EXCLUSIVE: In her first interview all year, Susan Monarez, CDC director for only 29 days, tells me why Trump/RFK fired her and where this is all headed. The CDC director is an “inherently political position, but that doesn’t mean that it has to be politically compromised”, she tells @nature.com.

NEW: The Supreme Court *refuses* to let Trump fire the Fed's Lisa Cook—for now. Instead, the court agrees to hear the case in January. Cook may continue to serve in the meantime.

Lightning round of what’s closed and what’s open during this government shutdown. Got questions? Drop them in the replies and I’ll work to answer them through the day.

A lot of people think that every international student admitted means one fewer spot for domestic students, when the opposite is more likely true - the tuition revenue international students bring allows public universities to provide substantial discounts to domestic students, improving access.

Hello, I'm an evolutionary biologist in a film. I can identify any species from 30 base pairs of DNA, including human-alien hybrids. I quote Darwin and Gould ad libitum to compensate for my lack of emotional depth. Inexplicably, I'm unable to correctly pronounce 'genome' or 'drosophila'.

N. Case, Neon... (****): Aesthetic is a bit more subdued than her norm, but the arrangements reward close, repeated listens. The writing strikes an even balance between conventional structures and her more idiosyncratic, prose-poem style, too. She remains a fascinating storyteller and vital artist.

Tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Bioinformatics in the Department of Biology at the University of San Francisco usfca.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/USF_Fu...

The GRFP announcement from NSF cuts out an entire cohort of 2nd year students from consideration, without warning. This is so deeply unfair that it warrants a formal protest from the scientific community. If someone wants to work with me to craft an open letter and solicit signatures, LMK.

Looks like year 2 grad students can no longer apply for the NSF GRFP. I hope I am wrong. www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

Good morning, science friends. 1) It’s okay to laugh. 2) It’s okay to scream. 3) It’s okay to cry.

The Department of Human Genetics at the University of Michigan is looking for a new faculty colleague at the rank of Assistant Professor. Please share! careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

In Normal Times™️ this statement from Thune would be nbd. Right now it's a very good sign. “There needs to be accountability, and there needs to be transparency in this decision-making process, and ensure that it is governed by science,” he said.

I wonder how much basic academic science funded by the public underlies this new treatment for Huntington’s disease?

Don't forget to apply to our position in Evolutionary Genetics at U of South Carolina! In my experience it is a fantastic place to start a new lab, with friendly and supportive colleagues and many junior faculty in EEB! Review starts in 1 week (Oct 1)!

The disappearance of America’s leadership class at a time like this means that the rest of us have to be leaders. We can no longer wait to be led by those with the power and authority to lead. You must lead, I must lead, all of us must lead. We are the leaders we’ve been waiting for.

If anybody cares, there was a Science Vs. last week about the actual links between acetaminophen and autism. (Spoiler alert: the well-designed studies don't find one.)

Trust me, I feel this. Deeply. I don’t promise to have it figured out. But I am blocking two hours a day for what I call “this shit here”: the headlines from the majors, the 9 or so newsletters in areas I follow, a scroll through my subscribed content in Gmail, & then I clock back out.

NEW: Hours before a new entry ban is supposed to go into effect, the federal government officially acknowledges for the first time that the restrictions do NOT apply to people who currently have H-1B visas. Link: www.uscis.gov/sites/defaul...

Really cool story about long-distance pollen transport by migratory hoverflies. The actual research paper is here: doi.org/10.1111/1365...

Today, scientists know that genetics plays a role in many conditions and diseases. But back in the ’90s, geneticist Mary-Claire King was the first to link a gene to an inherited form of a common cancer.

"Assistant Professor - Plant Resilience to Climate Change at University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA *Application Deadline: 11/1/2025" Read more here: https://arabidopsis.org/news/jobs/view?file=20250919_UCB.pdf #PlantSciJobs

Happy to share the results of a long-haul post-doc project, now online @science.org, aiming at understanding the rules of transgeneration epigenetic inheritance over TEs in plants and its extent and impact in nature. More below! doi.org/10.1126/scie...

