I know there's a lot happening today, but this is sneaking in under the radar. This proposed new rule would absolutely crush foreign PhD students, potentially making it impossible for them to enroll with any certainty of their ability to finish www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

A Quiet Policy Shift That Could Devastate American Science Why NIH’s sudden move to multi-year grant funding should alarm every principal investigator and university

This is a VERY important read about the status of NIH funding & how funding works. Labs all over the country are feeling the effects of this policy change. Last year, 10% of grants got funded.

The number will be reduced this year & beyond. 🧵

🧪 scienceandfreedomalliance.substack.com/p/a-quiet-po...

This should absolutely be a scandal which people lose their jobs over. You'd have to assume that anyone in power actually cares though to think that would happen, which obviously would be a bold assumption in present circumstances.

And now, a note on Bill Owens who, until this past week, was the executive producer of 60 Minutes.

We’ll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.

Good reporting here. Student paper gets what the bigs have missed. White House is actually threatening to defund all of bostons major hospitals www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

DOGE takes over federal grants website, wresting control of billions A DOGE engineer removed users’ access to grants.gov, threatening to further slow the process of awarding thousands of federal grants per year.

Scoop: DOGE now controls how grant opportunities get posted across government.

DOGE engineer removed users’ permissions to post to Grants-dot-gov without telling them. Now requests flow thru DOGE-controlled mailbox.

with @carolynyjohnson.bsky.social + @hannahnatanson.bsky.social

Dear Secretary Rubio,

Hi, Tufts professor here. As someone who was on campus during the time in question, your claims about what Rumeysa Ozturk did bear no resemblance to reality. So did you just revoke her visa because she co-authored an anodyne op-ed that never mentioned Hamas?

Sincerely,

DWD

'Segregated facilities' are no longer explicitly banned in federal contracts The Trump administration cut a clause from federal contracting rules that had been on the books since the 1960s: Companies are no longer explicitly prohibited from having segregated facilities.

Every day is something new.....
‘Segregated facilities’ are no longer explicitly banned in federal contracts : Shots - Health News : NPR
www.npr.org/sections/sho...

Elon Musk’s Starlink internet service installed in White House Billionaire denies conflict of interest as he heads Trump initiative to cut costs throughout federal government

Nothing to see here... www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

NEW: Judge Chutkan has blocked the EPA from terminating grants for climate programs held by Citibank, saying the Trump administration failed to abide by legal procedures and provided no evidence of impropriety.

ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show...

The employees who attempted to stop Musk staffers at the U.S. African Development Foundation have been placed on administrative leave “effective immediately.” The email also stated that during the administrative leave, USADF employees are prohibited from

We are fighting like hell to stop Musk’s staffers. They come into our buildings, forcibly removing us with the FBI, U.S. Marshals, and police. This coup must be stopped.

Trump Decried Millions Spent 'Making Mice Transgender.' It Was Cancer and Asthma Research President Trump falsely claimed that Biden spent $8 million on 'making mice transgender,' but the real research was for human health.

Trump claimed the Biden administration spent $8 million "making mice transgender." The White House tried to back up this number with records of funding for research into cancer, asthma, and HIV, some of which used *transgenic* (genetically modified) mice.

All this business I am reading about social security is nonsense. My mom died on 2/18. My dad got a letter yesterday informing him her benefits were ending and he had to repay the February payment because they don’t give a payment in the month someone dies. They know where every dollar is.

38,000 workers didn’t die building the Panama Canal, and the 5,000 who did die were almost all Afro-Caribbean workers who toiled in segregated conditions under white American supervisors.

Something that’s very clear is that Trump is old and checked out. He wants to play the role of president but has zero interest in doing the job and is happy to outsource the real work to Musk, Vought and a crew of feral zealots.

We love merit, don’t we folks?

A new document undercuts Trump admin's denials about $400 million Tesla deal The State Department claimed a plan to buy thousands of armored Teslas was left over from the Biden administration. A document obtained by NPR shows the Biden plan was far smaller.

The Trump administration blamed Biden for a $400 million federal government contract with Elon Musk's Tesla to build armored electric vehicles. But NPR obtained documents showing the Biden administration only approved $483,000, not the $400 million that the Trump-Musk administration wanted.

this is an act of unspeakable violence. it benefits no one, it doesn’t move a number on a balance sheet. it only guarantees that every one of these incarcerated transgender people will be tortured.

If you look at all the firings across the government over the last two weeks it's frequently been taken as a given that any black or woman official or officer is either a DEI hire or supports DEI and is summarily fired on that basis. Seems like the same model here.

Exactly right

“The thing that I can’t get over is that the actual richest man in the world directed my fucking firing. I make $50k a year and work to keep drinking water safe. The richest man in the world decided that was an expense too great for the American taxpayer.”

There's an important point here that I'm not sure everyone is fully appreciating. People still in their probationary periods took their career positions because *they were committed to doing the work of keeping the government humming regardless of who won this or any other election.*

Interesting: the State Department’s procurement forecast detailing a $400 million order for "armored Tesla" has now been edited to "armored electric vehicles." The document shows the edit was made tonight at 9:12 p.m. -- after it was highlighted in reports