Siri, what is the most predictable thing to be reported today?

I did not expect health insurance companies to be the good guys ever, but today they are. AHIP has announced that insurance companies will cover all vaccines recommended by ACIP through 2027. Because a judge stayed RFK Jr’s Temu ACIP, this means they will use recommendations by actual experts.

The implicit “problem” these white papers are dealing with is the TAs’ success at winning a favorable employment contract. The “solution” these white papers propose is to divest from reliance on grad students as teachers. Instead, we’ll use AI, undergrads, and anyone else we can exploit.

Excellent summary of how Vought’s proposed rule will destroy science. Please be ready to comment tomorrow, call Congress, tell your friends. If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to speak up, that moment is now.

a VRA map that recognizes discrete and compact communities and creates districts accordingly? illegal race discrimination. packing every black person they can find i to a single district crossing the whole state? colorblindness and equal protection thank you sam alito

This is an actual Thirteenth Amendment violation, because they have not been convicted of any crime.

SCOOP: The Trump administration is paying millions to quickly cover four enormous bronze horses with extra-thick 23.75 karat gold leaf. The money for the rush job is coming from National Park Service funds. In total, I found ~$100 mil spent on new DC beautification projects.

Important update: This morning NSF removed its internal flags on 3 of the 4 universities (Princeton's remains). We've updated our story to reflect this and the release of the new awards to Harvard and Duke.

An unapologetically angry post about what’s being done to US science:

I told y'all that Russell Vought wasn't through trying to destroy science in the US!

“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.

A near-miss incident and a deadly chemical accident in a single week have affected thousands and drawn scrutiny to federal rules around risk management at chemical plants

"Your generation’s upcoming battle … 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.” Dude just described MY generation's battle. Apparently, we're losing.

America! Fuck Yeah!

DEEP DIVE: The Trump administration is escalating efforts to unmask anonymous online critics, sending grand jury subpoenas to social media companies for their information. A court fight has been playing out in sealed proceedings in DC. With Jimmy Jenkins: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

This is North Korea level bullshit, and a total fucking disaster for science and for the United States alike. It doesn't matter whether it fails to pass; this kind of thinking is already penetrating NIH, NSF, NASA, etc and causing severe harm. NASEM, AAAS, AAUP, etc must condemn unequivocally.

“The call came from the White House: We have to get this done,” the person said.  About three months before the Pentagon announced plans to lend money to Vulcan Elements, Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm took an undisclosed stake in the company. @robert-faturechi.bsky.social

The U.S. Attorney doing this is apparently the same guy who just bragged about reforming his grand jury. Huh. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/u...

Scoop: NSF has been quietly blocking new funds and grants to four top universities: Duke, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. Dozens of proposals from PIs at these universities—and their collaborators—have been stuck at the Office of Award Management awaiting finalization for months.

The pressure has been enormous for months in case u can’t tell!! zeteo.com/p/trump-iran... @zeteo.com

I'm not sure most people appreciate how over-capitalized the AI industry is now. If AI companies can't shove AI into almost every facet of our lives, then they can't justify their revenue projections. Based on the size of the investments, AI needs to impact humanity on the scale of the railroad.

I can think of no benign reason this would happen.

NIH has allocated just 33% of its normal budget this year, putting critical medical breakthroughs at risk. Johns Hopkins President Ron Daniels and University of Kansas Chancellor Dr. Douglas Girod are calling on the government to release it before the damage becomes permanent. https://bit.ly/4f3GuzR

When can universities sue Trump for harassment?

What if taxing the rich works?

It's absolutely a low, but it's an aesthetic low not a substantive one. A blow to our national dignity more than our national well-being. Doesn't even make the top twenty lowest lows of the Trump administration, much less national history.

It's absolutely insane how the Nasdaq changed rules around its exchange to include SpaceX just 15 days of trading, allow less than 5% of free float, and require a weighting of multiple its float in the index. This is the largest wealth transfer in history from everyone's retirement to Elon.

In normal times, the fact that government officials at HHS blatantly lied to the public and got caught would be a scandal of unusual size. Everyone involved in this disinformation scheme against the people of the United States should be held accountable.

Reminder… Romney warned McConnell, McConnell ignored him… and he worried Trump would intentionally not send help…

Love it: the night after he was kicked off of CBS for good, Stephen Colbert hosted a public access show in southeast Michigan.

We found that Jeff Bezos paid zero taxes in 2007 and 2011. In fact, he reported making so little in 2011 that he even claimed and received a $4,000 tax credit for his children. Revisit our 2021 story:

Some notes now that I’ve seen the transcript of the hearing, thanks to @lizdye.bsky.social . First: the government dismissed the felony count in an effort to convince the judge not to make them produce full transcripts, knowing they showed serious misconduct.

Agree with @aaas.org on this one. Jim O’Neill is not qualified to run the NSF. Especially after they disbanded the advisory board. Tho not sure a public hearing is enough given the past approvals that have gone through public hearings. We need a public outcry. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/21/s...

When I was research faculty at the University of Georgia, I got to work with our on-campus slaughterhouse. Our Chemistry and Biology departments were next to the Poultry Science building. Now I'm in a School of Pharmacy at the University of Mississippi where students focus on patient care.

Bambu used code that was meant to be open in such a way that normal corporate capture vectors are illegal, and they tried to close their part anyway, so the test here is, can corporations steal with impunity?

Oh, the DoJ letter to Senators about the weaponization fund says Senators can apply too. Senators, I may have stolen $1.7bn from the American taxpayer but if you don't block it, you can have some! A naked attempt at bribery.

1. One of the clearest examples of pay-to-play politics you will ever see in last night's MAGA Inc. FEC filing.

FACT.. Solar farms do NOT destroy farm land. Agrivoltaics is a thing. you can have livestock or crops under solar farms. they do not "destroy" the land. you can take them down, and the land is still there to be used. #renewable

The bigger challenge is we have a handful of sociopaths who can circumvent and undermine democracy. We have no bigger challenge.

Many of the babies’ autopsy reports were clear: Vitamin K deficiency was the immediate cause of death, or contributed to it. The reports also included details about parents refusing the vitamin K shot, a long-standard injection, for their newborns.

Amazon's federal tax bill was CUT BY MORE THAN HALF in 2025, thanks to Trump's tax policies. So, if it was doubled in 2026, it would not even go back to what it was before. Thus, Bezos is essentially correct: it would not help teachers. Just stop harming them. www.wsj.com/business/tru...

ProPublica used leaked tax returns to calculate that through complex tax avoidance schemes, Jeff Bezos pays a tax rate of 0.98% www.propublica.org/article/the-... So if we doubled the taxes he pays, that would mean he'd still be paying less than 2%.

Not only is Trump the most corrupt president in U.S. history, you could make a persuasive case that about a dozen things he has done this term would earn him that title even if he’d done nothing else. And we’ve learned about two of those things just in the past week.

Democrats Shouldn’t Let Russell Vought Fly Under the Radar talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/democra...

The NAACP is urging Black athletes and fans to “withhold athletic and financial support” from public universities in states that “have moved to limit, weaken or erase Black voting representation”

$1M raise. Not salary. Raise. And people think the problem with universities are the faculty?

She said she "did her own research". Isn't that good enough? I was told that was good enough.

Welp. We’ll see what happens next. People like Jay Bhattacharya who spent the last 6 years belittling public health are now forced to adhere to its principles. It’s not surprising that after years of “medical freedom” agitprop one of the quarantined ship passengers wants to just walk out of there.

There’s a massive immigration operation in Memphis right now, but you may not have heard about it. Why? Community members face retaliation for trying to spread the word out, a lawsuit alleges.