Hey everyone, we've discussed how Trump
and members of his cabinet like Bobby
Kennedy have been destroying the
American scientific community since the
beginning of his second term. While the
war on science just got kicked up a
notch in a serious way by a figure who
many of you may not even have heard of,
Russell Vote. Who is he and why does he
suck so much? Let's talk about it. Once
again, we've covered Trump's war on
science quite a bit already. His
cancelling of random grants because of
the ridiculous claim that scientists
were turning mice trans. a thorough
dissection of Bobby's [\h__\h] the
whole Tylenol autism debacle, NIH head
Jay Bodacharia and his fake journal, and
the mass layoffs that purged numerous
federal institutions of any scholar that
would not bend the knee to the new state
sanctioned pseudocience. The goal has
always been the complete eradication of
the scientific community. But whereas
previous efforts have been measured
jabs, Trump is now winding up for the
knockout punch and things are looking
very grim. This is where Russ Vote comes
in. Russ Vote is the director of the
Office of Management and Budget or OM,
which is basically a giant bureaucratic
funnel that dictates the flow of money
throughout the federal government. The
amount of power this guy has
consolidated for himself is so profound
that he may as well be the president
himself. the gutting of federal
agencies, every single regulatory
decision, workforce policies, the final
say on every aspect of the $7 trillion
federal budget. The guy has an amount of
control that truly nobody should have,
especially when you're an evil gremlin
like him. When Congress refused to fund
Trump's border wall publicity stunt in
2019, vote redirected billions of
dollars in Department of Defense money
for him. When Trump pressured the
Ukrainian government into investigating
Hunter Biden, vote froze 214 million in
aid to coers them into doing it. But
none of this holds a candle to what
would come later. When Biden won in 2020
and MAGA had to take a back seat, vote
got busy cooking. He was the key author
and architect of Project 2025. This is
the ultraright-wing Christian
nationalist movement to take over the
government, dismantle democracy, and
replace it with a brutally repressive
authoritarian theocratic regime. We're
talking about enormous erosions of civil
rights, ending Social Security and
Medicare, gutting Medicaid, raising
prescription drug prices, eliminating
SNAP food assistance, an assault on
reproductive rights, including the
criminalization of abortion, reversing
FDA approval for abortion medication,
and legally assigning personhood at
conception. the paralysis of countless
federal agencies that protect the
citizenry from the private sector,
completely dismantling the Department of
Education, and withholding funds for
schools whose curricula are deemed
problematic, eliminating Head Start free
preschool for low-income families,
undermining voting rights, reducing
affordable housing, blocking student
loan debt relief, gutting labor
protections, defying unions, and
enacting mass layoffs, ending veteran
disability benefits, undermining racial
equality, revocation of birthright
citizenship, Mass detainment and
deportation, expanding the death
penalty, invocation of the insurrection
act to crush protests with a militarized
police force, warrantless surveillance,
weaponization of the justice system, and
of course, raising taxes on the middle
class while cutting taxes for the most
wealthy people. We are talking about
censorship, widespread loss of freedom,
fascistic loyalty tests, and the
continued transference of wealth from
the public into the oligarchy. We are
talking about seriously dark dystopian
[\h__\h] This plan is so evil and twisted
and was such a liability for Trump's
2024 election bid that it had to come
loaded with a media campaign to shame
anyone for even mentioning it, telling
them they were a silly conspiracy
theorist, that it's all just propaganda,
and Trump had nothing to do with such a
thing. Well, a year and a half into his
second term, 70% of Trump's cabinet and
more than 50 senior officials have
direct ties to Project 2025. All of its
major architects are in his inner
circle. And over half of its initiatives
have already been implemented, largely
through Trump's nightmarish big
beautiful bill. It's happening. It's not
on the horizon. It's not a vague
possibility. The descent into
authoritarianism is currently happening.
And since vote is the key figure in all
of this, let's all finally hear what
this prick sounds like.
