The Trump administration has cut nearly $1 billion in funding from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), targeting programs focused on immigrants and diversity.
The cuts, made late Friday night, affect several initiatives, including a study on primary care barriers for people of color, a project addressing racism in emergency medicine, and efforts to improve transgender care access for youth of color in rural areas.
A rare and contested move
The administration used a “pocket rescission” to cancel the spending, a method described by the Associated Press as a “rare and contested power.”
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defended the cuts, stating they targeted “the most harmful government spending.”
However, Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) strongly criticized the move, calling it an attempt to “undermine Congress’s Constitutional power of the purse.”
AI’s Role in Scientific Discoveries and Marketing
Anthropic’s recent announcement about Claude’s discovery of a new enzyme system with DNA repeats has sparked discussions. The company claims it resembles CRISPR, a gene-editing technology. However, experts caution that identifying such patterns is just the initial step.
Anthropic itself says that it does not yet know what this system’s function is, meaning there’s still a possibility that it’s nothing. While it is helpful that Anthropic is sharing this early in its discovery process, and the project illustrates how AI might be useful in scientific pursuits, it’s hard not to feel like this is marketing for Claude’s scientific capabilities as Anthropic approaches its long-awaited IPO.
At last week’s confirmation hearing, Heidi Overton, the administration’s nominee to head the FDA, wouldn’t say much on abortion, repeatedly declining to answer questions on how she would direct the agency’s safety review of the drug mifepristone, the drug used to end an early pregnancy. But in a First Opinion, the CEO of Reproductive Futures argues that Overton’s circumspect responses shouldn’t obscure the truth. Overton has a record of questioning mifepristone’s safety, including in a 2023 briefing. In a Fox News interview the head of Americans United for Life said he had spoken with Overton five or six times and predicted that she would “expose this drug.”
