Science and Freedom Alliance - SAFA

Re: Science Mag editorial celebrating mainly the inside/quiet advocacy done this year, I offer this in lighthearted response. 🧪

This is a Myanmar woman doing her usual, longstanding dance routine while black cars speed by to carry out a coup. 1/4

Epstein Backed ‘Billionaires’ Dinner’ Network of Prominent Anti-Trans Figures Lawrence Krauss, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker and other anti-trans influencers personally benefited from a right-wing academic social group backed by infamous human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, somet...

You’re not crazy. The anti-trans movement is not organic; it was funded by pedophilic billionaires like Jeffrey Epstein who backed a network of conservatives to accuse the same people they were sexually abusing of being the real danger. @madycast.com exposes the truth in our in-depth report.

💯

I wrote about one of the saddest evenings of my life: seeing Christine Maggiore, who opposed HIV medicines, speak in San Francisco. She was one of the HIV denialists who met President Mbeki at the International AIDS Conference in Durban in 2000; she died of AIDS

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Thread:

The NIH budget bill passed the House. Now, it's bundled w/ DHS funding in the Senate. We are likely to see a fight this week.

New from me: things to know about the budget bill, NIH presidentialization, free speech, why science has been quiet, & more.

At "Can We Still Govern" @donmoyn.bsky.social 🧪

American biomedical science in 2026 Where we are, how we got here, and what to do next

New at Can We Still Govern: NIH scientist @markhisted.org reviews the damage done to American biomedical science in the last year and looks ahead:
"Scientists should not be political partisans, but they should be partisans for liberal democratic principles."🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/american-b...

Yes, some ICE funding is provided by the summer reconciliation bill that also savagely cut American healthcare.

But D’s can demand language in the budget bills to restrain ICE, as @repcasar.bsky.social does. In principle they cld req ICE budget be zeroed out, if thr leverage&the public can get it.

❤️

Thank you for this, @repdexteror.bsky.social.

Congresswoman Dexter is a physician who worked at research-intensive UW. She is now standing up for science and democracy. 💪

If we continue to compromise with people whose stated goal is to destroy NIH, then we will not be successful in saving it.

United States Senate Committee on APPROPRIATIONS = MENU Search 01.20.26 Committee Releases Conferenced Defense, Homeland Security, Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Daldad Aaaaains and

NIH budget bill out today.

It’s the result of heavy negotiations in Congress over past month+. 🧪

Big pic: NIH budget now is abt more than funding. It’s abt restraining the technical ways NIH is being broken by Proj 2025. And the restraints in the bill are tepid 🤷‍♂️

Also: watch ICE/DHS budget.
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Endorse this. We are all in this together. Liberal values are important for science.

Science and freedom are linked.

The language on multiyear funding (MYF) is ineffective.

Final bill anchors MYF to 2025 instead of 2024. This means MYF will likely continue at the same rate we saw last year, where NCI's payline from ~10% to 4%.

This is incredibly harmful to the US research workforce - especially early career.

science peeps.

I feel connected to MLK at a personal level because he and I share a birthday. The holiday gets me to think about MLK’s words and lessons.

There is powerful advice for today in MLK's “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.”
Worth a read today. And a 🧵:
1/

Martin Luther King Jr on equality and the status quo From status quo bias, to ‘popularism’ and picking big fights, MLK Jr in Letter From a Birmingham Jail has lessons about politics and society in the Trump era.

@safa-science.bsky.social kindly posted it too.

If you want to keep up with folks who happen to work at the NIH, we have a starter pack of NIH relevant accounts.

It’s always growing, so might be worth checking again even if you’ve “followed all” in the past.

go.bsky.app/LQZYUdE

👇👇👇

For those of you following the Guinea-Bissau hepatitis B vaccine: The Danish researchers have posted their updated protocol (called version 1.5). They still propose giving a lifesaving vaccine to only half of newborns and withholding it from others. www.bandim.org/wp-content/u...

My hearty congratulations to Senator Bill Cassidy, who kissed the ring and appointed RFK Jr. for Trump, only to have Trump give his full endorsement to Julia Letlow.

The leopard eating faces party has eaten your face AND you have the blood of thousands upon thousands on your hands.

Bill Cassidy reportedly voted for RFK Jr because Cassidy was afraid of losing his next primary and feared Trump endorsed his further-right opponent.

Trump just endorsed Cassidy’s opponent anyway!

Appeasement does not work.
Fight or get out of the way.

Don’t let Russell Vought trick Congress into destroying science by removing multiyear funding limits from the NIH funding bill.

A Quiet Policy Shift That Could Devastate American Science Why NIH’s sudden move to multi-year grant funding should alarm every principal investigator and university

A reminder as Congress finalizes NIH appropriations: the bill must limit multiyear funding (MYF), Vought's way of cutting the NIH budget without cutting the budget. MYF will devastate the research workforce.

@safa-science.bsky.social wrote this in July. Still relevant: substack.com/@scienceandf...

Statement from the Civil Servants Coalition on the State-Sanctioned Murder of Renee Good A guest post from a broad and informal coalition of civil servants concerned about how the current administration is harming Americans

"We again call on Congress to reassert its constitutional power. Congress must hold the Administration accountable for its unlawful, violent, and deadly actions. If you fail to do so, people will continue to die at the hands of ICE."

scienceandfreedomalliance.substack.com/p/statement-...

Def not the most important thing about this, but coming across this thread from a researcher studying vehicle ramming attacks is giving me the most “old Twitter“ vibes I have had here…

Please join us in continuing to monitor the institute director searches.

Call your members of congress and demand oversight to ensure these positions are filled with scientific leaders who will prioritize evidence over politics.

The Covid Contrarian Clubhouse Makes Its Mark on Trump’s Washington - KFF Health News Get our weekly newsletter, The Week in Brief, featuring a roundup of our original coverage, Fridays at 2 p.m. ET.

But the current administration has been installing numerous health and science leaders tied to the Koch-funded American Institute of Economic Research and/or the COVID contrarian Brownstone Institute across the government: kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

With NINDS Director Walter Koroshetz's reappointment denied, the number of institutes/centers that have lost directors since Jan now totals 16 (of 27).

Protecting the NIH mission requires institute directors with the expertise and integrity to make sound decisions.

Reading the Tea Leaves on NIH Institute Director Searches Which Fringe Scientists Might be Considered for Leadership Positions?

The U.S. research community has an interest to help ensure the integrity of scientific leadership at our public institutions.

We are pleased to share this guest blog from @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social and Shiv Prasad, writing in their personal capacities.

open.substack.com/pub/sciencea...