>> We want the bureaucrats to be
traumatically affected. We want when
they wake up in the morning, we want
them to not want to go to work
because they are so they they are
increasingly viewed as the villains. We
want their funding to be shut down so
that the EPA can't do all of the rules
against our energy industry because they
have no bandwidth financially to do so.
We want to put them in trauma.
>> You heard correctly. He wants to craft
propaganda that villainizes regulatory
bodies and abuse bureaucratic tools to
defund the EPA and other agencies so
that it's impossible to regulate the
energy industry. You know, so they can
continue to poison everyone and destroy
the planet. Cool guy, huh? In general,
this is the messaging regarding every
aspect of the federal government. a war
against the so-called deep state, which
is just code for the government doing
what it ought to do to police the
private sector and thus must be
dismantled in service of the oligarchy.
And Trump loves this [\h__\h]
>> And today, President Trump posted on
social media that he would meet with
Russell Vote, the current head of the
Office of Management and Budget, also
known as OM. The reason to quote,
determine which of the many Democrat
agencies, most of which are a political
scam, he recommends to be cut. Those are
his words. and we wanted to dive deeper
into who Vote is and why he has so much
authority in shaping the federal
workforce. So, Vote is a self-declared
budget hawk who wants to shrink the
federal government and he gained
national attention for co-authoring the
Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. You
may have heard of them. They It is a
conservative blueprint to transform
nearly every aspect of government
containing hundreds of policy proposals
along with strategies to enact them. Do
you see how Trump distanced himself from
Project 2025 during his campaign, but
somehow he now announces his affiliation
loud and clear? Trump loves to be able
to give the richest people alive exactly
what they want so that he can enrich
himself in the process. So, he uses his
cult leader status to brainwash the
delusional MAGA base into praising
policy that will utterly destroy them.
Brace yourself for this AI hallucination
Trump posted to his Truth Social
account.
Now the time has come
here. The power gone
is the reaper. Here the pen and the
brain. Here comes the reaper. Come here
you babies. Here comes the reaper. Going
to tie your hands. Here comes the
reaper. Be able to fly. Here comes the
reaper. Baby and your plan.
That was sick, bro. Trump is like Will
Frell from that SNL sketch. We're all
going to die. And it's so funny. Just
like Will Frell again. Trump himself
posted this. This is what the MAGA base
consumes. This is the reality they
inhabit. They can't be reached. They are
infected with a mind virus. When met
with facts about the rise of fascism,
they just shout TDS at you until you
leave them alone. Trump could be carving
their children up with a butcher knife
and they would just shout and cheer and
take selfies. This is how a twisted
oligarchy employs a populist freak to
brainwash the masses into rooting for
their own demise. All of this should add
some context to previous content I've
made regarding Bobby Kennedy. Given that
we've talked about the mass layoffs at
FDA and CDC numerous times before. Now
we can understand the bigger picture.
This grander vision of the government is
the motivation behind the mass firings
and restructuring. Trump's handlers have
a very specific government in mind, and
there is no room in it for legitimate
scholarship, empathy, civic duty, or any
impediment whatsoever to totalitarian
rule. There is no room for federal
institutions that actually serve and
protect the public. This is why vote
specifically guided Elon, Musk, and Doge
in much of what was targeted. Apart from
the organizations that were specifically
investigating Elon for fraud, vote saw
Elon as a useful tool to implement part
of his agenda. This is an agenda that
seeks to illegally usurp power from
Congress and wreak havoc on the American
public. And again, it might seem like it
would be a challenge to avoid public
backlash from the MAGA base. But in
reality, it's easy. Just start a media
campaign brainwashing people into raging
against wokeness. You don't even have to
define the term, and none of them ever
will. You simply weaponize confused
anger regarding trans people or similar
issues and redirect it as outrage
towards literally anything. Want to
destroy a critical federal institution?
