‘Maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t have let Elon Musk and the cargo-shorts militia cut USAID funding in the first place.’ www.esquire.com/news-politic...

If you are a member of a scientific or educational society, please contact them and ask them what they are doing to fight this. They should be releasing statements, calls to action, explainers, talking points, or drafting letters for their members to sign.

Only 102 public comments so far on the biggest threat to publicly funded science in my lifetime. Please comment if you can. I know this sounds like "vote harder" but we have to keep fighting www.regulations.gov/document/OMB...

🧵 Public science in the US has taken some heavy hits over the last year, but the White House OMB is proposing a series of changes that will result in a TKO for science as we know it unless we fight back. Here's what's happening, and why it matters. 1/n

NEW: A lot of bad has happened to American science over the last year but nothing comes even close to what’s about to happen if we don’t speak out in opposition to the OMB rule changes and I hope @aaas-socsci.bsky.social @apsphysics.bsky.social and others will launch public campaigns about this. 🧪🔭⚛️

Here's a great training from @peerresearch.bsky.social explaining how researchers can provide the most effective public comments! static1.squarespace.com/static/68c72...

Feeling validated that I stopped using their antibodies a few years ago

Are you a US based scientist with federal funding? Do you have international collaborators? Do you have international trainees? Do you care about the future of science in the US? If so, this is a MUST READ and REPOST 🧪 elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of...

"OMB also proposes to add a provision that agencies may consider an applicant’s history of questionable practices based on publicly available and verifiable information"

"The plan is to kill off publicly funded academic science in this country." Correct. And that means killing off the whole US science and innovation industry. Because it's all built on a foundation of basic research—which. can. only. be. funded. by. public. dollars.

Scientific and intellectual freedom will be destroyed. Even where research currently "align[s] with the President’s policy priorities", researchers will not have the freedom to report accurately the results of their investigations lest their funding be terminated "at any time for any reason."

If these changes go through, it will be impossible to do effective science in the United States. Logistically, labs will not be able to function under these constraints. Team science—vital to almost every discipline—will be impossible under the rules around international collaboration.

5) And then there are bizarre overreaches, even if small in comparison: Requiring funding agencies to provide advance approval at the time of grant submission to attend a conference. Banning page charges making it impossible to comply with existing federal open access funding mandates.

4) International scientific collaboration is severely restricted. For the better part of a century the greatest strength of US science has been its position as a focal point of international research activity. This policy dooms US science to inevitable irrelevance.

3) Any grant can be terminated for any reason at any time—a devastating change that makes it impossible hire personnel, plan experiments, conduct field studies, or carry out most of the day-to-day activities that constitute effective science.

A few critical points: 1) Program officers will be replaced by political appointees in the grantmaking process. The role of peer review—originally introduced into US funding agencies for large part to prevent political interference with scientific research—is strongly diminished.

This has been bubbling up for a while. If enacted, it will formalize the illegal termination of grants and undermine the federal government's role as a trusted partner in accelerating R&D. How do teams plan, hire, and build over the long-term if OMB builds in punishment as a precondition?

“agencies may consider an applicant’s history of questionable practices based on publicly available and verifiable information.” Potential perma bans for any University which ever supported any type of DEI activity.

BREAKING: New proposed OMB regulation, applying to all federal grants, requiring grant reviews by senior political appointees and re-emphasizes that "peer review remains advisory and does not replace agency discretion". #standupforscience public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-10817.pdf

"It’s going to be people with substance versus people with shallow knowledge. It’s going to be mastery versus faking it. It’s going to be people with good taste versus tacky. I trust you will put in the work necessary to be on the right side of those battles.”

I went to Eastern DRC with @drtedros.who.int during the 2019 Ebola outbreak. There were attacks. Health workers died. I called that story The Ebola Wars. The current outbreak will almost certainly be much worse. My heart goes out to millions of Congolese who have been neglected for so long.

🆕For @Forbes: 80+ Chambers Of Commerce Raise Alarm On STEM Talent Exodus, R&D Funding It's not just universities - business is getting more engaged in federal R&D advocacy and voicing concerns around #STEM talent loss due to funding uncertainty www.forbes.com/sites/shalin... #scipol #scipolicy

AI companies are writing their own constitutions. Meanwhile, a shared vocabulary for contesting algorithmic power has been traveling across red and blue states, from legislatures to civil society. New from me in @science.org: "A Civic Grammar for AI Rights" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧵

informative brief by @celinegounder.com

President of MIT not mincing words today in @statnews.com www.statnews.com/2026/05/27/s...

“the language of chem used to be German &…only in the past 50yrs did [German]stop being a requirement for chem degrees in the US ‘20 yrs from now…what is going to be the language of science?Is it going to be English? I don't know that for certain.’It is a sobering thought”🧪 @holdenthorp.bsky.social

This Ebola response has me so freaking angry US Public Health Service officers are being deployed to Kenya - they'll be providing medical care to Americans at high risk of developing Ebola But if these officers get symptoms of Ebola? 🤷‍♀️ NOT how we should be treating those serving their country

Again - we should be supporting, not punishing, Americans who serve their country. "Foreign Service employees are there because the U.S. government sent them. They are entitled to the same standard of care that has always applied, including the right to come home." 💜 💚

4/ The US response to Ebola in 2014-2016 was exemplary. We should learn from - not hide from - what we learned there. Both our successes and what we should have done differently.

