President Trump has ordered a temporary hiring freeze throughout the federal government. That's not too unusual. Within HHS he's also ordered a halt to all external communications. That's a little more unusual, but not unheard of.
But keep drilling down and you get to the National Institutes of Health, the country's premier medical research center. It's loathed by RFK Jr. because it doesn't fund the kind of crackpot research he's fond of, so it's getting far more serious treatment:
The new administration [is] imposing a wide range of restrictions, including the abrupt cancellation of meetings such as grant review panels.... Today, for example, officials halted midstream a training workshop for junior scientists, called off a workshop on adolescent learning minutes before it was to begin, and canceled meetings of two advisory councils. Panels that were scheduled to review grant proposals also received eleventh-hour word that they wouldn’t be meeting.
....NIH travel chief Glenda Conroy sent an email to senior agency officials early today notifying them of an “immediate and indefinite” suspension of all travel throughout HHS.
....NIH today canceled meetings of advisory councils at its dental and bioengineering institutes. The council meetings include a closed-door session where grant proposals from extramural researchers that have already been approved by peer-review panels undergo a final review before the awards are made. It is not clear what will happen to those grants if the council meeting to finalize the review is canceled. Many more councils for NIH’s 24 grantmaking institutes and centers are scheduled to meet in the coming weeks.
Even more troubling to many researchers is a pause on study sections that many received word of today. Without such meetings, NIH cannot make research awards.
No travel, no meetings, and no research grants. That seems . . . excessive, doesn't it? More like punitive retaliation from someone holding a grudge than a mere desire to take a short breather while everyone gets settled. As far as I know, no one else has gotten this treatment and Trump himself has never bad-mouthed the NIH. So I assume he did this at RFK Jr's request. This doesn't bode well for his future stewardship of HHS.
FHWA has done this too. It has halted all federal money obligations on projects that have been approved and that is trickling down through states and municipalities.
Because of the unleashing energy EO
Ahh, yes, stopping the flow of energy is now freedom?
Ugh.
How are we going to burn all of those beautiful fossil fuels if we don’t lay down more asphalt?
Scrambled eggs in the morning!
I was going to say 'Vandals and Philistines at the gates!' I suppose they could sit down for a breakfast of scrambled eggs.
Meh. Who needs an NIH and research. We'll just let doctors figure it out on their own, like using a dewormer to treat COVID-19. That worked out for the folks who were "dewormed", didn't it? 😏
Can't wait to see what they do in week 2 of the new administration. Send troops to Panama? Fire missiles at Iran? Declare war on Mexican drug cartels and invade Mexico to take them on?
Hope those voters love all this chaos they voted for.
I think the one-time high school football players now underemployed latrine cleaners are all over this and dancing because of it.
That's the crazy part. They will love this chaos. Even when they're unemployed and have lost their life savings. Because they're owning the libs, don't you know?
Sounds sure to make America great.
Pressing the applause button vehemently.
Josh Marshall is shouting the only perspective that matters. Everything else is details. Call your Senators and Congress reps and get on their asses:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/democrats-are-surrounded-by-low-hanging-fruit-get-to-it
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/thinking-about-the-confirmations
Unless you'd prefer to tap your keyboard.
If I had any doubts as to how not up to the moment institutional Democrats are, this makes our situation perfectly clear (scroll down to "Vibe Check"):
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/with-trump-pardons-the-jan-6-coup-attempt-is-finally-complete
We are so fucked. But we got nothing to lose, and you know what Janis said about that. It's time to kick the fucking Democrats in the nuts and make them dance. Unless someone has a better suggestion.....
Go Away, far, far away. We're not Marxists around here. Go blab on Bernie's blog.
+50.
I live in Florida. Anything that involves "calling your Senators and Congress reps" is beyond pointless.
This is how a recession happens, millions and millions of people out of work as the federal government contracts. Not to mention the culling of the federal workforce. Argue all you want about whether the government should be spending so much or be the largest buyer in the country, but those people have mortgages and auto loans, they spend money at grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants, and Amazon.
Smoot-Hawley redux doesn't help either.
+1
I'm all for cutting the military budget in this country. But if that happened, millions and millions of people would be out of work. Those people have mortgages and auto loans, they spend money at grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants, and Amazon.
The justification for the NIH budget isn't employment, it's investment in the health of US citizens.