Just say they're doing woke Marxist
trans stuff and the brainwashed masses
will cheer you on as you do so. In this
way, vote is the architect of the
anti-woke cult. And the end goal is of
course an omnipotent executive branch
that can fire any person, cancel any
program, dismantle any agency, and undo
any regulation with no checks on its
power from any other branch of
government. He wants to disempower the
legislative branch entirely. He wants
the Justice Department to work directly
for the White House. In short, he wants
a dictator. And Trump is just the
populist Hitleresque [\h__\h] to play the
part. Maniacs in this camp will claim
that all of this is being done in the
name of constitutionalism, that they are
upholding the vision of the founding
fathers. But in reality, they do nothing
but violate the constitution. The
constitution guarantees no state
religion through the establishment
clause of the first amendment. This is
the separation of church and state that
is critical to any democracy. No matter
how much these [\h__\h] will lie and say
the US was founded as a Christian
nation. The Constitution ensures a
division of power into three branches
specifically to avoid tyrannical
behavior from wouldbe monarchs. This is
literally exactly why the founding
fathers fled Europe to get away from
[\h__\h] like this. And Trump has violated
the Constitution many times already. He
declares war without congressional
approval. He makes financial decisions
without support. always without any
repercussions because of the Republican
majority in the House and Senate. And
this inflation of executive power is
precisely what we see in the leadup to
any fascist takeover. Mussolini, the
Nazi party, this is the playbook.
Promoting extreme anti-intellectualism,
stoking the embers of xenophobia and
other forms of bigotry, and using
emergency decrees to dismantle
democratic institutions and establish
dictatorial rule. All the while, these
characters will grandstand as being
morally superior. Christian nationalists
do this all the time. They will pretend
to be fighting some divine battle for
spiritual justice. But this is just a
tool for commanding subservience from
the religious masses while they
greenlight everyone's most morally
repugnant and malicious intentions. So
that's Russ Vote, a slimy degenerate
wizard of Oz pulling all the strings
from behind a bloodstained curtain. a
disgusting con man with the power to
ruin millions of lives and destroy a
secular democracy that is the product of
hundreds of years of gradual social
gains which produced a middle class that
was the envy of the modern world. It can
all be undone and it is currently being
undone. But Dave, this was supposed to
be about science. Okay. Okay. Let's get
to the point of the video. On May 29th,
the OM put out this proposed rule which
outlines the most massive restructuring
of the American scientific community in
history. It's over a 100 pages long, and
it's linked below if you're in the mood
to torture yourself. But realistically,
ain't nobody got time for that. So,
let's check out a tidy summary of the
document from former NIH official
Elizabeth Janexi. Here are the 19 most
important rules and provisions broken
down for easy consumption. One,
political appointees take control of
grant awards. You heard that correctly.
Every single grant for science in the
entire country will now be controlled by
a panel of Trump appointees, not
scientists. They will get to approve or
reject every single grant for every
single area of science. None of which
they will have a single shred of a clue
about since they are not scientists.
that decisions will be made on the basis
of the agenda of the White House as is
explicitly stated by requiring that the
research demonstrably advance the
president's policy priorities. Anything
that conflicts will be vetoed. Climate
research that pushes the nasty liberal
lie of anthropogenic climate change, get
bent. Anything that denies the sex
binary, which isn't actually real, go
[\h__\h] yourself. Medical research that
saves lives. Alternative energies that
threaten fossil fuel profits, those
ultra feminine social sciences, get
real, libtards. Anything anti-American
will not get funded, and America hates
science now, so it's going to be slim
pickings. Two, peer review is no longer
binding. NIH, NSF, DOE, NASA, and all
other federal agencies have always
relied on the peerreview process for
publishing science and gauging the merit
of competing scientific ideas. Well, no
longer. It's not necessary for the
leading experts in a given field to
examine and verify new research because
[\h__\h] those nerds. Real men know what's
scientifically accurate by looking
inside their huge balls. And Trump has
the biggest balls in town. You can call
it elephantitis due to a parasite he
caught from Bobby, but real patriots
know he was born that way. Three, gold
standard science as an undefined
political test. This is a super fun term
borrowed from Bobby and the Maha cult.
