Current NIH leadership want you to think they are using rigorous, consistent & scientific processes to screen studies to align them with agency priorities.
But the process that they have put down on paper is a sham.
It’s important to know NIH is not following its own guidance. Here’s why:
🧵1/
Aerial view of gray ground with rows of tiny black graves and yellow backhoes
Graves.
165 graves.
Each for a little girl killed by the Israeli-American strike that targeted a school on the first day of the Iran War.
As my colleague Andy Schneider explained there is a complex administrative process CMS has to follow to preemptively withhold or retrospectively disallow federal #Medicaid funding for a state like MN. It would be unlawful to just unilaterally halt federal funding: ccf.georgetown.edu/2026/01/16/c...
An NPR investigation finds the public database of Epstein files is missing dozens of pages related to sexual abuse accusations against President Trump.
By @nurseteria.bsky.social & Dr. Arthur Lavin
“Those of us who lived through the polio era know something that is easy to forget today: Vaccines did not take freedom away, they restored it”
This is what we may loose: “The task force is made up of volunteer experts who review evidence & provide evidence-based recommendations on screening & other preventive care. By law, recommendations that garner an A or B grade must be covered by insurers without any cost sharing for patients.”
Her father fled China because he organized student protests during Tiananmen. He was a political refugee. The story of this family, and Alysa Liu, would have played out very differently today. This is what we're losing. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/19/w...
So thrilled @lizzylawrence.bsky.social and @statnews.com have won a Polk Award for our coverage of the Trump Administration assault on science+health. I couldn’t be prouder of our powerful coverage and the many stories we were first on. What a team. www.statnews.com/american-sci...
Do you want to feel more optimistic?! Read this thread from Erica Chenoweth about the power of protest and the mass mobilization movement!
Remember: if enough Americans use their political power, it becomes almost possible for the government to ignore them.
Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre: “I was trafficked to a lot of types of different men — billionaires, royalty… he used me as a form of blackmail so these people would owe him favors.”
Measles is a bellwether. Because it’s the most contagious vaccine-preventable disease, when vaccination rates drop, it’s the first to start spreading.
Now we’ve got mumps rolling up.
Expect more.
This is just the beginning of RFK Jr.’s successful infectious disease reintroduction plan.
"..cases of flu reached their highest levels in the United States in 25 years... 22 million reported cases, 280,000 hospitalizations, and 12,000 deaths..." (60 in kids). Kennedy's HHS reacted with nonchalance, chaos, and active sabotage.
newrepublic.com/article/2059... via @lauralew105.bsky.social
CDC funding cuts to 4 states in limbo after judge’s ruling
HHS notified Congress of its plan to terminate CDC grant funding to California, Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota on February 9.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/public-healt...
We now have a CDC grant tracker and are collecting information on CDC terminations. If your CDC grant was terminated, we need your help to gather data and documents! Please report!
grant-witness.us/submit-cdc.h...
A 76-year-old veteran and nurse was tackled and detained at the site of Alex Pretti's killing. Agents told him his phone was evidence in an investigation into him assaulting an officer.
“I didn’t assault an officer. I got assaulted by three officers." minnesotareformer.com/2026/02/12/w...
Clicked on this thinking "there's no way those were the actual words he said." And yet ...
This is the aftermath of an ICE kidnapping a few blocks from my home in St. Paul—an hour ago. A quiet street full of broken glass and at least three wrecked cars. The target of the kidnapping was taken away by ambulance. He was on a stretcher and covered by a sheet, though a cop said he was alive.
“Moderna, revealing the rejection, took the unusual step of releasing the letter it had received from Vinay Prasad… and issued a strongly worded statement from its CEO, who said the decision “does not further our shared goal of enhancing America’s leadership in developing innovative medicines.”
Read @bakerdphd.bsky.social’s piece on the need for institutions and their associations to stand up to this kind of behaviour, and then re-read the UNC story.
Quote is about the destruction wrought in science this year.
And it all happened with effectively a flat budget, without budget cuts, because science agencies have been presidentialized since Jan 2025– shifting control from the scientific community to the president.
Out of over 20,000 FDA-approved drugs, only 73 have active REMS—additional requirements that can make medication harder to get.
So it raised flags when the FDA put a REMS on Nexplanon, a birth control device available since 2011.
Read more from @garnethenderson.com at @autonomynews.co
Do you despise ICE as much as I do?
If so, @defendpublichealth.bsky.social has a new campaign, and it’s easy to send a letter to your elected representatives to air your grievances and demand that DHS and ICE not get funding to terrorize human beings.
Please join us!
we need to talk about that Ring Super Bowl ad
There are tens of thousands of scientists working in the US whose funding or careers have been damaged, and dozens of them moving to other countires is...not that many.
"Just move to somewhere else and do science" is not a serious approach here. There aren't anywhere near enough jobs elsewhere.
Segment with brave survivor Dani Bensky on the cover-up.
What keeps getting lost is how the decades of cover-up of Epstein's crimes is the experience of so many CSA and SA survivors--in that way it is not exceptional at all. Lifetimes of justice denied and perpetrators not held accountable. 🧵
I wasn't aware until I saw this, and I know that it is unlikely to pass, but the idea of a bill that would deport people for religious beliefs has made me physically nauseated.
It's a repulsive betrayal of bedrock American values that this has even come to a hearing
NEW: Federal judges are increasingly furious at what they see as a pattern / playbook of defiance by the Trump administration to court orders in immigration cases — in Minnesota and around the country.
Here’s a look at what they’re seeing: www.politico.com/news/2026/02...
We are murdering people and it is basically just background noise at this point. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/u...
"'This CRA loophole is just going to go bigger and bigger and bigger until it functionally becomes lawmaking,' Goodwin said. 'In all practical matters, as long as you are creative, you can basically nullify the filibuster.'" www.eenews.net/articles/how...
