DC-based friends, mark your calendars. www.atlasarts.org/events/tela-... After the concert, there's a science panel w/ @momedinamunoz.bsky.social & others. Raises $$ to build a coral gene bank & marine lab in Honduras. Vetted & endorsed by Storymaker fellow & trusted researcher @drcarl.bsky.social

And there is a modest strike fund (quite close to its goal!) to support striking @propublicaguild.org workers. If you have the capacity to donate www.gofundme.com/f/support-pr... (h/t @ethanmarcotte.com)

We've released a major update to our #NIH tracking at Grant Witness. We now publish a complete, multi-source history of events to track the complex administrative and legal history of each grant. grant-witness.us/posts/2026-0...

New: 150 unionized ProPublica workers are on strike TODAY over AI, layoff protections, wages, and more. They're asking readers to not visit ProPublica or engage with content on other platforms. It's the first work stoppage of its kind at the newsroom. www.theverge.com/news/908401/...

Also a perennial reminder that in times of fast-moving news, a TON of unverified photos, videos, audio, and 'news stories' circulate, go viral, and perpetuate misinformation. Please take time to double-check things before posting and/or sharing! Verifying reports can take time.

@lizneeley.bsky.social Thanks so much for the concern. Don't write us off yet. Tons of solicitations were archived last year at the same time as LTER and are now coming back. The program is still going.

Oh no. NSF Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program shuttered. This one leaves me winded. A good story from 2025 by @seattletimes-rss.bsky.social offers insight into what we are losing: www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

Each Friday night, I write a briefing on what happened in US science & higher ed. 🧪  Apr 3 (Year 2, Week 14) - president’s FY27 budget cuts NSF & EPA funding by 50% - Forest Service closing 57 of 77 research facilities - Florida targets sociology & so much more buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

Join the Emergency Campaign to Support Higher Education's Distributed Organizing Training on April 8 at 7pmET. This training explores the foundations of base-building, what makes teams strong and scalable, and how to coach teams to succeed. Sign up at link below ⬇️

Insightful thread, if long (a metacritique, as you'll see if you read to the end, which you should!)

New at @nature.com: what the #ArtemisII crew will see as they fly past the Moon on Monday 🧪🔭 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

🧪Hello all! I'm here with a #sourcerequest for @nature.com. I'm writing up a piece on low-tech lab tools. We place a lot of importance on technological innovation, but what are the simple things (DIY maybe?) that you find yourself turning to again and again? Please RT and let me know!

I'm so excited by & curious about this experiment -- basically Ann Arbor is standing up a second, municipal power utility, devoted to clean energy, to operate alongside its IOU. Unique in the world, far as I know:

University of Illinois Springfield colleagues are on strike, for good reason! "UIS accounts for 2% of all of the uni system’s spending in the current fiscal year.... UIUC receives 44% and the UI Chicago 31% while the rest goes to the system’s admin and uni’s hospital."

Did you know that a majority of what we know about how to reduce structure loss in wildfires came from Forest Service research that was at the time pretty controversial and not being done elsewhere?

The whole-Earth-at-night photo from the #Artemis II mission was brighter than many expected. That was mostly due to camera settings; here’s another pic taken just before with diff settings. Digital photography is always subjective—even before processing! (HT @swapnakrishna.com @jasonc0.bsky.social)

Each Friday night, I write a briefing on what happened in US science & higher ed. 🧪  Apr 3 (Year 2, Week 14) - president’s FY27 budget cuts NSF & EPA funding by 50% - Forest Service closing 57 of 77 research facilities - Florida targets sociology & so much more buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

A new bill would block UC executives from being paid by university vendors, a first-in-the-nation proposal targeting potential conflicts of interest.

I know a lot of researchers who should know AAT exists. “A disabled-led, unapologetically intersectional transcription and closed captioning social enterprise offering transcription support for researchers, by researchers.”

I first tried to build a collection of congressional press releases starting in 2013. I think I might have finally done it. Introducing Congress Press:

What will happen to the 82 USFS experimental forests around the country? Many sites have decades-long experiments that are tracking how forests are changed by timber harvesting practices and climate change. As I say here, “you can't just pick up an experimental forest site and move it to SLC.”

Saving SBE starts before the bill is written. SBE needs a distinct FY27 appropriation. If your sch. is on the list, get a group of colleagues to meet w your House/Sen. offices. Esp. for Republican seats, direct constituent comms matter. Timeline/templates/updates: www.paigeamormino.com/pages/9337

"Fascist efforts to control a populace employ a familiar set of strategies: Establish the purity of a people—white Christians, in the case of the U.S.—as under threat by outsiders; undermine empathy for outsiders by dehumanizing them; create a mythical past of national greatness;..." (1/3)

After 15 whole minutes of discussion, the Endangered Species Committee (100% Trump appointees) decided that oil & gas companies in the Gulf of Mexico don't need to exert any caution anymore to protect endangered whales, turtles, or other wildlife. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

After taking time to connect with the Pretti family and with their consent, we are honored to share that we have created the Alex Pretti Nursing Scholarship. For those interested, you can learn more and make a gift here: crowdfund.umn.edu/campaigns/Al...

