Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Trump’s attempt to increase military spending may be hampered by Trump’s tariffs. The tariffs make gaining access to key resources more difficult, and make inputs more expensive, making the increased spending not go as far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF3OkIbWnBE
The 3 Myths Supporting NIH Funding
https://reason.com/2025/04/01/the-3-myths-supporting-nih-funding/
“The Trump administration froze $1 billion in federal funding for Cornell University and $790 million for Northwestern University, the White House confirmed.
The freeze is the latest in a series of federal funding attacks against the Ivy League, but Northwestern would be the first institution to face a funding cut outside of that group. University officials from Northwestern have said they have not yet received official notice of the funding freezes.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/09/trump-administration-freezes-millions-at-cornell-and-northwestern-00280681
“President Donald Trump’s administration plans to end U.S. funding for Gavi, an organization that helps buy vaccines for children in poor countries, and will scale back efforts to combat malaria, among thousands of cuts revealed in a document prepared by the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The administration will continue to fund some grants that pay for drugs that treat HIV and tuberculosis and provide food aid to nations where civil wars and natural disasters are occurring, according to the document, which was first reported by the New York Times.
The document, reviewed by Reuters on Wednesday, lists international aid programs that will be dismantled as well as those that will be retained.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-ends-childhood-vaccine-funding-210555877.html
Why this Nixon-inspired law says Trump can’t freeze federal funding
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/29/trump-federal-funding-freeze-nixon-law
Government funding freeze starves all sorts of programs intended to help Americans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSQoA755Epg
“The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is walking back the federal funding freeze memo that set off a day of chaos and confusion on Tuesday up until a judge paused the order right before it was set to take effect.
“In light of the injunction, OMB has rescinded the memo to end any confusion on federal policy created by the court ruling and the dishonest media coverage,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. Leavitt said that other executive orders on “funding reviews” would remain in effect and that more would follow. “This action should effectively end the court case and allow the government to focus on enforcing the President’s orders on controlling federal spending. In the coming weeks and months, more executive action will continue to end the egregious waste of federal funding.”
The original memo would have paused the disbursement of federal grants and financial assistance programs, but its ambiguity and breadth led to a scramble for answers on what exactly would be impacted.”
https://www.theverge.com/news/602016/white-house-funding-freeze-memo-rescinded
“Trump’s 11th-hour decision to get involved in negotiations, weighing in via social media (and seemingly without coordinating with congressional allies), is reminiscent of his first-term approach to Capitol Hill, when he regularly blew up funding talks and directly caused the longest government shutdown in US history.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/392197/trump-government-shutdown-musk
“In the US, basic science research, studying how the world works for the sake of expanding knowledge, is mostly funded by the federal government. The NIH funds the vast majority of biomedical research, and the National Science Foundation (NSF) funds other sciences, like astrophysics, geology, and genetics. The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) also funds some biomedical research, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funds technology development for the military, some of which finds uses in the civilian world, like the internet.
The grant application system worked well a few decades ago, when over half of submitted grants were funded. But today, we have more scientists — especially young ones — and less money, once inflation is taken into account. Getting a grant is harder than ever, scientists I spoke with said. What ends up happening is that principal investigators are forced to spend more of their time writing grant applications — which often take dozens of hours each — than actually doing the science they were trained for. Because funding is so competitive, applicants increasingly have to twist their research proposals to align with whoever will give them money. A lab interested in studying how cells communicate with each other, for example, may spin it as a study of cancer, heart disease, or depression to convince the NIH that its project is worth funding.
Federal agencies generally fund specific projects, and require scientists to provide regular progress updates. Some of the best science happens when experiments lead researchers in unexpected directions, but grantees generally need to stick with the specific aims listed in their application or risk having their funding taken away — even if the first few days of an experiment suggest things won’t go as planned.
This system leaves principal investigators constantly scrambling to plug holes in their patchwork of funding. In her first year as a tenure-track professor, Jennifer Garrison, now a reproductive longevity researcher at the Buck Institute, applied for 45 grants to get her lab off the ground. “I’m so highly trained and specialized,” she told me. “The fact that I spend the majority of my time on administrative paperwork is ridiculous.””
…
“The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has a funding model worth replicating. It is driven by a “people, not projects” philosophy, granting scientists many years worth of money, without tying them down to specific projects. Grantees continue working at their home institution, but they — along with their postdocs — become employees of HHMI, which pays their salary and benefits.
HHMI reportedly provides enough funding to operate a small- to medium-sized lab without requiring any extra grants. The idea is that if investigators are simply given enough money to do their jobs, they can redirect all their wasted grant application time toward actually doing science. It’s no coincidence that over 30 HHMI-funded scientists have won Nobel Prizes in the past 50 years.”
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/370681/science-research-grants-scientific-progress-academia-slow-funding
“The Biden campaign said it had $240 million in cash on hand earlier this month, compared to former President Donald Trump’s $331 million. Campaign finance rules put some limits on what Biden can do with that money now that he’s no longer running for president.
The money isn’t just in limbo, however. Though it’s not yet completely certain whether Harris will become the nominee — she’d need Biden’s delegates at the Democratic National Convention to assume the candidacy, though his endorsement certainly puts her ahead of any possible competition — she could access Biden’s funds more easily than another Democrat. And the campaign pot only seems to be growing: Major Democratic donors, some of whom had paused their contributions after Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month due to concerns about his candidacy, reportedly reopened their wallets after Biden’s announcement Sunday.
Biden and Harris already share funds in a campaign committee under campaign finance laws that allow the president and vice president to run together as one ticket, said Saurav Ghosh, the Campaign Legal Center’s director of federal campaign finance reform. If she were to remain on the ticket as the presidential nominee, “the new ticket would maintain access to all the funds in the campaign committee,” Ghosh added.
That would make Harris’s transition to the top of the ticket seamless — at least when it comes to the money.”
https://www.vox.com/joe-biden/361991/361991biden-campaign-funds-after-drops-out