NewsFlash

https://www.wired.com/story/noaa-employees-foreign-nationals/

Feb 5, 2025 7:29 PM
NOAA Employees Told to Pause Work With ‘Foreign Nationals’

A number of federal employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the US federal agency that monitors and models the oceans and atmosphere for the purpose of predicting changes in climate and weather, have received orders to temporarily cease communicating with foreign nationals, including those working directly with the US government, WIRED has learned.

The US National Science Foundation (NSF), a major funder of basic academic research, announced yesterday that it has reopened a website that distributes money from research grants to scientists. The move comes after a week of confusion and frustration for NSF-funded researchers in which the agency froze their funding — including for postdoctoral fellowships — and said it was reviewing grants worth billions of dollars to comply with President Donald Trump’s directives to terminate funding for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts and to scrub all federal resources of these terms.


https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00365-z

[Basically, if there is any DEI language - as the censors see it - the doc has to be scrubbed of it.  Grant applications already in are being sent back for revision, I understand.]


- 10,000 research grants flagged for review by NSF Program Directors

- Reviews due by 5 p.m. today

- They flag grants with "broadening participation" language, foreign aid, climate science, domestic energy, and "discriminatory programs including illegal DEI"

"The criteria for flagging grants, which call for programme officers to look for “broadening participation” language, foreign assistance, climate science, domestic energy, & “...illegal DEI”. [NOTE - DEI is NOT illegal. There are no laws against it. Trump does NOT make the law.]

“To see ‘women’ & ‘woman’ & ‘people of colour’ showing up... that was a gut punch,” says one NSF employee."



SEE ALSO


The chaos triggered last week by President Donald Trump’s executive orders banning federal funding for diversity and other topics continues to shake the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other health agencies. NIH staff have been pulling down web pages and canceling programs aimed at diversifying the biomedical research workforce. But they are not reviewing existing grants for the verboten topics—at least not at this point, according to NIH sources who declined to be identified.

[snip]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has frozen payments for all grants in advance of any decision to terminate those that violate the orders. Other agencies, such as NASA, have halted diversity-related programs. NIH has also canceled DEI contracts, which pay for a specific deliverable, but staff are not taking any action on grants already awarded, according to three NIH sources.


https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-purging-trump-targeted-programs-sparing-existing-grants-so-far

Wired reports that employees of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have received orders to pause all “international engagements” amid concerns the scientific agency could also soon face mass firings and have its mission throttled, including its work on developing wind energy.

Meanwhile, employees of color at the Health and Human Services Department fear they could be directly targeted after their names and photos were published on a website called ”DEI Watch List,” created by the American Accountability Foundation. The list of workers claims their so-called offenses include working on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and using pronouns in their bios.

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/6/headlines/noaa_receives_order_to_halt_international_engagements_hhs_workers_placed_on_dei_hit_list

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/us/politics/dei-watchlist-federal-health-workers-cdc-nih.html


SEE ALSO [from 31 January]

The chaos triggered last week by President Donald Trump’s executive orders banning federal funding for diversity and other topics continues to shake the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other health agencies. NIH staff have been pulling down web pages and canceling programs aimed at diversifying the biomedical research workforce. But they are not reviewing existing grants for the verboten topics—at least not at this point, according to NIH sources who declined to be identified.  The purge stems from Trump’s 20 January orders banning activities involving diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); foreign aid; the green new deal, and “gender ideology.” Although the White House this week rescinded a 27 January memo that paused all federal grant funding until it could be reviewed, agencies must continue to review grants and contracts for topics covered by the orders.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has frozen payments for all grants in advance of any decision to terminate those that violate the orders. Other agencies, such as NASA, have halted diversity-related programs. NIH has also canceled DEI contracts, which pay for a specific deliverable, but staff are not taking any action on grants already awarded, according to three NIH sources.   Instead, NIH staff are pulling down program descriptions and revising requests for applications for programs that violate the orders, which have primarily focused on DEI. NIH observers have noted on social media that the web pages for Maximizing Opportunities for Scientific and Academic Independent Careers, a program that helps postdocs from diverse backgrounds transition to independent research, have disappeared.

