I have to get back to responding to comments. But I woke at 2 am all upset. Later when he got up Ron told me I was loudly begging them to take their hands off me, to stop grabbing me, to stop hurting me, and Ron said my voice was very strained, like I was trying to talk while someone had their hands around my throat. I can’t remember doing anything for the first few hours being up. I just watched videos and was in my own thoughts / head. I promise I will get back to comments. But I have to learn to function again while not seeing well, being so tired from not sleeping, and trying to do so much in the house. But I promise I will find a way. Even if I have to cut the cartoon / meme post to only a few days a week. Hugs
“Me? I’m a refugee from the meaningless, soul-killing, rapacious, stressed-out world of finance, but just for the last two weeks of August.”
It used to be that once a National Institutes of Health grant award hit “status 19,” the money was about to go out the door.
That’s not the case anymore. The Trump administration has enacted an unprecedented political review process, pushing hundreds of awards into limbo. Status 19 — an administrative code describing awards with senior leadership sign-off — is being used as the holding cell.
Current and former career staff say this extra review by senior leaders is occurring after grants have undergone peer review, been approved by multiple offices in NIH, and screened for red-flag words around race, gender or other behavioral and social sciences. The extra political reviews are required not only for newly funded grants but also for annual payment installments for previously awarded projects.
As a result, some grants are lingering in status 19 for weeks or even months, gumming up the works as grant officers try to get awards out the door ahead of the new fiscal year starting in October. Flagged grants reviewed by NOTUS had to do with maternal health, contraceptive use, aging, dementia and opioid abuse.
“The notion that Francis Collins or Mike Lauer would ever have reviewed individual grants like this is so beyond the realm of comprehension,” a senior career staffer said, referring to the former directors of NIH and its Office of Extramural Research. “It’s laughable to me.”
A second senior NIH official called status 19 a “graveyard for grants.” The NIH staffers were granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media.
As one of the largest grant funders in the federal government, NIH’s process is a prime example of how the Trump administration is implementing more political oversight of grants across a wide swath of agencies, even as its efforts to formalize those reviews face pushback.
Senate Republicans voted to temporarily block a White House regulation to formalize political review, which has already led to delays in posting and awarding grants at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Department of Interior and other agencies.
Researchers, patient advocates and biotech companies are outraged by the proposed regulation, which the White House is seeking to implement by Oct. 1 but could be blocked until December if the House also approves a delay.
Senior NIH leaders sent around a new agency review flowchart in May outlining additional steps once an award hits status 19. The flowchart, viewed by NOTUS, mandates a review by the NIH Office of Extramural Research (OER) and an HHS counselor before grantees are given a notice of award. There are no political appointees at OER, but its director reports to NIH Director and Trump appointee Jay Bhattacharya.
As a result of the extra reviews, the number of grants sitting for weeks in status 19 have surged. Around 8% of new grant awards are sitting in status 19 for anywhere from two to seven weeks, according to internal data shared with NOTUS.
In past years, around 11% of first-time awards had been released to the recipients within a week. This year, it’s 2%.
The delays are even more pronounced for annual payment installments for ongoing grants. The vast majority previously left status 19 within three days; now it takes 53 days to get 90% of payments out the door.
Lauer, who served as NIH’s extramural research director from 2015 to February 2025, said he couldn’t recall a time when a political appointee — including the NIH director — halted awarding of a research grant after it had gone through the review and approval process.
“Status 19 was not something I thought about,” Lauer told NOTUS.
NIH career staff stress that by the time grant awards reach status 19, they have been through dozens of editing and review steps. They’ve undergone peer review and a second look by an advisory council. Grant officers have gone through a checklist, including confirming that women and racial minorities have been appropriately included, something required by statute.
In grants reviewed by NOTUS, HHS or EOR staff flagged words including “diverse,” “equity,” “structural” and “underrepresented” and asked for clarification about what the researchers meant by them. In one project, a staffer wrote that the word “structural” could include concepts that are inconsistent with NIH priorities.
They asked for more clarification in projects that focused on health disparities or racial groups. Officials wrote that focusing on specific racial groups required more justification. In one project that expressed support for scholars and researchers from a variety of backgrounds, an official responded that the language could raise legal concerns if interpreted as targeting people based on demographics.
In multiple flagged grants, officials expressed concerns that they weren’t worth funding because their only practical use might be to support the writing of new laws.
HHS spokeswoman Emily Hilliard disputed the notion that status 19 is being used to hold up grants under extra political reviews. She said grants can remain in status 19 for five to 10 days while they are given final review by the Office of Extramural Research.
“There is no political appointee review stage in the NIH grant review process,” Hilliard said in a statement. “OER’s review is a longstanding part of NIH’s grant review process.”
Lauer said releasing grant money might face occasional delays, but it was almost always because Congress had failed to pass a budget for NIH, leading to uncertainty about how much total grant funding would be available.