+1
Totally with you there, but a rule about no funding going to publicly owned companies might be good. And maybe caps on total executive compensation. Nobody is comfortable with people getting rich off the government, except maybe Republicans.
Don't you mean "privately owned companies"?
nobody is comfortable with people getting rich off the federal government? how do you think fred trump got rich?
Trump's tariffs on the auto industry will destroy GM, Ford and Stellantis.
Eggs are a lot cheaper in a recession.
Just sayin’.
I'm not so sure. Eggs are a cheap and easy to cook source of protein even for vegetarians. The demand is fairly inflexible, which is why the prices go up and down so much with changes in supply. Of course Donald wants to get rid of or severely restrict who can get SNAP so the unemployed may just be able to afford dollar loaves of bread.
You will join the intra-federal Stasi… https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/federal-workers-told-name-dei-colleagues-risk-adverse-consequences-rcna188871
It's going to get real interesting when they start demanding the same of universities that receive federal dollars.
If NIH funding dries up, many Universities will be shutting down.
Grad schools will close, TA's will dry up, and Universities will collapse.
I think they would consider that a feature and not a bug.
Which may be part of the plan.
A national poll showed that the majority of Republicans thought that college was bad for you.
RAs will dry up. TAs wouldn't normally get federal funding.
But DOJ has been ordered to halt all civil rights cases. So what’s to keep anyone from discriminating against white men?
I thought it might be that fraud, Jay Bhattacharya (of the Great Barrington Declaration), doing this, but he's not confirmed yet, so I wonder who is calling the shots.
According to RFK Jr. most cancers can be cured by eating red cabbage that has been fermented in goat piss for 30 days. I expect the FDA to green-light that in the near future.
Don't be silly. You can't cure cancer by eating red cabbage that has been fermented in goat piss for 30 days. The goat piss has to be filtered through beryllium sulfide crystals first. Then it has to be stored in quartz containers and exposed to classical music for 24 hours. Then you ferment the red cabbage in it. This reduces the time to only 12 days. Unless there's a full moon. Then it takes only 8 days.
You are right. I stand corrected. I merely skimmed the report and didn't read it thoroughly.
The crystals are the important part.
Only Party members in GOOD Standing will get grants???
I gotta think Pharma will way in on this, and before too long the more extreme of Bobby's nut-casery antics will be curbed.
That'll be a possibility, contingent on understanding that their lobbying and advertising budgets need to go toward buying a few hundred millions' worth of $trump meme coins.
Remember Biden's Cancer Moonshot?
Can't have that, can we....
Nixon had one of those too.
This is all activity funded by some congress act(s), no?
Doesn't that makes it impounding?
There would be a legal difference between impounding the money and preventing it from being spent by cancelling the meetings required to approve it. The workers are still getting their salary even though they aren't working. And not being able to complete the necessary paper work or anything similar in order to fund a project has always been a valid excuse for not spending appropriated money.
How long does it take for a whack job judge in Amarillo to declare the anti-impounding law unconstitutional and enjoin its enforcement nationwide?
An hour, maybe two?
We are well past the rule of law, now.
This is NOT limited to NIH
CDC just this morning is being asked for details on all grantee meetings down to the level of individual phone calls
All parts of HHS are affected by the hiring and communication freezes
I would place a bet they kill off weatherization funding as a benefit to the oil and gas lobby, plus it's for poor people who need a boot to the ass to pull themselves together.
That's more millions of jobs.
Oh hey, didn't you say mass immigration raids wouldn't happen? https://www.axios.com/2025/01/24/ice-raid-newark-new-jersey-immigration-us-citizens
How'd they end up detaining US citizens? Did they screen employees by the color of their skin?
I'd imagine executives and supervisors are fair game for arrest in immigration raids.
"How'd they end up detaining US citizens? ..."
When they raid the whorehouse they take all the girls.
Back a couple of decades ago, florida under jeb bush made a big splash attracting biotech research centers like scripps to the state in order to diversify the economy. the idea was that these centers would create spin-off companies through their work that in turn would create more jobs while also bolstering local universities academically. part of the equation was the nih money that their research would attract. at the time, florida was near the bottom as far as attracting nih money.
i haven't looked at the numbers in years, but the effort has worked at least to an extent. drying up nih grant money would put the work of these centers and these companies at risk. by the way, trump has a golf course in jupiter, fla., literally just down the street from scripps florida and the max planck institute.