Republican Stupidity Watch: Health Edition 

The Trump/Musk machine says they are going to protect U.S. health by using Title 42 to keep out migrants. Migrants, they say, pose a public health threat. What threat? Measles? No, that’s Texas. Avian flu? That’s migrating birds, not people. 

Trump/Musk and company are still trying to figure out their 21^st century reprise of this venerable racist trope.  In the meantime, they are protecting U.S. health by firing the border inspectors whose literal job is … to protect U.S. health by inspecting humans, animals, and agricultural products crossing the border. Yep—they fired CDC and USDA border inspectors, leaving some ports of entry with no health inspectors at all. 

In another public health move, the Trump administration is targeting health and medical research. On January 29, a judge ordered an end to Trump’s freeze on grants and funding. That should mean that grants for health-related research are once again possible, right?

Wrong. On February 7, the Trump administration ordered an indefinite hold on submissions to the Federal Register. Any NIH grants must first be submitted to a study circle. The study circles can only be convened by …. you guessed it—notice in the Federal Register. The Transmitter, a news publication focused on neuroscience, reported: 

“Without being able to hold those meetings, new grants cannot be awarded, says Carole LaBonne, professor of molecular biosciences at Northwestern University. That serves as an ‘end run’ around the court ruling that hit pause on a funding freeze initiated by the Trump administration, she says. ‘By preventing publishing on the register, they were able to prevent any new funding.’ …

“New grants, and even grant renewals, on the other hand, cannot move forward without these meetings.”

The little Federal Register gimmick is one way to get around the court order against the funding freeze. Another way is—just ignore it. Popular Information reports:

“From February 1, 2025, to February 12, 2025, there was a total freeze on the issuing of continuing grants, according to publicly reported data. After the issuance of the February 12 memo, some continuing grants have been funded. Between February 13, 2025, and February 22, 2025, there were 335 continuing grants issued with a total value of $200,235,780. However, the data shows that most continuing grants are still being blocked. Over the same nine-day period in 2024, there were 823 grants issued with a total value of $484,709,831.

“Funding for continuing grants administered by the National Cancer Institute has dropped from $162 million between February 1, 2024, and February 22, 2024, to $27 million over the same period this year.”

Read that last paragraph again. They are defunding cancer research. Is cancer research now too “woke” for the new regime? 

Besides restrictions on research grants, Trump/Musk are firing essential health researchers. The Transmitter noted that among more than 1,000 National Institutes of Health employees fired was Carla Pugliese, chief of the NIH autism program. Pugliese was just 21 days short of completing her one-year probationary period. The fact that she was a “probationary” employee does not signal inexperience.

“Prior to taking her position at the NIMH in March 2024, Pugliese was tenured at George Washington University. In the Facebook post, Pugliese wrote that she had spent two decades in academic research and advocacy and was recruited based on her expertise “to help develop ways to get low-cost, evidence-based mental health care into schools and community settings.”

In her February 18 Facebook post, quoted by The Transmitter, Pugliese wrote: 

“I didn’t take the move to NIMH lightly. I went because I believed in shaping the future of autism and mental health research, impacting policy, and ensuring that science actually reaches the communities that need it most.”

Trump, Musk, RFK, Jr.—they are responsible. But they are not the only ones. Republicans in the House and Senate continue to uncritically support the Trump/Musk dismantling of government. They own the unfolding disaster that is the Trump/Musk administration.