Way back when I was a young kid going into a science career, I knew ahead of time that the pay was going to be crap and I was going to have to scramble for a new position every few years, and that I was going to have to move multiple times to destinations unknown. That was the job. My expectations were low (maybe too low — who’s stupid enough to pursue a career like that?) but I just wanted to do science and teach and have a satisfying intellectual life. We made enough money to scrape by, and there was enough of a demand that I felt I could probably land a new position at a university somewhere if one job fell through. I came from a generation where science was a viable, if not particularly lucrative, career.

That has changed.

For one postdoc, uncertainty about whether the funding for her awarded “diversity” fellowship from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will come through means she’s spending valuable time writing more applications instead of doing research. For another, learning that the “dream job” he’d been offered at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) was being withdrawn because of the federal hiring freeze has left him clinging to his current position—and $5000 poorer because he already canceled his lease in preparation for moving. And a Ph.D. student whose dream is to one day lead a planetary mission at NASA is “panicking” about her professional future.

These are just a few of the countless researchers reeling after President Donald Trump’s administration unleashed a wave of actions over the past month—freezing funds, firing thousands of federal employees, upending programs and research related to gender and diversity, and more. Scientists of all stripes have been affected, but none more so than early-career researchers, a group already struggling with low pay and job insecurity. Now, some wonder how many of those budding researchers will throw in the towel and leave science, or the United States, entirely. “There’s going to be a missing age class of researchers that will reverberate for years,” one federal scientist fears.

Chopping out a whole cohort of researchers is a catastrophe. What happens in 10 years, 20 years, the time when all these young people should be in their prime, producing great new ideas and data? There was a time 30 years ago when I was tempted by opportunities to work in industry, and I said no, and committed to academic research. I’d be deeply conflicted if I faced that kind of situation now. Or not…maybe those academic avenues would be simply closed.

Young researchers also face the prospect that positions for graduate students and postdocs will dwindle because of broader scale cuts to research funding—for instance, the threatened reduction in the indirect costs that universities charge to carry out research funded through federal grants. As graduate school admission decisions are being made, faculty at several research-intensive universities—including Vanderbilt University and the University of Washington—have been told to reduce the size of their incoming cohorts, the health news site STAT reported.

Or wait…what if you decided to leave the academic track and pursue a career in industry, just like all your peers?

Many of the federal scientists fired this month are also early in their careers. “I feel like I was robbed of a career,” says one biologist who was terminated from his position at the U.S. Geological Survey on 14 February. Another fired scientist, who had started a position at USDA in 2023 after finishing a 3-year postdoc, says he had “envisioned this being my last job—one I would be in for 20 or more years.”

They’re now suddenly in an uncertain position, with a new set of financial challenges and anxiety about where they’ll be able to find work next. “I’m not optimistic about an already competitive job market that is going to be flooded with qualified scientists,” one said.

I never thought my career timing was particularly good — I was always being informed that there was going to be a wave of opportunities as older faculty retired, but that it was going to be ten years in the future. It was always 10 years from now, kind of like Elon Musk’s predictions about when we’d be living on Mars. Those predictions always failed anyway, just like the fantasy of Mars colonies. But now I think maybe I got lucky. I’m reaching the end of my career just as American science is being taken out back behind the chemical sheds by a gang of psychopathic fascists.

That doesn’t help my daughter, who has just begun a career in science.

Help me…wait, who is going to help? The Rebellion has been coopted!

Tom the Dancing Bug

Spoiler: it’s not much of a plan.

He points out the magnitude of the problem: Trump has the backing of billionaires, who are rushing to fund his every desire; he has the media under his control; he’s a master of the “big lie”; he does not believe in democracy, at all. That’s what we have to overcome.

What do we have? We have high aspirations and grand values.

Healthcare is a human right and must be available to all regardless of income.

Every worker in America is entitled to earn a decent income. We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage and make it easier for workers to join unions.

We must have the best public educational system in the world, from childcare to vocational training, to graduate school – available to all.

We must address the housing crisis and build the millions of units of low-income and affordable housing that we desperately need.

We must create millions of good paying jobs as we lead the world in combating the existential threat of climate change.

We must abolish all forms of bigotry.

