Marsha Michie

Project 2025 is gutting medical funding that helped Russell Vought's own kid Its architect's daughter has cystic fibrosis—and benefits from a "miracle drug" backed by an agency he's attacking.

Also worth mentioning that Russell Vought’s ex-wife credits their daughter’s life to a medicine developed through NIH funding, which they wouldn’t have even been able to afford without NIH funded research trials. This should come up in every conversation with him. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

NIH killed grants on orders from Elon Musk’s DOGE Court documents and internal correspondence show the cost-cutting force has broad control over the world’s largest public biomedical funder.

Sworn testimony of NIH officials and internal emails reveal just how much DOGE is calling the shots in killing peer-reviewed biomedical research grants. More bombshell reporting from @maxkozlov.bsky.social in @nature.com:

I had a few moments to dig into the “MAHA Report”. Let me begin by saying that if an undergraduate student attempted to submit this pile of garbage as a paper, they would fail the assignment.

It a superficial, agenda-driven document that ignores any scientific work that doesn’t fit that agenda.

I have a lot of people telling me that they don't hate trans people, they just hate that we manipulate kids into being trans, because no kid is truly trans without an adult influence.

Except for one thing.

I WAS. And I was homeschooled.

26/27: Disability access is about human access, it's about universal access, and god fuck it, it's for YOU. Not "even if you're trans." It's just for you, because you're as human as the polio survivors and MD havers and all the other folks who fought this battle.

Congress has given NIH a CR budget that is the same as last year. It is literally *illegal* to underspend that budget.

Cutting by 35% is wrong, it will hurt science, and it's made up.

NIHers should stand up.
Say the contract cuts are bogus.

Tracking the HHS April Fools’ Massacre The Handbasket has created a document to capture the destruction.

“There isn’t a single person in this entire country whose life isn’t impacted by the essential functions of HHS, and soon we’ll see what happens when those functions are destroyed.”

Senate Bill 1 guts academic freedom and reshapes Ohio’s public universities • Ohio Capital Journal The Ohio Republican higher education overhaul substitutes governmental edicts for academic freedom; eliminates all diversity and inclusion activities on campuses; restricts how faculty teach; and bans...

A sickening blow to public universities here in Ohio. ohiocapitaljournal.com/2025/03/20/s...

I’m told this is a real letter. It basically says, “We’ll destroy Columbia unless you destroy it first.”

They're lying to you about transgender women and girls in sports Michelle R. Martinelli For The Win

They’re lying about transgender people in this world. They’re lying about what LGBTQ+ inclusion in society really means, and they’re lying about trans people in sports. They’re lying about a “transgender cult” and “transgender insanity,” about teachers indoctrinating kids with “transgender ideology” and about “making mice transgender.” Right-wing activists, anti-trans bigots, many politicians, the president — they’re lying to you about many things but especially trans women and girls in sports. They’re lying about transgender athletes supposedly ruining women’s sports, and they’re lying about this being a ubiquitous “problem.”

They are deliberately and strategically lying about trans folks’ lives, about trans athletes and about their own disingenuous motivations for pushing these lies. They don’t care because they keep doing it. Worse, it’s working.

They're lying about trans people, especially trans women and girls in sports, probably, in part, because the actual data doesn't support their arguments. Yet several states have their own bans against trans athletes competing in sports consistent with their gender identity, despite expert estimates of fewer than 100 trans high school athletes nationwide. In 2022, Utah's Republican governor, Spencer Cox, vetoed an anti-transgender bill - it was eventually overruled by the legislature - and outlined his rationale. Along with the high suicide rates for trans youth, he noted that of 75,000 high school athletes in the state, four identified as trans and just one student was playing girls' sports. A whole state bill targeting four athletes, but really, one.

I can't remember the last time I saw an article just focus on this. Not that they've bent the truth or misrepresented a few facts a little, but that every single solitary thing that the GOP says on the topic is a stone cold lie with absolutely no basis in reality.
ftw.usatoday.com/story/sports...

