Jessica Chong

No vaccine requirements for thee;

No vaccine access for me.

At a community meeting in SE Seattle tonight, where opposition to closing schools was strongest, Seattle school board member Liza Rankin tripled down and said SPS still needs to close a lot of schools. She just absolutely refuses to listen to the public or the facts on this.

Doctor Behind Award-Winning Parkinson’s Research Among Scientists Purged From NIH Leading scientists at the National Institutes of Health, the US’s leading medical research agency, were swept up Tuesday in the Trump administration's latest firing blitz.

NEW: The doctor behind breakthrough Parkinson’s research was among the scientists purged from the National Institutes of Health, the US’s leading medical research agency. www.wired.com/story/doctor...

Tapping the sign.

If you are feeling a little bit of schadenfreude about the demise of 23andMe (and let's be honest -- who isn't?) you should keep this bruising thought in mind: I bet whatever comes next is way, way worse.

Even conservative economists admit we are a low tax haven, geez.

www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

"The agency was set to give full approval to Novavax’s shot, but senior leaders ... are now sitting on the decision and have said the Novavax application needed more data and was unlikely to be approved soon." Potentially big red flag, including possible political interference in agency decisions.

I have learned that the directors of ALL: PREP, IMSD, and IRACDA programs across the country have received similar cancelation notices. This follows previous cancellations of MARC and URISE programs. This further dismantles the mechanisms that enable scientific training opportunities for SO MANY.

The Quiet Way the NIH Is Stalling Some Research Before It Starts A number of grant proposals have disappeared from scientists’ review pipelines, with little explanation. Applicants are bewildered and frustrated.

SCOOP: You've heard about the NIH terminating grants. I've learned of another, less visible way it's disrupting science: It’s removing some applications from peer review. Not rejecting them, but putting them on hold without saying why or if they'll ever be reviewed. www.chronicle.com/article/the-...

‘One of the darkest days’: NIH purges agency leadership amid mass layoffs In shock move, four institute directors at the US biomedical agency are removed from their posts.

🚨🚨🚨 Four NIH institute directors have been removed from their posts and some offered reassignments to the Indian Health Service, effective today.

These institutes include NIAID (Jeanne Marrazzo), NIMHD (Eliseo Pérez-Stable), NICHD (Diana Bianchi), and NINR (Shannon Zenk).

Anyone in research still credulous enough to think some of the changes to NIH are good, actually, is in the first half of this.

So many students in my lab and my department have been supported by the NIH MARC and U-RISE training grants!
These grants help students who are interested in research, but who cannot afford to volunteer their time to get extensive research experience. @sfsu.bsky.social @sfstatebio.bsky.social 😢😡

Needless to say the answer here is "I refuse to answer questions, I want a lawyer, please leave."

Scientist loses their grant funding because they briefly mentioned the word "hesitancy" in their grant.

Not In Our Name Please complete this form to add your name to the statement "Not In Our Name." Although we sincerely appreciate the solidarity of all university stakeholders, we are asking that only those who identi...

If you're a Jewish professor, staff member, or student at a US university who would like to join the growing community of voices standing against the targeting of Mahmoud Khalil & resisting efforts to politicize Jewish identity, you can sign the statement here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

This gets to the heart of RIFs and impoundment. RIFs are supposed to eliminate unnecessary roles or functions. But who decides? For small cuts, defer to the executive. But when you are gutting the statutory purpose of agencies and its ability to spend money, surely Congressional intent matters.

The military banned cultural awareness celebrations – except for St. Patrick’s Day Women’s History Month and Black History Month are among those events no longer celebrated in the armed forces.

Saint Patrick’s Day is a good time to talk about which sort of immigrants are celebrated and which sorts are being deported. Who gets to fly a foreign flag without complaint and who doesn’t.

Always good when the authoritarian leader decrees who is and is not Jewish.

Hundreds of research grants at Columbia canceled following Trump edict, administrator says The National Institutes of Health is terminating 232 grants for scientific research at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, according to an email an administrator sent to faculty.

I received one of the 232 NIH grant "terminations" sent to scientists at Columbia last night. My research focuses on improving maternal and child health in the US. Also affected: ongoing clinical trials, research training programs, and research centers that aim to improve the health of Americans.

Add R25s to that list.

Our NIH funding got straight up cancelled today for the two R25s that my team runs at Columbia for post-bacs and high-school students.

I fear for our young scholars, who love learning about the brain and now are losing opportunities to be tomorrow's neuroscientists. 🧪

Republicans snuck a provision into the rule for the CR that would preemptively surrender congressional authority to block tariffs.

When House Republicans vote for this rule today, they will also be voting to support Trump's tariffs and all the resulting damage to the US economy

ProPublica just obtained a remarkable directive to those remaining at USAID: Empty the safes with the classified and personnel records and then ... "Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break." The email came from from the agency's acting executive secretary. I asked Kel McClanahan, a national security attorney, if this was legal. He said: "No it is not," citing the Federal Records Act. "Classified records are still federal records."

@propublica.org reporter Brett Murphy with an explosive scoop. This is insanity.

Bsky vs Twitter engagement difference now 50-fold...

Hearing from a source:

"A friend at NCI lost 3 outstanding staff (their words) and tweeted about it. She was suspended for 2 days. No idea how her tweet was flagged."

This is for all the people asking us why it's hard to tell what's happening at NIH. Retaliation is real.

This isn't going to get the attention of Columbia, but it's at least as bad: the University of Maine is having its funding cut off because the governor of Maine dared to challenge Trump.

In case the ongoing slaughter of research and training at Columbia feels distant at the moment, it's coming to a university near you soon. They are on a mission to destroy American academia.

Wow. "NIH" canceled my co-mentored (with Dave Sulzer) PhD student's F31 funding. His work is on understanding the genetics and neuroscience of language learning disorders. F31 provides no indirect $ to Columbia, just pays his salary. Not that it should matter, but he's an American citizen. W.T.F.

ACTION ITEM

I was chatting with a young scientist who expressed concern re the multiplicity of ongoing issues

Over the course of our conversation, we arrived at the idea of a DASHBOARD where issues could be tracked

If anyone is interested in helping with this (ideally with expertise) please DM me