TONIGHT: Former USAID official @nenrich.bsky.social talks to @lawrenceodonnell.bsky.social on The #LastWord at 10pm ET.

"Scientific judgment exercised by career civil servants, vetted through multiple layers of peer accountability, is categorically different from political discretion exercised by appointees whose job is to advance the President's priorities...

Biologists say that the algae bloom in Trumps’s reflecting pool was caused by hasty construction. A guy who snorts cocaine off toilet seats and brings raccoon penises home for “further study” says kids should swim in it to avoid getting autism. For busy Americans, it can be hard to know who to trust

In Cote D’Ivoire, 70% of HIV medication was provided by USAID via PEPFAR. Over 2,000 health clinics have closed globally due to USAID cuts. In Somalia, child malnutrition has risen 73%

Musk says not a single person has died due to him axing USAID. Sadly, part of my job involves tracking aid spending. So here’s a thread with just some of the people who lost their lives because of USAID cuts

I wrote a book! It's called WHY WE ASK WHY, and it's about the human drive to explain, combining psychology, philosophy, and stories. It will be released on October 6, but it's currently available for pre-order from Barnes & Noble at 25% off with code PREORDER25.

So happy and proud to see this paper out in @natcomms.nature.com today! We show that traces of human DNA can persist on cave walls for thousands of years. Absolutely fantastic work by the wonderful Alba Bossoms Mesa at @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social and a great team! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

ADA leaders were forcibly removed from their own meeting for sharing copies of an ADA OpEd critical of Jay Bhattacharya. Thanks to you it's now got >125,000 views. As CDC interim director, Jay also blocked publication of this paper because it showed that COVID vaccines work. You know what to do.

30, 50, 70, and 100-year sentences for the Prairieland defendants so far. Dark day, man. Truly.

This amount would fund the US National Science Foundation for a decade. 🧪

"Program managers would normally rush to inform potential and current grantees about such dramatic changes. But the memo tells program managers to keep their mouths shut. 'This information is highly confidential...Please do not communicate anything to PIs.'” www.science.org/content/arti...

(1/X) It's become popular to describe people as "politically heterodox". I've been wondering what it means in practice and I've settled on a good definition. It means you're not an enthusiastic Trump supporter but you spend nearly all of your time criticizing "the left"...

This is an unfathomably evil act that will be a foul stain on our nation’s history forever. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/19/w...

this may well be the defining joke of our era theonion.com/guy-who-suck...

Breaking | The Trump Administration is negotiating a deal to repaint Reflecting Pool to prior color, allow algae to stay.

If you're going to Cogsci, you should check out this workshop being organized by @davidnagy.bsky.social and @hanqizhou.bsky.social from hmc-lab.com, together with an all-star cast of co-organizers and speakers. I'll be heading there straight from teaching at @bamb-school.bsky.social

When the OMB rule proposal dropped, @standupforscience.net set the goal of 10k public comments through our portal...that felt like a huge number to me. Y'all, we just passed 6,500! And there are over 30k on the gov site!

Every person in the US gets to pay $1000 for Trump's Iran war

One thing I can never, ever forgive the MAHA leader RFK Jr for is him peddling the dangerous and deadly lie that women who get the HPV vaccine are at higher risk of cervical cancer He makes 💰💰💰 in law suits against the HPV vaccine maker

Edward Luce in the Financial Times about Musk:

I don’t have the tears to express how much this hurts my soul. The guy who just became a trillionaire cut aid to the poorest people in the world, resulting in 14 million tragic, horrendous, avoidable deaths by 2030. This world fucking sucks. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Update: The flag on Princeton's grants was removed on June 4, around the same time NSF got this letter from Democrats on the House Science Committee, demanding details. democrats-science.house.gov/imo/media/do...

🧵 Thread: Does the internet threaten democracy? I argue that it does in my latest piece in Science: doi.org/10.1126/scie... Here's the short version. 1/9 1/10

Imagine a world where memory is edible. Think “piano lesson pills” and “professor burgers.” In the 70s, a series of strange worm experiments made it seem possible. www.quantamagazine.org/are-memories...

