Christian A. Meissner

Picture of DOGE guy Nate Cavanaugh

Screenshot of my DOGE letter “Dr. Joseph Rezek Dear NEH Grantee, This letter provides notice that the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is terminating your federal grant (Grant Application No. FEL29509824) effective April 3, 2025, in accordance with the termination clause in your Grant Agreement. Your grant no longer effectuates the agency's needs and priorities and conditions of the Grant Agreement and is subject to termination due to several reasonable causes, as outlined in 2CFR§200.340. For instance, NEH has reasonable cause to terminate your grant in light of the fact that the NEH is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President's agenda. The President's February 19, 2025 executive order mandates that the NEH eliminate all non-statutorily required activities and functions. See Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy, E.O. 14217 (Feb. 19, 2025). Your grant's immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities. Any objections or appeals to this termination will be managed in strict accordance with the President's Executive Orders,

Last year, this guy (left) from DOGE used ChatGPT to find NEH grants that were too “DEI” for Trump, and canceled them, including mine, as shown by the letter I received last April (right). Huge new NYT article on the back story link below

Screw Covid, I'm going to Sturgis. Troy Tassier is a professor of economics at Fordham University and the author of The Rich Flee and the Poor Take the Bus: How Our Unequal Society Fails Us during Outbreaks.

"Screw Covid, I'm going to Sturgis!" The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, held in August 2020, was the epitome of the individual choice mindset. Of course it spread cases outward and caused infections, illness, and death. A new research paper allows us to watch the Sturgis Covid wave spread across the US.

Record Numbers of Workers Are Raiding Their 401(k) Savings A divergent economy has given people record retirement savings and more need to dig into them.

BREAKING: A record number of American workers are pulling money from their 401(k)s to cover financial emergencies.

Tillis: You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time in training it, and then you have the audacity to say it’s a leadership lesson. You killed a goat and said it was behaving badly. You’re a farmer — you don’t castrate a goat, they behave badly.

Making us less safe every damn day. It will take decades to replace the expertise lost.

Kash Patel’s latest firings ousted agents with expertise in Iran The FBI director gutted a specialized, global espionage unit of counterintelligence agents, just days before Operation Epic Fury.

When FBI Director Kash Patel fired a dozen FBI agents and staff last week for their role in the classified documents investigation of Donald Trump, he targeted an elite counter espionage unit that investigates threats from foreign adversaries and specializes in Iran www.ms.now/news/kash-pa...

Residency Applications After Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization This cross-sectional study using an interrupted time-series analysis investigates disparities in the residency application rate to programs in abortion-restricted states compared with nonrestricted st...

Oh look.
Residency applications took a dive across multiple specialties (OB/GYN, family medicine, internal medicine, emergency medicine) in states that banned abortion after Dobbs.
They made us all less healthy and less safe.
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Trump in 2011: “Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak and he’s ineffective.”

Just thinking about the County Clerks who are largely Republican (fewer voters, but in rural and smaller counties) will go apeshit over this. They aren't geared up for this and it will require wholesale changes in their processes and they generally don't have large staffs.

As a newly elected Member-at-Large for AAAS Section Psychology (J), I am excited to support the AAAS mission to advance science and serve society! I look forward to representing the interests of our scientific discipline! @aaas.org

NSF officials break silence on how AI and quantum now drive agency grantmaking Leaders acknowledge White House role in controversial moves

The National Science Foundation is systematically being converted to the National AI and Quantum Research Foundation.

“I see it as the administration exerting political control over what has traditionally been NSF’s ability to fund the best science.”

Private money cannot replace public funding of science Who should pay for American science? In the current political climate, many are looking to the private sector to compensate for cuts in public funding. At the Harvard School of Public Health—particula...

My latest:

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Next column will address needed guardrails for private funding of science, esp. in light of #Epstein/ #Summers etc.

Hillary Clinton: "It then got quite unusual because I started being asked about UFOs and Pizzagate"

I'm going back to bed.

Lithium Plume in Our Atmosphere Traced Back to Returning SpaceX Rocket Space junk returning to the Earth is introducing metal pollution to the pristine upper atmosphere as it burns up on re-entry, a new study has found.

Space junk returning to the Earth is introducing metal pollution to the pristine upper atmosphere as it burns up on re-entry, a new study has found.

Little Marco getting his wish.

Don't congratulate John Roberts or the Supreme Court.

Congratulate Rick Woldenberg, the Chicago-area leader of Learning Resources, an educadtional toy company that had the courage to sue the president of the United States to save his family business.

As well as everyone else who stepped up.

Florida man shows his racism and is proud of it.

Agreed

Gabbard Whistleblower Complaint Based on Intercepted Conversation About Jared Kushner The substance of the conversation, which covered in part issues related to Iran, isn’t known.

Breaking WSJ:

The highly classified whistleblower complaint against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is related to a conversation intercepted last spring in which two foreign nationals discussed Jared Kushner, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

I gotta say, "the Pentagon uses a high powered laser to shoot down a party balloon" feels like enough symbolism for awhile. all full up thanks

Irish man held in ICE detention says he fears for his life and asks Ireland for help Seamus Culleton describes conditions as ‘torture’ as he pleads with taoiseach to raise his case with Donald Trump

An Irish man held by ICE for five months despite having a valid work permit and no criminal record says he fears for his life and has appealed for help from Ireland’s government.

“I’m not in fear of the other inmates. I’m afraid of the staff. They’re capable of anything.”

"A modern-day concentration camp ... People have been killed by the staff here." Irish citizen Seamus Culleton has been in ICE detention since September, despite having a valid work permit and his own business in the US.

Don't Be a Sucker YouTube video by US National Archives

In 1947 the US War Department released “Don’t Be a Sucker,” now archived by the National Archives. It shows how fascism grows through fear lies and scapegoating. This should not be history. It is a reminder our government once wanted remembered.

Washington’s Corruption Has Created Another Humanitarian Crisis in Puerto Rico The island’s earthquakes are its latest man-made disaster.

If you didn’t catch the significance of the exploding transformers in Bad Bunny’s halftime show, I gotcha. Here’s one of a bunch of pieces I wrote from/on Puerto Rico about the crisis—and Trump’s role in it. slate.com/news-and-pol...

Just had a Super Bowl halftime where the singer:
1) boasts about the poor place he’s from;
2) boosts the value of agriculture;
3) celebrates small town life;
4) highlights the joy of inter-generational celebrations; and
5) promotes marriage.

And tomorrow, the MAGA movement will attack it.

We’re at that stage in higher ed where faculty are being asked to play the role of custodian and exterminator. We can afford the consultants for the President and layers of VPs, but can no longer pay the hourly workers who maintain our facilities. 🤦🏻‍♂️ 🤷🏻‍♂️

Big picture: Unemployment is up half a point over the past year, suggesting that we're falling behind. Not a panic button, but definitely a warning light. Add in falling vacancies, spiking initial claims, and falling quits, and the dashboard is lit like a Christmas tree.

Trump is spending over a billion dollars to tear down, build and/or remodel the WH, a ballroom, a triumphal arch, the Kennedy Center, and several DC golf courses, while spending most of his non-golfing time on interior decorating.

MAGA: This is what I voted for! He loves us!

Can you share the $ curves and distribution of $ / grant? Just curious how this compares by year and directorate.