I don’t think people are entirely picking up on the implications of the assault on DEI. The biggest beneficiaries of DEI have been women … all women including white women. Don’t be distracted by the racial component…it’s worse than you think.
"It is hard to see who could possibly benefit from these heavy-handed moves to constrain and defund our most vital public health institutions."
Trump benefits. He cuts funding for science and public health, which his people don't believe in. That "saves money" he will turn around and use for something he does care about and want. He sure doesn't care about elderly Black people in Detroit, for instance. And when his policies start hurting his constituents, he will just lie about it. (Just as he said he sent the military into California to turn on the water!) And they will believe him. That's my fear, but I hope to be wrong and reality breaks through instead.
My one comfort today--and it's a big one--is that, according to a Reuters poll, his job approval rating has dropped by something like 8 points. Political gravity still, (hopefully ?) exists...or at least it does after the sh*tshow of this past week. Is this enough to change people's minds, and have a real impact? Of course not. But it shows that even he doesn't behave in a vacuum. It's quite possible it can go up, and it may, but at least his popularity seems to still respond to the terrible things he does.
China benefits from US abdication in leadership - they will fill the breech. Take the resins of global organization, step into developing countries (not so provide aid except as a ruse to steal resources.
Putin has wanted the destruction of the US - without the US not just Ukraine, but others in Eastern Europe are at risk. Russian can reconstruct the Soviet Union and trump wouldn’t stand in his way b
My brother-in-law was recently diagnosed with glioblastoma, which is an aggressive brain cancer. Many clinical trials are on-going across the country and the world. A "pause" may delay needed research for his disease which has a very short-term survival rate. I think the current POTUS would enjoy it if Pres. Biden's "Cancer Moonshot" went by the wayside because of all these disruptions because he is a stupid and cruel person. American voters and non-voters will pay a heavy price but will be lied to about the consequences, as was done in the first administration with regard to covid.
This will affect everything at universities, most immediately the graduate students and post-doctoral fellows who depend on the stipends and health insurance benefits they receive for their work in research labs. No paycheck and health insurance = no grad school for many. No indirect cost funds = no research labs and no support staff. Down the pike, there will be a brain drain for the USA.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels a sense of helplessness but the only way we can counter these drastic and ruthless actions is to talk about it, make it publicly known, repeat it over and over just like they repeated the Big Lie, talk about the specific impacts on people. Thank you for drilling down into the issue.
I don't think Trump understands (or cares) about how NIH research is done. Many of the critical studies designed to ultimately cure serious health conditions are longitudinal (testing over very specific times). Were these to be interrupted the entire project would be jeopardized, wasting millions, delaying the advancement, and harming the participants.
The universities that rely on these grants will be hit hardest. The University of Alabama Birmingham/UAB is in the top 1 percent of universities that receive NIH funding. Johns Hopkins and Massachusetts General Hospital are also up there as well. Transplantation medicine has benefited greatly from original research as a collaborative effort between UAB and Vanderbilt University. They have made xenotransplantation possible and we now have a woman in my state who is benefiting from it and at the moment is thriving. It pains me to know that we have a mad man in the Oval Office who is impeding medical progress. Perhaps we should be shaming him and those who are allowing him to get away with it.
DMJ; think of the grad students and postdocs in the lab that are trying to decide whether to pursue careers in academics vs government vs industry vs switch to investment banking., etc, etc.
Shaming won't help; the tumor cells have acquired checkpoint surface immunity from SCOTUS.
As one of my trumper-friends said yesterday, "I agree with his economic plans but I'm really bummed about all the humanitarian implications". My paraphrased response, Darwinism on steroids so be it. Red states not only depend more on federal $$ than blue states but the average life expectancies of red state populations are 10yr shorter vs blue states. Go wrap your head around that. And then please explain how to quickly separate radical economic plans from their humanitarian implications.
Current shock&awe plan: carpet-bomb, flame-throw and kick all the beehives as quickly and as hard as you can. Let the smoking holes in the ground smolder, dead bodies pile high, toxic plumes sink deeper into our aquifers, newly homeless souls build larger encampments and career government workers suffer physically, spiritually and psychologically. Then wait for the libs to mount some milquetoast legal/civil rights response before rinsing&repeating.
