Norman Luc

YouTube video by PABLO TORRE FINDS OUT Watching Football on Death Row — with a Wrongfully Convicted Man | PTFO

"I'm innocent. I can prove it."

Charles Flores, a wrongfully convicted football fan, is running out of time. I visited him in Texas for the one hour of the day when he's not in solitary confinement, to talk about life on death row — a decade after the real killer went free: youtu.be/0-GnKLFY_Gc?...

ICE ended up returning the man, Saly, after realizing he’s a fucking US citizen with no criminal record, per his sister-in-law. These fucking animals.

⛔️ Big NIH update:

We just learned of 726 more NIH grants that were terminated sometime over the past 2 months.

A huge number of diversity supps, diversity F31s, and diversity training grants. See below ⤵️

View them here: grant-watch.us/nih-data.html

h/t to @noamross.net for processing them.

Northwestern has not received any NIH funds since March. No written communication about why or what can be done. Thank you Ben Singer for raising awareness at #ATS2025

"Within minutes after DOGE accessed the NLRB's systems, someone with an IP address in Russia started trying to log in ... Whoever was attempting to log in was using one of the newly created DOGE accounts — and the person had the correct username and password"

How Trump 2.0 is slashing NIH-backed research — in charts Nature analyses which fields of science and US states are being hit hardest by grant terminations.

Deep dive into 800 cancelled NIH grants. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

absolutely insane, a betrayal of the most basic principles of freedom of speech for which the American republic is supposed to stand

CDC denies help for lead poisoning in Milwaukee schools due to layoffs The CDC rejected a request for help "due to the complete loss" of their lead poisoning experts.

3 days ago RFK Jr. told the CDC to stop recommending water fluoridation, claiming it was a neurotoxin (this is a lie).

Turns out he also just eliminated the CDC’s entire Lead Program, and now lead poisoned children in Milwaukee are just on their own. Lead IS a neurotoxin and harms brain development

Pressed for evidence against Mahmoud Khalil, government cites its power to deport people for beliefs The U.S. government has submitted a two-page memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio as its main evidence in its deportation case against Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil.

"The two-page memo, which was obtained by The Associated Press, does not allege any criminal conduct by Khalil"

"Rather, Rubio wrote Khalil could be expelled for his beliefs."

Free this man immediately.

apnews.com/article/mahm...

A reminder that if the government can send migrants to a prison camp without any due process, it can send U.S. citizens there, too. I know because this happened to me and my family in 1942.

Nearly 150 Students Have Had Visas Revoked and Could Face Deportation Dozens of schools, including the University of California and Harvard, said the Trump administration ended the visas of their students in recent days. For many, the reasons are unclear.

Nearly 150 international students have had their visas revoked by the Trump administration. Many weren’t given a reason.

I think I’m going to be thinking about this quote from Gordon Hirabayshi on the walls of the museum for a long time.

A tricky thing about modern society is that no one has any idea when they don’t die.

Like, the number of lives saved by controlling air pollution in America is probably over 200,000 per year, but the number of people who think their life was saved by controlling air pollution is zero.

Screenshot of the cover page of Griffin v Board of Elections. Text reads: "IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF NORTH CAROLINA No. COA25-181 Filed 4 April 2025 Wake County, Nos. 24CV40619-910, 24CV040620-910, 24CV40622-910 JEFFERSON GRIFFIN, Petitioner, v. NORTH CAROLINA STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS, Respondent, and ALLISON RIGGS, Intervenor-Respondent. Appeal by petitioner from orders entered 7 February 2025 by Judge William R. Pittman in Wake County Superior Court. Heard in the Court of Appeals 21 March 2025."

Excerpt from the panel majority opinion in Griffin v. Board of Elections. Text reads: "Upon remand, the Board is instructed to immediately direct the county boards to expeditiously identify the military and overseas voters challenged under this protest and notify said voters of their failure to abide by the photo ID requirement or equivalent, to allow said voters fifteen (15) business days from the mailing of the notice to cure the defect, and upon verification, to include in the count of this challenged election the votes of those voters who timely cure their failure to abide by the photo ID requirement and to omit from the final count the votes of those voters who fail to timely cure their deficiencies. Finally, as to the "Never Residents" voters, we conclude these purported voters are not eligible to vote in North Carolina, non-federal elections, and the votes cast by these purported voters are not to be included in the final count in the 2024 election for Seat 6. The Superior Court's order in 24CV040619-910, affirming the Board's dismissal of Griffin's protest as to these purported voters is reversed with instructions to remand the matter to the Board to direct the county boards to identify the votes from "Never Residents" and remove them from the final count of the 2024 election for Supreme Court Seat 6. The Clerk of this Court is ordered to issue this Court's mandate on Monday, 7 April 2025 at 5 P.M. It is so ordered. REVERSED AND REMANDED. Panel consisting of: Judges TYSON, HAMPSON, and GORE. Judge Hampson dissents by separate opinion."