It’s borderline criminal.

Dear universities, scientists, lawyers, farmers, workers, artists, doctors...

Being silent won't protect you.

I want to make sure the government funding bills Congress drafts are written to help the people I represent—NOT Elon Musk’s bottom line.

It's tough to write laws that reflect reality when Elon shuts government programs on & off like a two-year-old with a light switch.

What the FDA will likely do is produce *something* - just not a vax that includes strains chosen based on the committee & WHO's reasoned input.

🔹️They'll throw darts at a board, & the vax won't be a good match (it's tough to get it right even *with* annual input), but folks will think "see,...

1/5

We are experiencing an assault on science unparalleled by anything I’ve seen in my life. It’s not one issue or another anymore, the entire institution is under attack by the most powerful individuals in the country.

This Friday, where will you be?

standupforscience2025.org

FDA cancels meeting to select flu strains for next season's shots The canceled meeting comes just days after a CDC vaccine advisory committee meeting was abruptly postponed.

The FDA just cancelled a meeting to select flu strains for next season's flu shots.

"It's unclear what the canceled meeting will mean for Americans who want to get a flu vaccine next season."

www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

Decreasing indirects absolutely does not do that, and it will harm our ability to do research on myriad ways. You are simply very, very wrong.

Also, while I wouldn't defend irresponsible/power-hungry admins, I also wouldn't defend irresponsible/power-hungry faculty, who are more common than I could have guessed before I was a faculty member myself.

Since you are behind an anonymous handle, I can't compare our experiences. I didn't say that deans don't wield power. But you paint with a very broad brush. External review for accreditation, e.g., is typically done by faculty - experts from other institutions. Deans are typically also faculty.

If the dean and other administrators at your university aren't accountable to others (president, trustees, faculty council, external accreditation bodies), your uni is very poorly governed and I'm sorry to hear that. I've worked at 5 R1 universities and have not seen deans recklessly wielding power.

House Rs just passed the budget resolution, the first step in their process to enact a bill that'd kick millions off Medicaid & cut SNAP down to just $1.60 per person per meal on avg while cutting taxes for the top 0.1% by $278k - all while increasing the debt

🧵on what's to come and WHERE TO FIGHT

Institutions vary in how much power deans have, but indirects aren't the dean's slush fund - they have to cover infrastructure like buildings, electricity, police services, etc. And I may refer to "my grants" but they are definitely my institution's; if I leave, they don't have to let me take them.

This sounds like a misunderstanding of terminology. Federal grants aren't made to individuals (usually), they are made to institutions. I am the PI of multiple grants but the money, even the direct costs, isn't granted to me directly. Indirect costs are entirely different.

The settlement here will not be for a trivial amount

an archival black and white photograph of the KKK marching in Washington DC with the capitol behind them

In light of everything happening, I wrote about how the KKK in the 1920s felt unstoppable, about the people that fought against them anyway, and about how fascism always fails. dansinker.com/posts/202…

If you wanted to cut waste, fraud, and abuse, you would empower the inspectors general.

If you wanted more waste, fraud, and abuse, you would fire them.

While Trump “floods the zone,” we must stay focused. 

NO to oligarchy, tax breaks for the rich and cuts to working class programs. NO to authoritarianism and unlimited power for one man.

YES to growing the union movement and raising wages. YES to health care as a human right.

I'm frustrated with the state of things right now, but reminded that ugly things (yesterday's wet, grey slush) can be transformed into beautiful ones (today's gorgeous snowscape).

She was the first transgender woman to testify before Congress. Then conservatives began attacking her identity | CNN Frances Thompson’s testimony in 1866 came at a critical time, as the nation weighed whether to expand equal constitutional protections to newly freed Black Americans. But it also came at a great perso...

The story of Frances Thompson (a black trans woman who testified to Congress in 1866 about white men who sexually assaulted during the Memphis Massacre) is so incredibly telling to me because the southern media used her status as a trans woman as proof all testimony against them was a lie

the single most un-american and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an american president