10 ms·
Trump's NIH axed research grants even after a judge blocked the cuts
- hn_acker 1y agoThe full title is: > Trump's NIH Axed Research Grants Even After a Judge Blocked the Cuts, Internal Records Show
- voidUpdate 1y agoWhat is the administration's reason for cutting transgender research? Is it just "trans bad"?
- timschmidt 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war#2012%E2%80%93present:_Broadening_of_the_culture_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war#2012%E2%80%93prese...
- dymk 1y agoThat and “witches, 21st century edition”
- krapp 1y agoTo be fair "witches" were the culture war / moral panic of their time.
- gilleain 1y agoAn interesting fact I learned from this [1] youtube video was that the 'Malleus Maleficarum' (The Hammer of Witches) book was very concerned (among other things) with witches casting spells that caused male genitalia to vanish. 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIdcjeeYjaE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIdcjeeYjaE
- krapp 1y agoFear of penis-stealing witches is apparently a thing among African Christian communities as well. It's probably a constant in any culture that believes in some form of witchcraft or sorcery.
- pstuart 1y agoYes.
- senderista 1y agoIt's kind of odd that one of the main talking points on the right is that there isn't enough evidence to determine e.g. the long-term safety of puberty blockers, but then they want to defund all research investigating this question?
- pjc50 1y agoNo it isn't, when you understand that they're starting from the answer.
- matthewdgreen 1y agoMaintaining uncertainty has always been the goal of these ideological movements. That’s also why they’re so eager to slash NOAA and climate science. If you can’t see it coming, then you can’t vote to stop it.
- reverendsteveii 1y agoThis is really insightful and I hadn't realized it, but I can see where to some people there is value in being sure and wrong and that these conmen take advantage of the comforting nature of certainty regardless of correctness.
- Fomite 1y agoNot when you want to preserve it as a wedge issue.
- kelipso 1y agoGuess what the political biases of the people reviewing NIH proposals for funding are.
- alabastervlog 1y agoWhat's peculiar was that a bunch of the research was about whether things like hormonal transition are safe, what kind of side-effects or lasting harm there may be, et c. You know, the stuff they claim to be really worried about.
- pjc50 1y agoThey're not interested in facts or outcomes, they just want to ban transness and gender non-conformity in general. Similar to the abortion policy; see the Pulitzer winning article https://www.propublica.org/article/propublica-wins-pulitzer-prize-public-service-2025 https://www.propublica.org/article/propublica-wins-pulitzer-... . Sure, it might kill some women, but they're never going to pay attention to that.
- garciasn 1y agoNo; they want to have a distraction for their voters to latch their attention on to while they do other shit that is terrible. Previously: communists / abortion George Bush II: terrorists / LGBTQ+ / abortion Trump: immigrants / LGBTQ+ / educators / liberals / terrorists / gangs / etc
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> while they do other shit that is terrible Namely, blow out the deficit to fund tax cuts and engage in massive grift.
- sebazzz 1y agoBTQ+ only. Peter is gay so they don't hunt gays anymore.
- rsynnott 1y agoThis isn't a purely American thing, either. For quite a while, the British right's thing was Brexit. When Brexit actually happened, this kind of evaporated as a motivator, and they very visibly tried to pivot to transphobia as a primary voter motivator (it didn't really work, but it was remarkably blatant).
- _dke7 1y agoIt's not just transgender research it's also if an organization boycotts a certain foreign country (note: boycotting any other country is still OK): https://www.pulmonologyadvisor.com/news/nih-prohibits-dei-programs-boycotting-israel/ https://www.pulmonologyadvisor.com/news/nih-prohibits-dei-pr...
- PKop 1y ago[flagged]
- justanotheratom 1y agoWell, a straight answer that you may not like is that voters want different priorities: - reduce spending. - emphasize key public health priorities, like the chronic disease epidemic. - de-emphasize studies on gender identity, vaccine hesitancy, diversity, equity, and inclusion, climate change projects.
- malcolmgreaves 1y agoThey’re increasing spending. And they are not funding any of the research you listed. Please don’t lie about what the Republicans are doing. They have no desire to help Americans. Their goal is to destroy things that serve the public so that their billionaire masters can capture these services and charge Americans 10x what it used to cost them (their taxes).
- justanotheratom 1y agowell, you accuse me of lying, while you spew out nefarious theories. I simply stated what the NIH director has publicly said. (https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/jay-bhattacharya-begins-tenure-18th-director-national-institutes-health https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/jay-bhattachar...) RE: they'are increasing spending. - can you provide some evidence? RE: their goal is to destroy things that serve the public... - you must be a genius to see through their goals. Has it occured to you that maybe they simply reflect that desire of the people you disagree with.
