marielle

Judge will hand down new TRO that "prohibits the relocation, federalization, or deployment of any National Guard under federal command" "within the state of Oregon"

Changes at NIH Give Political Appointees Greater Power To Fund or Block Research - KFF Health News The National Institutes of Health’s long-held standard of peer review for grantmaking has been subverted by President Donald Trump and NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, who gave unprecedented power to po...

IMO this hasn't gotten enough attention: a recent memo at NIH announces that peer review will be devalued in determining which grants get funded, granting more power to political appointees to make decisions based on the admin's whims over scientific merit

kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

Exclusive: NIH to dismiss dozens of grant reviewers to align with Trump priorities The move would undo years of work, leaving advisory councils understaffed, and without the full expertise needed for reviews.

NEW: In an unprecedented move, the NIH will soon disinvite dozens of scientists about to take positions on advisory councils that make final decisions on grant funding.

NIH staff were told to select others aligned with the Trump administration and told to expect placements by political appointees.

Protein Domain Designer tool for the generation of publication-ready protein domain diagrams

New week, new tool: Find our Protein Domain Designer tool to generate publication-ready protein domain diagrams here: domaindesigner.farnunglab.com

'Highly premeditated' attack at North Carolina waterfront bar leaves 3 dead and 5 wounded Nigel Max Edge, 40, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder on Sunday morning.

www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

The Story of DOGE, as Told by Federal Workers WIRED spoke with more than 200 federal workers in dozens of agencies to learn what happened as the Department of Government Efficiency tore through their offices.

NEW

WIRED led the way in reporting on Elon Musk's efforts to dismantle the US government. My colleagues and I spoke to 100s of employees at dozens of agencies to understand what happened.

This is the definitive story of DOGE as told by those who experienced it

www.wired.com/story/oral-h...

Their waists and hands were tied together, forcing them to bend down and lick water to drink. The unscreened bathrooms contained only a single sheet to cover their lower bodies. Sunlight barely penetrated through a fist-sized hole, and they were only allowed access to the small yard for two hours. Detained by US immigration authorities for eight days, the workers and their families expressed shock, describing human rights violations and absurdities they could not have imagined as ordinary Koreans living in 2025.

korean reporting is nightmarish on the conditions Korean workers were contained in

Bureau of Labor Statistics postpones key data report with no explanation There is heightened concern about the future of key government statistics, including politicization and accuracy.

JUST IN: Bureau of Labor Statistics postpones key inflation data report

Texas A&M President to Step Down After Controversy Over ‘Gender Ideology’

President of Texas A&M resigns.
This is the second Texas A&M President chased out of College Station in two years as a result of right wing politicians and activists attacks on academic freedom.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/u...

Sally Rooney unable to collect award over Palestine Action arrest threat The Normal People author can no longer safely enter the UK without potentially facing arrest, according to a statement read out by her publisher at the prize ceremony

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...

Regardless of the disgraceful nonsense we will likely hear from this administration in the coming days on vaccine “recommendations,” Americas healthcare insurers issued a joint statement tonight saying coverage for Covid and flu shots will remain unchanged from prior years.

Speaks for itself.

The union representing the musicians from Jimmy Kimmel’s band releases a statement calling the FCC’s pressure on Disney “state censorship.”

Opinion | My U.N. Commission’s Finding: Israel Is Committing Genocide

"I urge every government, every leader and every citizen to ask: What will we say when our children and grandchildren ask what we did while Gaza was burned to the ground? Every act of genocide is a test of the humanity that binds us."

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/o...

Its H.R. 5300, "To guide the foreign policy of the United States, and for other purposes."

This is a five-alarm fire.

In the last couple of years, students in America have seen their free speech rights aggressively contested by government. Those lacking citizenship protections have been jailed or deported for speech. Fearful of not appearing sufficiently punitive, universities have withheld diplomas from students purely for their speech. The government is currently engaged in an obvious and massive viewpoint discrimination lawfare campaign against campuses in an effort to control campus speech. If students are becoming more skeptical of free speech, as The Free Press suggests, perhaps it is because while they hear much about the importance of free speech, it is plain to them that their supposed speech rights are all too easily abrogated.

The reality is that universities, faculty and students are living through an unprecedented assault on speech rights. If you care about protecting speech on campus, that is the battle.

Weiss mostly doesn't care abt Trump clamping down on campus speech, because she is largely aligned with his goals.

Exclusive: Fed Governor Cook declared her Atlanta property as “vacation home,” documents show A loan estimate for an Atlanta home purchased by Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor accused of mortgage fraud by the Trump administration, shows that Cook had declared the property as a “vacation home,” according to a document reviewed by Reuters.

Well, well, well, how about that:

“Exclusive: Fed Governor Cook declared her Atlanta property as ‘vacation home,’ documents show”

www.reuters.com/world/us/fed...

no, really: nazi shit (richard evans' Third Reich in Power)

Unbelievable levels of Texas A&M Mindset here. We've never seen numbers like this.

RFK Jr. considers critics of coronavirus shots to join key vaccine panel Two urged removal of mRNA coronavirus vaccines. One said physicians “blindly believed” in them. Another said covid isn’t “scary,” noting Jesus touched lepers.

