Todd Douglas

Given the state of things, self promotion is weighed down by extra shame and dissonance these days, but here is some personal news anyway:

I have Emerged, per @weillinstitute.bsky.social!

Very grateful for this award and the opportunity to share my work from @craigmcrews.bsky.social's lab.

I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE.

This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined.

It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

University of Virginia President Resigns Under Pressure From Trump Administration

This is naked authoritarianism. It is exactly what happened in Turkey. There is nothing to stop this regime from demanding that faculty be purged too. Everyone must stand up and push back.
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/27/u...

Zohran Mamdani Proves That Power Belongs to the People In a rebuke to cynical Democratic insiders and the New York Times editorial page, voters backed a democratic socialist for mayor of the nation’s largest city.

Zohran Mamdani just caused a political earthquake. What happens next is anyone's guess. Read John Nichols on a seismic night for New York City and the Democratic Party.

I think a new name should be used only if the actual mechanism by which the cells die is distinct from known pathways (e.g. cuproptosis). Here they show TNF + efferocytosis = casp8 pyroptosis. The casp8-GSDMD axis is well known, so imo a new name is not warranted. Great paper, just my 2 cents!

BBC News - BBC World News America In-depth reports on the major international and US news of the day.

I'll be on #BBCWorld News America tonight ~6:40pm ET to discuss the rapidly shrinking window of opportunity to avert dangerous 1.5C/3F planetary warming, and our new research tying rise in persistent summer weather extremes to human-caused warming. Please tune in: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/n...

In the past year we've had a series of papers with results that've shocked #climate scientists - the globe is heating #FasterThanExpected & we don't fully know why

The public discourse is not keeping up.

Here's a series of 5 new studies that climate hawks & journos need to have on their radar 🧵

New Haven: No Kings, No Billionaires, No Genocide! · Mobilize NO KINGS is a national day of action and mass mobilization in response to increasing authoritarian excesses and corruption from Trump and his allies. We’ve watched as they’ve cracked down on free spee...

no kings, no billionaires, no genocide!!

today at 1pm on the New Haven Green
www.mobilize.us/mobilize/eve...

@standupforscience.bsky.social

If that’s what they do to a United States Senator with a question, imagine what they can do to any American that dares to speak up. We will hold this administration accountable.

"Liberate this city from socialists and burdensome leadership." If that's not regime change, I don't know what to tell you.

The inflection point is now.

Graphs showing 25 years of budgets for the National Institute of Health, NASA, and the NSF. In all cases, the proposed budget for next year is far, far below any year of the previous quarter century.

There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd.
It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.

FDA will limit Covid vaccines to people over 65 or at high risk of serious illness, leaders say The FDA announced it will limit access to Covid-19 vaccines going forward to people 65 and older and others at high risk of serious illness

GUYS. The comment period for this ends in THREE DAYS. PLEASE if you have even a little bit of time, submit a comment here: www.regulations.gov/commenton/FD...

Let them know EVERYONE should be able to get COVID vaccines. They BACK DOWN when WE PUSH BACK. www.statnews.com/2025/05/20/f...

we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.

i'm just a senior postdoc, standing in front of a career that i have worked really hard for, asking higher education in the united states to not completely implode in front of my eyes before i even get a chance to say the words 'my lab studies'

Awesome work as always, Irah! Congrats!

Breaking News: Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia student activist who is a legal permanent resident, was arrested by ICE at a meeting he thought was a step to becoming a U.S. citizen. nyti.ms/4cxlwG4

AOC: We must acknowledge the terrifying moment we are in right now. What we are hearing and seeing with our own eyes is, in fact, happening. We are watching our neighbors, students, and friends being fired, targeted, and disappeared. It is real.

She Worked in a Harvard Lab to Reverse Aging, Until ICE Jailed Her (Gift Article) President Trump’s immigration crackdown ensnared Kseniia Petrova, a scientist who fled Russia after protesting its invasion of Ukraine. She fears arrest if she is deported there.

