WTW139: They're Literally Destroying American Science Because Woke

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:03 Clip: What's so scary about the woke mob? How often you just don't see them coming. Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed. Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down. The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything.

0:00:33 Clip: Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green M&M will now wear sneakers.

0:00:42 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Where There's Woke. I'm Thomas. That over there is Lydia, the brains of the operation today. How you doing?

0:00:48 Lydia: Pretty good. We're going to get really nerdy. Yeah. No, God. We are going to get real nerdy today, actually. Like real sort of government

0:00:49 Thomas: So, Graham Platner. No, I'm just kidding. Wow.

0:00:57 Lydia: Conversation, you know. No, like regulations. But no, it is so important. It is so important, you guys. Like, I cannot wait to do this episode because it is going to affect so much more than anyone realizes. And it's regulations that are not yet in effect, So we have a chance to actually have our voices heard through the comment period. So I have a little call to action for you guys, too, towards the end. But I think this is such an important episode. And it's basically all about how the Office of Management and Budget are trying to impact housing, science, the arts, victim -related money from the DOJ, everything. They are trying to basically make it so if you want federal funding, you cannot

0:00:57 Thomas: Like Lord of the Rings or, ah, cool. Oh, right.

0:01:47 Lydia: Use the words diversity, equity, inclusion. You cannot touch anything about gender ideology. You can not do X, Y, and Z. But it goes even more beyond that. This is 400 pages of regulations that they have put out as of May 29th. And we're coming towards the end of the comment period, July 13th. So we're going to get into the things that matter the most from this. And hopefully you'll all feel inspired to hop on. I'll include the links where to go. We'll have some sample comments available in the show notes, too, because I think it's really, really important that we start pushing back on something that could be so incredibly dangerous for everybody.

0:02:29 Thomas: I know they have done this with a lot of stuff. Like a lot of the doge cuts was like, is it like that kind of thing where they're like, well, we looked at your grant application and you're black so no no it's like there'll be a word that's like diversity or something yeah

0:02:42 Lydia: Right. It's worse than that because a lot of times, like what you saw with Doge was it was resting on executive order. This is regulation. So if these regulations go through, undoing this is very hard. This would be government policy, government regulations moving forward for generations. The entire regulation process, well, yeah, unknown, I guess is the the answer is unknown how long it would last

0:02:59 Thomas: And then the next administration would have to go through the well I don't know about that they have to get through the plus there's the whole thing where it's sort of this weird schrodinger's chevron I don't know if anyone's ever said that before those words uh but it's yeah it's um you have to defer to the agencies when it's trump and you can't defer to the agencies when it was Biden or when it's a Democrat. So that does make it like, you know, heads, we lose tails, they win, because that's another thing that slows it down. That that's that happened with a lot of border policy where it was like, this should be stuff that's executive order stuff, actually, or not executive order stuff like changes in this, like it's it's federal policy, but it does have that, you Know, notice and comment period and all that kind of thing. When Trump does a quick racism, they're like, that's cool. That's fine. President Unitary Executive, baby. And then when we try to undo it, it's like, whoa, whoa. Major questions doctrine. This is just so, yeah, it can be even stuff that seems like it shouldn't take that long to undo could very, very well do that. So, all right. Well, I guess we'll have to go ahead and take a break and then dig into it.

0:03:16 Lydia: Probably not yeah yeah right slow your roll yeah yeah exactly yeah that sounds good to me

0:04:16 Thomas: What do you think? Okay. Well hey, support the show. Important work like this, like Lydia is doing here, patreon.com/where there's woke and skip those annoying ads. We don't have any control over those stupid ads. It's kind of the industry standard and that's what it is. Unfortunately we can, we can turn them off, but then we can't do the show.

0:04:36 Thomas: So those, those are the choices we have. Yeah. It'S a, it'S a tough industry getting tougher every single day. So sorry about those ads to get rid of them. patreon.com/where there's woke.

0:04:36 Lydia: Yeah then we're poor

0:04:47 Thomas: Thanks so much. And we'll take a break come back wow

0:04:47 Lydia: Dollar show easy peasy

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0:04:55 Lydia: So this came across my radar through an article with The Verge and just just the title of this alone, The War Against Woke Could End U.S. Science As We Know It. And I was like, what? And the little tagline, I guess, underneath this is a quote from the article, everyone will be affected, not just scientists, every community in the country. This is a big deal. This is a huge deal. So looking through this article, they touch on a lot of these high points that we're going to be digging a little bit more into. But they quote the founder and CEO of Stand Up for Science, who will be linking their website in the show notes as well. Her position is, her organization's position on this, is that if the rule change goes forward, science in the United States, quote, will stop. It won't exist anymore.