"At an internal all-hands meeting on Friday, NSF leaders announced that they would dissolve the agency’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences directorate based on the budget request, according to two NSF staff members who shared information anonymously in order to speak freely"

Here's a big one from NIH. It remains Trump admin policy to - Cap indirects at 15% (repeatedly rebuffed by courts and Congress) - Multi-year fund *all* grants. As a reminder, this has the effect of dramatically decreasing the total number of labs and projects supported by the government.

Some science cuts in Trump's proposed FY27 budget ❌ NIH: -$5B, including all of NIEHS, NIMHD, FIC & NCCIH. ❌ EPA: -4.6B ❌ NSF: -3.8B ❌ NASA Science: -3.4 Billion ❌ NOAA: -1.8B, including the entire Oceanic and Atmospheric Research budget ($605M) ❌ AHRQ: All of it. -$296M, 100% And there's more.

NSF update Still looking very bleak. 4/5

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/....

This is a really helpful summary of the various higher ed lawsuits against the Trump administration, although it's important to emphasize that some changes are moving forward more quickly through other regulations (such as language in new grant agreements).

If anyone on here works at one of the 57 forest service research stations that are going to be closed and you want to tell me about your work there and why it's important, reach out: [email protected]

I appreciated this article by Michael Taggart, on the temptation to use some of these coding tools and the pitfalls, from the POV of an experienced software engineer. This is why it's important to fight these issues collectively rather than at the individual level. taggart-tech.com/reckoning/

Boston University’s student paper, The Daily Free Press, reports about the multiplication of pride flags on campus following the administration’s attempted crackdown on free speech.

If the posts in this thread are of interest to you, I promise you want to be following the incredible team at www.talkscratch.com - a weekly newsletter of interviews, essays & delightfully funny but honest chats about how writers are surviving

The question about losing status as a country that has eliminated measles has to do with the source of infections. What we are looking for is repeated independent introductions from elsewhere vs “If there was continuous transmission for a year, that means the U.S. has lost its status”

Beware the dread Chortlemuffin

On his 1st anniversary of starting as #FDA commissioner — & the 1st anniversary of FDA losing 3,500 staff in DOGE-ordered cuts — Marty Makary said FDA is trying to hire 3,000 scientists, inspectors & support staff. @lizzylawrence.bsky.social heard his address. www.statnews.com/2026/04/01/f...

The Artemis II Crew is launching for a mission around the Moon in three minutes. Live launch video www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf_U...

I'll read anything @neillewisjr.bsky.social writes, it's true. But I think all of us who care about public health should read his latest on the work ahead. The Importance of Dreaming About (and Mobilizing to Create) Equitable Futures read.dukeupress.edu/jhppl/articl...

What could possibly go wrong? www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/h...

I'm worried about the US Forest Service* and just saw morethanjustparks.substack.com/p/breaking-t... Please send me more reporting and analysis of this latest move as you see it? *among many MANY other things

📢 Journalism professors! Want to bring digital security into your classroom? FPF is offering a free virtual training program this summer to help you teach our J-school Digital Security Curriculum — no prior experience needed! Sign up by April 8 👇

For #NSF and #NIH watchers, Grant Witness now has interactive data on numbers of grants and total funding obligations, broken down by institute and directorate, new awards and non-competitive renewals. The stranglehold on new awards is still a disaster. grant-witness.us/funding_curv...

Today, MSF is going public with something we've been fighting behind closed doors for months: Gilead will not sell us their new HIV drug, lenacapavir. The sticking point isn't even price, they just refuse to sell. Open letter linked + explainer 🧵1/ www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/gilea...

Each Friday night, I write a briefing on what happened in US science & higher ed. 🧪  Mar 27 (Year 2, Week 13) - attacks on DEI via accreditation bodies & medical schools - missed deadline for CDC director nomination: measles still rising - #noKings & so much more buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

Arizona’s mountain snowpack dropped over 90% in just a few weeks. New from me on the results of a first-in-the-state aerial snow survey. news.asu.edu/20260325-env...

Each Friday night, I write a briefing on what happened in US science & higher ed. 🧪  Mar 27 (Year 2, Week 13) - attacks on DEI via accreditation bodies & medical schools - missed deadline for CDC director nomination: measles still rising - #noKings & so much more buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

Some real talk, on a Friday evening before #NoKings: This is a proposal designed to re-anchor our expectations. No Republican in Congress wants to walk the plank and vote for cuts to cancer research! We shld not fall for it. Our counter-proposal should be a 25% incr in govt support for research.

The leading cause of health disparities in this country, health inequity, is being struck from medical school curricula- this is a sad day for public health and medicine