Max Kozlov

“I got scared of traveling to the US,” she wrote on her blog, pointing to several high-profile incidents in which scientists were scrutinized at the border last year.

“And while it had been hard to get research funding before Trump, it now seemed impossible.”

Nevertheless, some researchers still see reason to relocate.

@pleunipennings.bsky.social moved her lab from CA to France last year. She cited the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, diversity and science funding as her main reasons for leaving.

Top US officials such as NIH director Jay Bhattacharya have brushed off concerns that this ‘brain drain’ will become reality.

“The United States is still the single best place in the world to have a career in biomedical research,” he testified last week, pointing to the agency's $48b budget.

Yet a few dozen vacating scientists are unlikely to make a large dent in the US, which has 1.5 million faculty, Milgram says.

France and other countries hoping to lure US scientists face an uphill battle: funders such as the NIH, with their multibillion-dollar budgets, are irreplaceable, she adds.

A whopping eight of the 41 recruited from the US worked at Columbia University, which last year saw hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of its research grants cut and frozen by the Trump administration.

(Columbia faculty represent ~0.5% of all faculty in the US, but 20% of the recruitees)

The high proportion of US scientists among those recruited by France shows that “enthusiasm and morale for doing science is low” in the US, says Sharon Milgram, who led early-career researcher programs at NIH for nearly 20 years, until she retired in December.

By @lizziegibney.bsky.social and me

Epstein files reveal deeper ties to scientists than previously known Latest batch of documents show researchers consulting the financier and sex offender on publications, visas and more.

The fact that Epstein had ties to the scientific community is not news, but the enormous cache of documents released by the DOJ last week was still startling. It showed just how deeply Epstein was involved—how many were in his orbit, and how deeply involved he was with some research.

My reporting:

Eg fellowships or lab positions exclusively for students of a certain race or gender.

Under the current EOs this is seen as an illegal preference. The administration’s argument is that choosing someone based on their demographic instead of their skills violates civil rights laws.

Cognizant of my oath, I’ve framed the limited question before us and answered it. And I’ve (reluctantly) left others for tomorrow.”

On a lighter note, he includes a lengthy and wryly-worded rant about Rubio's obsession over the Calibri font.

Chief Judge Diaz wrote: The US claims there's “absolutely DEI activity that falls comfortably within the confines of the law. I hope that’s true.

But the evidence cited by plaintiffs...suggests a more sinister story: important programs terminated by keyword; valuable grants gutted in the dark

The judges caveat that while Trump's orders are legal on paper, how they are enforced could still be reviewable in court (eg if federal agencies use these orders to target protected speech or activities that don't actually violate civil rights laws).

Because DEI is so ambiguously defined, the EOs will cause researchers stop their work on topics like community health or fair hiring just to avoid getting into legal trouble, plaintiffs alleged in their suit.

This reverses a lower court's ruling finding the EOs "unconstitutionally vague" and against free speech.

Now, universities could lose funding if the govt decides their 'DEI' projects go too far. It also allows the govt to enter contracts w/ grantees promising they aren't funding any illegal 'DEI'.

Published authored opinion filed – #106 in Natl. Assoc. of Diversity Officers in Higher Edu. v. Donald Trump (4th Cir., 25-1189) – CourtListener.com PUBLISHED AUTHORED OPINION filed. Originating case number: 1:25-cv-00333-ABA. [1001922624] [25-1189] CH [Entered: 02/06/2026 11:09 AM]

NEW: An appellate court has just overturned a lower court and ruled that Trump's executive orders cutting DEI programs and funding are constitutional — as long as the government only targets things that are already illegal under civil rights laws.

Read the full ruling below.

Bhattacharya testified that he's taking this issue seriously, but I just spoke with a researcher who had completed all the screening and was disinvited from NIAID's council *today*.

NIAID's council is set to run out of voting members in October. No grants can be funded without Council.

Reporting this story in Cameroon, I met people who were blind because larval worms died in their eyeballs: NTDs cause immense suffering and disability.
But they're preventable! And treatable! And eliminatable!

For the same reason that Indiana, which is virtually the same size as Massachusetts received nearly $349 million last year in farm subsidies, while Massachusetts got only about $9 million, 1/39th of Indiana’s boon.

And third, Bhattacharya said many trials were renegotiated to "take out the political ideology" and then allowed to resume.

Senators seemed to accept that reasoning, but I was surprised that they didn't push back on how arbitrarily "political" was defined, and who was making those determinations.

Second, Bhattacharya also said that many grants were restored. Well they were restored because a federal court found the cuts to be unconstitutional and ordered them to!

NIH staff were told not to address ones that were terminated if they didn't sue or appeal.

Bhattacharya said the number of trials disrupted, if you don't count the ones that had funding restored or renegotiated, is not hundreds but about a dozen.

This is misleading. First, funding can't easily be turned on or off, so any disruption is a big problem.

One observation: Several senators brought up terminated grants. Bhattacharya kept saying the agency hasn't cut any funds. That is false.

When he says no funds have been cut, he means NIH spent all its allocated money, as required by law. In fact, a watchdog found NIH illegally impounded funds.

BHATTACHARYA: The key thing about the Danish is the adoption of trust–

CASSIDY: That's because Denmark is not a country — it's a club. Everybody knows each other. They all look alike.

CHAIRMAN CASSIDY (R-LA): We're both professors. Education is the way you address trust.

Saying the MMR should be divided into three doses for no scientific reason...is not going to increase trust. It's going to decrease complete immunization rates. We know that from experience.

BHATTACHARYA: Denmark has strong trust in public health. That's what we're trying to do. Re-establish that public trust.

B-R: I agree on the public trust piece, and that's what is concerning me: Instead of modernizing the NIH, we're actually going backwards to a time we didn't even have vaccines.

RFK's vaccine agenda is a major theme at this hearing.

BLUNT-ROCHESTER (D-Del): It's strange to me we're comparing oureslves to Denmark as a peer nation. Denmark has 6 million people, we have 340 million. Denmark has socialized medicine and universal health care, US does not.

lol. To entertain the possibility he's asking in good faith, the very simple answer is that Boston is one of, if not the, largest hubs in the nation for scientific research with several of the nation's top research institutions. From 2025 RePORTER data, I count 205 research orgs in MA vs 23 in IN.

An NIH staff member texted me wondering if Indiana was looking for some affirmative action or diversity funding.

"We had to terminate all those awards that were specifically targeted to under-represented institutions."

JIM BANKS (R-Indiana): Massachusetts, which is virtually the same size as my state (?!), received nearly $3 billion last year.

Can you explain why schools on the coast seem to get more NIH funding than schools like my state, which is doing a lot of research as well?

[correction: in my haste, I said Baldwin above, when I meant Sen Patty Murray!]

An NIH staff member texted me immediately: "His answer was bullshit btw. It implied that the fault was in NIH not nominating people quick enough rather than the administration not doing their part" to review the slates that agency staff had already submitted.