All the new science has got to be gold
standard science, you guys. Of course,
just like woke, this term is not defined
in even a half-assed way. It's just
blindly asserted, which makes it a
totally nebulous term that in any given
situation simply refers to whatever
[\h__\h] conclusions the administration
wants to pass off as fact. Gold standard
science will be awarded with a fun
little collectible trophy, just like the
medals Mussolini used to give out for
loyalty to the regime. Looks like we
have a little mango Mussolini of our
own, don't we? Viva duche. Four active
grants can be terminated at any time for
any reason. That's right. Obviously, any
brand new stupid woke libtard science
won't get funded, but also any stupid
woke libtard science that's currently
underway can be cut at any time. No
fraud, no non-compliance, no
justification. Just [\h__\h] you. You're
done. Researchers in the middle of
multi-year investigations who have built
entire groups and facilities around the
science they're doing can have their
entire projects demolished on a whim.
Careers ruined. Graduate students thrown
completely off their path. But who
cares, right? Five. DEI, gender
research, and related topics banned as
grant conditions. That's right. If
you're trying to study gender identity,
which is objectively a thing, think
again. Trump and pals say it's not a
thing because reasons. It's a stupid
ideology and no money for you. And of
course, even though gender identity and
sex are two completely different
concepts, anyone who denies the sex
binary will also get no money. So
basically, people who understand human
anatomy and physiology get no money. And
don't even think about assisting minors
with puberty blockers that stop them
from wanting to kill themselves. Trans
youth should be dead because they are
actually demon house who are coming to
take away our guns. Just let them die,
man. Six. broad prohibition on
international scientific collaboration.
Did you know that people in other
countries also do science? That may come
as a surprise since America is the super
awesome best country ever and every
other place sucks ass, but it's true.
Other countries do science. But the
thing is, it's not gold standard
science. It's stupid butt science. So,
there will be no more collaborating with
other countries or their libtardiness
will infect us and we won't achieve the
gold standard anymore. It doesn't matter
if you're sharing data on climate with
other countries or if you need access to
amazing facilities like particle
accelerators that exist in other places.
Facts from other countries are fake and
gay. So knock that [\h__\h] off. Seven.
Domestic first framework for research
awards. Science in America must benefit
America only. If you even think about
doing something that will also help
people in like France or some other
weird country, you go to jail. Eight.
Applicants can be denied based on
organizational affiliations. Are you
someone trying to do science that is
also an actual human person who cares
about social justice? [\h__\h] you. No
science for you. If you have anything to
do with any organization that advocates
for gay or trans people or fights
climate change or protests Israel's
genocide, even if you just marched or
tweeted that one time, you can't be a
scientist anymore. Sorry. Nine. E-Verify
mandated for all grant recipients. Was
it already almost impossible to get a
grant? Let's make it even more
impossible by adding a bunch of
additional bureaucratic hoops you have
to jump through. 10. OM claims direct
binding authority over all agencies.
Remember how FDA, CDC, EPA, and a bunch
of other agencies were things that
mattered? Not anymore. In this brave new
world, there can be only one. No, not
the Highlander. It's the OM
[\h__\h] beat led by Russ Darth
Vader. Vote. Suck it losers. 11.
Conference attendance now requires
express agency preapproval. Wait, did
you want to use grant money to attend
conferences and share your research with
your peers? Sorry, [\h__\h] It's got to
be one that Russ likes and you have to
include it in the grant application. If
you didn't put it in there several years
ago because you're not psychic or it's
in some other loser country like Germany
or England, no sleepa away camp for you.
This isn't gatekeeping or isolating in
any way. We just think other scientists
are a bad influence on you. They do weed
and listen to the rap music. Just stay
home and jerk off to Passion of the
Christ again. It's safer. 12.
