mmolteni.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Incredible reporting by @propublica.org and its partners: "the government’s own data...showed that officials knew that only 32 of the deportees had been convicted of U.S. crimes and that most were nonviolent offenses, such as retail theft or traffic violations." www.propublica.org/article/trum...

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

NEW: We obtained DHS data that shows the US knew only 32 of the 238 Venezuelans deported to a prison in El Salvador in March were convicted of US crimes, only 6 of those violent. Trump called them “savages,” “monsters” and "the worst of the worst.” www.propublica.org/article/trum...

submitted 4 days ago • 49 comments

I spent five weeks talking to federal workers about knowledge loss and brain drain across the federal government, and its implications, both right now and for decades to come. Their stories are frightening, but I think it's important to know what we're facing: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

submitted 5 days ago • 35 comments

New from 404 Media: a cop in Texas performed a nationwide search of license plate reading cameras for a woman who got an abortion, according to multiple sets of data we've reviewed. Included cameras where abortion is legal, like Washington and Illinois www.404media.co/a-texas-cop-...

submitted 5 days ago • 54 comments

NEW: The US government has collected DNA from over 100,000 migrant children—including a 4-year-old—and uploaded their genetic profiles into a national biometric database meant for sex offenders and violent criminals. www.wired.com/story/cbp-dn...

submitted 5 days ago • 20 comments

BREAKING: In a serious blow to US pandemic flu preparedness, HHS has cancelled a contract with Moderna to test and license prototype vaccines for #H5N1 #birdflu and other potential pandemic viruses. In a pandemic, mRNA is the fastest way to vaccine doses. www.statnews.com/2025/05/28/m...

submitted 6 days ago • 128 comments

‘Corrupt’ medical journals, including NEJM and JAMA, have to change, RFK Jr. says, or the NIH will publish in-house, per new @aniloza.bsky.social story. The remarks come a week after the FDA commissioner rolled out a new vaccine framework in ... NEJM. www.statnews.com/2025/05/27/r...

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Trump team orders stop to new student visa interviews, as it weighs expanding social media vetting www.politico.com/news/2025/05...

submitted 7 days ago • 32 comments

SCOOP: The Trump regime’s continued attacks on the Mine Safety and Health Administration have put coal miners at risk of deadly disease. Today, 32 district/field offices in 20 states that had been marked for closure received notice that those orders had been cancelled This is very good news!!

submitted 7 days ago • 6 comments

News of the first infant treated with a custom-built CRISPR therapy electrified the field But it raised a hard question: How do we assure baby KJ is not a one-off? Can personalized gene editing be given to thousands? It won't be easy but it is possible: www.statnews.com/2025/05/26/w...

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

Ethical discussions about genome-editing are inextricable from questions about government funding and regulation of science. But some experts' assumptions about the workings of government are now up in the air, @mmolteni.bsky.social writes. www.statnews.com/2025/05/27/g...

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Kennedy unilaterally strikes healthy kids & healthy pregnant people from the list of people who should get Covid boosters per the #CDC's approved schedule. There's a process for doing this, but it was not followed. "He's overstepped his bounds," one expert told STAT. www.statnews.com/2025/05/27/c...

submitted 7 days ago • 11 comments

The GOP tax bill will significantly increase US carbon pollution over the next decade. In return, it will increase our dependence on foreign oil, blow up the deficit, raise interest rates, make the country’s energy supply more volatile, and weaken strategic industries: heatmap.news/politics/tru...

submitted 11 days ago • 6 comments

The CDC is pubbing papers by laid-off employees, including those who investigated lead-tainted applesauce. "In a way, the paper was a record of what had been lost, of what might not happen if a food product were poisoning kids right now": @ericboodman.bsky.social: www.statnews.com/2025/05/23/c...

