Trump to appoint himself Kennedy Center chair, citing disapproval of drag shows
At NIH, funding cuts were announced to medical centers and universities that do cutting-edge research
Read in The Wall Street Journal: https://apple.news/A7DI_rcqCQpaJEIv9szZcOA
Shared from Apple News
Best Wishes and Hugs,Scottie
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For those that are having trouble with the link which I just did, I edited this post to add these three links and I just posted a post linked to the NIH funding cut. Each story has some information that the others don’t, that is why I am posting all three. Hugs
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/07/politics/trump-kennedy-center-board/index.html
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/07/trump-kennedy-center-chair/78346730007/
Scottie's Playtime 
Just a point…LOTS of Apple news articles, like this WSJ one are paywallled behind Apple News + and unless you’re paying for it, not accessible.
This thing hits really close to home for me, because I work at a Research 1 state university in the health sciences. NIH grants are the major source of our research funding.
Here’s a NYT gift link to what they’re doing, which is capping “indirect costs” at 15% for new AND existing grants.
Existing grants with greater indirect supprt have already budgeted for that money because grant budgeting is done for the duration of the grant. IE a five-year grant with 25% indirect costs already has that money baked into the overall budget, allowing other sources of funding to keep the lights on and the doors open.
As a simple forinstance: a NIH grant can cover the cost of a new instrument for the research in the grant, but any consumables for that are indirect costs. An NIH grant that will use existing instruments uses indirect costs for those consumables as well.
The Pharmeceutical industry relies open academic research funded by NIH to do thair basic and applied research for them.
Coupled with red states chronically underfunding universities this will set research back decades or longer in the US, and will harm our standing in the world. For all his bellowing about trade surpluses Trump won’t see that this will only make the US more dependent on foreign trade for medicines.
America First my ass…this is simply the wholesale disassembly of the federal government in the us so the billionaires can steal everything that isn’t nailed down, and they have lots of crowbars to pry nailed down things with.
This suits the fascists like Musk, Bezos and Thiel who don’t actually believe in science that isn’t about rockets and computers, and the Theofascists who want to return us to the 10th century, and morons like Trump who think that the 1890’s were the apex of American Glory
(ssh, don’t tell him that a huge amount of the ‘medicine’ for sale in 1890 contained narcotics like opium, heroin, cocaine, or were often just worthless nostrums. But I don’t think a moron who thinks ‘washing out your lungs with disinfectants’ is a valid way of treating a repiratory virus can ever understand this)
This is what MAGA voted in for all of us, and my only consolation is that they’re gonna get what they voted for good and hard. May they choke on it as the barbers bleed them to “balance their humors” or the doctors apply leeches to “cure” their cancer…after they’ve buried half or more of their children before the age of three due to diseases that vaccines would prevent…that the monsters that they follow blindly tell them are bad.
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Hi Bruce. About the Apple + stuff I agree. I just use the regular Apple News. But it seems that a lot of the stuff I read with no problem on my phone won’t open on the computer. I may have to find other news sources. I subscribe to several substacks for news. I may use them to do videos of the news.
As to the pharmaceutical companies using the US government funding universities and research so they have minimum expense for the drugs they sell increasing the money going to the CEOs, was shown grandly by Katie Porter. https://x.com/RepKatiePorter/status/1394724627566391297 There are many clips some are full length. Here is a longer one for those who are interested. How I wish she was a Senator instead of Schiff
What you wrote about us falling behind and depending on other countries for new medications is so true. Look at what happened with all the NASA development of products since their funding was cut repeatedly over the years.
You wrote “this is simply the wholesale disassembly of the federal government in the us so the billionaires can steal everything that isn’t nailed down, and they have lots of crowbars to pry nailed down things with”. This is so true. I wish I had a way to communicate this clearly. Hugs
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