0:05:06 Thomas: What wow they do stand-up comedy for science huh wow we'll stop that feels like a lot

0:05:50 Lydia: We'll stop. I'm going to explain why I think that's not exactly incredibly hyperbolic, maybe a little bit, trying to encourage people to go comment. But the rule change, basically, when we're looking at the funding that it touches, it does oversee more than $1 trillion of federal grants across 42 different agencies. And the federal grants are what funds scientific research in the United States, the researchers, the universities that are home to those researchers and the research that's being conducted. We're talking about things like new vaccines, natural hazards, climate change, And before I get into the big issues here, let me take a step back very quickly to just level set on what this document even is. This is not a brand new document that has been created and is moving forward. This is something that's existed for a while. It's called, it's nicknamed the Uniform Guidance. It's 2 CFR Part 200. And it's basically a rule book for how every dollar of federal grant money gets administered. Administered who's eligible how you determine eligibility what the oversight looks like what reporting looks like when you can spend the dollars when the government can take back the dollars we're talking things like national institute of health grants hud right

0:07:11 Lydia: All the housing grants that are related as I mentioned in the pre-show DOJ victim services grants arts grants with the national endowment for the arts foundations everything this document sits underneath need all of it. Everyone who ever touches federal money, not just scientists. But there is clearly like a huge potential impact to science as we get into it.

0:07:31 Thomas: Hmm is this something that's been politicized in the past or not okay

0:07:33 Lydia: No, no. So if you look at the history of this document, it actually like originated as these things called circulars in the 50s and 60s. They consolidated all those circulars and 2013 as government does right there like things are kind of disjointed. Let's put it all together, collate everything. And now we have this thing that we're going to lovingly call uniform guidance to help guide everybody. And they've done some touch -ups since then. There has been regulation changes, but they've been pretty minor and evolving based off of things like technology, administrative sort of things, pretty boring historically.

0:08:11 Thomas: Yeah I think that now the main like toggle switch is this politicized mega bullshit? Or is this letting, you know, number people, pushers, whatever, mostly nerd accountants or whatever, do their kind of boring basic work? Is it that kind of thing?

0:08:26 Lydia: No, this is a brainchild of Russ Vogt. This is his thing. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So we're looking at more than 120 revisions to the current uniform guidance. And it's not just like slightly altering guidance. A lot of what's in there for uniform guidance is actually kind of flexible. And this would convert a lot of things that have functioned as flexible into hard regulatory policy that is aligned with this administration. The president of the Association of American Universities specifically said that this would materially alter longstanding foundational principles underpinning how federally funded research works.

0:08:28 Thomas: Yeah. So I'm saying this is that. Okay. Yeah. Hmm.

0:09:05 Lydia: Now, before I go on my entire rant about how this is horrific and needs to be stopped, or if it goes through challenge with a lawsuit, which we'll talk about later, I do want to address there was one thing in this executive order, the related executive order from the beginning that a lot of people were really concerned about, which was the capping indirect cost reimbursement.

0:09:28 Lydia: And we covered that on the show. They don't include that in these regulation changes. So for now, that doesn't seem to be something that would be emboldened by regs. It's still part of the executive order, but it is kind of surprising that they didn't includethat here in their regulations.

0:09:46 Thomas: Do they see that it like was a dumb idea? Do you think or huh?

0:09:50 Lydia: Perhaps. It just doesn't touch on it at all. I don't know what the thought behind that was. It very well could be that they forgot about it. Who knows with this administration? Yeah, fair. But why don't we hear a little bit from this first clip I sent you from someone who is a scientist who's experiencing this a little more from the ground and their perspective of what we're looking at here.

0:09:57 Thomas: I don't think respot forgets. Well, this is five days to save science. So it's yeah along those same lines is what it's called okay

0:10:18 Clip: At the end of May, Trump's Office of Management and Budget released these proposed rules that would censure academic freedom, dismantle U.S. research funding, and create a pathway for the administration to funnel funds wherever and to whomever they want. The way science funding is supposed to work is a federal agency like NASA, Environmental Protection Agency, or the US Department of Agriculture publicly posts a grant opportunity, soliciting proposals on a certain topic. Scientists from all over submit research proposals, these proposals are peer reviewed by an expert panel, and grants are distributed based on what those experts think would make for good science. The proposed OMB rules completely undermine the peer review process, so that instead of scientists making funding decisions, political appointees have the final

0:10:57 Lydia: All right, pause. So what she says there, the way that it has worked in the past is there was a peer review panel of experts in the related field that would look at every grant and they would score those grant applications on scientific merit. They've been doing this since World War II, like forever. This is how it's worked.

