Cara Exten

I have a PhD in the medical sciences....and it seems pretty close to magic to me too. :) But that's probably why I became a scientist.

Trump administration violated impoundment law by canceling NIH grants, slowing new awards, GAO finds The Government Accountability Office found that the Trump administration, by abruptly canceling NIH grants, had violated a 1974 federal law

Congress approved the money. The Trump administration canceled the grants anyway. The GAO says what many of us already knew: canceling NIH grants was illegal. This was a direct breach of checks & balances - a textbook case of authoritarian meddling in science.

zurl.co/mbX9W

This is truly heartbreaking.

Yes. And I also understand how good people “let it happen”. I’ve never felt so helpless. Calling senators and reps daily - which feels futile. Donating to the orgs fighting this administration in court - but not enough $ to make a real impact. Desperate for a roadmap - how do we stop this?

10 years from now at the start of a Zoom meeting: “Y’all doing anything fun for No Kings?”

The mainstream media has enabled Trump’s war on universities | Jason Stanley For the past decade, the US press has fueled a moral panic over leftists on campus while failing to report on the right’s assault

Prof Stanley slaying it here calling out mainstream media for enabling the Trump regime's fascist dismantling & privatizing everything: science, academia & public health.

Dont let the bastards win. Stand up, fight back & join us to kill his #BigBadUglyBill !
#StandUpForScience


zurl.co/t7mEE

Every hour that Kennedy remains Secretary puts lives at risk. We stand with our patients, and Congress must as well.

And now the NIH has stopped all research that focuses on minority health. NIH funding must be fully restored and must be used to focus on the most urgent health problems.

Bring him home, Senator. Then, bring them all home. No one belongs in a foreign prison known for its violence. No one should be deported without due process.

🧵1-Attention #B1G alums & supporters. #Rutgers University Senate has resolved to adopt a Mutual Defense Compact for the Universities of the Big Ten Academic Alliance in response to the attacks on higher ed, research funding, academic inquiry and student safety.

senate.rutgers.edu/wp-content/u...

Making a big deal about sending an all women team “to space” on Blue Origin, in full glam, while defunding programs that support women scientists and stripping DEIA from NASA…is something else.

Science for me, but not for thee!

#standupforscience

"You don't deserve due process if you're a criminal" has got to be among the least "American" arguments the government has put forward in a century

A glimmer of hope on an otherwise grim day in the news cycle. May Harvard be the first university of many to take a stand for freedom of speech and the right to dissent.

If the U.S. government is going to take the position that, once removed from the United States, folks can’t be brought back, then it sure seems to me that federal courts should be reflexively and categorically barring *all* removals until they’re 100 percent certain that the removals are lawful.

FINALLY. This is what I am ranting about in my own world to mostly deaf ears. I am baffled by the apathy.

I agree, Rep Raskin. What actions will you take in your office to stop these illegal acts? You have power that most of us do not.

THIS is the take. Due process is a constitutional right.

Bring them all home.

Disappearing people without any due process is fascism — full stop. I’m sick to my stomach and we all should be.

Justice Dept. Defies Order to Reveal Plan to Return Wrongly Deported Man.

Don't let up.

Don't look away.

This is a crisis.

www.nytimes.com/live/2025/04...

The thing that I’m
not sure I’ll ever get over is the realization that I’ve been living among monsters my entire life. Working, celebrating milestones, watching kids’ sports, chatting in the grocery store…all with monsters.

Seems to me that @aspph.bsky.social has a stake in this.

The courage of @APHA needs solidarity. Do you run or sit on a board of a professional organization? #StandwithAPHA. Join the call. RFK Jr. must resign or be fired. Speak out now before he does more damage to the nation's health and future. apha.org/news-and-med...

THIS is the leadership we need at universities.

Sending anyone from this country to a foreign gulag, particularly without a court hearing, should rightfully end a presidency. Full stop.

Respondents emphasize that Abrego Garcia was improperly removed to El Sal- vador because, although he could be removed anywhere else in the world under a 2019 order of removal, that order granted statutory withholding of removal to El Sal- vador alone. But, while the United States concedes that removal to El Salvador was an administrative error, see App., infra, 60a, that does not license district courts to seize control over foreign relations, treat the Executive Branch as a subordinate dip- lomat, and demand that the United States let a member of a foreign terrorist organ- ization into America tonight. For starters, because MS-13 members such as Abrego Garcia have since been designated members of a foreign terrorist organization, they are no longer eligible for withholding of removal under 8 U.S.C. 1231(b)(3)(B). Fur- ther, the United States has ensured that aliens removed to CECOT in El Salvador will not be tortured, and it would not have removed any alien to El Salvador for such detention if doing so would violate its obligations under the Convention Against Tor- ture. Moreover, respondents treat the relief here as “routine,” Resp. C.A. Stay Opp. 1, but that relief goes far beyond merely facilitating an alien’s return, which is what courts have ordered in other cases. This order—and its demand to accomplish sensitive foreign negotiations post-haste, and effectuate Abrego Garcia’s return to- night—is unprecedented and indefensible.

If the Supreme Court decides that the government can "erroneously" disappear you off the street to a foreign torture prison, and that federal courts have no power to do anything about it, that is, in a meaningful way, Pretty Much It www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24...

Millions Stood Up: April 5 Hands Off Day of Action I was the closing speaker at the ebullient San Francisco Hands Off rally, and when I got home later I scoured the news for  reports on the more than one thousand other rallies. Of course people would ...

If one of us stands up, they can pick that person off. If ten or a hundred or a thousand, they can pick those people off. And they're picking off people--immigrants, dissidents--to make an example of them. But if ten million people stand up, they cannot stop us all.

The problem is: they've mistaken correlation for causation. They think their parents and grandparents had a good life *because* of manufacturing jobs. When, in reality, their parents and grandparents had a good life *despite* manufacturing jobs, because of unions, high taxes, and social policies.

The thing that I’m
not sure I’ll ever get over is the realization that I’ve been living among monsters my entire life. Working, celebrating milestones, watching kids’ sports, chatting in the grocery store…all with monsters.

To friends and colleagues (and others) who were fired from NIH, CDC, and elsewhere in HHS in yesterday’s RIF: You deserved so much better from your country. The work you did made America and the world a healthier and all around better place. Thank you for your service.