Trump / Musk (other than DOGE)

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nycfan said:
This topic was combined in the Public health thread but seems to need its own thread.

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Deep Cuts to Medical Research Funds Could Hobble University Budgets​

Grants from the National Institutes of Health come with additional money for overhead. Proposed funding cuts would leave colleges with large budget gaps.

www.nytimes.com

Trump Administration Cuts Put Medical Progress at Risk, Researchers Say

Grants from the National Institutes of Health come with additional money for overhead. A planned $4 billion cut would leave colleges with large budget gaps.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

“The National Institutes of Health announced a new policy Friday to cap a type of funding that supports medical research at universities, a decision that most likely will leave many with a large budget gap.

The policy targets $9 billion in so-called indirect funds that the N.I.H. sends along with direct funds to support research into basic science and treatments for diseases ranging from cancer to Alzheimer’s to diabetes.

Currently, some universities get 50 percent or more of the amount of a grant in indirect funds to maintain facilities and equipment and pay support staff. The new policy would cap those indirect funds at 15 percent.

“I think it’s going to destroy research universities in the short term, and I don’t know after that,” said Dr. David A. Baltrus, a University of Arizona associate professor whose lab is developing antibiotics for crops. “They rely on the money. They budget for the money. The universities were making decisions expecting the money to be there.” …”

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I don’t think you can overstate the negative impact on the budgets of major research universities from this abrupt change …
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There are R1 public universities that get as much or more from NIH than they get from state appropriations. The indirect funds are used to maintain lab spaces (which is not cheap) and staff business and compliance offices. The permissible charges to direct and indirect funds is tightly defined so it’s not a matter of shifting some expenses around and making do. For some universities, it would effectively end most science research, not just medical. To use an easily digestible analogy, NIH is to academic science research what D1 football is to non-revenue and Olympic sports at colleges.
 


Judge needs to demand an accounting of who received the info and if its destruction.
 
I mean you can argue Indirect Costs are too high...whatever
But entire Budgets years out-including Facility construction happening now-have this rate build in. You can not just cut it all off one Monday morning
UNC gets more Research money than State appropiations-or at least it is close . I would be willing to bet even the Transit subsidy UNC gives Chapel Hill busses gets some Indirect $$ As it should. All these folkes working the labs need to get to work.
The money does not go to hookers and blow
 
mpaer said:
I mean you can argue Indirect Costs are too high...whatever
But entire Budgets years out-including Facility construction happening now-have this rate build in. You can not just cut it all off one Monday morning
UNC gets more Research money than State appropiations-or at least it is close . I would be willing to bet even the Transit subsidy UNC gives Chapel Hill busses gets some Indirect $$ As it should. All these folkes working the labs need to get to work.
The money does not go to hookers and blow
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I think this is correct. Get the right number for costs and give universities some runway to make plans. But this is kind of the way corporations do it. They do the cuts and then see where they've gone too far.

Out of curiosity, does this hit the indirect costs for already awarded grants or just the ones to be awarded?
 
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gtyellowjacket said:
I think this is correct. Get the right number for costs and give universities an efferent way to make plans. But this is kind of the way corporations do it. They do the cuts and then see where they've gone too far.

Out of curiosity, does this hit the indirect costs for already awarded grants or just the ones to be awarded?
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The consequences for corporations isn't nearly as consequential as the public arena.
 
My system sent a very brief “oh, this shit is bad, but there’s nothing you can do” notice, this AM re: grants and future research funding.

The damage this admin has likely done, in two weeks, to medical research advancement likely takes years to recapture, and that’s if they turn the research dollars back on, quickly. These advanced research labs require specialized supply chains, protocols, trainings, and most importantly, recruits with elite capabilities. The US doesn’t consistently produce the number of people with elite capabilities needed to conduct this type of life saving and enhancing research. The blanket financial shock to the research ecosystem will likely damage our ability to recruit top minds from outside the US, possibly for many years, as those people have a plethora of choices. Why sign-up to work in a lab at UNC, under the constant threat of revanchist, xenophobic, and capricious fascists when you likely have a home country option, or the likes of Cambridge, McGill, etc. interested in your services?

It’s almost like the intention is to cull the herd. Hell, next year’s flu vaccine development has been compromised.
 
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The dumbest part is when people think Elon really cares about government waste

He wants the money for himself and his projects. And the followers keep thinking he's for them. It's mind blowing

The only rich people that care are Melinda Gates and Mackenzie Scott
 
dcf2 said:
The state of NC (UNC, Duke, NCSU, others) receives ~$2B in NIH Funding. Most in the RTP area.

This will eliminate thousands of jobs.
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And librul-hating Trumpers will rejoice. They're gloating right now at all of the "useless" government workers and experts and researchers and scientists and so on who are going to lose their jobs. One of the underrated aspects of Trumpism is that it is to a great extent a class war by working-class, mostly non-college educated rural and suburban whites against the professional classes, and under Trump 2.0 that war is now going full throttle. If you're an expert in any field, you're the enemy and should lose your job, so you can replaced by Trump and Musk loyalists who in most cases have no experience in the jobs they're being hired to do and in some cases are barely out of college. It's quite literally crazy and isn't going to work, but they're hellbent on going through with it, all so they can punish the libs and professional classes and make them suffer, and of course pay for their next big tax cuts for people like themselves. And when the shit finally hits the fan they'll somehow find a way to blame the very people they're trying to fire for all of the problems and disasters they've caused.
 
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Severance pay isn’t really a thing for staff in academia. When positions are cut, they give you maybe 3 months notice. If we had to cut positions because of this and then the Trump administration backtracked the following week, we couldn’t simply reappoint them. We would have to advertise, interview, go through the HR salary approval process, make an offer and wait for a response. A month is lightning quick for that process. Ten weeks is typical.
 
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