It’s become almost commonplace in recent years, and especially in the last four months, that the divisions among Democrats are less progressives vs. “centrists” or liberals than one between institutionalists and what we might call Team Fight. There’s a separate issue which is that there needs to be a lot more elaboration or articulation about just what “centrists” or “moderates” even are. The language is typically used as an electoral self-definition for the purposes of intra-party dynamics. But let’s leave that topic for another day. So we have the mounting knowledge that the divisions are more Team Fight vs. Team No Fight than the more ideological definitions. At the same time, though, you have non-progressives (see the problem of definitions?) worried that the highly polarized climate of 2025 will “push the party to the left.” (I have my own thoughts on that latter question.) A lot of those voices came to the fore during the Bernie and AOC barnstorming tour, which I guess is paused, at least for the moment. But for “centrists” or non-progressive liberals, if it’s really true that the real issue is Team Fight vs. Team No Fight (and I believe it is), you’ve got to get out there and do your own barnstorming tours or find other ways to demonstrate the fight.
This is just obvious. In a period of high polarization and high threat, the center of gravity of the party and inevitably the ideological center of gravity of the party will move to those fighting hardest, most successfully, with the fewest apologies.
Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone. While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management. The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.
This is a follow up to Friday’s piece on how to save American biomedical research. A lot of what follows assumes you’ve read that earlier piece. I realized based on responses I received that there is one point I didn’t make explicit enough. As I wrote, there are “disease communities” around every major disease that affects Americans — cancers, diseases of age and dementia, heart disease, degenerative disorders. These communities exist in relationship with various advocacy organizations. But they are not the same and there’s a reason I focused specifically on these communities rather than the organizations.
On Tuesday DOGE representatives contacted the Government Accountability Office and demanded its standard level of access to analyze and “reform” the agency. Today the GAO contacted its employees via email and explained that they had told DOGE that GAO is a legislative branch agency and not subject to executive orders or the executive branch. They say they also contacted the relevant congressional committees to notify them of the attempted DOGE takeover.
Ed.Note: The original version of this post incorrectly reported that DOGE contacted GAO on Friday 16th rather than Tuesday 13th.
Over the past four months, I’ve spoken to dozens of biomedical researchers either at NIH, other government grant-making agencies or at the various American research institutions which receive U.S. government grants. Over that time, I’ve developed at least a very rudimentary understanding of the nitty-gritty mechanics of the grant-making relationship between agencies and research institutions. What I’ve learned is a fascinating and critically important dynamic operating just beneath the surface of theWhite House’s whole war on biomedical research specifically and universities generally. The world of biomedical research actually has immense latent political power, albeit largely untapped. Researchers have a much stronger hand politically and the White House’s position, in terms of public opinion, is comparatively weak.
The problem is that the world of biomedical research has close to no experience operating in a political context and especially in the context of mass politics. Much of the world of biomedical research operates through channels of review and funding connecting a few government grant-making institutions to the nationwide archipelago of research institutions and universities. Operating within those channels is so basic to the mores and experience of the research and university world that researchers have in many cases kept trying to operate within them (rebooting them, checking them for unknown clogs) long after the White House has broken them and moved on. The White House has relied on researchers’ unfamiliarity with political fights, using their sole reliance on bureaucratic channels of funding and review — which the universities and the federal government set up together going on a century ago — against them. The only other pathways through which researchers tend to assert themselves are professional organizations, very non-mass politics entities which, in ordinary times, would speak to the relevant members of Congress.
You’ve seen our liveblog, which provides a detailed and technical look at today’s birthright citizenship oral arguments before the Supreme Court. I want to focus on a broad and critical issue. The Trump administration brought this to the Supreme Court. While the underlying or substantive issue is birthright citizenship, they were not seeking to have that issue resolved. They wanted the Court to address whether federal trial courts can issue national injunctions binding the hands of the incumbent administration.
Member Newsletter
