Andrea J Zimmer, MD

DOGE recommended firing workers at:

-FDA, which oversees Neuralink

-FAA, which oversees SpaceX

-USAID, which probed Starlink

-CFPB, which oversees Tesla's financing arm and a potential payment platform on X.

"Conflict of interest" is a severe understatement.

Crockett: "Down in Alabama, who's broke. Down in Louisiana, who's broke. I can go through pretty much the entire south and tell you that they're broke and rely on a lot of welfare from the government. To be perfectly honest, it is tax dollars from these big blue states...we're in the find out phase"

The opposite of DEI is NOT "color-blind, hire-the-best-qualified." It's "continue to hire the incompetent white male just because he's a white male." And the entire Trump administration proves that point.

🚨 Yesterday was a true Valentine’s Day massacre for public health.

💔 Over 5,200 jobs cut at NIH & CDC
💔 EIS program slashed at CDC
💔 Federal funding cut for schools and universities with COVID-19 vaccine mandates

We are gutting public health, with repercussions that will last for generations.

Doing great 👍

Gutting the CDC right as we’re on the cusp of major outbreaks of transmissible diseases is a very bad idea.

NEW: The CDC is currently removing all the influenza resources from their website during the worst flu season in decades.

This is so important - the line of defense is at the state level.

Seeing changes in LA and WV are examples of moving in the wrong direction

📌CDC EMPLOYEE RESOURCES📌

Thread organized by topic. Reply with resources/requests. Resources not fully vetted.

SAVE DOCS (eOPF, mypay, benefeds, PMAS, CV, telework agreement, contacts). Save/BCC termination email.

Opening a termination email triggers lockout countdown. DO NOT OPEN until ready.

Elon Musk’s staffers have been going through data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees healthcare coverage for over 160 million people through Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Health Insurance Marketplace.

Judge temporarily halts mass firings at CFPB, preserves agency data The order also blocks acting CFPB Director Russ Vought from taking steps to defund the agency.

A judge just blocked Elon Musk and co-president Donald Trump from firing the financial cops at the CFPB who protect consumers from Wall Street scams.

There's power in fighting back.

This needs to be emphasized. Public health capacity is being rapidly destroyed and this cannot be undone. The expertise and institutional memory will be gone, and it will take years or even decades to restore.

White House bans AP journalists from Oval Office amid continued Gulf dispute News agency, which has declined to use ‘Gulf of America’ name in stories, also barred from Air Force One

A free, independent press is a cornerstone of democracy and functions to hold those in power accountable. When journalists are coerced into reporting using only government-sanctioned language and information, the press is no longer free. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

The wide-ranging nature of the federal workforce cuts will leave all of us more vulnerable to disease and other safety threats, including from outside the United States, says IDSA President Tina Tan, MD, FIDSA, FPIDS, FAAP.

Our statement: https://buff.ly/40UK0E8

In a joint statement, IDSA and HIVMA reaffirmed our core mission and values and emphasized that inclusion, diversity, access and equity — and an unwavering commitment to health equity — are essential to improving health outcomes for all.

Read: https://buff.ly/3WXIfVA

AAMC Statement on Drastic Cuts to NIH-Funded Research Drastic cuts to NIH-funded research will diminish the nation’s research capacity, slow scientific progress, and deprive patients, families, and communities.

www.aamc.org/news/press-r... thanks @aamctoday.bsky.social for finally speaking up! @germhuntermd.bsky.social @boghuma.bsky.social

NIH doesn’t just support infectious disease research—it drives breakthroughs in cancer, childhood diseases, heart disease, diabetes & more.

Thanks to NIH, we have:
💉 Cancer immunotherapy
❤️ Cholesterol-lowering statins
🩸 Insulin for diabetes

Investing in NIH = investing in life-saving discoveries.

Under fascism, no one is safe.

Universities stayed quiet as the admin targeted DEI & foreign aid, censored research, etc.

Now, they face devastating cuts to indirect cost rates, threatening research & operations.

Silence won’t protect institutions. It won’t protect people; it never does.

Agreed, and we need to decide what areas are highest priority and what responses might actually be impactful. We also need to partner with other societies to have a larger collective front.

I think a lot of us are overwhelmed and don't know where to start. I am also hearing from colleagues across specialties that many are avoiding the news. Meanwhile, our government and programs are being systematically dismantled.

Maybe I'm being naive but I'm hoping this is a way to start the conversation and discuss strategies. When registering, we can submit questions to be addressed by the leadership panel.

Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, the administration continues to charge ahead, running roughshod over norms, laws, and the dignity of and most basic protections for the people most vulnerable to infections. Many of the changes are summarized here, up to date as of Feb 4. Who will speak up, or better still, ACT UP for these individuals? The National Science Foundation has reportedly shared with program officers a list of forbidden "DEI"-related words that will result in grants being flagged. These include routinely used terms like "female", "biased", "systemic", "inclusion" and "exclusion" along with other words that specifically target vulnerable populations. While few clinical researchers rely on NSF grants, it can be reasonably expected that similar censorship with grants from NIH, CDC, etc is inevitable. USAID funding remains frozen, and in fact there are reports of efforts underway to eliminate the entire agency. The effects have already been devastating for programs dedicated to controlling TB, malaria, and HIV, among others. Despite claims that these would be exempt, distribution of antiretrovirals remains frozen. The Senate Finance committee advanced RFK Jr for confirmation as HHS Secretary. Kennedy's disdain for evidence-based medicine is no secret. He is a conspiracy theorist who engages in dangerous race-based pseudoscience. The IDSA has fallen short of other professional societies (e.g. the American Public Health Association, which represents 25,000 public health professionals) in calling for the outright rejection of RFK Jr's nomination. The CDC and NIH remain muzzled, unable to communicate with interstate or international agencies or the public. They have been instructed to recall submitted or accepted manuscripts to scrub objectionable language. They remain barred from traveling until at least the end of April. How will these actions affect our ability to detect and respond to infectious disease outbreaks?

Meanwhile, our members are experiencing significant moral injury, and some have expressed levels of morale that rival the nadirs felt during the worst of COVID19. Every day it is a new insult, the cumulative effect being the disassembly of public health protections and further marginalization of the most vulnerable in society. Reticence to call attention to ourselves, potentially putting our work in the administration's cross hairs, is entirely understandable. After all, we don't want to imperil existing and ongoing advocacy efforts, including those related to bolstering the ID workforce. A sober analysis would concede that the likelihood of any potential actions moving the needle on any of these issues is low. I would argue, however, that standing up for what is right is the most important thing we can do to reinforce our commitment to social justice and to our members and the patients in our care. What we can do and how we can do it is up for debate; some bold ideas have already been presented in the IDea exchange forum and I welcome further input from colleagues. What is certain is that as rank-and-file individuals, our voices can easily be dismissed, but as a trusted, bipartisan professional organization that represents >13,000 infectious diseases experts, we cannot be ignored, and we must not allow ourselves to cower in silence. The reality is that things are going to get worse, and standing up to the assault on public health will only get more difficult as the administration becomes further emboldened and the actions set in motion gather steam. In the words of John Lewis, "If not us, then who? If not now, then when?"

I am deeply disappointed by the subdued response of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (@idsainfo.bsky.social) to the dismantling of public health structures, both in the US & globally

Here's what I wrote in the closed listserv (response: 🦗) in hopes of stimulating discussion here #IDSky

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Navigating the New Political Environment – IDSA/HIVMA Member Town Hall. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar. The rapid succession of policy actions since Jan. 20 has been unsettling and created anxiety and uncertainty in the ID and HIV community. Join IDSA and HIVMA for our second virtual town hall for updat...

I don't know that the majority of members are getting the listserve messages; mine were in a junk folder and I only found after searching for them when a colleague mentioned the discussion. There is a town hall on Mon, hoping to hear some action plans there societycentral.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Reflections on the Successes of Pediatric Vaccines This Viewpoint discusses the importance of early and continued vaccine use in the US.

Moving defense of childhood #vaccines by Vanderbilt vaccine expert Kathy Edwards in JAMA. Stunning that so many people fear the tools that prevent children from dying and being maimed, rather than the pathogens that resurge when vaccine use declines. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

White House opens funding spigot for DOGE expenses - Roll Call Nearly $7 million over the past week has gone to cover the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency’s expenses.

Meanwhile... we the people have spent 7 million dollars on Elon and his stooges for a weeks worth of "work". Make it make sense. rollcall.com/2025/02/04/w...

Received a letter from POTUS today purporting to remove me as Commissioner and Chair of the FEC. There's a legal way to replace FEC commissioners-this isn't it. I've been so fortunate to serve the American people and stir up some good trouble along the way. That's not changing anytime soon.

Gutting USAID threatens billions of dollars for U.S. farms, businesses U.S. businesses that sold goods and services to USAID are in limbo, including American farms dealing in rice, wheat and soybeans.

Farmers slammed. “American farms… supply about about 41 percent of the food aid that the agency sends around the world.” And “hundreds of tons of American-grown wheat stranded in Houston alone.”

wapo.st/3WSo7nI

Rubio claims that @USAID lifesaving assistance for health and humanitarian needs will continue. But his team just communicated that the entire agency will be imminently reduced from 14,000 to 294 people. Just 12 in Africa.

Opinion | Samantha Power: Killing U.S.A.I.D. Is a Win for Autocrats Everywhere (Gift Article) The attacks on the agency are cruel and counterproductive.

“We are witnessing one of the worst and most costly foreign policy blunders in U.S. history.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/o...

Ellen Weintraub, chair of the Federal Election Commission, announced that President Trump sent her a letter declaring her immediate removal. However, Weintraub rejected the action, stating it was not legally valid.