Meet the new vaccine panel advisors RFK Jr. is considering

Two urged removal of mRNA coronavirus vaccines. One said physicians “blindly believed” in them. Another said covid isn’t “scary” noting Jesus touched lepers

W @lenasun.bsky.social @washingtonpost.com www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Figure 2 from the linked article.

Abstract of the linked article

New paper for anyone working with data:
Better data viz - for free, in few clicks.

Below, all N = 111, M = 0.04, SD = 0.27.
One-sided t-tests vs. 0 yield: t(110) = 1.67, p = .049.

Use raincloud plots. Or risk wrong conclusions!
Plot w/ @jaspstats.bsky.social today!

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🧵👇

Excited to share our new preprint in @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social

"Cyclin-dependent kinase-like 5 (CDKL5) binds to talin and is anchored at the postsynaptic density via direct interaction with PDZ domains"

Instead of a 🧵 the paper is summarised in this video.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

HHS devises legal playbook for future grant terminations, internal memo shows Exclusive: HHS devises a legal playbook for future research grant terminations, an internal memo shows.

It's also key to note that NIH thinks it'll have more power to terminate grants for policy reasons starting Oct 1. See earlier reporting from @aniloza.bsky.social.

It's possible OGC / NIH is simply waiting to re-terminate until after Oct 1 so they can rely on this (still legally dubious) power.

8/

After conferring with DOJ, we'd like to provide the following guidance on the implications of last week's Supreme Court's decision. First, the Challenged Directives identified in the Rite to adamante o tune romain verated and cannot be applied to the identified plaintiffs in the two cases going forward. Second, for any terminated grant that has nc already been reinstated, NIH may stop all work toward reinstating those few grants, if any. Third, for those grants reinstated by NIH in response to the June judgments, we would strongly recommend against re-terminating such grants, because it will likely be viewed as a reapplication of the now-vacated Challenged Directives. We would also refer you to the Acting General Counsel's attached 6/25/25 opinion on the legal risks in terminating awards for nonalignment with priorities at this time. The Supreme Court's decision was an interim order while the cases proceed with the appeals of the phase 1 judgements before the First Circuit Court of Appeals. We will keep you posted on those proceedings. In the interim, please let us know if you have any questions.

BREAKING: per email sent to agency staff NIH will _NOT_ reterminate the ~900 grants which were reinstated.

"[W]e would strongly recommend against re-terminating such grants, because it will likely be viewed as a reapplication of the now-vacated Challenged Directives."

The 'Mozart of Math' rarely speaks about politics. The wide-ranging cuts to science funding made him change that. UCLA's Terence Tao called the Trump administration's actions an "existential threat" to academic research in the U.S.

"Tao is one of the most prominent mathematicians and academics to publicly oppose the administration’s actions, calling them an “existential threat” to his field, and academic science, more broadly. He said public advocacy is a priority over his research, for now."

www.nbcnews.com/science/scie...

Wow. On NPR, @gbrumfiel.bsky.social reports a Social Security official “copied the Social Security numbers, names and birthdays of over 300 million Americans to a private section of the agency's cloud.”

The source is a whistleblower, who is named: Charles Borges, SSN chief data officer.

Trump and RFK Jr. to Ban Covid-19 Vaccine ‘Within Months’ A close associate of the HHS secretary claims the U.S. government will soon pull COVID-19 mRNA jabs from the market.

EXCLUSIVE: The Trump administration will move to pull the COVID vaccine off the U.S. market “within months,” one of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s closest associates has told the Daily Beast.

US Supreme Court lets Trump cut diversity-related NIH grants The U.S. Supreme Court let President Donald Trump's administration on Thursday proceed with sweeping cuts to National Institutes of Health grants for research related to racial minorities or LGBT people, part of his crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and transgender identity.

There is no solace for NIH funded researchers in this Supreme Court decision. Grants that were ripped away on dubious grounds, restored by a reasonable judge are now again terminated by an out-of-control Supreme Court. Labs will shutter, people will lose jobs. www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...

Nice containerization of AlphaFold, Boltz, and Chai, and calculation of metrics (including our ipSAE score for protein-protein interactions). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Subcommittee Markup of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act | United States Senate Committee on Appropriations United States Senate Committee on Appropriations

🧪 BREAKING (good news): Senate subcommittee says NO! to Trump's proposed slashes to NASA & NSF funding.

Today, the subcommittee said to keep NASA + NSF funding at $33.9 billion, the same as in FY24.

See 7:15 below. Full Senate appropriations committee meets tomorrow about it.

🧵 1/3

Universal rules govern plasmid copy number - Nature Communications Plasmids exhibit a broad range of sizes and copies per cell, and these two parameters appear to be negatively correlated. Here, Ramiro-Martínez et al. analyse the copy number of thousands of diverse b...

🚨🚨New paper out in @natcomms.nature.com!!

Come for the first large-scale analysis of plasmid copy number across species,
stay for one of the most intriguing results of my lab: universal scaling laws in plasmid biology! 📈🧬

👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...