"I don't want to cut NIH programs, Russ Vought doesn't want to cut NIH programs, but we have a $35 trillion debt," Kennedy said.
[NOTE: the US War with Iran has already cost American taxpayers more than NIH's entire annual budget]
Hundreds of Fake Pro-Trump Avatars Emerge on Social Media (NYT Gift Article)
>The emergence of the A.I.-generated political avatars, researchers said, suggests a sweeping effort to hook conservative voters, a demographic primed by the president and his circle to accept memes, influencers, deepfakes and other digitally packaged messaging. Neither The Times nor the researchers it consulted found any similar left-leaning networks.
>“People gearing up for the midterms should expect that they might see some of this content on their accounts, that it might be crafted to be particularly engaging or exciting to them,” said Kaylyn Jackson Schiff, a co-director of GRAIL.
A scientist charged with research misconduct used a fake email communication with an NIH researcher’s address to support his claims of governmental retaliation, Retraction Watch has learned.
Last month, we reported on the upholding of a proposed 15-year debarment by a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services appeals judge against Argentine chemist Ariel Fernández for falsifying research while a professor at Rice University in Houston. Administrative law judge Margaret G. Brakebusch based that May 2025 decision on findings by Rice sent to the Office of Research Integrity in 2010 and conclusions from ORI’s independent review completed in 2022.
Fernández denied the misconduct allegations and told us the findings were retaliation by the government for a 2021 paper he wrote supporting a lab origin of SARS-CoV-2.^(1) As evidence of the contention, Fernández showed us an email purportedly from National Institutes of Health researcher Joshua Cherry dated June 2021. The email, which appeared to be from Cherry’s NIH address, threatened to resurrect Fernández’s ORI case if he didn’t remove the paper. We could not independently verify the email’s authenticity at the time.
Last week, an NIH spokesperson told us that, “following a thorough review,” the agency has no record of the email, which Fernández submitted to the HHS Office of Inspector General as part of a complaint about the alleged “attack” on his reputation.
A federal judge in Oregon on Saturday forcefully struck down Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s attempt to impose far-reaching restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors, ruling the policy unlawful and blocking its enforcement in the states that challenged it.
In a final judgment dated April 18, U.S. District Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai vacated the so-called "Kennedy Declaration," finding it exceeded the administration’s authority, violated federal rulemaking requirements, and conflicted with existing law.
The ruling delivers a sharp rebuke to one of the Trump administration’s most aggressive efforts to reshape transgender health care policy through executive action alone.