Trump appointees are also conducting extra layers of review to the notices posted by the government to let researchers know money is available for specific projects or programs. Researchers say they’ve seen more delays in posting those notices — another obstacle in getting grant funding out the door.
“It’s this black box of HHS review,” said Colleen Kelley, an associate dean for research at Emory University.
The Chicago-based agent was already identified on social media and by Unraveled Press. Now, two Department of Homeland Security sources have confirmed his name to Migrant Insider.
Two sources inside the Department of Homeland Security confirmed the name of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who pointed a gun at a U.S. citizen to Migrant Insider.
The masked ICE officer who stepped out of an unmarked SUV on Monday and pointed his service weapon at Carolina Molina — a U.S. citizen, seated behind the wheel of her own car, in a parking lot off Columbia Pike in Falls Church — is Martin Lagunas, according to two DHS sources who spoke to Migrant Insider on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the incident publicly.
“This is the same kind of behavior that led to the murder of two American citizens,” Senator Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) tweeted about the incident.” “Trump’s violent goon squad is out of control. We need to completely clean house and rebuild from the bottom,” he added.
DHS has not named Lagunas in any public statement. The agency’s official line after the encounter went viral described the officers as agents who feared for their safety during a “targeted immigration enforcement” operation. But Molina’s video shows her car is stationary as Lagunas points his weapon at her window and accuses her, on camera, of nearly running his team over — a lie ICE agents made after the killing of Renée Good in Minneapolis in January.
Confirming a name investigators wouldn’t
Lagunas, 40, was first publicly identified by Elgin-area ICE watchdog Ismael Cordová-Clough one week ago, and independently verified through voice and visual analysis — including a distinctive arm tattoo and a frayed “POLICE” patch worn across multiple eICEncounters — in reporting by Unraveled Press. Migrant Insider’s DHS sources corroborate that identification.
Unraveled’s reported that Lagunas is a Chicago native who led an Enforcement and Removal Operations team first documented making arrests outside Chicago’s immigration court at 55 E. Monroe Street in May 2025, and later during protests outside the ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois — the epicenter of last fall’s Operation Midway Blitz demonstrations.
That same team surfaced again in Minneapolis in January, four days after ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot the 37-year-old Good — the case Molina herself invoked at a Wednesday press conference, saying, “I think my life was in danger at that point. It wasn’t until after I was like, this was a whole Renée Good situation again.”
Martin Lagunas’ Facebook profile picture.
The “weaponized vehicle” playbook
DHS’s account of the Virginia stop — that Molina “attempted to harm officers by weaponizing her vehicle” — repeats a pattern the agency has leaned on before, per Unraveled’s reporting: almost identical language was used to justify the fatal shootings of Silverio Villegas González in Franklin Park, Illinois, and Good in Minneapolis — claims that video and body-camera footage in both cases failed to support.
Molina saids the gun in her face made her start filmimg. “I think that’s why I took my cell phone out and started recording, because I’m like, ‘yo, this guy is really pointing a gun at my head.’ Like that’s insane,” she said.
DHS’s statement on the incident does not mention Lagunas by name: “The operation was targeting criminal illegal aliens, whose crimes included a hit and run and drug trafficking, and illegal aliens with final orders of removal. Fearing for their safety, ICE officers conducted a vehicle stop of the driver. Necessary background information of the driver was taken and she could face criminal prosecution as a result of her actions.”
The Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office confirmed this week it is reviewing the footage. Rep. Don Beyer and Rep. Suhas Subramanyam have publicly demanded consequences for the agents involved.
Online Footprint
Four days before the Virginia stop, back in Minneapolis, Lagunas told a driver he’d blocked in with his own vehicle: “You’re not gonna like the outcome of this, sir. I guarantee you’re not going to like the outcome.” On the day Renée Good died, he’d posted about her death on his own Facebook page. The caption was one word: “FAFO.”
This is a developing story. If you have information about Lagunas or other ICE agents caught on video committing atrocities in our country, let us know at tips@migrantinsider.com or on Signal at pab.202.
A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by an Amazon representative because they wanted to recruit me as one of their “Amazon influencers”. I’ve been thinking about it seriously since then, considering that it’s a lot of money and visibility, and as an independent underground artist, I’m never really sure what tomorrow will be made of. Well I just decided to decline, as the thought of taking an active part in promoting this company was making me physically ill. I am aware that I’m saying no to a big opportunity, but staying true to myself and what I stand for is more important to me. My books will remain out of Amazon, even if that means less sales. I hope you understand – I know how easy Amazon makes it and I’m not judging anyone for buying there. I’m guilty as well. Anyway, if you’re looking for my books, they’re still on www.serioustransvibes.com or on Etsy. And if you think my independence is valuable and worth a bunch of dimes or more, please consider subscribing to my Patreon account, that’s what keeps the ship afloat : www.patreon.com/assignedmale ❤
Not much these days, end up walking in circles around the house. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 