The Americans are doing to Kseniia what the Russians did to Brittney Griner for having 0.7 grams of cannabis oil. Except no one is coming to negotiate her freedom and Harvard is sitting on their hands. I am so ashamed. Please share this story.
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/s...

ICE director envisions Amazon-like mass deportation system: ‘Prime, but with human beings’ • Michigan Advance The leader of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that his dream for the agency is squads of trucks rounding up immigrants for deportation the same way that Amazon trucks crisscross American citi...

When the head of ICE starts talking about how great it would be to have Amazon Prime for shipping human beings to a concentration camp in El Salvador that no one ever leaves, you’ve gone way past “it could never happen here.”

The courts *should* put an immediate and unequivocal halt to all use of the CECOT prison in El Salvador, with or without due process.

They may not do that.

But the *people* of the US still can. Don't lose of sight of this atrocity amidst the other outrages. Make this a key focus of resistance.

Tackling climate crisis will increase economic growth, OECD research finds Third of global GDP could be lost this century if climate crisis runs unchecked, says report

Guess what?? Investing in climate solutions actually grows your economy.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Everyone wants there to be a grand scheme behind all of this but the terrible truth is that extremely stupid people are in charge and they have a fanatical devotion to wrong, childlike concepts of society and economics cooked up by right wing radio hosts in order to sell tainted dietary supplements

BREAKING: We're suing the National Institutes of Health over their politically-motivated purge of research grants.

This is an unlawful attack on scientific progress that puts lives at risk.

A graphic that reads Free Rümeysa Öztürk with a photo of her.

This week, my Somerville constituent Rümeysa Öztürk was abducted in broad daylight by DHS officials and sent to Louisiana to be locked in a detention center. She has not been charged with any crime.

14 pages of terminated NIH grants--everyone should read through the list. The sweep is VERY broad, including "The Impact of the Herpes Zoster Vaccine on Herpes Zoster Ophthalmicus" & "Mitochondrial-based Determinants of Sex Differences in Acute Kidney Injury"🧪 1/n
taggs.hhs.gov/Content/Data...

The Massachusetts governor, the city, and the university needs to drop everything to locate and free this girl and make sure this doesn't happen again.

This is DEFCON-1. If they do this to someone who wrote an op-ed in a college newspaper, they will do this to anyone they don't like.

Six masked agents in street clothes disappearing a Tufts Ph.D. student in broad daylight on the streets of Somerville. There is video footage out there every person should watch.

Opinion | Universities Can Afford to Fight Trump Every university president will face a choice similar to Columbia University’s in the coming months.

both the financial and the moral math point in the direction of resistance and not capitulation www.nytimes.com/2025/03/25/o...

13. And anyone who has been part of this grand humanist tradition is someone who will not lie down and cower before these sad bullies.

I don't know what happens to science in the US over the next four years, but I have no doubt as to where the arc of history bends.

We aren't going anywhere.

fin

I’m curious how you think about how protests should be addressed, considering the context of what you just said. The Trump administration just announced it’s pulling $400 million in funding from Columbia University, giving the reason as “relentless violence, intimidation and antisemitic harassment.” I’m wondering what you make of that. Columbia did not do enough. I criticized them. And believe me, I believe in free speech, I believe in the right to protest, as you read in my book. I started my career protesting the Vietnam War. I say to some people, “If I were your age, I’d be protesting something or other.” So I get that, and I love it, and it’s about America. But when it shades over to violence and antisemitism, the colleges had to do something, and a lot of them didn’t do enough. They shrugged their shoulders, looked the other way. Columbia among them. So what did they do? They took away $400 million. I’m trying to find out what they took away. Are they taking away money from cancer

"Columbia did not do enough....shrugged their shoulders, looked the other way. So what did [Trump] do? Took away $400 million.
... I think we have to see." @schumer.senate.gov to @nytimes.com.

Oh, my word.
This is a punch in the stomach.
Schumer is not standing up for science, or universities. 1/