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

A new proposal by the White House could further politicize the NIH Thousands made their reservations about the rule known “There is a threat of more politics, more instability, [and] loss of people who have the institutional memory” w/ @mmolteni.bsky.social 🧪 www.statnews.com/2025/05/23/n...

submitted 11 days ago • 2 comments

What do we know about the safety and effectiveness of mRNA vaccines? Lots. @jonathanwosen.bsky.social explains. www.statnews.com/2025/05/21/m...

submitted 13 days ago • 3 comments

"US scientists who are abruptly unemployed are turning desperation & defiance into coping strategies & advice. But 1 thing is clear: whether they move abroad, pivot to other research areas or leave science, their deep expertise is likely to be lost." By @virginiagewin.bsky.social in @nature.com 🧪

submitted 13 days ago • 8 comments

“Communications have not been handled in-house by CDC scientists and communicators like before. All posts that CDC workers want to make to their agency's social media accounts have to be reviewed by HHS, employees at the CDC said.”

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

@caulfieldtim.bsky.social pushes back on idea Covid vaccines caused mistrust. “The logic seems twisted. Politically fueled misinformation created distrust, so now we are going to push a vaccine policy that seems to legitimize that distrust? How does that help?” www.statnews.com/2025/05/20/f...

submitted 14 days ago • 8 comments

"to run a contest that you end up not funding as a private organization at this time is… both extremely wasteful of these people’s time, and just devastating in terms of morale." I spoke with @aniloza.bsky.social at STAT today about HHMI's decision not to fund this round of Hanna Gray applicants.

submitted 15 days ago • 4 comments

NEW: How RFK Jr. goes about solving the chronic disease epidemic depends on his top concerns. Here, we break down the nation's health into 9 "priorities" — using original data analysis you can't find elsewhere! — and let you choose yours. W/ @jaspar.bsky.social: www.statnews.com/2025/05/20/k...

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

Huge numbers of researchers across the country had their government funding unexpectedly terminated this spring. But as @elizabethcooney.bsky.social‬ reports, some are finding ways to get it reinstated. www.statnews.com/2025/05/19/r...

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

For those anxiously watching the 23&Me bankruptcy saga, drugmaker Regeneron is going to buy the company and its user data, which it will use for drug development. More from @statnews.com here, including the company's statement on its data privacy plans: www.statnews.com/2025/05/19/2...

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

Russell Vought, acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has canceled plans to introduce new rules designed to limit the ability of US data brokers to sell Americans’ most sensitive data, credit history, and Social Security numbers.

submitted 16 days ago • 516 comments

🚨We're hiring for not one, not two, but THREE positions!🚨 The Center for Investigative Reporting, which hosts both Mother Jones and @revealnews.org, is looking for an assistant editor, assistant producer and a digital producer! You can learn more and apply at the links below! 🧵

submitted 18 days ago • 6 comments

The staff had set up a schedule to stagger shifts Friday “knowing we were looking at a nearly full day of a threat of severe weather,” said office lead meteorologist Christian Cassel. “I’m glad to say we were very well staffed for the entirety of the event.” www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025...

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

In Missouri and Kentucky, tornadoes killed at least 21 last night. The National Weather Service office responsible for KY has faced some of the most severe staffing cuts by the Trump administration, including the loss of experts that do overnight forecasting.

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

Does #CDC have an acting director? Sec Kennedy says yes but the #HHS communications office will not confirm that CDC chief of staff Matt Buzzelli has actually been named to the position. Buzzelli "has been carrying out some of the duties," they told @statnews.com. www.statnews.com/2025/05/16/d...

submitted 18 days ago • 3 comments

HIV organizations are reeling from Trump's cuts. “I don’t understand how someone, with the stroke of a pen, could just haphazardly write off the health of millions,” one outreach worker told me. My latest piece @capitalb.bsky.social via @kffhealthnews.org capitalbnews.org/hiv-testing-...

submitted 18 days ago • 2 comments

Kevin Hall, a top nutrition scientist who departed from the National Institutes of Health last month due to censorship, said he’s unlikely to return to the agency, despite NIH director Jay Bhattacharya’s asking him back. www.statnews.com/2025/05/16/n...

submitted 18 days ago • 1 comment

New from PP: The US has been pressuring countries in Africa to grant licenses to Musk’s Starlink. “If this was done by another country, we absolutely would call this corruption,” said a former Bush official. “Because it is corruption.” www.propublica.org/article/trum...

submitted 19 days ago • 10 comments

Tailor-made therapies for a single patient are here. @jasonmast.bsky.social has the story behind today's publication of the first ever CRISPR n-of-1 study, which raises both hope and big questions about how to safely and equitably scale personalized treatments. www.statnews.com/2025/05/15/c...