3/ US tax payers already fund these special facilities, called Regional Emerging Special Pathogen Treatment Center (RESPTC) So let's use them!

And this! 😡 1/2 “We know that their chances of getting through an Ebola infection would be higher in specialized units that have been designed to care for them,” said Dr. Tom Inglesby, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“So this is already an outbreak that has moved beyond the point in outbreaks when chance factors can lead to the outbreak kind of fading away quickly on its own.” Quote from Richard Hatchett, CEO of Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. www.bmj.com/content/393/...

So, is Ebola just the first step to bar citizens from US entry? What is next? How about HIV? Or what will even count as “disease”? Who will decide which citizens with what “disease” can re-enter their own country?! I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ll work to expand this in the future.

So here's what happened to my lab (and @viralemergence.org). www.nature.com/articles/d41...

You may recognize names like "Hantavirus" and "Ebola virus." But "Andes virus" & "Bundibugyo virus" may not ring a bell. I wrote about how recent outbreaks highlight virus diversity, and our difficulty putting names on it. Yet our survival depends getting names right. Gift link: nyti.ms/4dzRPqn

I keep thinking I’m done being shocked. It is abundantly clear there is a vendetta against anything that gives joy or laughter and helps people. I cannot believe the brilliant researchers who have been targeted and criminalized. Easy to demolish, hard to rebuild. www.npr.org/2026/05/21/n...

This is why we need trusted folk already in these places, before outbreaks like Ebola hit--& why funding cuts to WHO and USAID forced many of those people who were working there to leave. Trust of the community is critical when you're asking them to do things like change funeral/burial rituals.

“If your neighbour’s house is on fire, you don’t wait and watch. You help to put it out before the fire spreads to yours. That’s the interconnected world we live in, and an important lesson for all politicians watching the crisis unfold.” Excellent from @profdevisridhar.bsky.social

The world is full of parasites and bacteria and viruses that can make you sick and kill you. There are thousands of the lm. They exist out there, evolve and aren’t engineered by humans or are part of a vicious plot to make you get a vaccine to stop you getting sick.

Getting caught up on the latest on Ebolavirus and Hantavirus now that the semester is over and am thinking lots about this prescient piece from @edyong209.bsky.social in 2018 (and not just because of the description of the Nebraska facility) www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

Good article. No doubt, the rare species of ebola virus made it hard to detect this outbreak. But that doesn’t make it okay. Snapping into action at the first sign that a novel virus is causing a deadly outbreak is exactly what we need to be prepared for a pandemic. We failed this test.

I usually get a bit out of touch with the news as the semester is ending. When I first saw reports about this, I was confused about how I missed reading about this for so long that case numbers got THIS high. I’m realizing this wasn’t a me/end of semester problem

Vaccines are starting to gain traction in cancer treatment. A DNA based vaccine is a potential treatment for glioblastoma. Developed by Geneos Therapeutics, it transforms “cold” tumors into “hot” tumors that can be targeted by the patient’s own immune system. 🧪 medicine.washu.edu/news/persona...

Cassidy’s vote to convict Trump turned out to be mostly symbolic (not his fault. McConnell couldn’t muster the votes). But his vote to confirm RFK Jr. will have real world consequences. Children will die from measles. Parents will be afraid to get their kids screened for autism.

3 reasons why the travel bans are a bad option vs. enhanced screening: a) they are racist & inequitable b) they make it much harder to get assistance into the countries to fight the epidemic b) they stigmatize disease & push contacts and cases under the radar this all makes the situation worse.

Peru declares health emergency declared amid 231 confirmed and 115 suspected measles cases Read more at: https://beaconbio.org/en/report/?reportid=3e431eb8-9fc8-4f40-af9c-e5de39a68233&eventid=5ac5f370-1a28-4b3c-9ad0-9c422e8aa70d&utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialpost

Mr. Anti-lockdown Jay Bhattacharya authorized the quarantine of a hantavirus patient. I can’t. I’m done. Like, L-O-fucking-L TWF reality gets in the way of your dumb ideology. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/u...

The mandatory quarantine "was authorized by Jay Bhattacharya, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention" Well, that's a turnaround....

A year ago I warned what would happen if the US tore down our disease detection system around the world With Hantavirus & Ebola we are seeing VERY clearly what we’ve lost And why it matters Read my @theatlantic.com piece from last year outlining what happened www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

This week on episode 1321, TWiV explains how cross-reactive anti-prophage antibodies and bacterial hetero-resistance is implicated in phage therapeutic failure and how phages communicate across species to shape microbial ecosystems. @bioprofbarker.bsky.social @jrrmicro.bsky.social