Great! But I’m 3/4 of the way through his essay, and he hasn’t said how we will accomplish that. In the final few paragraphs, he gives us one goal: we have to defeat one particular and particularly significant bill.

In the coming weeks the Republicans in Congress will be bringing forward a major piece of legislation, a “reconciliation” bill, that encapsulates the value system of greed and their obedience to oligarchy. It is the economic essence of Trumpism.

At a time of unprecedented income and wealth inequality, this legislation will provide trillions of dollars in tax breaks to the richest people in our country. It will make the rich even richer. At a time when the working class of this country is struggling to put food on the table and pay for housing, this legislation will make savage cuts to Medicaid, housing, nutrition, education and other basic needs. It will make the poor even poorer.

That’s it? Defeat this one bill? You know, I don’t get to vote on it, this legislation is entirely in the hands of the current crop of elected congresspeople, and we already know that a lot of them are spineless simps who will bow down before authority. I am confident my senators will oppose it, and that my representative is a terrible Republican MAGA-head who will support it. This is a plan that leaves me helpless, only pawn in game of life.

It also reflects a naive confidence in the rule of law. Trump is busy trampling over the Constitution, issuing executive orders that are both illegal and in defiance of all political norms, and we’re supposed to think that one political setback in congress will stop him? He doesn’t respect congress or democracy. The only thing that will stop him would be for the police/FBI/whatever to intervene, arrest him and his cronies, and lock them all up. We know that no one in government will have the spine to do what needs to be done.

But sure. I’ll tell my representatives to vote against the reconciliation bill. I hope it fails.

Now what do we do about the gutting of NSF and NIH, the dismantling of the parks service, the dissolution of the board of education, the selling out of Ukraine to Putin, the alienation of all of our allies in the world, and on and on and on?

Fortunately, salvage crews work for free.

My wife & I have discussed flying out to Washington state, maybe with a side trip down the Oregon coast, but I may have to rethink that.

The Trump administration has begun firing several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees, upending staff on a busy air travel weekend and just weeks after a January fatal mid-air collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

Probationary workers were targeted in late night emails Friday notifying them they had been fired, David Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, said in a statement.

The impacted workers include personnel hired for FAA radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance, one air traffic controller told the Associated Press. The air traffic controller was not authorized to talk to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity.

ATC was already understaffed. In what muddled, evil mind does firing more improve air travel safety? Unless…maybe it’s not about safety.

One FAA employee who was fired over the weekend suggested he was targeted for his views on Tesla and X, formerly Twitter, not as part of a general probationary-level sweep. Both are owned by Elon Musk, who is leading Trump’s effort to cut the federal government.

Charles Spitzer-Stadtlander posted on LinkedIn that he was fired just after midnight Saturday, days after he started getting harassing messages on Facebook.

“The official DOGE Facebook page started harassing me on my personal Facebook account after I criticized Tesla and Twitter,” Spitzer-Stadtlander wrote. “Less than a week later, I was fired, despite my position allegedly being exempted due to national security.”

He added: “When DOGE fired me, they turned off my computer and wiped all of my files without warning.”

I’ve criticized DOGE and Tesla and everything connected to Elon Musk. Will they try to revoke my tenure next?

At least innocent people wouldn’t die if I lose my job, unlike those air traffic controllers.

The Trump administration and his unelected stooge, Elon Musk, had charged in and imposed a blanket reduction of all indirect costs to 15% — indirect costs are the mechanism used to support the infrastructure of science all across the country. This was a devastating, crippling strike against research.

Not so fast, says a judge.

A federal judge in Boston ordered a nationwide temporary pause on plans by the National Institutes of Health to substantially slash research overhead payments to universities, medical centers, and other grant recipients.

Judge Angel Kelley of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued the temporary restraining order late Monday night in response to a lawsuit filed that afternoon by associations representing the nation’s medical, pharmacy, and public health schools, as well as Boston and New York-area hospitals. The suit names the NIH, Department of Health and Human Services, and the acting heads of both agencies as defendants.

In the order, Kelley wrote that the defendants cannot take “any steps to implement, apply, or enforce the [policy] … in any form with respect to institutions nationwide until further order is issued by this Court.”

