchers and onlookers worry the new rules could strip labs throughout NIST of up to 500 highly trained researchers and prevent foreign graduate students and postdocs from completing their Ph.D.s or other projects. “This is an absolute disaster,” says one physicist at the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder with close ties to NIST who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. Maya Miklos, a physics Ph.D. student and U.S. citizen at CU Boulder who works at JILA, a joint institute with NIST, agrees. “The mood at NIST is extremely grim right now,” she says. If adopted, Miklos notes, the proposed rules are “going to be extremely detrimental to science.”

Sources at NIST contacted by ScienceInsider say they have yet to see any written versions of the proposed rules, which have been conveyed in meetings. Patrick Gallagher, a former NIST director now at the University of Pittsburgh, says the lack of clear communication and the short notice being given to foreign scientists is creating a sense of chaos. “I’m as disappointed as to how this is unfolding as to what is unfolding,” Gallagher says. “At the very least NIST owes an explanation to the country. If there is a good reason for what they are doing, they should flat out say what it is.”

...



https://www.science.org/content/article/nist-moves-restrict-foreign-scientists-its-labs

[Winehole23]

god how dumb

[Winehole23]

Trump 2.0 is basically attempted civilizational suicide


https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7e6gdj33irtt6i7vc6hozfah/bafkreihbopo53rodfzrhffpkzvuhaopckzkkv5m4j262f376g ludzancvq

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:nyjm4ylfid2a7mjm6varxuiq/bafkreiaschf4uizkufvxhwgpu6yowrtdk7flpgadwgnmxoytr 6cwxjgcym

[Winehole23]

China to overtake US on investment in science


China is on the cusp of becoming the world’s biggest public funder of research, according to a forecast by US academics, as stalled growth in government investment in the United States coincides with consistent rises in spending by the Chinese authorities.


The analysis — produced exclusively for Nature Index — was the work of researchers from Frontiers in Science and Innovation Policy (FSIP), a programme at the University of California, San Diego, that studies the US research and development (R&D) system and examines the extent to which public and private funding boost technological development.


Government spending on R&D in China increased by 90% to US$133 billion in the decade leading up to 2023, according to the most recent purchasing-power-adjusted data (https://go.nature.com/4rMdcsj) from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). By contrast, in the United States, spending rose by just 12%, to $155 billion.


According to the FSIP’s forecast, China’s public spending on research is likely to overtake that of the United States in the next two to three years.


“I think the earliest likely is 2028, plus [or] minus one year,” says Robert Conn, a specialist in research policy and science philanthropy, who co-leads the FSIP. “It could be next year, could be 2029.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00618-5

[Winehole23]

There is still a large gap between China and the United States for overall spending on fundamental research. If US expenditure stays broadly flat, then China might not catch up until around 2035, but a real-terms cut in US spending could bring about this scenario sooner.

[Winehole23]

killing the golden goose


https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6vwezbhj7wwowu4sbur5npjk/bafkreidctt2zvm6pkael5bwqiq3ec3zhhrh62c3ejj3k46joa xx3kxlpzy

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6vwezbhj7wwowu4sbur5npjk/bafkreidxd7hps5u2orcpwlth7ixi4bbm5y5fqymivdirc663e b4ru363uy

[velik_m]

Trump fires all 24 members of the U.S. National Science Foundation’s governing body

U.S. President Donald Trump yesterday fired all 24 members of the National Science Board (NSB), the body that oversees the National Science Foundation (NSF). Many science advocates see it as the latest step by his administration to erode—some would say destroy—the independence of the 76-year-old research agency.

“On behalf of President Donald J Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately,” reads a 24 April email from Mary Sprowls of the presidential personnel office to each NSB member. “Thank you for your service.”

The NSB is a unique entity within the U.S. government. In addition to advising the administration and Congress on national science policy, it has statutory authority to oversee the actions of the $9-billion NSF, setting policy and approving large expenditures. Its presidentially appointed members, typically prominent academics and industry leaders, serve 6-year terms, with eight members chosen every 2 years.

...



https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-fires-nsf-s-oversight-board

[Winehole23]

Basically at this point Trump is presiding over cargo cult fascism that lacks the public capacity to consolidate -- the very first thing Trump wrecked was the US civil service, but he didn't wait long to start purging science too.

The vandalistic elimination of US science is momentous...this could be akin to the prestige German universities and science forfeit in the 1930s-40s

[velik_m]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6Ejmhwb8Sc

[velik_m]

Video transcript: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

...

First, although Congress restored substantial agency funding, we can see in the numbers that federal funding is not actually flowing to MIT the way it typically has. Relatedly, some federal agencies are discussing the possibility of factoring in geography when they allocate their funds, rather than basing decisions on scientific merit alone.

Compared to this time last year, MIT has experienced a decline in campus research activity funded by federal awards of more than 20%. Still more concerning is that our number of new federal research awards is also down more than 20%.

