Vivek

Opinion | Trump’s ‘Compact’ With Universities Is Just Extortion

Here's the assignment folks. Write op-eds for your local papers and campus newspapers too. Just. Say. No. This is a classic authoritarian move and risks the future of higher education and science and innovation in the US. Speak out today. No time to lose. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...

I asked Trump's former OMB director Mick Mulvaney to acknowledge it's a lie that undocumented immigrants get ACA subsidies (they don't), and he ended the interview.

"Would you agree that not a single dime of ACA subsidies goes toward undocumented immigrants?"

"I'm not gonna do this anymore."

Sen. Murphy: "Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, literally accepted a bag of cash—$50,000—and the investigation was dropped when Trump became president. There are two standards of justice now in this country. If you are a friend of the president...you can get away with anything."

This is not an issue where GOP legislators can even pretend that they agree with the policies being set into place. There has seldom if ever been so transparent an example of a group of elected US representatives so utterly cowed by a demagogue as to abandon their constituents so completely.

Not really an overstatement to say that the test of a free society is whether or not comedians can make fun of the country's leader on TV without repurcussions.

E.P.A. To Stop Collecting Emissions Data From Polluters

Ending crime reports wouldn't make the world safer; ending disease reports wouldn't make the world healthier; and ending pollution reports won't make the world cleaner.

Need this man in Gotham Green like I need air

Tyranny

NEW: Wearing masks, no ID, unmarked & blacked out cars, refusing to say what agency they’re from and using profanity with any press & public nearby.

This was at 14th & R in Washington DC, this morning (Sunday).

What the hell is happening to the US?

(🎥 Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Washington Post)

While masked agents were violently attacking a delivery worker this morning, bystanders repeatedly asked to see their badge numbers but they refused.

Bystander: You guys are ruining this country, you know that, right?

Agent: Liberals already ruined it.

This is insane

It’s good that they’re doing this, I’m just not sure that these sorts of sternly-worded letters from established organizations really move the needle anymore, particularly with non-Democrats. It takes a populist/viral video that stirs emotion, and our institutions aren’t set up to do that.

The FBI Redacted Trump’s Name in the Epstein Files The bureau’s FOIA team tasked with conducting a final review of the records blacked out the names before higher-ups said last month that releasing the documents ‘would not be appropriate or warranted....

NEW FOIA Files SCOOP: The FBI redacted Trump’s name—and the names of other prominent public figures—from the Epstein files under two privacy exemptions before DOJ & FBI concluded “no further disclosure” of the files “would be appropriate or warranted.”
www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

NIH also faces a more immediate threat: the loss of money it has already been awarded. Trump policies have slowed agency spending so much that Berg estimates the agency is at least $6 billion behind in its spending. As a result, a large portion of its $49 billion budget could go back to the U.S. Department of the Treasury when the fiscal year ends on 30 September. In principle the administration could claw back the money in a so-called rescission, like the one that recently cut billions from global health and public broadcasting. In their 25 July letter to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the 14 Republican senators wrote that “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.”

This piece in Science:
*confirms that the push for multi-year funding is coming from White House, against NIH wishes
*White House is deliberately slowing spending already appropriated to then cut it via rescission
www.science.org/content/arti...

Whatever the potential upsides might be, the sudden nature of the policy's application means it is a terrible idea now. We are arriving at the last few months of an already challenging and financially complex fiscal year. Research laboratories across the country are struggling with instability introduced by new federal policies. Many grants have been terminated, some institutions have had their funding completely frozen, and grants that would have been awarded are stuck behind administrative bottlenecks. Given these unprecedented attacks on science, scientists and institutions are faced with impossible decisions. Staff layoffs are widespread, investigators are fleeing to other countries, and research projects are being shuttered. Scientific work is not something that can be stopped and started on a whim: the required specialized expertise, reagents, cells, and animal models require predictability over several years to allow planning.