The program announcement for NIH’s main science, technology, engineering, and math education program, the NIH Science Education Partnership Award, has also vanished. Several training grant solicitations have been altered so the expiration date has passed, including one Science reported on this week and others noted on Bluesky.  Although awarded grants are so far safe, grant renewals or new proposals are a different story; if they involve DEI, they will not be funded or will have to remove that component, NIH sources say.

[snip]

In the meantime, another memo late Wednesday from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management that provided new guidance on ending funding for topics now off-limits is adding to the chaos. The memo gave agencies until 5 p.m. today to pull down websites and end projects that “inculcate or promote gender ideology,” adding to the scramble to scrub web pages at NIH, as first reported by Splinter.

At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a purge took place Friday, with multiple agency web pages involving race or containing the term LGBTQ (for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) going dark. Many provided access to CDC data, which scientists and groups rushed to download before the deadline.

“All of the data for HIV is gone. Normally there’s a menu for medical professionals,” but that has disappeared, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan who says she was up until 2 a.m. trying to download data on influenza surveillance.  One shuttered site was a key youth risk behavior survey that has been collecting data on LGBTQ youth since 2015. It looked like this on Wednesday but as of Friday it is gone.“I’m exceptionally frustrated,” says Andrew Fenelon, a sociologist and demographer at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. “This is one of the gold standard publicly available surveys for studying health … and risk behaviors among American youth. Without this, there is a wealth of questions we don’t know the answer to.”

Also no longer available is CDC’s social vulnerability index, which uses metrics such as poverty and age composition to rank communities’ vulnerability to natural disasters with the goal of helping emergency responders and public health authorities plan appropriately. Also dark on Friday after looking like this on Wednesday was a CDC web page titled CDC’s Efforts to Address Racism as a Fundamental Driver of Health Disparities.

“I knew it was going to be bad, but I didn’t know it was going to be this bad,” Rasmussen says. “It’s like a data apocalypse.”

https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-purging-trump-targeted-programs-sparing-existing-grants-so-far

Revenge. Pure abuse of power.

NPR
‪@npr.org‬
President Trump has ordered agencies to halt funding for many climate and infrastructure projects. That's created uncertainty for communities expecting tens of millions of dollars for everything from solar projects to electric school buses. via @wbur.org


If Congress has appropriated the funds for those programs, I believe it's illegal for Trump to halt the projects at this point. But that's how he rolls.

https://www.science.org/content/article/it-s-tectonic-u-s-foreign-aid-freeze-deals-blow-research-around-globe

Everything was ready to go. In late January, a consortium of researchers from eight African countries was set to launch a phase 1 clinical trial of two experimental HIV vaccines that would enroll dozens of volunteers in South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda. “The vaccines are in the country. The regulators have approved the study. [Clinicians] at the sites have been trained,” says Glenda Gray, chief scientific officer at the South African Medical Research Council, who leads the BRILLIANT Consortium.

But the trial is off—at least for now. The consortium, which was awarded more than $45 million by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2023, has decided to put the research on hold after President Donald Trump’s administration announced a 3-month freeze on all U.S. foreign assistance on 20 January and ordered recipients of its funding to halt their work. “It would be unethical to start a study that you can’t guarantee you can continue,” Gray says. She doesn’t know yet whether the team will have to let the project’s scientists go or how the consortium will continue to pay for cold storage of the vaccines.

The global impact of the aid cutoff is “tectonic,” she says—“and that’s an understatement.”

[SNIP]

The agency at the center of the turmoil, USAID, devotes some $10 billion to global health, much of it for humanitarian assistance such as food and medications. But it also funds clinical trials on HIV and malaria vaccines and microbicides and supports other research projects.

