Michael Niño

Wow. Harvard nuking its PhD programs

- Science PhD admissions reduced by more than 75%
- Arts & Humanities reduced by about 60%
- Social Sciences by 50–70%
- History by 60%
- Biology by 75%
- The German department will lose all PhD seats
- Sociology from six PhD students to zero

Massive, Unarchivable Datasets of Cancer, Covid, and Alzheimer's Research Could Be Lost Forever Days before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that 10,000 HHS staffers would lose their jobs, a message appeared on NIH research repository sites saying they were "under review."

The incoming NIH Director has repeatedly stressed the importance of open science and open data.

Now petabytes of NIH-hosted research data are about to be lost on his watch.

www.404media.co/nih-archives...

US map via scienceimpacts.org visualization of economic loss due to IDC cuts to 15% as part of Feb 7, 2025 executive order, with shading denoting intensity of cuts.

Working with an interdisciplinary team, we have developed a website to communicate how the White House's proposed cuts to health research would cause losses of $16B and 68,500 jobs.

Find out how your community may be impacted.

Explore more at SCIMaP: scienceimpacts.org

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NEW! Sworn declarations filed last night confirm the Trump admin sent INNOCENT people to rot in prison El Salvador, including a professional soccer player jailed and tortured by the Maduro regime, who entered this country LEGALLY to seek asylum, and who has NO CRIMINAL RECORD in either country.

March 21, 2-3 pm ET: What to do when your federal grant has been stopped or terminated

If you have a federal grant, I *highly* recommend going to this Friday's webinar on responding to grant terminations.

Lisa Brown, former general counsel at Dept of Ed, will present along with other lawyers.

Friday, March 21, 2-3 pm. More info & register here: www.linkedin.com/pulse/regist...

DOGE Privacy Act Requests U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin is encouraging all U.S. citizens to join him this week in filing formal demands for access to their personal data obtained by the Department of Government Efficiency (...

Office of @raskin.house.gov provided a letter template to officially request your federal personal data from
DOGE in accordance with the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552a(d)(1) and this could be interesting jamieraskin.com/doge-privacy...

Archivists Recreate Pre-Trump CDC Website, Are Hosting It in Europe The team used a Reddit-made archive of the CDC website to create a new live mirror of the site before it was purged.

A team of archivists has recreated the pre-Trump CDC website as a live, easy-to-navigate website that should be indexed by Google. The team is hosting it in Europe. Cool project that is sadly necessary:

www.404media.co/archivists-r...

This is evil. Pure evil.

New study out in @sfjournal.bsky.social. We find Christian nationalism is among the leading predictors of multiple measures of racial solidarity, but ONLY FOR WHITES. For Blacks, CN actually seems to make them LESS inclined to advocate for themselves in politics. 1/3 academic.oup.com/sf/advance-a...

“The thing that I can’t get over is that the actual richest man in the world directed my fucking firing. I make $50k a year and work to keep drinking water safe. The richest man in the world decided that was an expense too great for the American taxpayer.”

Tracking US Health Care Spending by Health Condition and County This observational analysis uses insurance claims and facility records to estimate US health care spending for each of 3110 US counties, across 4 payers (Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, and out...

"This report introduces a powerful new dataset—publicly available...—that opens up rich opportunities for exploration & analyses. An initial review reveals striking county-level variation in utilization of health care services & in health care spending..."🛟 policysky sociology health policy 😷📉

Steve Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die

"the U.S. is sliding toward a more 21st-century model of autocracy: competitive authoritarianism"
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"A failure to resist... could pave the way for authoritarian entrenchment"
www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

NIH slashes overhead payments for research, sparking outrage and lawsuit Move to cut indirect cost rate to 15% could cost universities billions of dollars

Breaking news: 22 states are suing to block NIH’s cutting of indirect costs.

See our updated story on the Friday night news and its aftermath. scim.ag/4hTJQ6v

Super Bowl
USAID
Save Foreign Aid

Have Questions about NIH's New Indirect Cost Policy?
Here is a quick overview:

Very helpful data aggregation on the financial impacts of the proposed 15% #NIH indirect rate 👇 datawrapper.dwcdn.net/l0ZqA/8/

The NIH’s drastic cut to indirect cost rates is a critical threat to U.S. research infrastructure The drastic reduction in indirect costs is not a path to innovation or cost savings — it’s a threat to U.S.’s position as global leader in medical research.

My #Yale colleague Harlan Krumholz explains why the cuts to indirect costs are a disaster for biomedical research in the United States. Want to do something about it? I'll list those who have to hear from us below. Share, recruit friends and family to help. 1/ www.statnews.com/2025/02/08/n....