Professional memberships require prior
approval and must be necessary. Oh, I'm
sorry. Did you need journal
subscriptions? Did you need to see what
other scientists in your field are doing
to inform your own research? Well, some
of them are from those other buttthead
libtard countries, so that's not a good
idea. You don't need them. Remember what
I said earlier about looking inside your
balls? Just do that. 13. Publication
costs and open access fees are
presumptively unallowable. You know how
paying huge fees just to publish your
research is [\h__\h] outrageous, like
thousands of dollars per publication?
Well, we're not going to solve that
problem at all. Instead, now you can't
use grant money to pay for it. So yeah,
if you're a grad student and you want to
get a couple papers published to
kickstart your career, make sure you
also work full-time at the local Shake
Shack because that [\h__\h] is coming out of
pocket. This nightmare just keeps
getting worse, doesn't it? 14. Public
communications and outreach severely
restricted. Did you accidentally figure
out some new facts we don't like? Well,
you can't share them with the public or
press. Just pretend it didn't happen.
Okay, seriously, we will kill you. 15.
New issue advocacy prohibition. If you
try to champion any issues we don't
like, we will destroy you. Like
Palestine and Palestine. Did I mention
Palestine? You worthless anti-Semitic
piece of [\h__\h] 16. Program goals must
align with administration policies and
priorities. Starting to get a little
redundant here. We get it. Absolutely
[\h__\h] everything has to align with the
state narrative. Science should be a
branch of politics and anyone who
disagrees is a stupid Marxist commie
bastard. Freethinkers are not allowed.
17. Agency heads can exempt grant
competitions from public notice. Can't
find a grant because we barely give them
out now? Well, let's make it even harder
by hiding some of them from you while
citing some horseshit about national
security. Good luck, [\h__\h] 18.
Agencies can restrict eligibility to
specific nonprofit categories. Are you
associated with a nonprofit? Is it one
of those annoying ones that's all about
civil rights or justice or advocacy for
the marginalized or any of that gay
[\h__\h] No grant for you. And 19. OM gains
direct oversight of which institutions
receive grants. EPA getting a little
uppety with the climate stuff. [\h__\h] you
no money. CDC getting a little nosy
debunking lab leak propaganda. [\h__\h] you
no money. Anyone doing anything against
the handsome God king? [\h__\h] you no
money. And that's the long and short of
it. Make no mistake, if this is set into
motion, it is the nail in the coffin for
the American scientific community. It
will be dead in the water. 100% of all
science done in America, not just in
federal agencies, but in every academic
institution across the country, will be
hopelessly politicized. Anything
fact-based that challenges the agenda of
MAGA and MA will be silenced by brute
force. And it's not just the silencing
of inconvenient science. It will be used
as an instrument to suppress social
issues. If you're a scientist and you
also support Palestine, your grants will
be terminated. This is just another way
for Israel to suppress any protest of
Zionism. It's already begun. A tenur
professor was put under investigation
because she assigned a case study that
mentioned violence against Palestinians.
Was it a manifesto that read death to
Israel? No, it didn't even mention
Israel a single time. It referenced a
thing that is objectively happening,
violence towards Palestinians, in
describing a hypothetical client for
whom students had to develop a treatment
plan. And yet, the Israeli propaganda
machine fired into action. The professor
was put on leave and she was silenced.
Any mention of Palestine or Palestinians
anywhere in academia is now met with
this cartoonish level of retaliation.
This is a violation of free speech. This
is fascism, plain and simple. There is
nothing hyperbolic whatsoever about that
label. Anyone who does not recognize
fascism all around us in this
administration is either in denial or
they don't know what that word means.