In an interview from a factory floor in El Salvador on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that foreign aid spending does not support U.S. aims and that USAID, the main conduit for foreign assistance, has been recalcitrant. The agency, he said, has a history of “deciding that they are somehow a global charity separate from the national interest. These are taxpayer dollars.” Last night, USAID posted a notice saying all of its staff globally would be placed on administrative leave effective 7 February, with some exceptions for critical jobs. Staff posted overseas would be repatriated within 30 days

[SNIP]


Some scientists remain hopeful their projects will resume in weeks or months—counting on legal challenges to Trump’s actions. (The Congressional Research Service in a brief issued on Monday noted that “because Congress established USAID as an independent establishment within the executive branch, the President does not have the authority to … abolish, move, or consolidate USAID.”) But the interruption itself is causing “havoc,” says Timothy Mastro, an epidemiologist with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who previously led the global health nonprofit FHI 360, which receives most of its funding from USAID. “Uncertainty of timing puts the financial management of an organization into real disarray,” Mastro says.

Meanwhile agency staff overseeing the research have been sent packing. Margaret McCluskey, who runs an HIV vaccine research program at USAID, says she was told to hand in her badge, phone, and laptop on 29 January, after which she was escorted to her office to pick up six boxes worth of material collected over the years. “The security guards had tears coming down their cheeks,” says McCluskey, a nurse and public health specialist. “I was maybe the 200th person that they had to take upstairs that day.”

The $28 million USAID program that McCluskey ran had funded the BRILLIANT consortium and also IAVI, a U.S.-based nonprofit focused on HIV vaccines, as well as its collaborators in Africa and India. “I’m completely devastated,” McCluskey says. The pursuit of an HIV vaccine depends on global cooperation, she points out. “No one company, no one organization, can do this,” she says. “If America could do it alone, we’d have a vaccine. We can’t.”

The world’s richest man is boasting about destroying the United States Agency for International Development, which saves the lives of the world’s poorest children, saying he shoved it “into the wood chipper.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/opinion/usaid-spending-trump-musk.html?unlocked_article_code=1.u04.e4Eq.nBGQejsTSFZf&smid=bs-share

I can't keep up. And I can't keep looking at it, so I'll only post particularly noxious developments I might see.

The Times has a running tally.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/us/trump-agenda-2025.html

And as I should have often stated, I wonder if this dog-and-pony show is distracting us from something else going on in DC.  Watching Congress for bills seems prudent, although there's little that can be done if something egregious is up for a vote.

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/

I have been told that one of the potential aims of all this insanity is to get civil disorder stirred up so that martial law can be imposed. Would that surprise me?  Hell no.

‪Ellen L. Weintraub‬ ‪@ellenlweintraub.bsky.social‬
·
9h
Received a letter from POTUS today purporting to remove me as Commissioner and Chair of the FEC. There's a legal way to replace FEC commissioners-this isn't it. I've been so fortunate to serve the American people and stir up some good trouble along the way. That's not changing anytime soon.

I don't know if the NYTimes is paywalled. If not

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/opinion/usaid-trump-samantha-power.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare



Opinion

Guest Essay
I Ran U.S.A.I.D. Killing It Is a Win for Autocrats Everywhere.
By Samantha Power -  Ms. Power was the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development in the Biden administration.

We are witnessing one of the worst and most costly foreign policy blunders in U.S. history. Less than three weeks into Donald Trump’s second term, he, Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have halted the U.S. Agency for International Development’s aid programs around the world. In so doing, they have imperiled millions of lives, thousands of American jobs and billions of dollars of investment in American small businesses and farms while severely undermining our national security and global influence — all while authoritarians and extremists celebrate their luck.


SEE ALSO

Two weeks into President Trump’s sweeping freeze on foreign aid, H.I.V. groups abroad have not received any funding, jeopardizing the health of more than 20 million people, including 500,000 children. Subsequent waivers from the State Department have clarified that the work can continue, but the funds and legal paperwork to do so are still missing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/health/trump-usaid-pepfar.html

And with this one, I'm off-duty for the rest of the day.  He's certifiable. [see his post, attached]

The people who put him in power and who are pulling his strings are not.

