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vaughandy.bsky.social
Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. My lab does “lung stuff” and regenerative biology. Leges sine Moribus vanae. I took the liberty of ironing your homework. www.vaughanlab.com
93 posts 851 followers 682 following
Prolific Poster

Wrote this the day after the election. Unfortunately, it aged well.

What an absolute dick. This is the job he was elected to do. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/24/u...

All of NIH funding to Northwestern University is frozen. This pause includes noncompeting approved funding, new and competing grants with fundable scores. No reimbursements for money already spent have been received since March. This situation is rarely reported so please Please get the word out!

[nodding]

Your regular reminder that the entire global economy is subject to the whipsaw whims of a person who doesn’t understand how the global economy works

House Republicans smuggled this👇attack on the federal judiciary into their reconciliation bill. Courts rarely require plaintiffs to post security, so this provision, if passed into law, would render a vast number of existing judgments—including Boasberg's contempt order—effectively unenforceable.

These “deficit hawks” spent weeks harrumphing about deficits (not to mention years yelling at us about it), said over and over again they wouldn’t vote to increase debt, got nothing, then voted to add like $5 trillion dollars in borrowing. Just ridiculous human beings

Great news! I'm told a few moments ago US Institute of Peace Board Chair Amb. George Moose went to the USIP building where he and legal counsel were able to retake possession after the recent court decision. They were accompanied by a small team securing the building and assessing maintenance needs.

This is why it's so damaging for the media to keep calling illegally withholding congressionally appropriated, contractually obligated funds as "cuts", which implies some rational and legitimate budgetary process.

To be clear, these kinds of breakthroughs are going to come to a screeching halt with the current NIH funding cuts. This new treatment is only possible because of decades of basic research. What might be possible 20 years from now if we don't destroy basic research? www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Same. Our NIH research includes (or included, past tense) research on place-based risk factors for dementia, impacts of school segregation on heart disease, and health impacts of pandemic policies. The last is notably ironic: one study assesses how COVID school closures worsened kids' mental health!

Just said goodbye to my NIH MIRA award. Really hurts to see the word “terminated” in writing. Even worse to see it next to the F31 awarded to a fantastic PhD student in my lab @aybv.bsky.social. I REFUSE to let this stop us!!!

I’m reliably told this is cutting edge research with lots of commercial and defense applications that no one in their right mind would shutter.

RFK Jr. said multiple times during his house and senate hearings today that no scientists have been fired from federal agencies. Our reporting has shown that hundreds, if not thousands, of scientists have been let go from NIH/CDC/FDA

NPR has identified three Trump administration officials with close ties to antisemitic extremists, including a prominent Holocaust denier.

For those confused by the China tariff news: • Trump caved and got zero in return • No manufacturing moved back to the USA • 30% tariff is still a huge tax on Americans • 90 day pause still causes uncertainty • Trump lost all negotiating leverage

The church said it's terminating a decades-long partnership with the federal government to help refugees arriving in the U.S., citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa.

Excellent NYT graphic. In the space of about 3 months, tariffs on China: -- doubled; -- went up ≈ 2.5X from there; -- roughly doubled again; -- went up ≈ 40% from there; -- and now have dropped ≈ 80% from the peak -- but are still 3X what they were in February. www.nytimes.com/article/trum...

The Administration has arrested a judge in WI and a mayor in NJ, and is threatening to arrest federal lawmakers. In any other country we would say the strongman's security forces are locking up political opponents. We need to treat it exactly that way here. www.axios.com/2025/05/10/t...

Heading to New Castle today. People in towns like this could never skip 45/46 shifts and be invisible to those who hired them. Sen Fetterman is not working and we can’t be afraid to say that if we want to convince people who do work that we will fight for them.

The way we were treated at Delaney Hall is almost unbelievable. ICE shoved me, manhandled @repbonnie.bsky.social, and arrested Mayor Baraka. They disrespected us and tried to stop us from conducting the oversight we’re elected to do. But we’ll never back down in our fight for what is right.

ICE just arrested the ELECTED MAYOR OF NEWARK NJ for engaging in his constitutionally protected right to protest. This is F*ed.

Exclusive: National Science Foundation staff were told today that the agency’s 37 divisions—across all eight directorates—are being abolished and the number of programs within those divisions will be drastically reduced.

Yeah, take that, you freeloading newborns.

The new NIH director said grants “canceled because they’re DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion]-based science … [which does] not actually have anything to do with promoting the health of the American people” www.science.org/content/arti... So let’s take a quick look at some of his past papers… 🧵

The Monday letter took an explicitly ideological tone, writing that Harvard had benefited from the American 'free-market system you teach your students to despise.' McMahon also blasted Harvard for its association with prominent Democrats...

In which the Senate-confirmed director of the National Institutes of Health - talks down to the highly experienced @jocelynkaiser.bsky.social - says "it's not me personally" who cancels agency grants - claims @nature.com is spreading rumors, hours before he confirms said rumors

It’s a difficult time for young men, growing up in a culture that no longer provides them with strong role models like Robert Wadlow, the fat biker twins, or the Indian guy with the long fingernails

The Spencer Foundation is offering rapid response bridge funding for those who lost NSF research grants. www.spencer.org/grant_types/...

What an embarrassment. It’s wild that the official position of the US Government is now pro-Nazi.

"A report by economists at American University in Washington DC estimates that a 50% reduction in federal science funding would reduce the US gross domestic product by approximately 7.6%." Science is an amazing engine of economic activity and progress for the US ... or at least it was.

Honestly this is just incredible content.

May Day rally with Bernie Sanders

"Of the 1,500 postdoctoral researchers at Penn, 1,000 signed authorization cards in support of forming Research Associates and Postdocs United, according to the group." @rapup-uaw.bsky.social www.thedp.com/article/2025...

Now we have the answer. The original story was legit then Bezos backed down.

We see you Kennesaw State University Faculty Senate! 1st in the South to pass a resolution establishing a mutual defense compact w/ other institutions. "Whereas, Faculty members must organize to effectively counter political attacks on higher education & defend #academicfreedom..." #defendhighered

Dear Tenured Facility, Over the past 100 days my career trajectory has turned into a question mark. At best, the TT job market just got even crazier, at worst there won’t be research career options in the US when I finish my PhD. It took me a while to find my path and I love being a scientist. 1/x

This entire thread

We are destroying our future. At this very moment. “Breakthroughs in technology are grounded in a fundamental truth: that transformative innovation often begins with a new understanding of the natural world at its most basic level” www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/o...

A huge majority of Americans (77%) oppose the cuts to medical research that the current administration has made. (Source: Wash. Post/ABC/Ipsos poll)