Vance follows a coterie of online Nazis on X, has described Curtis Yarvin as a major intellectual influence, and openly attacks immigrants in blood and soil terms. The response of most of the political press? "Doesn't look like anything to me."
Epidemiologist. AIDS Activist. Dog lover. New Haven.
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Vance follows a coterie of online Nazis on X, has described Curtis Yarvin as a major intellectual influence, and openly attacks immigrants in blood and soil terms. The response of most of the political press? "Doesn't look like anything to me."
The last thing I want to do is turn into someone like bhattacharya and center my minor social media scandals. But Prasad is just straight out lying here. Unlike him, I never monetized social media content. It’s bad when government leaders lies about their critics.
the democratic party's bias to normalcy is gonna kill us off. the gop is literally talking about a military junta and the democratic leader is operating like he can just cut a deal with republicans like its normal times.
I’ll wake up tomorrow morning & send this to every editor I can think of. @andreapitzer.bsky.social nails the failings of the US media in this piece: a world-historical abdication of journalistic & civic responsibilities in service of self promotion above all else. The most vile form of betrayal.
I wrote about journalists who look away. From Maxim Gorky's shameful behavior in 1929 at Solovki and the death of George Polk in Greece in 1948, I move on to our current national crisis, which grows a little more urgent every day, despite those who continue to act as if nothing is happening.
Pritzker: When did we become a country where it's okay for the president to insist on national television that a state should call him to beg for anything, especially something we don't want? Have we truly lost all sense of sanity in this nation that we treat this as normal?
Say a critical word about RFKJr and you're fired from any expert advisory committee. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...
"We’re currently at about 54% of last year’s total [of funded R01s]...Another way to look at this is that we’re missing 1,809 new R01s."
Thoughtful take from @labonnelab.bsky.social “The administration is moving to end independent research that threatens its ideological narratives and agendas…” www.statnews.com/2025/09/02/h...
Francis J. Allman, Chief Judge of Florida’s Second Judicial District should be removed from the bench for a basic failure to understand our constitutional system if he lodged the complaint Atty Rashid discusses here ⬇️
That’s why we created this worksheet, and why I’m organizing workshops this week, including one on facilitating people’s assemblies.
Moving our people from a place of fear, anxiety and panic to organized collective action is another kind of success. That’s why I’m so focused on political ed right now. People need tools. They need strategies for mobilization and help asking the right questions.
The kind of organized resistance that tells a story about Chicago rejecting this authoritarian maneuver (which is not a question about crime rates at all, but a question about whether authoritarian consolidation should be resisted, period) will take organization.
Someone asked me what victory against the forces seeking to occupy Chicago looks like. Obviously, those forces being repelled is the goal, but there are layers to what success looks like in these deteriorating conditions. The first is to successfully resist the normalization of military occupation.
I said a month ago that Pritzer = unlikely Desmoulins, jumping on metaphorical table in mediated Palais Royal to warn of danger, rally patriots. Now he's Mirabeau and Sieyes ("Be Loud for America"="What is the Third Estate?") too. Newsom = Lameth brothers + Barnave. Media darling of early days.
Had students read @rlspang.bsky.social’s “How Revolutions Happen” for our 1st French Rev class today & the Q she poses–“What is the difference between a revolution & the failure of a state or the collapse of an empire?” hit home even harder than it did in 2020 www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
Pritzker: "When did we become a country where it's ok for the US president to insist on national television that a state should call him to beg for anything? Especially something we don't want. Have we truly lost all sense of sanity in this nation that we treat this as normal?"
So #RFKJr is a liar. He's a charlatan. @kasie.bsky.social catches him here and it's wonderful to watch. We need more of this. Do not give this man any credibility. He's a huckster with famous name and is destroying public health and science in America. Spread the word.
@kasie.bsky.social: wow. Thank you. Great work.
Every word he ever wrote was a lie, including "and" and "the." Some heavy bullshit from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: We’re Restoring Public Trust in the CDC. I'm not linking to the @wsj.com op-ed, but he simply lies for 750 words straight.
A1 above the fold in the @nytimes.com. The message is getting through. Keep pushing everyone. We can save the #CDC, save the #NIH from the clutches of #RussellVought #StephenMiller and #DonaldTrump. Keep the pressure up on your members of Congress and the media (letters to editors, op-eds).
This means that the average fraction of the award dedicated to IDC is 0.42/(1+0.42) or precisely 30% (!!!)
Nominally, negotiated indirect cost rates of 60% are common, but in practice, many of the costs are not included (e.g., tuition/equipment/participant costs) so that the *effective* rate is closer to 42%. Source: www.nber.org/system/files...