CONTACT YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS: www.usa.gov/elected-officials Script by@sciencewhizliz Hello, my name is [Your Namel, and I'm a [scientist, researcher, concerned citizen, etc.] from [Your City/State]. I'm calling to urge [Representative/Senator's Namel to support NIH and NSF funding and to immediately reverse the Trump administration's decision to cap NIH indirect costs at 15%. This decision will cause a massive funding shortfall at research institutions across the country, forcing layoffs, reducing support staff, and jeopardizing critical scientific research. Indirect costs aren't wasteful. They pay for essential infrastructure, maintenance, and support staff to ensure that research can happen. This sudden change undermines years of financial planning and creates a devastating budget crisis overnight. NIH and NSF funding doesn't just support scientific progress— they fuel the U.S. economy. Every $1 NIH invests results in $2.46 of economic activity. NIH-funded research has led to significant breakthroughs that improve human health. In 2023 alone, NIH funding supported over 400,000 jobs and generated nearly $93 billion in economic activity. Cutting indirect costs will mean fewer jobs, fewer discoveries, and a weakened global standing in science and innovation. Please publicly oppose this NIH policy change and work with congress to reverse it. I also ask that [Representative/Senator's Namel support sustained, robust funding for NIH and NSF to protect the future of American scientific research and its economic benefits. Can I count on them to take action? Thank you for your time and for supporting American research and innovation. I appreciate your leadership on this critical issue.

If you are upset about the devastating cuts to science, remember to call your elected officials and let them know about it.

Regardless of if they are red or blue, supportive of science or not, they all track calls. Calls matter. Do it!

Find your elected officials: www.usa.gov/elected-officials

The Hidden Backbone of Research: How a 15% Cap on Indirect Costs Will Devastate Universities So, if we’re serious about keeping research alive, it’s time to push back. Because 15% isn’t just a cut—it’s a death sentence for academic institutions as we know them.

Good blog post on describing why the NIH drop in IDC would have such negative effects. It is clear, non-technical and has things that can be done by everyone www.kateringland.com/the-hidden-b...

Here are the 25 institutions that receive the most NIH funding (98% of HHS is NIH). Basically, they're large schools with large hospitals. They receive 50% of all NIH funding.

Source: ncses.nsf.gov/surveys/fede... (table 26)

(Not going to do a whole thread but thought folks might be interested.)

Alabama: 952,000 people, 19% of the total population

Alaska: 250,000 people, 34% of the total population

Arizona: 1.96 million people, 26% of the total population

Arkansas: 821,000 people, 27% of the total population

🚨 How many Americans rely on Medicaid or CHIP in *your* Congressional District? #HandsOffOurMedicaid

#Alabama: 952,000 (19% of total pop)
#Alaska: 250,000 (34% of total pop)
#Arizona: 1.96 million (26% of total pop)
#Arkansas: 821,000 (27% of total pop)

acasignups.net/25/01/29/how...

letter describing ice authority boarding school buses

In case you wondered what depths our democracy has sunk to

In which I provide links to archived versions of every CDC.gov page available pre-purge (Part 1 of 15) As horrific as it is that the Trump/Musk Administration is purging data from federal websites, it's good to know that the Internet Archive has been archiving much of it. However, in addition to the Ar...

📣 UPDATE: OK, still working with some others to figure out the best way to present it all, but in the meantime here's the first batch of links to the most-recent archived versions of every page at the CDC prior to the Trump/Musk Purge:

acasignups.net/25/02/02/whi...

NOTICE OF COURT ORDER You are hereby advised that a temporary restraining order has been entered in the case of New York et al. v. Trump, No. 25-cv-39-JJM-PAS (D.R.I.), ECF No. 50 (Jan. 31, 2025). You are receiving this Notice pursuant to the Court's directive that notice of the order be provided "to all Defendants and agencies and their employees, contractors, and grantees by Monday, February 3, 2025, at 9 a.m." A copy of the Court's Order is attached for reference. This case challenges an alleged "pause" of certain Federal financial assistance, related to OMB Memorandum M-25-13, Temporary Pause of Agency Grant, Loan, and Other Financial Assistance Programs (Jan. 27, 2025) ("OMB Memo*). Although that OMB Memo was rescinded on January 29, 2025, the plaintiffs in the above-referenced case allege that the funding pause directed by the OMB Memo is still in effect, including because of recently issued Executive Orders by the President.

1. Federal agencies cannot pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate any awards or obligations on the basis of the OMB Memo, or on the basis of the President's recently issued Executive Orders.

From inside HHS, a court order sent around this morning telling agencies they can’t pause spending:

Our Litigation Tracker is now souped up with interactive Table. ⬇️

Now tracking 23 cases and expecting more to drop soon.

Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions
www.justsecurity.org/107087/track...

The entire archive of CDC datasets can be found here.

HUGE shoutout to data archivists- this work is important 👏🙌🏻

archive.org/details/2025...

Know Your Rights | Immigrants' Rights | ACLU Regardless of your immigration status, you have guaranteed rights under the Constitution. Learn more here about your rights as an immigrant, and how to express them.

Heads up! The @aclu.org Immigrant Rights Project has an EXCELLENT online resource available in multiple languages to walk immigrants or advocates through various scenarios of encounters with immigration officials or police. It includes contact #s for local ACLU offices.

www.aclu.org/know-your-ri...

To mark "Trump will declare a national emergency for mass deportations" day: here is the initial spreadsheet of our crowd-sourced *local* immigration advocacy/support organizations.

Please share widely, put to good use, and keep letting me know about more organizations folks can connect with.