A sentient, majority, pragmatic, approach: Propose reasonable change in small integrated steps.
Before the first Trump administration many government scientists offloaded critical data that were likely to be removed from government databases and websites to safe locations, often offshore. Let's hope that the same thing happened this time because the destruction of vital information considered to be ideologically impure is much more likely this time.
Yes, totally agree that given the current (illegal) assault on where our taxes get spent and this pernicious attempt to frighten basic bioscience PI’s to hide their “ideologically impure” research activities, I’m hoping my terabyte thumb drive can backup all my lab’s unpublished data before the JackBoots come to shutter my GC-MS, unplug my sequencer, lock my Revco and thaw my cell bank.
Ill never forget when Reagan made deep cuts to social spending, they had to close the State Hospital in Denver turning hundreds of severely mentally ill out onto the streets. I lived in Capitol Hill at the time. You would see them wandering aimlessly and sometime laying in the gutters. It lasted into winter. The Baptists opened up a coffeehouse and local churches collected warm clothing and blankets for them. I don't know who fed them or where they slept. Many may have froze to death, we'll never know.
Maybe I'm wrong, but aren't the federal taxes I pay then disbursed through federal programs and grants? If those are on "pause," can I "pause" my federal tax payments as well? I still haven't received my 24 W-2 yet. Does the IRS even have the capacity to process tax filings with all this fuckery going on?
Medical Schools are major NIH grant recipients Their survival and ours franklynrely upon the research that is born and devlops ar medical schools and their research labs. This Administrations action are a sin and is an attack on thinking and innovation in health.
I don’t think people are entirely picking up on the implications of the assault on DEI. The biggest beneficiaries of DEI have been women … all women including white women. Don’t be distracted by the racial component…it’s worse than you think.
55 y/o white woman here fired along with my Muslim woman coworker and my African woman coworker on Jan 23, 2025.
I am so sorry you and your coworkers were treated in this way. It offends me to the core.
"It is hard to see who could possibly benefit from these heavy-handed moves to constrain and defund our most vital public health institutions."
Trump benefits. He cuts funding for science and public health, which his people don't believe in. That "saves money" he will turn around and use for something he does care about and want. He sure doesn't care about elderly Black people in Detroit, for instance. And when his policies start hurting his constituents, he will just lie about it. (Just as he said he sent the military into California to turn on the water!) And they will believe him. That's my fear, but I hope to be wrong and reality breaks through instead.
My one comfort today--and it's a big one--is that, according to a Reuters poll, his job approval rating has dropped by something like 8 points. Political gravity still, (hopefully ?) exists...or at least it does after the sh*tshow of this past week. Is this enough to change people's minds, and have a real impact? Of course not. But it shows that even he doesn't behave in a vacuum. It's quite possible it can go up, and it may, but at least his popularity seems to still respond to the terrible things he does.
China benefits from US abdication in leadership - they will fill the breech. Take the resins of global organization, step into developing countries (not so provide aid except as a ruse to steal resources.
Putin has wanted the destruction of the US - without the US not just Ukraine, but others in Eastern Europe are at risk. Russian can reconstruct the Soviet Union and trump wouldn’t stand in his way b
The Cruelty Is The Point.
So in their sick minds, DEI is more dangerous than our vital public health structure. Stupidity at its worst!!
My brother-in-law was recently diagnosed with glioblastoma, which is an aggressive brain cancer. Many clinical trials are on-going across the country and the world. A "pause" may delay needed research for his disease which has a very short-term survival rate. I think the current POTUS would enjoy it if Pres. Biden's "Cancer Moonshot" went by the wayside because of all these disruptions because he is a stupid and cruel person. American voters and non-voters will pay a heavy price but will be lied to about the consequences, as was done in the first administration with regard to covid.
This will affect everything at universities, most immediately the graduate students and post-doctoral fellows who depend on the stipends and health insurance benefits they receive for their work in research labs. No paycheck and health insurance = no grad school for many. No indirect cost funds = no research labs and no support staff. Down the pike, there will be a brain drain for the USA.