While we’ve seen encouraging growth in research funding from other sponsors, it’s not nearly enough to offset the federal decline.

So here’s the big picture: Counting federal and non-federal sources together, our campus sponsored-research activity is now 10% smaller than it was a year ago. That is a striking loss for one of the most influential and productive research communities in the world.

...

As I’m sure you all understand, responding to these new pressures is not just a matter of belt-tightening – and it’s not “just trimming around the edges.”

Last week, I spoke with several senior faculty members, in very different fields, all with long records of winning significant grants. All of them are now having to cut graduate students, postdocs and particular avenues of research.

At the Institute level, we are working on plans to help support groups whose operations are seriously impacted by current federal funding lapses. But that will not be a long-term solution.

The fact is that we’re looking at a real drop in research being done by the people of MIT. It’s a loss of momentum for faculty and students.

And frankly, it’s a loss for the nation: When you shrink the pipeline of basic discovery research, you choke off the flow of future solutions, innovations and cures – and you shrink the supply of future scientists.

...



https://president.mit.edu/writing-speeches/video-transcript-message-president-kornbluth-about-funding-and-talent-pipeline

[velik_m]

House Republicans propose cutting science budgets, but by less than Trump

...
The House Appropriations Committee proposes level funding for NASA overall, at $24.4 billion. The Trump administration’s budget request proposes $18.8 billion for the space agency, a 23% cut. Rogers said during the CJS markup that the House bill “maintains strong levels of funding for NASA.”

“With the recent success of Artemis II, it is a critical time to invest in human space exploration and ensure that American astronauts are the first to return to the Moon. With its sights on Mars, NASA will lead the way to the next frontier and safeguard our national security by ensuring America maintains a competitive advantage over China,” Rogers said.

While the Trump administration proposes approximately halving SMD funding from $7.3 billion to $3.9 billion, the House proposes a budget of roughly $6 billion — an 18% cut. CJS Subcommittee Ranking Member Grace Meng (D-NY) said the reductions would be “shortsighted.”

“I disagree with this bill’s approach,” Meng said during the markup. “As I have said repeatedly, I believe we should be doubling down on the investments in science that grow our economy and incentivize advancements that improve life for all Americans.”

The House proposes funding NSF at $7 billion, a 20% cut, while the Trump administration requested around $4 billion — a more than 50% cut that would reduce funding across NSF’s directorates — including a 67% cut to the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate and 58% to the Geosciences Directorate, as well as the elimination of much of the agency’s social and behavioral sciences funding. The House proposal includes $6.4 billion for research and related activities (down 10% from last year) and $173 million for major research equipment and facilities, down 31%.

Organizations such as the American Association of Universities have stated that the House’s proposed budget for NSF, though more generous than the Trump administration’s request, is insufficient to keep up with competition from China, which recently overtook the U.S. in R&D spending. AAU noted, however, that it was pleased to see that the House preserved language from last year’s bill instructing science agencies to keep indirect cost rates for research at fiscal year 2024 levels.

...


https://www.aps.org/apsnews/2026/05/house-republicans-cutting-budgets-less

[velik_m]

U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

Grants managers at two of the U.S. government’s largest funders of scientific research have recently placed unprecedented limitations on the ability of U.S. scientists to publish with co-authors from other countries, researchers say. Units of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are privately directing grantees to request permission in advance for any co-authorship with a scholar affiliated with a foreign institution, even if all the work was done in the United States. NASA, meanwhile, is reportedly telling some grantees that papers co-authored with researchers in China may have violated its rules.

Neither agency has publicly issued new formal guidance describing these requirements. Instead, officials are informing grantees individually, leaving researchers confused and concerned. In several cases, NIH grantees say they have been asked to remove published papers with foreign co-authors from annual progress reports to the agency. Observers say the policy creates an incentive to preemptively remove foreign co-authors from forthcoming papers.

At NIH, co-authorship by scientists with foreign affiliations—including ones working at U.S. institutions—has historically been accepted, and relatively common: According to the most recent analysis available, 30% of papers produced with NIH funding in 2017 had both U.S. and non-U.S. authors. Some oversight of these collaborations for national security considerations is reasonable, says Tobin Smith, senior vice president at the Association of American Universities, a group of leading research institutions. “You’ve got to assess the risk in each collaboration.” But, he says, “I worry, based upon what we’re hearing, that agencies are now shifting to a blanket mode, and it’s more about who you publish with than what science you are actually publishing. And that will hurt science.”

...


https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-researchers-face-new-restrictions-publishing-foreign-collaborators

[Winehole23]

Wretched imbecility

[Winehole23]

grant reviews by political appointees make American Lysenkoism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism) possible

the GOP in Trump 2.0 has morphed into a Bolshevist-Leninist type party structure -- leader above the party and party above the country

https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-10817.pdf

[Winehole23]

This is arguably the most consequential change in the rule. Senior political appointees, rather than career scientists or program officers, would now be required to conduct a “pre-issuance review” of every discretionary grant before it is awarded. These appointees are explicitly forbidden from deferring to peer reviewers or routinely ratifying their recommendations.