But, as far as I understand the proposal, the House bill would limit IDC to less than "30 percent of an award" (see page 118). Depending on interpretation, this level may be doable, or nearly so, for many institutions.
Litigation has been successful. In practice, this means that cuts have not yet been implemented, but the threat of large-scale cuts to IDC has remained.
First research infrastructure costs. Early in Feb, the NIH imposed a rapid change that would slash these costs (term 'IDC' for indirect costs') to 15% effective immediately. Doing so would have massive consequences to the viability of research. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Crucially, maintaining NIH support is essential and is closer to becoming a (re)emerging, bipartisan goal - though the devil is in the details and there are many details that require scrutiny, dialogue, and engaged input to ensure that a world-class systems remains just that.
It is notable that House R-s offer a clarification that aligns (almost certainly) with superseding WH interests.
They are not wrong to highlight the self-defeating potential of major cuts. Indeed, consortiums of US institutions have been making precisely this argument: www.aau.edu/newsroom/lea...
As for the top line $, the House Republican summary describes it as follows appropriations.house.gov/news/press-r... "Providing $48 billion in funding to support biomedical research, a necessary counter to China’s growing threat in basic science research."
It will be essential to interpret any top line number in terms of (i) whether expert review or political ideology guides decisions; (ii) whether Congress intends to stop the process of impoundment. Otherwise, the budget becomes a guessing game, undermining research objectives.
For example, even a cursory reading suggests an intent & path to withhold funds from research institutions on the basis of policies that insufficiently comply with moving target requirements that have already been used for large-scale grant terminations. www.acenet.edu/News-Room/Pa...
The top line NIH number is good news compared to plausible alternatives. It is a rejection of the WH proposal, more closely aligned with the Senate vision, but caution is key as the details are unpacked.
The House discretionary budget bill is now out for FY26, including a proposed *slight boost* in NIH funding & many other components that will take time to unpack. Bill text: appropriations.house.gov/sites/evo-su... A few key points including IDC analysis in a provisional 🧵
Just wondering. bsky.app/profile/greg...
Or this doctor to go back to her patients? www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/h...
Or this man to go back to his telescope? www.marinebio.org/the-greenhou...
Or this woman to hold her tongue and just "do science?" rachelcarsoncouncil.org/about-rcc/ab...
When people say science should be apolitical, I have to ask, would you have told this man to shut up? ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/key-docu...
#RFKJr wants to take away #COVID #vaccines (and then move on to #childhood #preventable #diseases). You can see it in the works now. Write to your member of #Congress now. This makes it easy to do so. @defendpublichealth.bsky.social actionnetwork.org/letters/writ...
@mark-ungrin.bsky.social this is great. Wonder how this could be addressed by Congress?
The roadmap for turning the NIH into an EBM slush fund and shutting down real science. Kulldorf, in the new public health blog ("journal") co-founded by Bhattacharya. 1: Fund based on who applies 🤔, rather than ideas 2: Give ECR grants. But only to "medical, dental and public health school".
12: Public health cranks to be allowed to run a COVID Commission targeting their enemies and rewriting the history of the pandemic to erase their own failures. Conclusion: The scientific community (medicine and public health) needs to be reformed so EBM cranks leech off trust in science and get $$$
9: NIH scientists to publish whatever they want (a good idea per se, but NB they're going to stack the place with cranks and EBM hobby "scientsts") 10: Keep real scientists away from power at NIH and reserve it for public health cranks; re-organize NIH into fiefdoms so the cranks can all have one.
7: Standardize overhead rates. Might be OK? But IDK the US system well, look for the grift... 8: Any institution receiving overhead not to discriminate against anti-vax, anti-PPE, pro-disease etc cranks, and should dedicate 1% of overhead to make sure they feel loved and appreciated or lose funding
5: Dump huge amounts of funding into giant RCTs (chosen by...?) 6: All NIH research results in the public domain (sounds good - but will dramatically reduce the influence of scientists who invent things vs medical administrators who don't, but write reviews and grab control of things 🤔)
3: NIH publications to be redirected to a class of journals of which their own is the only example. NIH funded research to be reviewed by paid "methodologically astute scientists" ( = approved Lysenkoists) 4: Take over systematic reviews, throw money at "research teams", let EBM set $ priorities
Maintaining the NIH budget is only good if it goes to actual science. Bhattacharya's buddy Kulldorf laid out a 12-point roadmap to replace the NIH with a pseudoscience engine, and divert the budget to their cronies. They seem to be following it, and may be expanding the idea to NSF etc too. 🧵:
Here's a better response to RFK's destruction of our public health system than what Senator Schatz is offering here, from JB Pritzker (with some additional ideas thrown in from me and public health experts): newrepublic.com/article/1998...
