Prof. Aviles

SUFS ANNOUNCES DR. JENNA NORTON AS A SPEAKER AT THE MARCH 7TH NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION WASHINGTON D.C. RALLY!

Stand Up For Science announces Jenna Norton, NIH Whistle-blower (@jenna-m-norton.bsky.social) as a speaker at the Washington D.C. National Day of Action rally on Saturday, March 7th!

Visit standupforscience.net/march7 to find a rally near you!

#science
#standupforscience
#rally
#March7DC
#March7

Jayme Lawson from Sinners hit the nail on the head and said how I felt with the whole BAFTAs situation.

White House stalls release of approved US science budgets The US Congress rejected sweeping cuts to science agencies. But the NIH, the NSF and NASA have had their spending slowed.

Congress rejected massive cuts to US science budgets for 2026, but much of the money still isn’t flowing to researchers.

The culprit? The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is quietly slow-walking the release of funds. 🧵👇

If there was ever any doubt of her parentage the shoutout to Reconstruction should settle it

A hand drawn pop-up Valentines Day card featuring a drawing of Frederick Douglass and some biographical details of his life

My daughter recently became obsessed with Frederick Douglass and appears to have made a pop-up Frederick Douglass Valentines Day card at school

Next para: "A regime of secret policing has no place in our society. Here, the Government’s power is derived by the People, and the People must be able to identify the Government when it acts to infringe on their liberty."

Important things happening in cville. Add this to your calendar. I am looking forward to learning more about these efforts!

What NIH Staff Can’t Tell You—And Why That Matters The people who understand most clearly what is being lost at the NIH are also the people least able to say so.

In a post-Schedule F landscape, we should expect NIH civil servants to be more at risk than ever before—just as their ability to get reports of what’s really going on inside the agency to the public is most urgent.

open.substack.com/pub/elizabet...

Get in, dorks. We're ready for round two.

RALLY TO TAKE BACK SCIENCE! 🔬🧪✊
March 7th, 2026 in Washington, DC

Learn more at www.standupforscience.net/ma... (link in our bio.)

interesting to think that revolutionary era americans understood themselves as making a break with the “old world” and establishing a new civilization. and crucially, this new civilization rested on republican self-government, not “sovereignty.”

Fear and Fascism (Believe me, I'd rather be using other F words...)

Some good reading for the day...

sciencefightclub.substack.com/p/fear-and-f...

@standupforscience.bsky.social

a cartoon character is wearing a pink hat and making a funny face ALT: a cartoon character is wearing a pink hat and making a funny face

My social scientist reaction every time I have to listen to a homeschool mom who just learned about The Anxious Generation.

The chill FDA’s Moderna decision sends through the entire vaccine R&D ecosystem can’t be ignored. Many bigger pharma companies already downsized in-house vaccine efforts or cut them entirely after the 80s out of liability concerns. An administration set against vaccines can kill US vax R&D capacity.

straight out of those Civil War histories where some ill informed white Union soldier got a view of slavery up close and became hyper abolitionist in an instant

Exclusive: Key US infectious-diseases centre to drop pandemic preparation Staff members have been instructed to scrub this topic and ‘biodefense’ from the agency’s website.

Scoop: The NIH infectious-diseases institute (NIAID) will soon scrub “pandemic preparedness” and “biodefense” from its web pages, according to e-mails I obtained.

The directive is the start of a broader shake-up at NIAID, which has long been attacked by Republicans.

I'm still SHOCKED by the obscene rise in billionaire election spending since Citizens United in the NYT piece, despite already knowing that election corruption w/ $ was profound. (Recall that BCRA fought dangerous campaign $ in *2002*)

The article data didn't have a graph, so I made one to show it.

Presidential appointees chosen for loyalty to the administration rather than scientific expertise are overruling the judgment of experts to undermine the US’s ability to innovate and distribute valuable medicines. What happened at FDA is one piece of this bigger problem affecting NIH, CDC, etc.

C'ville folks! Local luminary and lender of e-bikes Josh Carp created this very cool site, which combines videos of public meetings with searchable, linkable transcripts. meetings.cvilledata.org/meetings

Rep. Delia Ramirez to DHS officials: "I have as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color. I have no respect for the inheritors of the Klanhood and the slave patrol. Those activities were criminal and so are yours."

Trump's Schedule F Rule Finalized A bizarro rule formally justifies politicizing public services

New, from me: Trump finalized his Schedule F policy, allowing him to remove job protections from career civil servants.

The new rule is dishonest and unmoored from reality in its effort to formalize the politicization of the federal government 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/trumps-sch...

Final schedule F rule "will allow agencies to quickly remove employees from critical positions who engage in misconduct, perform poorly, or *obstruct the democratic process by intentionally
subverting Presidential directives.*"

(emphasis mine)

public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-02375.pdf

I couldn't string sentences together yesterday, Maybe that's a sign that I shouldn't have been spared when all my fantastic colleagues who unfairly lost their jobs pushed through their grief to write beautiful notes about their careers and the situation at The Washington Post. The health team lost 8 out of 13 reporters yesterday despite health listed as part of The Post's new pared down focus. Just six months after becoming an editor and having the honor to lead an all-star team covering federal health agencies and public health, I have to go back to reporting because there are barely any health reporters left to edit. I'll say more about the reporters we lost later today, but as a team, we did everything we were supposed to do under the vision for The Post to be a digital innovator that breaks news, offers hard-hitting accountability and directly address reader concerns. We landed exclusives on the CDC director's firing, plans to overhaul the childhood vaccine schedule, projections for steep ACA marketplace rate increases and more. We avoided dutiful iterative stories and covered storylines such as the expiration of enhanced ACA premiums with smart targeted angles that were widely read. We broke the mold of a traditional newspaper with clever formats including a pop-up newsletter and live chats to help readers navigate new restrictions on coronavirus vaccines, a quiz to understand new dietary guidelines and vertical videos to showcase reporter expertise. The Metro section where I started my career (and offers a clear reason for millions of potential subscribers to pay for us instead of or in addition to other national outlets!) is hollowed out. Reporters around the world wiped out after the owner set a vision for international relevance. A sports department home to journalistic legends shuttered. And so much more bleeding across the entire newsroom.

The Washington Post gutted the health team which I helped to lead despite our stories being among the most widely read, impactful and adept at reaching new audiences.

If Trump ever read the Bible he’d be so pissed right now

Surprise! The White House’s attempt to undermine the administrative capacity of the entire federal government is reallllly unpopular.
An excruciating read for its pedantry, but important to see how Federalist Society originalism is being used to argue for dramatically unpopular policy decisions.

As far as I know, this is DHS's first effort to explain their position that I-205 forms allow entry into the home. They rely on the dicta in the 1960 Abel case (before Payton) and re-imagine the plurality opinion in Lucas as if it were the majority (and then overrely on it).

Virginia’s New Governor Ends ICE Program. Local Contracts Remain, For Now. - Bolts Abigail Spanberger left the 287(g) program, which empowered state law enforcement to detain immigrants. Will Democrats also bar local police and sheriffs from the program?

NEW: Abigail Spanberger this afternoon ordered that all state agencies leave ICE's 287(g) program.

This means that the state police (and some other agencies) will no longer be empowered to detain and arrest people for ICE.

Big, big move by the governor within weeks of coming into office.

I’m about to receive my first royalty check from my academic book! I can’t wait to find out how much I made. Elevens, perhaps twelves of dollars!

I'd say it's less outrageous than simply absurd but it's those too. I mean, you go into NIH and you close down the ability to review or issue grants, send out stop work orders and then fire half the people. That's probably going to have an impact on research and patient care.