My Hobby and Interest - Research

Thanks to Susan Santangelo for this contribution!  Maine nurses showed up at U.S. Senator Susan Collins ' office to demand she vote no on any appropriations package that includes the Homeland Security Appropriations bill. It's time for this ICE terror to end! Listen to their message here!

  Washington Week in Science - January 30, 2026 A Weekly Update of Policy News and Select Funding Opportunities Compiled by  Van Scoyoc Associates View this email in your browser January 30, 2026   Health   HHS appoints 21 new members to federal autism advisory committee   The Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday announced the appointment of 21 new members to a federal committee that advises health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on autism. Many of the new members of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee share a common trait: They have publicly expressed or belong to groups that have publicly expressed a belief in the debunked claim that vaccines can cause autism. Read more:   STAT News   Life expectancy in United States hits all-time high: CDC  People in the United States are living longer than ever before, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A report released Thursday...

 Thanks to Susan Santangelo for this contribution!

  As Americans this has been another tough week. It has been disturbing to follow the events in Minnesota and the consequences of the ICE invasion of that state. Scientific freedom isn’t possible unless all people are free. We have less science news to report this week than usual, as the Nation’s attention has been focused on other events. Additionally, because the budget for HHS/NIH was part of a package that included funding for the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, passage has been delayed. As of this writing, Senate Democrats and Republicans negotiated and passed a version of the budget that would fund all agencies and programs while postponing a vote on the DHS/ICE budget. The amended budget must now return to the House for reapproval on Monday; until this version passes the government will enter a partial shutdown of programs whose budgets are not yet passed, including NIH. It remains to be seen whether the NIH budget will be a victim of the unconscionable actions of I...

 Thanks to Abby Kaija for this contribution! Because  by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer So I can’t save the world— can’t save even myself, can’t wrap my arms around every frightened child, can’t foster peace among nations, can’t bring love to all who feel unlovable. So I practice opening my heart right here in this room and being gentle with my insufficiency. I practice walking down the street heart first. And if it is insufficient to share love, I will practice loving anyway. I want to converse about truth, about trust. I want to invite compassion into every interaction. One willing heart can’t stop a war. One willing heart can’t feed all the hungry. And sometimes, daunted by a task too big, I tell myself what’s the use of trying? But today, the invitation is clear: to be ridiculously courageous in love. To open the heart like a lilac in May, knowing freeze is possible and opening anyway. To take love seriously. To give love wildly. To race up to the world as if I were a pupp...

Thanks to Susan Santangelo for this contribution! We Are Witnessing the Self-Immolation of a Superpower With Donald Trump’s actions in Greenland, Minneapolis, and Venezuela, a foreign enemy could not invent a better chain of events to wreck the standing of the United States. by Garrett M. Graff IMAGINE YOU WERE  Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping and you woke up a year ago having magically been given command of puppet strings that control the White House. Your explicit geopolitical goal is to undermine trust in the United States on the world stage. You want to destroy the Western rules-based order that has preserved peace and security for 80 years, which allowed the US to triumph as an economic superpower and beacon of hope and innovation for the world. What exactly would you do differently with your marionette other than enact the ever more reckless agenda that  Donald Trump  has pursued since he became president last year? Nothing. In fact, the split-screen juxtaposition of t...