The Executive Orders Blocking Your NIH Grant This image was generated by Google AI (Gemini)

Very informative post from Elizabeth Ginexi about NIH grant delays.

elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/the-execut...

The real failure to look in the mirror is academics falling back on comfortable “we’re partly responsible because we enforced left wing orthodoxy“ thinking rather than the less comfortable truth that Trump/MAGA are bad faith actors who will only be satisfied with resegregated MAGA academies

This is really smart stuff from @davidsirota.com explaining how a Dem victory in the midterms could create an opening for a major recalibration via a revitalized exercise of Congressional power.

Transcript:

newrepublic.com/article/2092...

Are Peptides Just Snake Oil? Don’t Ask the FDA The Food and Drug Administration will hold meetings this summer to discuss whether compounding pharmacies should be allowed to manufacture half a dozen commonly sought, yet unproven peptides. Health S...

Finally dove into the peptides mania. The FDA is set to open up compounding of unproven peptides. What people actually need? Evidence they are safe and actually help. My latest for @opinion.bloomberg.com (🎁):

(And RIP to my instagram feed after working on this one)

Opinion | When Your Child Dies of Measles

"Parents must realize that refusing vaccinations doesn’t just put your own child at risk. It puts other children at risk"

- A mom who lost her kid

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/o...

"The masters of war pretend not to know that it takes only a moment to destroy, yet a lifetime is often not enough to rebuild. They turn a blind eye to the fact that billions of dollars are spent on killing and devastation, yet the resources needed for healing, education and restoration are nowhere to be found." -Pope Leo XIV

This particularly resonates with me, when I see our precious science infrastructure get dismantled.

We have long road to recovery when Russel Vought et al. are out.

So much damage has been done within one year.

Went to a workshop this morning & one of the “fireside chat” speakers was former CDC Director Dr Mandy Cohen & it was painful to hear her say it’s going to take “generations” to undo the damage & rebuild CDC—she reflected on the amazing outbreak experts, eg Marburg experts, at CDC when she ran it

This is a devious plan. Sharply reduce grant numbers without deflating the budget (via MYF). Because they know most scientists can’t survive 2-3 years of zero funding. It self corrects and future budgets will be resized to the reduced capacity. Ditto NSF, NASA. The progressive USA is being shrunk.

As with declining trust in universities, you cannot explain the timing or this trend, or fix it, without first acknowledging the reality that the the primary driver of these is the Republican Party’s near-total collapse into far right authoritarianism in the last decade:

bsky.app/profile/mcop...

Figure showing number of competitive grants mentioning women from 2015-2025. The number was rising until recently, with a precipitous drop in the last year.

At the end of 2024, the National Academies put out a report concluding the NIH has woefully underfunded women’s health research, and they suggested $15 B should be invested over the next 5 years.

Here’s what’s happened instead. Hard to study women’s health if you can’t say “women.”

wapo.st/4euUt1c

Ah, Peptides. Where to Begin?

Like most drug discovery researchers, I’ve been watching the “peptides for everything” craze with a mixture of amusement and alarm:

The Faculty Are the Problem, Apparently | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson Those who want to diminish the faculty’s decision-making authority, or who think universities should be run more like companies, should be careful what they wish for.

A new fundraising campaign aims to bring "viewpoint diversity" to Harvard.

"What could explain the university's eagerness to embrace one, and only one, special form of diversity?-- Harvard's admininstration sees its faculty as a problem that needs to be solved."

www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

a cavs tweet that says BE EARLY. BE LOUD. BE THE **C**** DIFF and the slogan in a graphic

The slogan “Be the C Diff” definitely didn’t land the way the Cavs thought it would lol

Will RFK Jr’s podcast actually address Americans’ public health concerns? Secretary Kennedy Podcast so far seems designed to promote Trump administration talking points over any specific public health message

Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. has no public health credentials to his name, but he does have a few years of podcasting experience under his belt, which he brought to the role of Health Secretary with the launch of a new show last week.

My latest.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Inside the Five Days That Remade the Supreme Court

Well, well. It seems that our lack of confidence in the objectivity of the Supreme Court has been justified.

"When the court changes its way of operating, there is a risk to the legitimacy of the institution... Public trust in the court is testing all-time lows."

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/p...

In August, Jay Bhattacharya said “Training future biomedical scientists” was the 1st priority for his version of NIH.

But talk is cheap. Let’s see how JB’s doing. 🤔

NIH supports trainees mostly via fellowship (F), training (T), and career development (K) awards.

Here are funding curves for each.🧵

Ossoff: "How does American politics really work? It's coin operated. Money goes in, favors come out. It's been running on secret money, corporate money, billionaire money ... all of this gave rise to a depraved president who exploits this rot to empower and enrich himself"

Going through findings about SARS-CoV-2 in the Wuhan wet market. It’s bizarre to me that there are still people who challenge these findings

Another illustrious alumnus of Liberty University

A true “Scientific Freedom” lecture series at NIH would rely on the scientific community to select speakers.

And they wld end up inviting the virologists representing 97% of the community and ppl like @naomioreskes.bsky.social , Hotez, and Mann who analyze the influence of billionaires on science.

We Need to Prepare for the Mammoth Task of De-Trumpification The damage he and his cronies have wrought could take decades to repair, particularly when it comes to science and public health.

The task of de-Trumpification of science and public health will take a generation and a "Marshall Plan" to rebuild. Without a bold, expansive vision to guide us, there is no coming back. Small-bore, poll-tested versions of the future will not help us. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

In a randomized trial in countries with a high incidence of antimicrobial resistance, rapid susceptibility testing in patients with Gram-negative bacteremia allowed more appropriate antibiotic use and shorter hospital stays but failed to improve clinical outcomes.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Where U.S. science has been hit hardest after Trump’s first year The Trump administration has slashed the number of grants from the National Institutes of Health, with far fewer focused on women, cancer and mental health.

Those of us doing research related to women’s health have been hit particularly hard by the govt’s sabotage of the NIH. I spoke to WaPo for this piece, as painful as it was to discuss the reality my lab is facing. www.washingtonpost.com/science/2026...

NIH grantmaking plummeting under Trump

How many people will die from diseases that would otherwise have been preventable

Here’s the director of the NIH explicitly espousing populism over expertise as the means of determining priorities for federally science funding by leaning into the stupidest possible examples: ivermectin as cancer therapy .

This is a reference to multi-year funding and this statement is complete horseshit.

Early stage investigators are not preferentially receiving multi-year funded grants and often need longer grants and more stability rather than the ability to spend more upfront.

5/8

This essay is totally worth your time. The USA has committed suicide.

They have to know that “infrastructure building” is what startup packages are for. So they’re just brazenly lying because there’s no actual justification for MYF.

For U.S. medical researchers, shrinking labs and bare budgets are the new reality The Trump administration has slashed the number of grants from the National Institutes of Health, with far fewer focused on women, cancer and mental health.

Very good (if tragic) story from the Washington Post

[GIft Link]

wapo.st/3OONwh6

1/8

Trump’s not just pretending to be a madman. He actually is one. His unhinged behavior may alarm Americans more than it intimidates Iran

Agreed.