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rebekahnagler.bsky.social
Health communication researcher. Associate professor @HSJMC, UMN. Studying conflict and controversy about health and science in the media. Member @commhsp.org. Reluctant social media user, always and forever. Annenberg Penn alum.
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“I want people to know how bad things are at NIH,” Norton told The Associated Press. 🎤⬇️ apnews.com/article/nih-...

RFK Jr. promised under oath not to take away vaccine access. He broke that promise again today. ACIP determines which vaccines are covered by major insurers. Replacing career civil servants w/political appointees (or disbanding ACIP altogether) will reduce access for *millions of Americans*

Joint w/@asinclair.bsky.social and the #SCIMaP team: brief correspondence in @nathumbehav.nature.com on the impact of NIH indirect cost cuts on the economy and employment, impacts that will only worsen given similar proposals for NSF/DOE + overall science proposal. rdcu.be/eo3Hp

How bad will it be? Catastrophic. Proposed cuts to #NSF, #NIH, and #NASA will set the US R&D landscape back 25 yrs+, cause economic and job loss now, and undermine innovations to come. But, this is the WH's *proposed* budget. Speak up now before it is too late. (inflation adjusted $-s below)

SecState Rubio claims that no on has died because of USAID cuts and suggested that I had lied in my reporting. So here I show him photos of specific children who have died because of the Trump administration's reckless cancelation of aid: www.nytimes.com/2025/05/31/o...

"If the proposal is enacted, Americans today and tomorrow will be sicker, poorer, and die younger” an $18 Billion cut Only 3 NIH Institutes will remain in place, and even they will have their funds markedly reduced www.statnews.com/2025/05/30/n...

I urge everyone to read Unbreaking’s new page on everything the govt is doing to destroy & diminish medical research funding. It’s the best thing I’ve read on this topic: @lizneeley.bsky.social & co have such done an incredible job. unbreaking.org/issues/medic...

Yep. This is what we called for, too: www.milbank.org/quarterly/op...

The NIH Clinical Center is struggling to carry out its mission of running clinical trials for the hardest-to-treat diseases

Ugh, this is so wrong. Research by @egolberstein.bsky.social and @aaronsojourner.org (see link in thread) showed positive impacts of school-based mental health services. www.npr.org/2025/05/01/n...

BREAKING: NSF has frozen all grant funding, as of yesterday. It's unclear when they will resume funding awards, or why the pause has been put in place. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

“However bad everyone on the outside thinks it is, it is a million times worse. They’re dismantling and destroying everything.” Read, share, respond. Call your representatives. The health and well-being of Americans & America's innovation economy are at stake. www.science.org/content/arti...

The Trump administration is "willing to not just slash and burn research that challenges their political ideology but to replace it with shoddy studies designed to support their goals, under the guise of scientific legitimacy," Katherine J. Wu writes.

URGENT ACTION FOR NSF GRANTEES. For current & recent (since 2020) awards, archive your award history this afternoon/tonight. Screenshot/download/print your work in research.gov & alert your partners. We have credible threats to integrity of awards tracking systems (via @jeremymberg.bsky.social)

New survey on awareness of Trump cuts: "We found that a high proportion of the American public (almost 80%) had heard about the firing of federal scientists and health workers… undoubtedly an underestimate of current levels." @rebekahnagler.bsky.social @efranklinfowler.bsky.social et al

Given the number of federal actions threatening public health and science in the first three months of the Trump administration, @rebekahnagler.bsky.social of the University of Minnesota and colleagues conducted a survey in March 2025 on public awareness of these actions and their consequences.

📣To what extent is the U.S. public aware of firing of federal workers, canceling of research grants, or removal of public data that’s disrupting public health and science? Members of our team fielded a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults in late March. www.milbank.org/quarterly/op... 1/

If the government can pay a foreign state to imprison you and, in so doing, remove you from the protection of US law, the Constitution is worthless.

Update via #SCIMaP now broken down by house districts Our interdisciplinary team has expanded efforts to communicate the economic impacts of White House proposed cuts to health research. Find out how your community may be impacted. Explore more at SCIMaP: scienceimpacts.org

ICYMI: You've probably heard about the vast array of agencies the HHS layoffs gutted, but somewhat less focused-on were the communications teams that were laid off. I talked to laid-off workers in the comms offices in 5 divisions of HHS, and all said their offices had been emptied or nearly so. 1/x

A letter isn’t unimportant. I just hope scientists are talking in their communities, too, because plenty of people aren’t consuming news rn. (See @benjamintoff.bsky.social on news avoidance)

The recent evolution of public discourse about racial equity, a data-driven analysis beautifully summarized by colleagues @neillewisjr.bsky.social and @efranklinfowler.bsky.social 👏

Exclusive: NSF this week began to search through billions of dollars of grants the agency has already awarded for anything touching on topics that President Donald Trump has criticized. And NSF has blocked grantees and trainees from accessing funds while the review is underway. scim.ag/3El0NZh

Or as Jon Stewart recently said (well, I think), the news media’s role is to “litigate the boundaries of our shared reality…through a process of standards [and] evidentiary truth.”

Heard from inside the National Cancer Institute, part of NIH — travel through April is canceled. Purchasing with government card is frozen. All public comms are off limits. Can’t even submit abstracts to future meetings. Can’t submit *manuscripts* for publication. All hiring activity frozen. Fuck.