Join us at the Plant Science Research Institute of the University of Montreal to develop your research group in Plant Molecular Genetics: www.nature.com/naturecareer...

PROVO, Utah (AP) — Robert Redford, the Oscar-winning actor, director and godfather for independent cinema as Sundance founder, dies at 89.

🚨 Great fellowship opportunity for grad students! 🎓 A lot of folks are aware of the NSF GRFP but a lot less are aware of the similar DoD NDSEG. 💡 This competitive fellowship covers stipend and travel. It's a seriously great resource that not enough students know about. ndseg.sysplus.com

Three Associate Professor (or Professor) positions available at Oxford Biology. Come be my colleague! www.biology.ox.ac.uk/article/we-a...

Those who care about academic freedom, what studies have you seen that are helpful in understanding the correlation between perceived ideological bias & student/public confidence in higher ed? This was one I recall, which highlights partisan framing of the problem www.pewresearch.org/social-trend...

@aaup.org has prepared materials for faculty who face these threats and harassment. 6/ www.aaup.org/issues-highe...

I wrote a thing. As someone who survived the 1970s and kept the receipts.

Here is a plot of 4-year multi-year funded new R01s for 2015-2025. NIH has made some 4-year R01s late in the fiscal year to invest the last of the appropriation, but what is happening this year is quite different. I estimate that these new R01s are ~25% of the multi-year funding since July 1.

After lagging far behind, NIH now seems on pace to spend its entire $47 billion budget by Sept. 30 www.statnews.com/2025/09/12/n... via @statnews.com

The 2020s feel like an inverse of the 1960s: instead of a wave of permissiveness and expanding rights for women and minorities, we’re watching that progress recede. Then, as now, marked by violence against the leading voices of the cultural movement.

This song is going to be released soon and I think it will hit www.instagram.com/parispaloma/...

don't think it's a good thing to have a society this highly armed and this unstable

Job Alert! The University of Tübingen is hiring a FULL PROFESSOR (W3) in FUNCTIONAL ECOLOGY! Come and join our institute, and maybe our new excellence clusters @terra-cluster.org and @greenrobust.de. @gfoesoc.bsky.social @britishecologicalsociety.org @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social Please repost!

After a 4 yrs, colleague & I in collab w/ grad college to revive our GRFP grant writing workshop we ran through the ISU+KU SACNAS chapters, 2016-2021. Friday evening: lightning talks. Saturday: grant writing panel, broader impacts 2025, & 1on1 coaching with faculty for Grad students/Senior UGs.

The GRFP lives!! (due end of October) www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

Super excited about this new Open Rank tenure-track faculty search for the MSU Plant Resilience Institute. We successfully hired two excellent new faculty in our last search and we are hoping to build on that success with this search. careers.msu.edu/jobs/assista...

I thought this was a joke, but I just watched a video of Mike Johnson saying this, omg. This country is wearing me out.

This is not how science works Keep resisting, CDC

About this Florida vaccine story: When they were little - 1 yr and 3 1/2 - my two older boys, who’d had all their shots, got whooping cough. We asked their pediatrician what would’ve happened if they hadn’t been vaccinated. “Oh, they’d have died.”

I can

BREAKING: Trump unlawfully canceled Harvard's research grants, US judge rules reut.rs/46m6HVu

🧪 And House appropriators say: no cuts to NIH budget! House subcommittee version just came out (link below). Holds NIH flat at $48 billion. To be clear: this is far from over. But a good sign that science still matters across both sides of aisle. YOUR VOICE MATTERS!!

The lifetime return to college remains enormous: four years of study adds more than a million dollars to expected earnings. And that yields a funny conclusion that I like to remind my students about: It may not feel like it, but these might be the highest earning years of your career.

What's wrong with the obsession to consume high protein in your diet or via bars, supplements, or powders? A review of the data on efficacy and safety erictopol.substack.com/p/our-preocc...

This feels exactly right:

For those following the NIH budget fight, the next big development will be this Tuesday, Sept 2nd, with the House LHHS subcommittee markups. The bill text will likely come out late Monday. The House bill is likely to be closer to the president's budget request than the Senate's was, so be prepared.