Whatever case there is for multi-year funding, but it will defund many labs: "A payline under 5% means it's not worth my time to apply. My lab will close down, and I'll stop doing research."
The worry is that they want to free up future funds to redirect toward RFK approved alternative science.

🚨 This woman tries to call the family of the man being disappeared and ICE will not allow her to get a phone number. One of the “undercover” mobsters nearly backed into her.

"Name and Badge Number"
If they refuse
"Hello 911, there are armed men impersonating Law Enforcement, and kidnapping people off of the street"

When you strip away humanity

According to the WSJ, he knew he was in the files. The Attorney General helped him hide the files. He likely has already destroyed the files that implicate him.

Now we need an investigation that makes Watergate look small.

Exclusive | Justice Department Told Trump in May That His Name Is Among Many in the Epstein Files Attorney General Pam Bondi told the president that the department also decided to not release more Jeffrey Epstein documents because of the presence of child pornography and the need to protect victim...

BREAKING WSJ:

The Justice Department told Trump in May that his name is in the Epstein files.

Many other high-profile figures were also named, Trump was told.
www.wsj.com/politics/jus...

I always find survey results like this staggering (almost to the point of unbelievability).

The US was spending around 1% of its federal budget on foreign aid.

The average guess among 1,000+ surveyed Americans was 26%.

15% thought it was over half of the budget (?!)

www.kff.org/global-healt...

The #1 way to explain America working properly is by saying “comedians can make fun of he President on TV.” A good way to explain fascism is “the President forces companies to fire those comedians as a condition of allowing them to conduct business.”

The fact that she had an ethics chief this whole time is kind of hilarious

USAID served for decades as a vehicle for both US soft power and foreign aid. Within the first days of the Trump administration, the agency was effectively closed, its staff told to go home and its funding frozen. It is impossible to understand the demise of USAID without understanding the broader contours of American governance during the early days of the second Trump administration. The agency was the victim of online conspiracy theories and suspicion of state institutions that shape Trump's populist movement, falsely accused of criminality and corruption. Its elimination violated traditional understandings of the separation of powers, testing an expansive novel theory of presidential authority. It was underpinned not just by spending changes, but by the mass purging of government officials by a entity led by Elon Musk. The end result is both to weaken US administrative capacity and its credibility on the international stage, as well leading to thousands and potentially millions of the world's most vulnerable people to face disease, disaster, and death.

Musk said USAID was wasteful. A new review published int he Lancet estimated it saved more than 90 million lives over 20 years, and that shutting it will cause 14 million unnecessary deaths over the next five years.
Open access link to my paper on USAID
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

should a brown man be mayor? We asked a eugenicist

“The New York Times collaborated with a white nationalist eugenicist hacker and agreed to keep his identity a secret to publish a Zohran Mamdani hit piece” is a way bigger story than “18 year old Zohran Mamdani ticked ‘African American’ on his Columbia application because he was a citizen of Uganda”

The fiscal conservatives in the GOP just added $4 trillion to the deficit to give the wealthiest people on earth a tax cut. The pro-family party just took healthcare away from 17 million Americans to give ICE a bigger budget than Brazil’s military. The single most inhumane bill ever passed.

Live updates: Hakeem Jeffries slams Trump agenda bill in hourslong remarks as it teeters on passage Live updates and the latest news as the House approaches a final passage vote on the Trump-backed "big, beautiful bill" after a group of Republican holdouts changed their votes to advance the measure.

The defining characteristic of this bill, is that some of the most vulnerable in society will suffer greatly. The elderly, the infirm, the hungry child, the tired migrant, the folks on the margins. Their tomorrow is much darker. www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru...

Keilar: You’re taking issue with the CBO estimate? Burchett: The office is very partisan… Keilar: So in January 2024, there was a Republican who trusted the CBO so much that they reintroduced a resolution to require the house clerk to read the CBO estimate of any bill. I believe that was you, sir.

*gulp*