Stay safe and happy, where you are.  I hope all of this has minimal impact on you. But, if unchecked, it eventually will come for you.

And may the gods help all those people who were depending on us for food and medicine. They're going to die, so the gods are all they have now.

There's always room for one more.

DEIA.  The press is leaving the "A" off that most of the time. "A" stands for accessibility. AKA, we don't want no cripples here, nosiree!


https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-and-wasteful-government-dei-programs-and-preferencing/


https://www.npr.org/2025/01/23/nx-s1-5271588/trump-dei-diversity-equity-inclusion-federal-workers-government

Of course. If interested, check out the language of some of these bills before Congress.  https://www.congress.gov/most-viewed-bills


February 2, 2025

1.    H.R.722 [119th]    To implement equal protection under the 14th article of amendment to the Constitution for the right to life of each born and preborn human person. [would outlaw abortion]
2.    S.5 [119th]    Laken Riley Act
3.    H.R.25 [119th]    To promote freedom, fairness, and economic opportunity by repealing the income tax and other taxes, abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, and enacting a national sales tax to be administered primarily by the States.
4.    H.R.899 [119th]    To terminate the Department of Education. [Self-explanatory there!]
5.    H.Res.7 [119th]    Recognizing the importance of access to comprehensive, high-quality, life-affirming medical care for women of all ages. [Language in there relating to a specific medical entity/clinic.]
6.    H.R.86 [119th]    NOSHA Act [Basically kills OSHA - no more safety in the workplace rules]
7.    H.Res.59 [119th]    Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the sermon given by the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde at the National Prayer Service on January 21st, 2025, at the National Cathedral was a display of political activism and condemning its distorted message.  [Mercy is not ok.]
8.    H.R.55 [119th]    To repeal the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Voter_Registration_Act_of_1993
9.    H.R.25 [118th]    FairTax Act of 2023 [see also #3, above]
10.    H.R.28 [119th]    Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025 [ trans not allowed]

Florida middle-school science teacher was reportedly detained by immigration officials and now faces deportation, despite being part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The unnamed middle school teacher in Miami-Dade County was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at an immigration hearing, according to NBC Miami.  Miami-Dade County Public Schools told Newsweek that all employees were legally authorized to work within its system, and that it had not received a "formal notification" from the Department of Homeland Security regarding a teacher in its system.

DACA recipients, otherwise known as Dreamers, are U.S. residents brought into the country illegally as children. Those granted protections under the program are supposed to be exempt from ICE detention and deportation, although these protections can be revoked by authorities.

[snip]

While new applications are not being accepted, the 3.6 million who were allowed into the program are able to extend their protections. Florida is home to upwards of 74,000 Dreamers, making it one of the most-populous for DACA recipients alongside New York, Illinois, Texas, and California. While details of the individual case remained vague, immigration enforcement has been stepped up in the south Florida city in recent weeks, under President Donald Trump's mass deportation efforts. There have been reports across the country of legal immigrants having been swept up in enforcement action, while Dreamers have voiced their concerns about potential deportation.

[SNIP]

More details on the teacher's case were still pending Friday morning, as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced he was making it easier for local law enforcement to work with federal authorities carrying out immigration enforcement.

https://www.newsweek.com/daca-dreamer-teacher-detained-ice-florida-2027946

ICE agents were given quotas to fill.


SEE ALSO

https://www.newsweek.com/texas-immigrant-arrested-ice-deportation-mixed-status-family-2027517

Members of Congress denied entry into the Department of Education

by: Traci Caldwell   

Posted: Feb 7, 2025 / 11:09 AM CST   

WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) – Democratic members of Congress were not allowed into the Department of Education Friday morning. The lawmakers were blocked by a private security contractor who told them they needed to be on a guest list in order to enter the building.  On X Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) wrote, “They are blocking members of Congress from entering the Department of Education! Elon is allowed in and not the people? ILLEGAL.”

https://wgntv.com/news/washington-dc-bureau/members-of-congress-denied-entry-into-the-department-of-education/

SEE ALSO

https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/lawmakers-denied-department-education/