0:11:18 Thomas: Yeah well it reminds me of uh in canada when jordan peterson didn't get his bullshit it was because like a panel of peers were like oh maybe not

0:11:28 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. And now with this change, there's still a peer-review panel, but their recommendations are, yeah, their opinion, their review of your grant is considered advisory. And instead, there would be an appointed senior political individual, someone that the agency has personally designated to do their review.

0:11:34 Thomas: This, I hope your peers are billionaire you know bought off mega bullshit people oh I see, gotcha yeah Oh my God This is Soviet Union shit this is literally chernobyl I rewatched that recently because so freaking good. But it really is that because like a lot of the problems are because the scientists have to like tiptoe around all the bullshit political people who are in charge of like they put political people, you know, political hacks in charge of like you know the ministry for mining or whatever like stuff that's like you actually kind of need people that's the one in the in the show but like plenty of stuff like that where just the overall problem obviously is why fascism ultimately ends up with you know incompetence and corruption is you don't value science anymore you don't value merit it's either ideology or corruption and so people are in charge who don't actually know how anything works and then uh you know, the reactor melts down.

0:12:50 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. So for example, think about grants related to cancer trials. So instead of 12 oncologists who are serving as peer reviews, evaluating all these grants, they're looking at 500 applications for this grant, and they say, hey, this is going to further the science here the best. Instead, political appointee, potentially no scientific background because we know these appointees that have been part of the Trump administration and the folks, you know, a second, third down from them, too. They can just override it because the first thing that is to be considered when they are evaluating grants is, quote, it must demonstrably advance the president's policy priorities.

0:13:00 Thomas: It's one pair of RFK's genes. Oh my God. Yeah.

0:13:35 Lydia: That's crazy. That is number one in the list. Number one in the list. Climate science. Thatis freaking screwed, right? Like, what is supposed supposed to happen. Yeah. But now we're talking about something that is hardwritten in government regulations and undoing that is just terrifying.

0:13:45 Thomas: I feel like it probably already was, but yeah.

0:13:56 Thomas: Okay. So the upside then would be if the regulations are tough to undo, you can just put your appointees in. So if we, if we get control of this, then that means the quickest path will be, okay, well, I guess our political people are going to be making that call. Yeah right yeah but it is something you'd want to try to demolish that stupid architecture on the way out or

0:14:13 Lydia: Yeah, overseeing that and then and probably deferring to the peer review panel. Right. So making that work. Yeah absolutely.

0:14:23 Thomas: Whatever so that they can't do that their way

0:14:26 Lydia: And then how much damage is done in the meantime and and how much science is affected in the mean time or these like housing grants and stuff throughout the entire United States, the entire country. Yeah. It's every federal agency that offers federal money to anybody, anyone who applies for a grant, if you're getting federal money for anything. Yeah. Science is just one piece of it. It's 42 different agencies. And a lot of those grants are scientifically-centered agencies.

0:14:37 Thomas: Housing so the science is just one little piece of it sure

0:14:56 Lydia: We did a whole breakdown before of how incredibly massive Health and Human Services is, for example, and all the different agencies within that. But no, it's housing and urban development offers grants with federal money, as I mentioned before, National Endowment for the Arts, everything. Anything that offers a grant throughout the entire United States for anything. Now, say that you get your grant, and this also applies to any grants currently that have been awarded at this point in time. According to subsection 200 .340, this is on page 28 of the file I'll be sharing with everybody, Your grant can be just terminated mid -project and you have no appeal rights.

0:15:37 Thomas: How do you have no appeal

0:15:40 Lydia: No appeal rights, that's what they're trying to put in these regs, that once they have made the determination that they no longer want to offer your grant money, it's dead and you don't have any opportunity to fight back for that. It's expanded power to, you know, like there is a termination process in place because sometimes that has to happen. But if at any point in time they decide that your project, your already awarded grant, is later judged to, quote, be inconsistent with program goals or agency priorities or is, quote. No longer in the federal government's interest, they can just end your grant. You're done. For example, let's think about how this might impact actual people. Maybe you're doing a five year clinical trial.

0:15:58 Thomas: Rights yeah

0:16:30 Lydia: Let's just say cancer again. You're doing some sort of, you know, trial regarding a new drug that might have positive benefits, you hope, for patients. And for whatever reason, the Trump administration says not anymore.

0:16:44 Thomas: If it's like somehow uses mRNA or something.

0:16:47 Lydia: Who knows? I mean, or like they don't like something that's come out of a report that you've shared because you use gender. And they're like, excuse me, you're not supposed to be using that word. Now your clinical trial is done. None of it can be used anymore. You have no money to continue. You have patients that are part of this that now are in limbo or SOL, I guess. There are patient advocates who have spoken up about this, too, because they are also very concerned. There are people who sign up for this hoping for an answer to something that, when we're talking about diseases or illnesses and things like that, that are hoping for an answer, that they are willing to To participate in these clinical trials because they are so desperate for things to get better, not just for themselves, but for their communities. And then they just don't get to have that anymore. And who knows what like bodies are crazy, right? Like if you are just completely cut off from that trial experience, then how might your body react to something that like you were getting on a continuous basis? I feel like that has a lot of incredible downstream impacts.

0:17:56 Thomas: Yeah. I feel like they're, man, I want to say that the way it works is they have to make sure they have funding to finish whatever trials before they even start or something, so I don't know if that would mean this would undo that somehow or what, but either way, it's still not good.

0:18:15 Lydia: I mean, from my reading of it, it's that, you know, you have the money awarded for the period of time that you expect, but it's not necessarily issued to you as a lump sum at the beginning, right? It's that they would just stop the funding. So you're expecting X dollar amount to hit in your next fiscal year, and it's gone because they decided they don't want to give you money anymore. It's done.

0:18:39 Thomas: You would hope that the legal system would work, but as with everything, it is like they do a shotgun approach and maybe some people are able to go through the courts to get their money back. How many people is that? Can everyone do that? You know, it's the same thing we've seen with everything.

0:18:52 Lydia: All right. So the next one I want to talk about is kind of a two-pronged one. So the first piece that I wantto talk aboutis this idea of, you know, DEI gender ideology in quotes that they obviously have such an issue with. So this is basically a bunch of executive orders that have been issued already. This would codify them, that they would be banning grants if there's anything related to DEI, even just terminology, because that's how it was handled before gender related research categories.

0:19:23 Thomas: Yeah. I remember when they were like, we couldn't put the word biodiversity in our science thing because it was that was real. They were like that was getting flagged. It's ridiculous.

0:19:31 Lydia: Exactly. OMB. So and they're hiding this under the guise of, you know, DOJ has issued guidance that this stuff is discrimination and there could be lawsuits. So really what we're trying to do with the regulations is protect you. Right. So OMB in consultation with DOJ and other agencies, proposes to amend paragraph B of subsection 200 .300 to provide that in administering federal awards to the maximum extent permitted by law, the federal agency or pass -through entity must ensure that the federal award is not used to fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate diversity, equity, and inclusion, or diversity, equality, inclusion, and accessibility policies, principles, or practices that violate any applicable federal anti -discrimination laws. This includes racial preferences or other forms of racial discrimination used by the recipient or subrecipient that violate any applicable federal anti -discrimination laws, including activities where race or intentional proxies for race will be used as a selection criterion for employment or program participation. Patient. Gender ideology, as defined in Executive Order 14168, gender ideology includes theories or ideologies that deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans or endorse or advocate for the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic, the, quote, gender ideology provision, or the so-called transition, in quotes, of a child under 19 years of age from one sex to another, including the chemical and surgical mutilation of children. The term, quote Quotes, chemical and surgical mutilation has the meaning provided in Executive Order 14187, the protecting children provision. These are things that we know have been under attack by this administration. That's not a surprise. Again, the concern is that it is being codified in something that is a lot harder to undo. And as you said, how is this going to be evaluated, applied? Is it going to Be Like Doge, where they just do a Control -F? And look for any time a word is used and then terminate your grant in the middle of it if you already have an active one just because of a particular word that was used or deny access to a grant that could actually meaningfully change and improve people's lives just because, again, a word or a part of a word that you've used.

0:21:52 Lydia: The other kind of related piece to this, too, is, and this is in a separate subsection, subsection 200.220, it expands restrictions on international scientific collaboration. And when I read this, I was thinking about Project Hail Mary and like what kind of a position would we have been in if the country, the world, yeah, if countries weren't allowed to collaborate to try and solve this like existential crisis, because that's kind of what we're talking about here. So there is something in place called the Wolf Amendment. It blocks NASA specifically from collaborating with China. And the way that this regulation would work is it takes that model, the Wolf amendment, and then extends it government wide. And then it has a list of, quote, covered foreign countries, basically any country that's designated a foreign adversary, a country of particular concern or subject to national security sanctions. So anyone who is potentially collaborating with a country for, you know, a multi -country research project, for example, which happens a lot, that would not be allowed. You would not receive any federal money for that. But not just that. So direct programmatic work, research, but also data sharing. If you're data sharing with any of those countries that they add to the list when they feel like it. Even travel. There is a mechanism to try and appeal that, but you would basically need to get the agency to sign off on it. Makes it very, very complicated and difficult. When we're talking about COVID -19, for example, that is something that did not happen in the United States in a vacuum, right? There are things, especially when we're talking about science, that have worldwide impacts and consequences and people committed across the entire world to finding solutions and cures and improvements for or whatever we're talking about, climate modeling, pandemic surveillance, tons of stuff is international. It's collaborative. And so when you decide that collaboration cannot happen if you don't like the country that we're trying to collaborate with, it doesn't just stop these partnerships that are happening with some of these larger research pursuits, but it also Also could potentially like reduce how much scientists are just like the everyday kind of collaborative stuff that they're doing. You ruin those networks of science on these grander scales. You start isolating everybody. And I think that also has a lot of impacts where I have a video for us later where we can kind of see what that might mean in the grand scheme of things. And then the other big piece I want to talk about here, too. This is something that I don't think a lot of people have talked about, but it's in there. This particular rule, this is in subsection 200 .201 and 200 .333. It would eliminate awards that have been appropriated with fixed amount is what it's called. So it's a simpler grant structure, has a lighter reporting requirement. And the thought is, if you are looking for something that is kind of like simple on its face and isn't necessarily complicated, you can get a fixed amount where you don't have to petition for additional funding. You know, maybe it's like a short -term sort of grant that you're looking at. And so it's almost like a win -win on both sides of the coin here. But OMB wants to remove those because their concern is the lighter reporting requirement and the reduction of monitoring of grants that are awarded in that way. I think that this is kind of built off the idea of fraud, that there's incredible amounts of fraud in the government. And so anywhere where they can like look to go find out if there's fraud, they want to. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. But it is kind of concerning that like now we have like incredible reporting requirements for something that should be simple where maybe you've received a million dollars, maybe not even a million hours, five hundred thousand dollars for your particular study. And it's supposed to be pretty straightforward. It's a year long thing. And now it's visits from agency heads. It's intense reporting requirements on a more frequent basis than you normally would do. I think it reduces the incentive to do a lot of these projects.

0:22:12 Thomas: Would we have been in? If in that movie that happened.

0:26:20 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. So it makes perfect sense when you look at it from the point of view that they don't care if anyone gets money. They want to get rid of government. So they're on easy mode. They're like, well, why would we have these ones that where it's a little easier and people can get a little bit out of money faster? Let's just go ahead and say we need our grubby mitts and everything. And that just creates more friction, creates more friction. In this kind of thing. There's not really that I know of like a right-wing science that they want to fund instead that mostly doesn't exist. So, I mean, there's probably grift and fraud. I'm sure there's some bullshit, you know, fake medicine or something, maybe. But for the most part, they just want to ruin everything. Now, I feel like it was the video that said, or was the VOU, one or the other said that, I don't know, I'm listening to this podcast in my ears and I'm watching the video too,

0:26:27 Lydia: Yes. Yes. That's true. Yep. Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:27:09 Thomas: I, you know, so hard to, that it would also allow them to redirect money other places. Cause that could be the real key. Yeah. Cause then that provides a whole nother level where it's like now, in addition to just wanting to break government in general and not give anyone any government money so that you can say government doesn't work. And then, you know, you can run on it and you can lower taxes and continue to rinse, repeat. If they can actually redirect it to, you know, the border wall, to use an old outdated example,

0:27:16 Lydia: Yeah, that's what she says there, too. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep.

0:27:39 Thomas: Then that's a whole nother can of worms in terms of like bad incentives there.

0:27:43 Lydia: Yep, exactly. I think that's a great point.

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0:27:50 Lydia: OMB will basically say there was actually a lot of federal grants that were being issued to fund the woke agenda, right? Right. And they'll say that there was a Senate Commerce Committee finding that 27 percent, yeah, that

0:28:01 Thomas: Is the woke agenda in the room with us? Can you see the woke agenda right now?

0:28:11 Lydia: NSF grants, of new NSF grants, by 2024, it had gotten to 27 percent of all new NSF grants were DEI related or, quote, far left projects. And in 2021, it was under one percent. And so they're saying we need more political and legal guardrails in the peer review and program design process because otherwise we're going to continue to see a misuse of taxpayer money. They're basically saying that this entire thing has been politicized and they're just trying to unpoliticize it.

0:28:46 Lydia: Yes, especially when it's a political appointee that has the veto power, the grant-making authority power, basically, instead of a peer review, and that number one item aligns with the president's policy.

0:28:44 Thomas: Using politics. Politics yeah yeah

0:29:03 Lydia: Sounds incredibly political. So that is just ridiculous. I mean, I don't even know why they're trying at this point. But we do see a lot of pushback, thankfully. I feel like I haven't seen this a lot in like popular media, but I might have been missing it. But I have seen, as I mentioned, the Verge article was really great on this. And I've seen some folks talking about it on YouTube and TikTok, Instagram, etc. And it's not just activist groups or things like that, like Stand Up for Science, which we'll talk about, but it's also just scientific societies.

0:29:02 Thomas: That sounds political to

0:29:41 Lydia: So you have entire organizations that are like, this is a problem. The organization behind the journal Science has called this a brazen power grab and that it would make future discoveries less likely. Yes.

0:29:56 Thomas: Me, yeah literally science literal science is like we say bad

0:29:58 Lydia: Literal science is like, this is a problem. Patient advocates, I mentioned that too. They've been speaking out. Former federal officials have been speaking out. Elizabeth Ganexie, who was with the National Institutes of Health for 22 years, she wrote on Substack that this isn't a grants management reform as anyone, you know, I don't even know that they're pretending that it is. But if you think that that's what it is, it's absolutely not. It's political control. And they are just trying to lay it on top of every stage of the funding life cycle of federal money. We have also congressional representatives who are speaking out about this a little bit. Zoe Lofgren, who is a Democrat out of where I'm from in the Bay Area in California, said that this was a move that would gut what remains of merit -based review. We have university associations pushing back.

0:30:53 Thomas: So the usual bullshit woke left okay

0:30:53 Lydia: There has been some, yeah, there's been some comment from university groups that they're pleased that the indirect cost split isn't included here. Exactly. However, but Stand Up for Science has been pretty vocal about this. Colette Dillawalla, who is the founder, has said that her biggest worry is that this would let the administration control what science gets done, who gets to do the science, who they're doing the science for, with whom they're doing it. And, as I mentioned before, basically isolating American researchers from the rest of the world. And their approach here is what I'm going to be asking everybody to do on this podcast episode, I guess, is we have a deadline of July 13th for public comment.

0:31:01 Thomas: Yeah sure trying to compliment sandwich yeah that'll that'll work on the fascists

0:31:43 Lydia: I don't want to lie to people and say that, you know, if there's X number of comments, they're not going to move forward with this. But it is really, really important that those comments get written down because then that's part of the record that Stand Up for Science and other groups can use for litigation. If this goes forward, if this gets implemented, that's not the end of the fight. And we have groups that are going to be taking this to court and our voices matter for them to help build that out. Again, this is not just science. We're talking housing grants through housing and urban We're talking about infrastructure money through the Department of Transportation. We're talking about victim services grants through the Department of Justice. We are talking about arts and humanities funding for all of your favorite cultural institutions across the entire United States. It's not just science. And even if it were, I know our audience would want to speak out about this, but this touches the entire fabric of our country, essentially.

0:32:37 Thomas: Yeah, you had me at science oh fabric too shit I like fabric

0:32:49 Lydia: We're going to come back to science a little bit because I want you to play this video that I think was really moving.

0:32:53 Clip: Say this would be messed up under any political. The proposed regulations put out by OMB last week are catastrophic. They are an escalation of the government's attempts to control and dictate exactly what science is conducted and what isn't. Instead of allowing scientists to determine which proposals have the most scientific merit, they now intend to have political appointees making those decisions. These political appointee know nothing about the science that they would be judging and instead of judging the quality of the science they would be judging to what extent these grants align with the president's priorities the president may I remind you is also not a scientist if you like me are excited to see major advancements in science like the one we saw at the american society of clinical oncology this weekend then you should be very concerned about these new In case you missed it, what we saw at that meeting was first of all, a room full of oncologists giving a standing ovation during a scientific presentation because of how significant the findings were. For patients with pancreatic cancer, they found this medication doubled the amount of time and also doubled the time they could live without progression of their disease. Disease, that is a huge improvement for a cancer that kills almost 90% of the people who get it within five years of being diagnosed. This is the type of breakthrough that we have when scientists are given the freedom to do the research they feel is important, not what some guy in the White House thinks is important in order to be able to advance care for patients.

0:34:37 Lydia: It just like makes me tear up like watching that video. I just like get emotional like seeing all the scientists like a standing ovation because of how incredible the research is and not just like not for their own ego because they solved a puzzle or something like that. It's that it's incredible impact to people's lives that previously with pancreatic cancer, as she said, basically 90% of people, if you're diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, you're dead within five years.

0:35:08 Lydia: Now we're talking about more time with their loved ones. We're talking About like getting to experience more of life that this isn't a death sentence for 90% of people within five years that they get more time. That's beautiful. Beautiful.

0:35:22 Thomas: And you're telling me it wasn't the MAHA organization of science that did that it wasn't yeah the department of MAHA

0:35:27 Lydia: Yeah, the red food dye, red dye number whatever. No, it wasn't. And just like seeing scientists moved in that way just was also just really incredibly moving for me. Like, they're not always the most emotional folks. You know, we've all spent time in doctor's offices. But anyway, I just thought that was really beautiful. So, again, I'm asking everybody to spend a few minutes to go make a comment. I'll include the link to that. I'll have some sample comments. If you're really not sure what to say, you know, happy to offer you some ideas there. However, if you can personalize it, those tend to hold more weight if you want to, if you want too. But under the Administrative Procedures Act, federal agencies are legally required to actually read and substantively respond to comments before finalizing the rule. They already have 68 ,000 comments last I checked. And again, no promises. I don't even know why you look to me for promises on the federal government anyway, but no promises that this still won't go through.

0:35:40 Thomas: Bullshit like make it personally insulting to I'm down way ahead of you yeah yeah

0:36:31 Lydia: It very well could.

0:36:32 Thomas: They have to read and respond to them can I do like a word problem then all right one train here's my comment one train's going east at eight and just make it really long and impossible.

0:36:41 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's a good idea.

0:36:42 Thomas: Yeah. I got them. Yeah, no

0:36:45 Lydia: It's worth trying. You know, people tune out with the math and stuff like and just some housekeeping stuff related to the comments. Follow the rules that OMB has about specifically tagging. Yeah. If your comment is addressing a particular section, you need to tag it in brackets at the start. So for example, it'd be like bracket 200 .205, close bracket, for the political appointee getting to review all the grants.

0:36:55 Thomas: Negative comments. I feel like this is a good guy. Now people are going to yell at me. I feels like this a good thing to use AI for. Go use AI. Get a chat bot to write you a thing. Now make sure you humanize it a little in case, I don't know, maybe they have some filter or something, but get a chat bot to do the hard work for you, It'd be like, all right, all right, chat GPT or whatever. Look at these regs, find every problem with citations and make it, make it good. That's a, let's use it.

0:37:20 Lydia: Yes. Why not? Yep. Yep. Make it a compelling comment that I can post. Don't put personal information in the comments, you guys, because once you submit it, it's public record. So keep that in mind. And Stand Up for Science has a raw government form, like basically a portal that you can do on their website. July 13th is the deadline. We have to get these things in before that point. Standpoint I guess a call to action I'll probably be doing more of these as we move forward because I know for myself after I listen to a podcast sometimes I'm like okay now what and I don't want anyone feeling yeah I don'T want anyone feel it like when we're talking about things that suck right as much as I can offer ways to fight back I want to and so this is one of those ways all

0:38:15 Thomas: Play another podcast. I don't know what you're talking about.

0:38:30 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:38:30 Lydia: Right and because we need more hope and something to feel good about why don't we just watch the actual presentation, the end of the presentation of the incredible work that was done through the study looking at that clinical drug for pancreatic cancer and get some more applause going in my veins. Something to look forward to. 9,000 oncologists, three standing ovations during this presentation.

0:39:54 Lydia: These are people who have had to deliver terrible news to their patients and patients' families.

0:39:54 Thomas: So I was just looking at this cause I'm interested. People might say that, you know, oh, well that dry, that's private. That's big pharma. They're just doing it out of there, whatever. But I think what was interesting about this is the National Cancer Institute director wrote a blog thing on the cancer.gov website about this because while right now it's, you know, just a pharma company working on it, everything leading up to it, it all depends on government. For one, there's also the element where the FDA is permitting it. That's not quite funding, but I imagine in Trump's, Trump did, Trump's FDA, I guess, did approve it. I don't know if that's because it's before these regs or if the regs have nothing to do with it. One way or the other, it is a thing that could have not happened if non -scientists might've been in charge, who knows. But also earlier than that, there's incentives and subsidies for the drug to get on the market faster.

0:40:54 Thomas: That's government stuff. But then even prior to that, the original research, here, let me just read this, is important to remember that a breakthrough like this is built on decades of foundational science, Much of it supported by NCI and NIH grants. Years of research have taught us that more than 90 % of pancreatic cancers and about 30 % of all human cancers are driven by changes in RAS genes or RAS. I feel like I've heard of that. Do they say RAS? I feel Like they say rass, but I don't know.

0:41:23 Lydia: Probably.

0:41:23 Thomas: For 40 years, RAS has been considered one of cancer biology's most important and most frustrating targets. After years of dead ends and failed attempts to drug RAS, a turning point came in 2013. That year, NCI-supported scientist Dr. Kevin Shokat and colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, discovered a previously hidden pocket on the KRAS G12C mutant form of KRAS, I guess, a protein made by the RAS chain family in its active on-state. This mutant protein causes uncontrolled cell growth in cancer. Dr. Shokat's team developed small molecules that bind to the newly discovered pocket in the off-state, effectively inactivating the protein. Their work showed that RAS, previously considered undruggable, could in fact be targeted, opening a new path for drug development. Around the same time, NCI launched the RAS Initiative under the leadership of Dr. Frank McCormick, also at UCSF, to accelerate research on this important cancer fight. And it goes on, but it's like, that was all government, government funded stuff. You know, like that's somebody working at a, at a public university. That's why this drug is here, you know, and that often happens. And I think this is in an Eric recording that hasn't gone out yet, but one

0:42:38 Thomas: Thing I didn't realize that makes me kind of even more upset about the big pharma bullshit is often it is this kind of thing where government research gets you 90% there. And then big pharma does the last 10% or whatever it may be. And then it, because I resent it because the argument's always been like, well, they have to make all this profit, otherwise they won't do the research. And it's like, well, I didn't realize maybe the government was funding 90% of the research, you know? I don't know. Maybe that last 10%, you could argue they still need to be able to take losses on a lot of that doesn't work out, fine. But I didn' t realize that the government w as responsible for so much of it. So government funding for science is crucial. I have to imagine, who knows if in 2013, if it was now instead, if Dr. Frank McCormick accidentally wrote the word gender in his fucking thing, then maybe no funding, no cancer research. Who knows?

0:42:47 Lydia: They swoop in. Well especially like when you're talking about also UCSF right. San Francisco. Exactly. Dismantle your your DEI office UCSF and maybe we'll give you money

0:43:33 Thomas: Woke University, San Francisco. Yeah. First of all, it's run by homeless people who are doing drugs and genderqueer. We know that. It's San Francisco, they don't even have a university anymore. It is like a zombie movie. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So who knows? Like genuinely, who knows. I think now that something like this is shown to be kind of a winner, I think obviously Trump admin is going to back it probably. And they may even tout it as somehow they're

0:43:42 Lydia: Yes of course of course that's that's everybody it's the entire population as their

0:44:02 Thomas: Doing. Yeah. Because the FDA did permit like the last stage here and fine. That's all right. But who knows, I think everyone agrees, even MAGA will agree if it's like, well, we've got this cancer drug, that's definitely going to work. And we're like 90% there. Let us do it. I'm sure most of MAGA even would be like, yeah, that's fine. We just don't want the woke part. And the woke part is all the stuff before it. Any university doing research, they didn't know in 2013, was this going to be promising? It even said they considered this undruggable. Well, okay. I can imagine a conservative or Trump or MAGA person being like undruggable. So you're wasting government money, taxpayer money on something that people say isn't going to work. You don't know what's going to work ahead of time or not. And funding should not be dependent upon someone using the word diversity or gender in their fucking proposal. Who knows? I can't say for certain that this would have changed, but it might have, especially with all the cuts, you know? Who knows. So it's amazing to hear that. Oh, another little detail. This is the drug that Ben Sasse is taking. Man, the crazy story, if you haven't heard about that or watched an interview or whatever, like it's, poor Ben Sasse. I mean, I feel bad for him. He's just, yeah. I mean, he's, he's just dying.

0:44:43 Lydia: Accomplishment yeah yeah Poor Ben Sasse yeah what an interesting yeah yeah

0:45:16 Thomas: Like he's just pretty much dead in public and he's doing a lot of interviews about it, which is really, it's fascinating. I don't know, but he is on an experimental drug.

0:45:22 Lydia: Moving into advocacy at least so that's

0:45:24 Thomas: And the part that's still a bummer is this drug doubled the life expectancy, but it doubled it from like six months to 12 months or something. So it's still obviously a huge uphill battle. Yeah. Right. So yeah, very important. Yeah, I would imagine if that's you or your loved one

0:45:31 Lydia: Good, but you're also not on chemo so yeah quality of life is also better too, yeah.

0:45:40 Thomas: Getting six awful months versus maybe a year doing media interviews. No, I'm just kidding. He's doing that. But like, yeah, maybe a year with your loved one, that's quality time. That really, man, that would make all the difference in the world.

0:45:44 Lydia: Travel the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I'm saying. It's like emotional.

0:45:56 Thomas: Yeah. Maybe science is good. I don't know. Maybe I'm thinking maybe science is good. And it's not just woke leftist bullshit ideology. Or it is. I don't even know. Maybe it is. Yeah, maybe science is woke, but that's because woke stuff is correct. So fund it, assholes. All right. Go forth and comment. We say bad.