That’s good. Unfortunately, I don’t like the idea of judges deciding the fate of universities, because if one thing is clear, there is no objective standard in how laws are applied, especially since different judges are expressing different opinions, and the judiciary is already packed with ideologues. Thanks, Federalist Society!

Perhaps more encouraging is that some Republicans are waking up to the fact that they’re getting boned by Trump policies.

Red-state universities are hitting back at the Trump administration’s expansive cuts to science and research funding, warning they would be forced to shutter laboratories and lay off staff should they face the sudden elimination of millions of dollars in funding.

The blowback, echoed by at least two Republican senators, marks the most widespread political resistance the Trump administration has faced in its rapid sprint to reshape the federal government and its spending policies.

There are very good universities imbedded in all those red states — they provide resources and training that are essential to the economic well-being of those regions. Even Republicans know this, and they have begun stirring to defend against the Trump/Musk idiocy.

Universities in conservative strongholds have spent the last few days warning of the drastic economic and scientific toll of the new funding limit, putting fresh pressure on Republican officials to stand up for their states. The episode could also amplify scrutiny of Trump’s pick to run the Education Department, Linda McMahon, ahead of her confirmation hearing on Thursday.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) slammed the policy as “devastating” and illegal.

Oh fuck no…Susan Collins is saying she opposes it? You know what that means: as soon as an opportunity to act rises up, she’s going to vote for anything Trump says. That’s the problem: you can convince Republicans that something is against their self-interest, but when push comes to shove, they’ll align themselves with the biggest bully in the room.

A bill has been introduced in Washington DC by a congressman from Georgia.

H.R.1161 – To authorize the President to enter into negotiations to acquire Greenland and to rename Greenland as “Red, White, and Blueland”.

It’s real. Buddy Carter has got to be one of the dumbest suck-ups in congress. I am embarrassed to be from this country.

At least we’re getting words of encouragement from the administration.

Dear Colleagues,

Since our founding in 1851, the University of Minnesota has distinguished itself as a global leader in research, scholarship and creative practice.

From pioneering the first open heart surgery to unlocking the secrets of DNA repair, our students, faculty and staff have always maintained an unwavering commitment to serving the world through discovery and innovation.

Thank you for everything you do.

The federal government’s recent notice calling for a 15 percent indirect cost rate on all new awards from the National Institutes of Health is a direct attack on our ability to advance the University’s public service mission, and it has created fear and uncertainty across our community. This decision would cut reimbursements for research facilities and administrative costs, which cover critical, lifesaving research activities ranging from patient safety to research security. It would no doubt have serious consequences for patients across the state, as well as our students, faculty and staff.

According to Mark Becker, President of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, “NIH slashing the reimbursement of research costs will slow and limit medical breakthroughs that cure cancer and address chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. Let there be no mistake: this is a direct and massive cut to lifesaving medical research.”

As a principal investigator on numerous NIH grants throughout my career, I understand how devastating this announcement must be for many members of our community.

University leaders convened over the weekend to chart a path forward, and we are actively partnering with higher education associations and peer institutions across the country to identify ways in which we can effectively address this rapidly evolving situation head on. With guidance and support from our Government and Community Relations Team, we have implemented a broad outreach strategy to ensure that members of our federal and state delegation fully appreciate the profound implications of this notice.

We are also supporting national efforts led by higher education associations to address the legality of this directive, and the University will stand in firm opposition to such drastic cuts that impede on our ability to advance research discoveries and innovations.

My leadership team and I will remain fully engaged on this issue, as well as other federal policy changes that affect our community and impact our operations. I recognize that news of this notice creates a significant level of fear, uncertainty and concern.

Please know that I am committed to ensuring our University’s primary missions of teaching, research and outreach thrive. And I will continue to advocate on your behalf, as the University explores every avenue to aggressively address the challenges posed by this notice.

We are one of America’s leading public research universities, and I will loudly champion the work of our students, faculty and staff so they can continue to advance research, scholarship and creative practice for the betterment of our society.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the latest announcement from NIH, please contact our Research and Innovation Office at rio@umn.edu, or connect with a research administrator in your school, college or unit. I also would encourage you to visit z.umn.edu/fed-impacts for research-related updates and FAQs.

Sincerely,

Rebecca Cunningham
President

Also, note that the University of Minnesota Morris will keep on celebrating Black History Month no matter how nasty the White House gets.