Marsha Berkman

The nomimated NIH Director said this at his confirmation 10 hours ago.

Meanwhile...
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Center for Scientific Review; Notice of Closed Meetings Search, browse and learn about the Federal Register. Federal Register 2.0 is the unofficial daily publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as e...

Study Section meetings actually announced in the Federal Register today!

www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

It’s been six days since Chief Justice Roberts’s “administrative” stay in the foreign aid cases. That almost certainly means (1) someone’s dissenting; (2) the Court is trying to reach a compromise; or (3) both. Hard to be sure which it is, but the continuing pause is itself producing plenty of harm.

This whole country wants bad things for others more than they want good things for themselves.

DOGE’s Millions: As Musk and Trump Gut Government, Their Ax-Cutting Agency Gets Cash Infusion The Department of Government Efficiency is funded — and acts — like a federal agency. But the White House has shielded DOGE from the rules that govern such agencies, ProPublica found as it examines…

NEW: While Elon Musk and his underlings demand budget cuts and layoffs across the federal government, funding for the agency they operate — the Department of Government Efficiency — has soared to some $40 million, ProPublica found.

Texas Banned Abortion. Then Sepsis Rates Soared. ProPublica’s first-of-its-kind analysis is the most detailed look yet into a rise in life-threatening complications for women experiencing pregnancy loss under Texas’ abortion ban.

NEW: Pregnancy became far more dangerous in Texas after the state banned abortion, according to ProPublica’s first-of-its-kind analysis, which found the sepsis rate for women hospitalized as they miscarried in the 2nd trimester shot up by more than 50%.

https://propub.li/43487Tj

Opinion | Trump’s Tariff War Is Being Fought to Lower Taxes for the Wealthy (Gift Article) President Trump is remaking the tax code to favor the well-off even more, and cloaking these changes in a veneer of nationalism.

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/o...

Opinion | Here Are the Digital Clues to What Musk Is Really Up To (Gift Article) What will DOGE do with access to personal data on almost all Americans?

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/o...

Chaos, harassment, and unpaid bills: Inside Elon Musk's war on USAID “We’ve given up everything to serve our country overseas, and we’re being maligned by the richest asshole in the world.”

For some of the most comprehensive USAID reporting yet, @timothypmurphy.bsky.social & I spoke to ~12 USAID workers about how Musk & Trump have screwed over FSOs, interrupted life-saving projects, & shattered the foundations of the entire humanitarian aid industry. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

The $400 Million Armored Tesla Story Is a Fake Scandal In a Sea of Real Graft and Horror The State Department does a lot of business with a lot of different companies and has bought Tesla's before. But freaking out and editing a spreadsheet when it’s pointed out is weird.

It's going to be a long four years, especially if we make ourselves insane misreading budget documents.

This is a story where multiple things are true at the same time and it's a warning about how we consume information going forward

gizmodo.com/the-400-mill...

🧵 THREAD

So a number of America’s 93 U.S. Attorneys — top federal prosecutors in districts around the country — have been notified they are being terminated.

In Trump 1.0, then-AG Jeff Sessions asked Obama-appointed U.S. Attorneys to resign.

In Trump 2.0, terminations are coming from White House.

Trump’s obsession with immigration is really an obsession with segregation | Heba Gowayed His policies are the latest instantiation of a centuries-long American tradition: laws meant to exclude people of color and privilege whiteness

My latest in @theguardian.com argues that Trump’s obsession with immigration is an obsession with it as a tool of segregation and white supremacy, which is how it has long been used in the United States.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/comm...

The men and women of our military have endured many hardships and even many shameful humiliations at the hands of their country but surely they don’t deserve being put in Cybertrucks.

Hopes raised for saving Gaza ceasefire as hostage releases reportedly agreed – Middle East crisis live Three hostages will reportedly be freed on Saturday after threats that Israel would resume war if they were not released Reporting from Rafah in southern Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum states that he can see “hundreds of UN trucks lined up” waiting…

Hopes raised for saving Gaza ceasefire as hostage releases reportedly agreed – Middle East crisis live

An insightful new (declassified) report from Denmark's Defence Intelligence Service. Here's a thread summarising the report's findings on Russia. 1/6 🧵

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

We are hearing today that NIH is restarting issuing grant awards — that is, for awards already approved by council, or renewals that normally happen as matter of course, money will start going out.

Caution, though, before we interpret this as a win...

1/ 🧪

This thread has aged depressingly well. The reporting in it was A+++

Top tip. Don’t have insomnia in the middle of a coup.

An executive order has now given DOGE oversight of all government departments.

It’s a complete takeover of the federal government by Musk. A Musk ‘team lead’ will now make all hiring decisions according to a ‘data-driven’ model

Don't let Donald Trump and Elon Musk talk us out of democracy Trump and Musk are testing the limits, trying to sell America on being an authoritarian state — but they can’t do it unless we allow them to do so.

OK, I wrote my “who’s going to enforce it?” piece. It’s a lengthy read, trying to respond to a lot of questions I’ve gotten over the past three weeks, but it’s about democracy so I decided it was worth it to lay out in depth, with examples, what I’ve been talking about here and elsewhere.

In Germany, the journalists are often the hosts and the politicians are the lucky visitors. www.cjr.org/analysis/ger...

DOGE Teen Ran Image-Sharing Site Linked to URLs Referencing Pedophilia and the KKK The site launched by Edward Coristine in 2021 promised to protect the privacy of its users, stating, “All your images are encrypted. We do not log IP addresses, device agents or anything else.”

1. Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old member of DOGE launched an image-sharing website in 2021 that featured custom “shitposting” URLs that redirected to content hosted on his site. URLs that redirected to Coristine’s site referenced the sale of child sexual abuse material, racial slurs, and rape.

Cut to NIH grants, initially only blocked for the 22 states included in the lawsuit, now is blocked for all states. Hopefully folks at places like Penn State and Iowa, where they had been told they could not submit or receive NIH grants, get some relief too.

yeah this is a straight-up heist

Excuse me while I vent for a moment

SHE IS THE APPROPRIATIONS CHAIR. SHE CAN SUBPOENA OFFICIALS, HOLD TELEVISED HEARINGS, HOLD UP ANYONE’S FUNDING, ZERO OUT THE WHITE HOUSE’S FUCKING ICE CREAM AND DIET COKE BUDGET, AND ENFORCE THE APPROPRIATIONS LAWS THAT ARE THE SOURCE OF HER PERSONAL POWER.

Note, this only applies to institutions in AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MA, ME, MD, NV, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OR, RI, VT, WA, and WI - because the injunction applies only "within Plaintiff States"

Institutions in states with red governors/AGs - Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, etc. - remain screwed

"The services cited concerns that participation in the predominantly Black event could run afoul of Trump's orders and the Pentagon's intensifying push to erase diversity efforts in the military."

This sure sounds like the federal government saying any events for Black people are now banned.

NIHTRO021025

NEW:

Federal judge in Massachusetts enters Emergency Temporary Restraining Order blocking Trump Administration from cutting health research grant money, including 15% cap on overhead costs.

www.documentcloud.org/documents/25...

BREAKING: 22 states sue NIH over Trump administration's new 15% cap on overhead for federal research grants. Suit filed federal court in Boston contends lifesaving research 'will grind to a halt' under the policy. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...