The criteria they must apply include blocking awards that touch on denial of “the sex binary in humans,” illegal immigration, or anything deemed to “promote anti-American values.” The rule also requires that discretionary awards must:


“...demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities.”


In practice, this gives political appointees a veto over any science that conflicts with the current administration’s ideology.
https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of-key-changes-in-ombs-proposed

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:a4ggcdmlzocecvzf534wlinu/bafkreic3o32yhu356vgipt2cdhgitlwb4zw3rfrnbj6nga6xt c6rmrndcqhttps://www.science.org/content/blog-post/current-crisis-what-s-happening-science-america

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:xtytenkhytpek3zszl3rh44t/bafkreifsqa3efemo5wqehq55p7jlajnjvdkuqckmm67cc7dac ybo7ndi5e

[Winehole23]

this is viewpoint discrimination


https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:3su2agky7a67ufheiundm5oi/bafkreief6cynd3x37wdadg57c73j7eber5u7srtgto5774qr3 2efq6uttmhttps://elizabethginexi.substack.com...-ombs-proposed (https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of-key-changes-in-ombs-proposed)

[Winehole23]

Scientists no longer allowed to use federal funding to publish, attend meetings, or talk to the public. They cannot collaborate internationally. Grants can be cancelled for any reason, at any time, political appointees have a final say over what gets funded, and who gets funded.

[Winehole23]

"One thing that actually propelled actual US greatness after World War II was tying large scientific investments to a non-partisan, merit-based process. But that is not the way of Trump, who wants to extend tools of control and retribution over science."

[Winehole23]

normal descriptions sound insane when you say them out loud

policies like this -- right-wing Leninism -- only make sense if Republicans are planning to stay in power forever

no way would they be cool with Democrats wielding similar executive amplitude


Trump claims federal grant money appropriated by Congress actually is money appropriated for use solely to his political liking, notwithstanding that it's actually earmarked for nonpolitical funding of nonpolitical interests like medical and other scientific research.https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/02/us/politics/trump-budget-grants-omb-vought.html

[Winehole23]

all Trump does is f@ck sh!t up and hurt people


A bed bug infestation at an Agriculture Department building is riling agency staff, reigniting frustrations over remote work policy and making at least some employees sick.


The bugs were found in the building that houses the Animal and Plant Inspection Service, the agency responsible for containing and mitigating the spread of invasive pests in the U.S. The irony, one USDA employee said, “was lost on no one.”
https://www.notus.org/policy/usda-bed-bugs-infestation

[velik_m]

Scientists lose critical climate record as ocean observatory will go dark under Trump funding cuts

...

The initiative launched in 2015 after more than a decade of community planning and construction. It was designed as a 25 to 30-year project, built in part around the oceanographic consensus that detecting meaningful climate signals requires at least three decades of continuous data. “We’ve just got to the 10 year record,” Dever said, “which will give you some hints, but it won’t continue on.”

One significant piece will remain: a seafloor cable network managed by the University of Washington off the Pacific Northwest coast, which will continue providing data on volcanic and seismic activity in the region.

Scientists had seen warning signs as the administration’s proposed 2026 budget included a 55% cut to the science foundation. Official word to begin shutting down arrived in early May.

The initiative was coordinated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in collaboration with the University of Washington and Oregon State University, as well as past partners including Rutgers University and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The initiative operated on roughly $48 million a year, not including the cost of research vessels, which adds substantially to the overall price. Prior to budget cuts, which began in 2025, around 60 to 70 people worked directly on the project across its partner institutions, Dever said.

“What’s happening with the Ocean Observatories Initiative is not unique,” he said. “This is just one of a number of science facilities that is being dismantled at the present time. It seems to really mark the end of a federal commitment to basic scientific research — a commitment that has served this nation very well for the last 70 years.”



https://apnews.com/article/climate-oceans-data-trump-science-a9539443dfaa32b3a67468a25f8b2674

[Winehole23]

I can’t stress to everyone how much the Administration just relies on wild assertions of power that lack in any statutory basis. OMB’s claim to be able for instance, to police all grantmaking by agencies, is well, McStuffins. Peer review is often established by statute.

[Winehole23]

https://apnews.com/article/climate-oceans-data-trump-science-a9539443dfaa32b3a67468a25f8b2674no data, no problem!

[Winehole23]

science.org joins the resistance


OMB’s job is to make sure that the funds are released in accordance with the law. But in Project 2025, the blueprint used by the Trump administration to overhaul the federal government according to a theory of greater executive power, Vought called for an activist OMB that serves as the “keeper of ‘commander’s intent,’” (https://thestennettreport.github.io/documents/project_2025_chapters/chapter_2.pdf) thereby moving power away from Congress.

The sweeping new regulations proposed by OMB would subject every federal research funding decision to political review.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aej3572