pmags

For example, in the Supreme Court ruling Justic Sotomayor included the following statement:

"The United States Government arrested Kilmar Ar-mando Abrego Garcia in Maryland and flew him to a “terrorism confinement center” in El Salvador, where he has been detained for 26 days and counting. To this day, the Government has cited no basis in law for Abrego Garcia’s warrantless arrest, his removal to El Salvador, or his confinement in a Salvadoran prison. "

So:

* Warrant-less arrest

* Government admitted it was in error

* 4 weeks in a foreign jail

And it's OK for the DOJ to say "we want 4 more days" to develop a plan that you asked us to start developing more than a week ago?

https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/ginsburg-and-huq-how-defin...

The above is a "simple language" style definition. I am not a constitutional scholar but it seems a straightforward and useful one. There are many other such definitions on the 'net but most have similar elements.

To me we seem to have a clear fight among the executive and judicial branches, and the executive branch is doing everything in its power to ignore a Supreme Court ruling and the order of a lower court Federal judge.

For those who would argue that the US is NOT in constitutional crisis, I'm curious to hear your reasoning.

The effort hinges on a surprising new tactic: repurposing Social Security’s “death master file,” which for years has been used to track dead people who should no longer receive benefits, to include the names of living people who the government believes should be treated as if they are dead. As a result of being added to the death database, they would be blacklisted from a coveted form of identity that allows them to make and spend money.

Border agents pressured Makled to hand over his cell phone. He refused. After more than 90 minutes of back-and-forth, he eventually showed agents his contacts list. He was eventually released. Makled says he was never given a reason for his detainment.

However, one of his current clients is a student who has been charged in connection to a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Michigan.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-justice-dept-bars-its-attor...

I was tempted to remove the "What does this mean for our health?" part of the title, but I thought that such a large edit might be against HN policy / too much editorializing on my part.

In any case, I thought the article was worth posting because it's a nice intro to a area of recent progress in biology that not a lot of folks are aware of.

The NHTSA, which has been a thorn in Tesla’s side for years, has eight active investigations into the company after receiving—and publishing—more than 10,000 complaints from members of the public...

Oligarchy and self-dealing are what pass for public policy these days in Washington, DC.

At the behest of its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), NIH will not only block new funding for the university, but also stop paying investigators working on all existing NIH projects. Although these researchers will not be ordered to stop work, they will need prior approval from NIH to draw from existing disbursements, according to an NIH source.

Iwasaki K, Neuhauser C, Stokes C, Rayshubskiy A. The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, as a microrobotics platform. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2025 Apr 15;122(15):e2426180122. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2426180122. Epub 2025 Apr 8. PMID: 40198707.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2426180122

Based on past actions I think the appropriate Bayesian prior for pretty much all such public health efforts is now "they've intentionally broken it" until proven otherwise. I'm happy to update my prior if evidence to the contrary comes to light.

https://www.research.gov/grfp/AwardeeList.do?method=loadAwar...

But without personnel to manage the initiatives or to disburse the money, it’s not clear how the work will continue.

EDIT: Research.gov seems to have been updated/changed. Now available at:

https://www.research.gov/grfp/AwardeeList.do?method=loadAwar...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43624506

This article in Nature includes significant discussion about NSF GRFPs, their history, and trends over time. So hopefully this isn't seen as too duplicative.

EDIT: removed sentence about Research.gov data no longer available. New URL fixed in item above.

On Tuesday, a study in The Lancet estimated that suspending PEPFAR could lead to about one million new H.I.V. infections by 2030 and could lead to nearly 500,000 AIDS deaths among children and the orphaning of 2.8 million more.

Here's details of the Lancet article referenced:

-- Cluver et al. 20205. Protecting Africa's children from extreme risk: a runway of sustainability for PEPFAR programmes. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

The number of awards made in 2025 (1000 awards) is LESS THAN HALF the number made in 2024 (2036 awards).

NOTE: You'll have to choose the award year and download the excel spreadsheets at the link above to see the numbers yourself.

This is an example of what scientists mean when they point out the Trump administration is handicapping the national research infrastructure across all sciences.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0130529/

The "Peter Pan" mutants sound clever, but biocontrol has such a dodgy history. I wonder what the impact of a permanently paedomorphic sub-population would be on the water insect population (both good and bad)? I take it since they're at the point of running field trials they'll have some data on that soon.

Reading between the lines, I take the reporting to imply that these 20 edits are what Colossus thinks is sufficient (at least for marketing purposes ;-) to recapitulate some of the key phenotypic traits of dire wolves.

Does that make them actually dire wolves? Not in my opinion.

I'd probably describe the genetically engineered pups as "isogenic with parental gray wolf genomes with the addition of 20 allelic edits that recapitulate key aspects of the dire-wolf phenotype" (or something to the effect; Colossus hasn't published anything by which to evaluate their claims).

I don't work on canids, but a quick PubMed search turns up this paper:

Perri AR, Mitchell KJ, et al. Dire wolves were the last of an ancient New World canid lineage. Nature. 2021 Mar;591(7848):87-91. doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-03082-x. Epub 2021 Jan 13. PMID: 33442059.

The analyses in that paper suggests quite a bit deeper divergence between dire wolves and gray wolves than the New Yorker articles implies.

Here's what was actually have done according to the New Yorker article, starting with a gray wolf genome as the baseline:

After almost a year of computational genetic analysis, Colossal researchers used Crispr to make twenty edits on fourteen genes. Fifteen edits were derived from Colossal’s study of the dire-wolf genome and five tweaks were derived from scrutiny of the gray-wolf genome.

20 edits and 14 genes -- clearly some related to coat color, however:

But the genes that guided coat color presented a problem: they carried with them a risk of blindness and deafness. (In humans, variations of these genes can lead to Waardenburg syndrome, which causes pigmentation deficiencies, among other problems.) So the group decided to edit a different gene that, when expressed in dogs, also codes for a lighter coat.

So the coat color alleles are NOT the dire wolf alleles.

"I also visited with these two extraordinary healers, Dr. Richard Bartlett and Dr. Ben Edwards who have treated and healed some 300 measles-stricken Mennonite children using aerosolized budesonide and clarithromycin."

Antibiotics and steroid drugs DO NOT heal measles.

See also:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/health/cdc-sti-lab-gonorr...

Color me dubious about "coding errors" when Musk and his lap DOGE-ies are involved.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/us/politics/nsa-cyber-com...

  Liu's lab has made much of its work freely accessible, sharing DNA blueprints through a nonprofit library used by tens of thousands of labs worldwide.

  "The science we create—which is ultimately funded by society, through governments and donors—ultimately goes back to benefit society."

  This year's Breakthrough Prize awards come at a fraught moment for U.S. science, as President Donald Trump's government strips funding for institutions like the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

  "The NIH is a treasure, not just for this country but for the world," said Liu. "Trying to dismantle the heart of what supports science in this country is like burning your seed corn."

As of 6:41pm EDT on Sunday:

* S&P futures: -4.13%

* NASDAQ futures: -4.89%

* DOW futures: -3.72%

-- https://www.npr.org/2025/03/28/nx-s1-5343474/trump-collectiv...