- CyberDildonics 1y agoReason? The reason is it is an issue that tested well with focus groups and they are an easy target that makes people uncomfortable. They can demonize them as an enemy while doing horrible but harder to understand things like hollowing out election oversight.
- AzzyHN 1y agoPretty much.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- shrubble 1y agoSomeone in the administration read the Cass Report from Britain, would be my guess.
- jmclnx 1y agoTo me, ignoring the courts means impeachment and conviction. But the US Gov is full of cowards who are only there to extort money from their campaign donors.
- philosopher1234 1y agoAre we sure they’re not giving the donors exactly what they want?
- krapp 1y agoThey are. And that should be a bigger problem to more Americans than it seems to be.
- lotsofpulp 1y agoIt’s kind of tough when you see 70M of your countrymen vote for a traitor and another 70M implicitly allowing it by not voting. He proved he could shoot someone on 5th Ave and get away with it, so that someone could be whatever government employee tries to go after him (already evidenced using the purse strings and lawyers of the government rather than a bullet). And congressional reps have seen others lose elections for going after Trump. The root problem is the voters, and that’s a tough one to fix.
- TOGoS 1y agoThe controlled opposition party makes dang sure that the only other option in major elections is "more of the same". (i.e. Democrats generally fail to clean up whatever mess the last Republican administration made, continue funneling money to Israel, yaddah yaddah, and don't to a whole lot to help the working class.) A lot of people are completely fed up with "more of the same", so they voted for the clown or didn't bother to show up. Don't blame the voters when they were never given a real choice.
- tough 1y agoDivide et impera. There's no two parties.
- matthewdgreen 1y agoA more serious political observation is that this administration operates on the theory that possession is 9/10ths of the law. If they control a pot of funding that you need to maintain normal business operations, they’ll block its payment until you’re out of business. What are the courts going to do about it? The law is not something they respect. The flip side is that in other areas their powers are much more limited. Revoke Harvard’s tax exempt status? That’ll filter through the courts and years from now Harvard might actually have to make a tax payment (I expect they won’t.) From a societal perspective, however, we’re in deep shit. There’s an excellent chance that you or a loved one will die from a potentially curable disease (cancer, dementia) because the research and clinical trials that should be bringing us those drugs are all being murdered. We should be reacting to this the same way we respond when someone shoots up a school or hospital. A friend who is a breast cancer survivor just had her trial moved from NIH funding to industry funding, but she is one of the lucky ones.
- ryandrake 1y ago> We should be reacting to this the same way we respond when someone shoots up a school or hospital. I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic, but we, as in the USA, don't do anything (besides offering the standard Thoughts And Prayers™) when someone shoots up a school.
- ty6853 1y agoNah we do something. We threaten to break the probation of anyone going in to save their children, beat up parents trying to get in, then scroll on our cell phones and furiously maintain hand hygiene with sanitizer while standing outside the door. The lesson is clear. Fight your way in to get your kids or die trying. No one is coming to help.
- danans 1y agoYou are confusing a specific situation (a particular school shooting) for the general problem (the cultural and legal circumstances that give rose to school shootings).
- Havoc 1y agoIs the US still a democracy? Leader is democratically elected so I guess yes. …but the three branches of government system has clearly collapsed
- nickff 1y agoThe US seems to be behaving more like a parliamentary system than the Republic intended by the founders. Prime ministers in parliaments usually have control of the (effectively single) legislative branch, as well as the executive branch, so they can operate almost like short-term dictatorships (albeit they can be toppled on most given Fridays).
- sillyfluke 1y agoNot sure what you mean for parliaments. Coalition governments are possible and sometimes almost the default in a lot of countries in recent history. If an opposition party in the coaltion withdraws its support, the government can collapse. Strongmen in (initially) parlimentary systems did the same thing Trump is doing. Expand executive power, reduce the legislative branch to a rubberstamping function and stack the courts with yesmen.
- nickff 1y agoMany parliamentary governments tend only to be stable when there is a majority, see Canada and the UK (arguably) for examples of this. There are definitely counter-examples, but they're generally less similar to the US (culturally and legally). When there are majority governments, there is essentially no difference between executive and legislative power.
- sillyfluke 1y agoI assume you're replying in good faith, but it's difficult to not be incredulous when you're ignoring the highest GDP country in the world after China -- i.e Germany -- which has had coaltion governments since in the 60s. Sweden since the 70s, Netherlands since the 1800s. You're needlessly conflating the topic of stability and democracy, which muddles the discussion. Autocrats have come into power by championing "stability" at the expense of democracy since time immemorial. This is texbook by now.
- Terr_ 1y agoAmerican medicine is also going to suffer from the brain-drain due to other crimes by the administration, as it goes after foreign students and would-be citizens. (Both capriciously, and also in First-Amendment-breaking retaliation.) https://xkcd.com/3081/ https://xkcd.com/3081/