I am sure @jeremymberg.bsky.social, @safa-science.bsky.social, @altnih4science.bsky.social and others can add to this, correct my mistakes.
#Vought doesn't care what the law or the constitution says. He has set himself up as his own law at this point. end/
"If impoundment wasn’t inherently legal, why did Congress enact the Impoundment Control Act? The ICA established a specific, clear, and public procedure for what Presidents should do if they want Congress to change its mind and reduce — or eliminate — some funding it enacted."
"Despite its name, the Impoundment Control Act did not make impoundment illegal; it already was." 3/
"'The president doesn’t have any constitutional authority to withhold, doesn’t have any inherent authority to withhold,' explained the general counsel of the GAO, the office given authority to enforce the ICA." 2/
And on impoundment, a primer from @centeronbudget.bsky.social. 1/ www.cbpp.org/research/fed...
We know raising our voices works. #Republicans and #Democrats together have now said no to NIH budget cuts. Now they have to protect NIH from interference from #Vought and his cronies. They need to put these protections in statutory, not report language in the bill. End/
This is all happening w/o many people knowing the full extent of what #Vought is doing. But like most vampires, daylight is something #Vought cannot abide. Shine a light on him. Call your members of Congress. Everyday if you can. Do not give up. #Vought is destroying American science. 7/
So three cheers today for Congressional appropriators--but they need to do more. Right now, #Vought has assumed control over the NIH by #impoundment, illegal #terminations and by hacking the agency to death by #executiveorders and #bureaucratic shenanigans. 6/
The Supreme Court has let #Vought cancel grants at NIH again based on his own whims, not the expert evaluation by scientists. They've play a game with these terminations by making any expeditious relief impossible. Congress needs to act to keep #Vought away from decision-making like this. 5/
Now, toadies at NIH, like #JayBhattacharya, #MatthewMemoli are doing their best to make it impossible for the agency to function-for instance, pulling all five-years of award funding into one fiscal year. This makes it almost impossible to fund new research. Congress has to fix this. 4/
Furthermore, #Vought has used presidential executive orders to interfere with #NIH research priority-setting, so that any research he doesn't like, doesn't get funded. Usually scientists make these decisions. #Vought thinks he knows better. Congress has to figure out how to stop this. 3/
Because as Director of the Office of Management and Budget (#OMB) #Vought has decided that he can withhold appropriated funds at his whim. This is #impoundment and it's #illegal, but he has and will continue to do it. Congress must explicitly confront this #lawlessness now or become irrelevant. 2/
So, kudos to both #Democrats & #Republicans in the House for their draft mark-up for next year's #budget, which maintains funding for #NIH (just like the Senate). This is rare, true #bipartisanship and should be praised. But #RussellVought will not be stopped by an appropriations bill. Why? 1/
A show of bipartisan support for NIH. Basically flat except for ARPA-H. The President’s budget proposal basically ignored (as it should have been).
This is very good news. BUT, as we saw this year when NIH was operating under a flat budget, Trump and Russell Vought can effectively destroy NIH even if Congress holds the budget flat. To stop Vought and make sure NIH can function, Congress must go much further than “no cuts to budget.” 1/
🧪 And House appropriators say: no cuts to NIH budget! House subcommittee version just came out (link below). Holds NIH flat at $48 billion. To be clear: this is far from over. But a good sign that science still matters across both sides of aisle. YOUR VOICE MATTERS!!
Good news. The House of Representatives stands behind the NIH budget with no cuts.
So, I've given what I can and if we can raise a bit more, we can move ahead. end/
Joe and his team can quickly have an ad up and running in the next few weeks and have a track record of success. If we're going to save biomedical research in the US we need a more aggressive approach. 8/
This triggered an all-out offensive from The White House, Fox News, and right-wing media because they knew the ad was effective. 7/
And testing showed their ads were 3x more effective than the average political ad (especially among men 18-29 since Joe is in the demo). In June, PAF's ad "Republican Kidnappers" received 40 million views on social media for highlighting Trump's disgusting deportation policy. 6/
PAF's ads received over 461 million views in 2024, averaging more views than Joe Rogan's interview with Trump. They have received praise from across the political spectrum, from MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace to even Steve Bannon. 5/
This is a first for me. I may be “political,” but haven’t dipped into this world of political advertising before. But I fear our message is not breaking through, what we face to lose at this moment is unprecedented and requires something more than the usual tactics. 4/
We are facing an existential threat which will sicken and kill millions as we stop research on new cures and treatments for disease, sideline the development of prevention technologies to keep us safe. 3/
The bottom line is that the assault on research in the US is at a crossroads. From crucial work on AIDS to cancer, from Alzheimer’s to heart disease, biomedical research in America will take decades to recover if the GOP gets its way. 2/
I'm tired of playing nice. I've been talking to Joe Jacobson from Progressive Action Fund about creating an ad targeting vulnerable members of Congress on cuts to scientific research at NIH and other agencies. I've raise about $30,000 for this but we need $50K. 1/ secure.actblue.com/donate/paf20...
This non-answer from @semaforben.bsky.social should be disqualifying for anyone remotely interested in reporting the truth. It is a panicked, evasive, bizarre response. It reeks of someone desperate to not offend the powerful. It’s servile.
Oliver Darcy @oliverdarcy.bsky.social was curious; so he asked Ben Smith — co-founder of Semafor, and former media columnist at the New York Times — if Smith thought democracy is under threat in the U.S. Good question.
Okay. I just came back to this and you aren’t calling these efforts resegregation yet, you absolutely should be
Nine former CDC directors basically said RFK Jr is a threat to public health.
Someone please kill me right now.
I shot this video at a history of polio museum in Joburg, South Africa This is how dreadful things were before mass vaccination made this disease disappear If quacks like RFK Jr had their way, we could see the return of polio!!
Vaccine sceptic RFK Jr has called for the retraction of a Danish study that found no link between aluminium in vaccines and chronic diseases in children — a rare move... “Kennedy has demonstrated that he wants the scientific literature to bend to his will”, says Oransky. Scientific American
the one time I think dems should get on Fox news and demand to know why RFK Jr hates Trump's vaccine
3/n Truth is: it's NOT really news. The data was there. You just needed to treat Palestinians as HUMANS to see what's happening But now the #DebateIsOver. Time to stop it. Make those responsible accountable. Bring Peace, Dignity and Justice to our tortured region. Fin.
2/n Two major Human Right organizations from Israel, Physicians for Human Rights Israel and and B'Tzelem released reports in July reaching the same conclusion: ISRAEL is committing GENOCIDE in GAZA #DebateIsOver phr.org.il/wp-content/u... , btselem.org/publications/2
1/n The International Association of Genocide Scholars, just determined ISRAEL is committing GENOCIDE in GAZA. They are the largest professional organization of scholars that study genocide #DebateIsOver genocidescholars.org/wp-content/u... 🙏🏼 @genocidescholars.bsky.social and there's more
And here are some actions you can take. More in the post.
Here is one thing that should be included in a Fighting CR at the end of September: statutory language to tell OMB to stop its illegal impoundment budget cuts.
Enjoy the holiday! At this time of unprecedented attack on our freedoms and liberty in America, let’s remember the labor mvt that fought for average people and for this holiday. The path forward is in community and solitary. Equality, diversity, and pluralism are how we build a great society. 💪✊
🚨 on this Labor Day: We have a moment of leverage in Congress at the end of September. Democrats in Congress can use this to stop Trump’s lawlessness. But we all have to start acting NOW. This is a public fight and D politicians need our help. New from us. “Democrats: Stand Up and Shut Trump Down”
52 of 53 Republican senators voted to confirm him.
Leaving aside the typical histrionics, this seems to be Trump beginning to distance himself from Kennedy (who’s “ripping apart” CDC), and inviting mainstream physicians and scientists to defend the vaccines, so Trump can then say, I got them to explain it better and vaccines are OK.
This morning 9 former CDC Directors, whose tenures date back to 1977, published this warning in the NYT: RFK Jr is a danger to public health. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
#CDC directors going back to 1977 tell the truth about #RFKJr: he is endangering the health of every American. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
This story by #TimArango an embarrassment. This isn’t a crime strategy; it’s an authoritarian one. WTF is wrong with these reporters and editors? www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/u...
What is Vinay Prasad afraid of? Coward.
@stuartstevens using the old Jim Hightower dead armadillos line!
“Nothing in the middle of the road but yellow lines and dead armadillos” is a genius turn of phrase.
Terrific and terrifying piece by William J. Broad for the @nytimes.com: “'Trump once said he wanted the generals that Hitler had,' Dr. Josephson wrote. 'He’s certainly working on getting the science that Hitler and Stalin had.'” www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/s...