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

On the hill today, RFK Jr. claimed that amid sweeping cuts to his agency, “we did not fire any working scientists" — an assertion one scientist at the National Institutes of Health told STAT they were “100% sure” was false.

submitted 20 days ago • 1 comment

With everything happening, it's easy to forget that H5N1 is still circulating in US dairy cows—Idaho's had 34 new herds infected in the last month—but fewer experts to keep tabs on it. USDA's animal disease unit has lost 16% of staff under Trump, @reuters.com reports www.reuters.com/world/us/sta...

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

STAT's @jasonmast.bsky.social is at ASGCT, where first-in-human prime editing data debuted today. Read his dispatch here and follow along for more from New Orleans over the next two days. www.statnews.com/2025/05/14/a...

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

NEW: A Musk employee is earning between $100,001 and $1 million annually as a political adviser to his billionaire boss while simultaneously helping to dismantle the federal agency that regulates two of Musk’s biggest companies, according to court records and a financial disclosure report.

submitted 20 days ago • 32 comments

As Congressional Republicans push for Medicaid work requirements, here’s how it’s going in Georgia: Deloitte Consulting is taking in tens of millions in tax dollars to manage the country’s only Medicaid work requirement program — and sell it to the public. Only 3% of those eligible have enrolled.

submitted 20 days ago • 20 comments

ICYMI yesterday, a federal court ruling means the PTAB will have to go back and look at CVC's claims of priority on inventing CRISPR gene editing in eukaryotic cells, this time with a broader range of evidence. 13 years in, the battle continues... www.statnews.com/2025/05/12/a...

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

Some of the thousands of federal health workers Kennedy and DOGE purged last month had their layoff notices rescinded today. The Trump admin won’t say how many. Dems plan to grill Kennedy on the cuts in tmw’s hearings. www.politico.com/news/2025/05... with @sophiegardner.bsky.social

submitted 21 days ago • 3 comments

NEW: Leading orgs representing makers of cell & gene therapies are renewing calls for a moratorium on heritable human genome editing. They say the science is too undercooked and the need for broader societal discussion too urgent to start to chart a regulatory path: www.statnews.com/2025/05/13/s...

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

As Elon Musk laid waste to the federal government, the Department of Transportation quietly met with and consulted his tunneling firm, the Boring Company, a $6 billion Amtrak tunnel project connecting Baltimore, DC and Virginia. Our latest: www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/t...

submitted 22 days ago • 125 comments

There's a more complete story out now for what happened at the Library of Congress today. Library staff denied access to new appointees to senior library positions without a Senate-confirmed Librarian in place. Recognizing the former #2 as in charge in the interim. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/u...

submitted 22 days ago • 7 comments

The Trump administration’s vast overhaul of the U.S. scientific enterprise is hitting Chinese-American researchers particularly hard, with big implications for the future of global scientific competition and collaboration, Brian Yang writes for @statnews.com: www.statnews.com/2025/05/12/n...

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

NEW: At least two institutions have been directed to comply with Trump’s anti-trans executive order as a condition of getting NIH grants, according to letters I've seen. The policy marks a new front in the administration's efforts to reshape the science ecosystem. www.chronicle.com/article/the-...

submitted 25 days ago • 5 comments

BREAKING: Federal judge in Vermont orders that Rumeysa Ozturk be released from detention "immediately" and on her own recognizance with no travel restrictions. More to come at Law Dork: www.lawdork.com

submitted 25 days ago • 121 comments

Despite the Trump administration laying off a majority of NIH staff that handle contracts, the DOGE-mandated contract terminations have slowly begun. @jasonmast.bsky.social and I took a look at what's being lost — including irreplaceable biological collections: www.statnews.com/2025/05/09/t...

submitted 25 days ago • 2 comments

Trump surgeon general pick Casey Means called the COVID-19 pandemic “a Darwinian moment for America,” arguing that Americans needed to get healthy through diet and exercise or risk death. The U.S. could not continue to keep its economy closed, she wrote. www.importantcontext.news/p/trumps-new...

submitted 26 days ago • 28 comments