Thanks for helping understand this treacherous move by POSOTUS. It just gets worse by the day.
POSOTUS
Good one!
And so apropos.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels a sense of helplessness but the only way we can counter these drastic and ruthless actions is to talk about it, make it publicly known, repeat it over and over just like they repeated the Big Lie, talk about the specific impacts on people. Thank you for drilling down into the issue.
I don't think Trump understands (or cares) about how NIH research is done. Many of the critical studies designed to ultimately cure serious health conditions are longitudinal (testing over very specific times). Were these to be interrupted the entire project would be jeopardized, wasting millions, delaying the advancement, and harming the participants.
It's now being reported, at 1306 EST, that funds have been un-frozen. This would be funny if it wasn't so destructive.
The universities that rely on these grants will be hit hardest. The University of Alabama Birmingham/UAB is in the top 1 percent of universities that receive NIH funding. Johns Hopkins and Massachusetts General Hospital are also up there as well. Transplantation medicine has benefited greatly from original research as a collaborative effort between UAB and Vanderbilt University. They have made xenotransplantation possible and we now have a woman in my state who is benefiting from it and at the moment is thriving. It pains me to know that we have a mad man in the Oval Office who is impeding medical progress. Perhaps we should be shaming him and those who are allowing him to get away with it.
DMJ; think of the grad students and postdocs in the lab that are trying to decide whether to pursue careers in academics vs government vs industry vs switch to investment banking., etc, etc.
Shaming won't help; the tumor cells have acquired checkpoint surface immunity from SCOTUS.
As one of my trumper-friends said yesterday, "I agree with his economic plans but I'm really bummed about all the humanitarian implications". My paraphrased response, Darwinism on steroids so be it. Red states not only depend more on federal $$ than blue states but the average life expectancies of red state populations are 10yr shorter vs blue states. Go wrap your head around that. And then please explain how to quickly separate radical economic plans from their humanitarian implications.
Current shock&awe plan: carpet-bomb, flame-throw and kick all the beehives as quickly and as hard as you can. Let the smoking holes in the ground smolder, dead bodies pile high, toxic plumes sink deeper into our aquifers, newly homeless souls build larger encampments and career government workers suffer physically, spiritually and psychologically. Then wait for the libs to mount some milquetoast legal/civil rights response before rinsing&repeating.
A sentient, majority, pragmatic, approach: Propose reasonable change in small integrated steps.
Before the first Trump administration many government scientists offloaded critical data that were likely to be removed from government databases and websites to safe locations, often offshore. Let's hope that the same thing happened this time because the destruction of vital information considered to be ideologically impure is much more likely this time.
Yes, totally agree that given the current (illegal) assault on where our taxes get spent and this pernicious attempt to frighten basic bioscience PI’s to hide their “ideologically impure” research activities, I’m hoping my terabyte thumb drive can backup all my lab’s unpublished data before the JackBoots come to shutter my GC-MS, unplug my sequencer, lock my Revco and thaw my cell bank.
What, Me Worry?
Ill never forget when Reagan made deep cuts to social spending, they had to close the State Hospital in Denver turning hundreds of severely mentally ill out onto the streets. I lived in Capitol Hill at the time. You would see them wandering aimlessly and sometime laying in the gutters. It lasted into winter. The Baptists opened up a coffeehouse and local churches collected warm clothing and blankets for them. I don't know who fed them or where they slept. Many may have froze to death, we'll never know.
Maybe I'm wrong, but aren't the federal taxes I pay then disbursed through federal programs and grants? If those are on "pause," can I "pause" my federal tax payments as well? I still haven't received my 24 W-2 yet. Does the IRS even have the capacity to process tax filings with all this fuckery going on?
My partner wonders if he will get his tax refund--heck, even his paycheck--now that DOGE is taking control of the US Treasury's payment system.
Medical Schools are major NIH grant recipients Their survival and ours franklynrely upon the research that is born and devlops ar medical schools and their research labs. This Administrations action are a sin and is an attack on thinking and innovation in health.