BREAKING: Republican-majority panel of the Republican-majority NC Court of Appeals rules 2-1 that the Republican candidate for Supreme Court (their colleague on the Court of Appeals) wins the election even though he got several hundred fewer votes than the Dem

appellate.nccourts.org/opinions/?c=...

Trump Declares A Trade War On Uninhabited Islands, US Military, And Economic Logic There’s a fundamental problem with Donald Trump’s new trade policy: it fails a test that actual 5th graders can pass. I know this because I tried explaining his “Liberation Day&#8…

I wrote a bunch of words trying to explain how economically incomprehensible the tariff stuff is. It explains how a 5th grader understands basic econ better than Trump and his economic advisors.

www.techdirt.com/2025/04/03/t...

If you are visiting the United States, having a negative view of Trump is enough to get you denied entry.
If this was coming out of Russia or China, we would deplore such an authoritarian attack on freedom of expression.

The government is demanding that a school discipline students as it wants, change the authority structure at the school, and end a department it doesn’t like.

Remember that next time some person on the right tells you the GOP is the free speech party.

JUST IN: A federal judge in Massachusetts has extended her nationwide block on Trump administration effort to slash funds for NIH research.

I think it's worth repeating plainly that a federal judge halted Musk's federal funding freeze nearly two weeks ago but funds are still very much being frozen in violation of the court order.

the “administrative state” in practice is a lot of very hard working, practically anonymous people doing the thankless work of making this country run and a drug-addled dipshit is slandering them in order to steal our money for himself

Dozens of Clinical Trials Have Been Frozen in Response to Trump’s USAID Order The stop-work order on U.S.A.I.D.-funded research has left thousands of people with experimental drugs and devices in their bodies, with no access to monitoring or care.

The Trump administration's stop-work order on USAID left thousands of volunteers around the world w/ experimental drugs + medical devices in their bodies – cut off from care by researchers running clinical trials, in violation of the fundamental principles of research www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/h...

Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania has indirect rate of 70%, but they probably didn’t want to list that atop Harvard because defunding a children’s hospital might be perceived as problematic.

This is devastating

Last year, $9B of the $35B that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) granted for research was used for administrative overhead, what is known as "indirect costs." Today, NIH lowered the maximum indirect cost rate research institutions can charge the government to 15%, above what many major foundations allow and much lower than the 60%+ that some institutions charge the government today. This change will save more than $4B a year effective immediately.

The Federal Government just capped indirect rates for new and existing grants for research at universities at 15%.

Capping indirect costs was on page 355 of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership

It is the position of the administration that a post saying “Free Palestine” or talking about diversity should ruin your life, but a post calling to hate people from India should not. That’s their moral sensibility. Nazi scum.

Elon Musk Is Permanently Deleting Government Agencies Donald Trump and the world’s richest man decided to eliminate a government agency. An employee details the vivisection of USAID.

www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

It’s official: all funding requests made on Tuesday by postdocs for their salaries have been unilaterally rejected by NSF.

Kash Patel confirmation hearing: Dick Durbin asks Patel if he’s familiar with Stew Peters—a right-wing fringe conspiracy theorist. Patel: <long pause> Not off the top of my head. Durbin: You’ve made eight appearances on his podcast.

Checking in on Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing:

What the Hell Is Going on at NIH? Scientists sound the alarm about Trump’s unprecedented “Big Brother” research crackdown.

Really thankful to all of the scientists who made themselves available to talk to me about the unprecedented situation at NIH.

I've never had so many people reach out to me for a story like this.
www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

And the funding announcement for diversity supplements now has been updated to expire today. Supplements are so important to the careers of junior scientists. This is crushing for post docs and early career faculty

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

An ICE spokesperson later issued a statement confirming that the raid had occurred and acknowledging that U.S. citizens may have been detained. "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement may encounter U.S. citizens while conducting fieldwork and may request identification to establish an individual's identity as was the case during a targeted enforcement operation at a worksite today in Newark, New Jersey," the statement read. "This is an active investigation, and per ICE policy, we cannot discuss ongoing investigations."

ICE’s unnamed and unruffled spokesman says the agency can make anyone in America show their papers, citizen or not, probable cause or not. www.nj.com/essex/2025/0...