Here's the article. diabetesjournals.org/care/article...

There are almost no crustaceans in the deep ocean. Not because they would get crushed, but because they would DISSOLVE. The cold & high pressure cause changes to water that make it very corrosive to calcium carbonate shells. But there's one crustacean who solves this problem with ALUMINUM ARMOR.

It's happening 🚨 House GOP representatives are about to introduce a bill that would completely eliminate subsidized student loans. They are trying to make it impossible to go to college unless you can afford to pay for it upfront.

Computational models are a key part of science but discovering new ones is hard! DataDIVER discovers concise models from data, which surface new mechanistic ideas and clear predictions for future experiments From Google Deepmind Neuroscience Lab + collaborators www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This is really important. “More than 100 retired NASA astronauts have banded together to form a new nonpartisan organization…” and its members believe deeply in “principles such as the rule of law, checks and balances, and the peaceful transition of power.” Follow @astronauts4america.bsky.social

If this pisses you off…get in. Register for our Emergency Science Meeting, yell at your Congress critters, and leave a public comment all in one place: fight2win.standupforscience.net

tl,dr; Scientists no longer allowed to use federal funding to publish, attend meetings, or talk to the public. They cannot collaborate internationally. Grants can be cancelled for any reason, at any time, political appointees have a final say over what gets funded, and who gets funded.

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. 🧪🔭⚛️

So honored to receive the Glushko prize, and just grateful that @cogscisociety.bsky.social is willing to recognize whatever I’m doing as the study of the “mind” :)

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

Many people write grant applications assuming their reader is engaged, but the opposite is more likely. Your evaluators are time- and attention-poor, so you should design your application with this in mind. This slide is part of a talk I'm giving today on writing grant applications

BREAKING: California will impose a 100% tax on payments distributed from Trump’s Jan. 6th “slush fund.”

Truly fascinating choice of reporter to put on this one

Can’t believe that Andy Kim is in two of the most haunting pictures of the last few years.

A livestream of a volcano in the Philippines captured a meteor crashing to Earth today. What are the odds? Mayon Volcano, Location: Albay, Luzon, Philippines

You're looking at an "Upside Down Jellyfish" (genus Cassiopea) & I think you can guess how they got their name. This is them most of the time: Not only tentacles up, but on the sea floor. But that's not the interesting thing. The interesting thing is they have no brain, but still can sleep.

An AI writing pages of proof like this, about a well-known unsolved problem, and having it be *correct* is absolutely insane.

Trump’s theft of nearly $2 billion from the Treasury raises eyebrows in some liberal circles

MIT announces “the number of grad students will be 20 percent less than it was in 2024 — about 500 fewer students” www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...

Striped cuckoo (Tapera naevia) chicks utilize specialized, cryptic plumage that mimics the texture and color of pinecones for camouflage. #birds

There has been a LOT of research on misinformation over the last decade. In a new paper (for Annual Review of Psychology), @dgrand.bsky.social and I attempt to distill the key points of consensus, highlight major disagreements, and point to future directions. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

It's VERY important to understand what's happening with the NASA 🔭 budget. White House proposed cuts to everything *but* Artemis. The GOP-led House proposal restores the size of the budget BUT shifts spending, which is to say *House committee and White House agree on cutting NASA astrophysics* 🧪⚛️

NEW: A serious staffing shortage — of the Trump admin's own making — is delaying the agency's ability to send billions to universities around the country, leaving labs reeling in the meantime. “I thought we were at rock bottom”, a senior NIH official said. “We are below rock bottom now.”

“The fact is that we’re looking at a real drop in research being done by the people of MIT… Frankly, it’s a loss for the nation. When you shrink the pipeline of basic discovery research, you choke off the flow of future solutions, innovations and cures — & you shrink the supply of future scientists”

I finally got to watch this stunningly clear explanation of transformers from the amazing Idan Blank. I agree with Ev, Idan is the best teacher I know. This lecture is a gift to the field. Thank you Idan! www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGMn...