My alma mater isn’t feeling so good

I graduated from the University of Washington, which is a major research institution, with lots of NIH money usually flowing through it. Usually. Everything changed this year.

Universities are reeling. The Trump administration has executed a flurry of research grant terminations at large, private institutions like Johns Hopkins and Princeton University. In a recent court case against NIH, the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the administration targeted cuts to grants about topics it disfavors like diversity, LGBTQ issues and gender identity.

Among public universities, the University of Washington is one of the hardest hit, and researchers and students have said the fallout from the cuts has upended their careers and forced some to consider leaving the U.S.

“We’re going to have a big brain drain in the U.S. of these really talented folks,” said Shelly Sakiyama-Elbert, the vice dean of research and graduate education at UW Medicine. “It’s not just a switch that you flip, right? If people move out into another direction with their careers, they often don’t come back.”

In a statement to NBC News, NIH said it was dedicated to restoring “gold-standard, evidence-based science.”

That last bit sounds like something Jay Bhattacharya would say, and it’s a lie. We had “gold-standard, evidence-based science” before the fringe pseudoscience kooks took over, and whatever it is they’re restoring, it isn’t evidence-based science.

Several institutions out there around Puget Sound are important centers of Alzheimer’s research — I guess that disease doesn’t fall under MAHA’s list of good research, which mainly seems to center on denying vaccines and peddling pointless supplements and killing the scientific establishment.

“Many of us are in the same boat” as the University of Washington, said Dr. Helena Chui, the principal investigator at the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the University of Southern California. “It’s a very strong network, and it would be easy to wreck, but it took years to build.”

All this destruction in the name of making the government more “efficient” and reducing deficits, all while the Trump administration is burning money at a furious rate.

A Wall Street Journal analysis of daily financial statements issued by the Treasury Department found that government spending since the inauguration in January is $154 billion more than in the same period in 2024 during the Biden administration.

I have to ask where that $154 billion went…