Excited about our new paper led by postdoc Jacob Feder, which examines social organization variation of baboons and their relatives. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Jacob's website here: jacobfeder.weebly.com UMass news release here: www.umass.edu/news/article...

Yup that’s Gary! I’ll never forget how in one of his 2022 senate campaign ads, he had hit a blunt then set the confederate flag on fire 😂 www.npr.org/2022/02/10/1...

Breaking NEWS!! Federal judge rules DOGE illegally terminated NEH grants last year in a summary judgment in favor of plaintiffs AHA, ACLA, and MLA, and orders the restoration of 1400 terminated grants

The letter of intent is due at the end of June. Contact me if you are interested in applying to the fellowship as part of being a graduate student in my lab for Fall 2027. www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons...

How is this being treated as normal? A Republican governor is declaring a state of emergency to cancel n ongoing election for Congress. If you think this is ends with redistricting, you are not paying attention.

Trump ousts National Science Board members wapo.st/3P3DSY2

“I knew it was risky to speak out, but my responsibility to Stripes and the First Amendment was paramount,” she said The troops, Ms. Smith said in the interview, “deserve to have the unfiltered news, not what the Defense Department wants them to hear.” www.nytimes.com/2026/04/23/b...

Journalists who are still attending the WHCD this year don't seem to get just how much things have changed. It isn't 1998. You're not going to pose for cute photos with the West Wing stars at "nerd prom." You're enabling a regime who's assaulting your own profession & you're torching your career.

NEW: NSF has been funding research at a fraction of its historic rate. Last week, the agency finally began distributing money to its directorates and is now likely to pick up the grantmaking pace. But these allocations also amount to substantial cuts across the sciences. My reporting:

Congrats to MJ!! umass.edu/news/article...

2/2 "Trump has touted the layoffs of hundreds of thousands of government employees from their “boring federal jobs” as one of his crowning achievements." Especially because so many were held by Black people, primarily Black women. They're positively giddy about that. msmagazine.com/2026/02/05/b...

“I think the biggest thing that we can point to is that we’ve cut government employment by 300,000 workers,” he said. “Those are jobs that are very high-paying that are gone forever.” 1/ www.commondreams.org/news/hassett...

Kim: Three weeks of the war in Iran could have funded vision, hearing, and dental coverage for every senior in America on Medicare. I mean, it just gives you a sense of the trade-off.

Donald Trump wants to spend $1.5tn on 'Defense'. $1.2tn would provide Universal Healthcare. No more stupid wars and no more poverty and death. Get a President who will choose Healthcare and not War.

The U.S. administration released the FY 2027 Budget Request this morning, proposing deep cuts to science funding once again. While there are similarities in the proposed cuts between FY26 and FY27, the final FY26 appropriations show the impact of advocacy in action.

Excited and honored to be named a AAAS Fellow! www.umass.edu/news/article... @sbs-umass.bsky.social @umassamherst.bsky.social

What happened to "America First"?

Gomez to Gabbard and Racliffe: "If the president can just ignore what you're doing, why do you even have a job? Why even advise him? You're saying the president can say tomorrow China is an imminent threat no matter what the intelligence says, and then he can take his own action."

No more excuses for funding social programs.

Hegseth: The world, the Middle East, our ungrateful allies in Europe, even segments of our own press should be saying one thing to President Trump: Thank you.

This is the quintessence of narcissistic sociopathy. And just plain stupidity. From @anneapplebaum.bsky.social:

HUGE: Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — Trump's former personal lawyer who was also responsible for Ghislaine Maxwell's transfer to a cushy club fed — has intervened to block the DEA from providing details of a mysterious Epstein investigation to my Finance Committee team.

Wyden to Gabbard: "Last year, your agencies testified 'Iran's large conventional forces are capable of inflicting substantial damage to an attacker, executing regional strikes & disrupting shipping, particularly through Hormuz.' In other words, every problem were seeing now was predicted"

Kash Patel refused to deny that the FBI is buying up Americans' location data. This is a shocking end run around the 4th amendment and exactly why we need to pass real privacy reforms NOW.

Q: You don’t regret that people might’ve lost important income to support their lives? A: No, I think it was more important to reduce the federal deficit. Q: Ok. Did you reduce the federal deficit? A: No, we didn’t.

My sources say it was former president John Barron

Starmer: "We will not be drawn into the wider war ... we cannot allow the war in the Gulf to turn into a windfall for Putin"

Hello?

Legacy media is not up to this moment. Six years ago I started Democracy Docket with its readers not private investors in mind. Now it has more than 400,000 free subscribers and 60,000 paying members. But to protect democracy, it needs to grow and scale. Sign-up now. bit.ly/4qmEiFz

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Luttig: Every single time Donald Trump opens his mouth or takes an action, the American people are forced to go into court and litigate. That’s the tragic place America finds itself in today. It is only the Supreme Court that is standing in the way of the American people saving their country.

Remember: There is nothing natural or inevitable about extreme inequality; it’s the result of an economic system that values wealth and power over human dignity and justice. It doesn't have to be this way.

This is a good lesson for journalists: Use plain language to state true things clearly.

Slotkin: "If Russia is helping to kill US forces, we have crossed a rubicon. We have to take decisive action on that. Instead, we're giving them breaks on oil. They're making a ton of money."

They either didn't know Iran would shut down the Strait of Hormuz or they knew and didn't have a plan. Either way - just totally clear they don't give a damn about what this war means for hardworking Americans.

Chris Murphy: "I Just came from a two hour, closed door classified briefing on the war. It just confirmed to me it's totally incoherent. We are not gonna be able to achieve any of our stated objectives ... this is a disaster of epic proportions, a 10 day debacle"

Murphy: "Literally in my other ear I'm listening to Ted Cruz on another network explain why this mission is so essential to destroy the nuclear program. I may have to walk over there and tell him the admin is now briefing that getting rid of the nuclear program has nothing to do with this mission."

Kim: The vast majority of what I hear in these classified briefings can be said publicly, but they intentionally do this to as a tactic to be able to prevent the American people from hearing and questioning what it is that they're doing. They know that the American people do not want a war

NBC’s Richard Engel: “The White House meme campaign is outraging many former US military commanders… they say only someone who has never really seen combat would think it’s a joke and put out material like this.”

If you’re roughly my age, it’s wild to reflect on the optimism for the future Americans felt when Obama was elected — young Americans spontaneously took to the streets to celebrate! — and contrast with what we face today. The falloff over the past 18 years is hard to process.

So far the war in Iran has cost an estimated $5.5 billion. That's roughly $1 billion per day. $41,666,667 per hour. $11,574 per second. People do not want this. They want a living wage. They want healthcare. They want to be able to afford a home. They want their basic needs met.

Let me be clear: I’m glad Kristi Noem was fired. But we still have to abolish ICE.

Kristi Noem has done a stunning amount of damage and it’s good she’s gone. But this doesn’t change the fact that we need a complete overhaul of DHS, impartial investigations into the killings of two American citizens, and information on children that were taken from Minnesota.