Many of you know about my work exposing
discovery institute, the anti-science
propaganda organization that is
essentially the intellectual arm of
Project 2025 Christian nationalism. In
that series, I covered John G. West, the
douchebag who wrote and disseminated a
propaganda pamphlet called the rise of
totalitarian science. Of course, it was
nothing but whining about COVID lockdown
and vaccine mandates and other totally
common sense and routine pandemic
protocol. And now here we are, the
Christian theocrats that Discovery
Institute works for themselves
implementing what can only be described
as totalitarian science. It's just
another masterclass in gaslighting and
reality reversal. Real science is
totalitarianism because reasons. And
actual totalitarianism is real science
because gold standard something
something woke bad blah blah blah. But
this is where we're at. The US had been
the global leader in science since World
War II. And why was that? Because we
funded the best science as determined by
scientists. the people who know how the
[\h__\h] science works. Peer review, open
competition, and institutional autonomy
were the pillars of this system. This
new rule obliterates all three pillars
in one fell swoop. Scientific expertise
is now meaningless, and all of these
agencies are now impotent. The only
thing that matters is the whim of the
emperor, I mean, president, and the
highest bidder that fed it to him.
Public health meaningless. technological
advancement, not if it threatens the
bottom dollar. Civic duty. The [\h__\h] did
you just say? This is a shift so severe
and so apocalyptic that it's genuinely
astounding to be reporting all of this
to you, even in the context of what's
been going on for the past couple years.
I can't possibly overstate how dire this
situation is. The middle class will
continue to disappear and large numbers
of people will die. So, you may ask,
what can we do about it? [\h__\h] if I
know. So, let's talk to someone with a
better grasp of that side of things.
Colette Deawala, CEO of Stand Up for
Science. I've shared a conversation with
her once before, which focused largely
on Maha and her organization's efforts
towards impeaching Bobby. While I make
content to inform the public, Colette
seeks tangible action. So, let's see
what she has to say. Colette, thanks so
much for joining me. Uh, I just outlined
the impending doom as best I can for my
viewers, but uh, with you here, I want
to give you the opportunity. Maybe you
can crystallize it uh, even a bit
better. What is this thing coming down
the pipe from OM?
>> Um, thank you first of all. Thank you so
much for having me, Dave. Um
it is a fundamental and sweeping uh rule
that skirts Congress and skirts prior
legal, you know, proceedings and how
things have, you know, panned out with
uh lawsuits related to canceled grants.
That fundamentally changes how trillions
of dollars of taxpayer dollars, our
money, moves through the government and
who controls it. And so it says that any
grant can be cancelled at any time for
any reason. It appoints any political
appointee is sort of the gatekeeper of
funds moving through government through
agencies and their responsibility is to
ensure that every grant moving through
the federal government is in line with
Trump's priorities. Um it effectively
bans international collaboration. Um, so
that is going to look like not getting a
tsunami warning if there is an
earthquake off the coast of China. Um,
it explicitly bans research on women,
LGBTQ plus people and issues, uh,
religious minorities, climate issues,
vaccines. Uh, there is no viewpoint
discrimination allowed except for the
viewpoints that
that this administration views uh, to be
bad. So, in other words, there's lots of
viewpoint uh and discrimination allowed.
Um, and it there's this first amendment
piece where any federal grantee has to
go through the government to be able to
talk to the press and um any any grantee
can have their grant either denied or
cancelled because of individual
organizational affiliations in their
private life.
>> Right? And guess which ones those are
going to be? Anyone that's pro Palestine
number one with a bullet.
>> That's right. Uh stand up for sides
indivisible. I promise you that Heritage
Foundation is not going to be on that
list.
>> Right. Of course. Yeah. Even though
they're I mean it's this. It's just such
undeniable tyranny. Like anytime it just
anyone that's like TDS, you know, Trump
during I just want to smack them in the
face. It's like how do you not see
what's going on that this is so
authoritarian? This is Trump and vote
and whichever lobbies they're beholding
beholden to going, "Nope, you can't do
that science because it interferes with
our bottom dollar." Like, it's just
clear as day. It's absolutely crazy to
me.
>> It really is. And it because it's so
sweeping. Um it all of the bad rules
that you sort of like heard little bits
about you know coming up through you
know that happening at the NIH or
happening at NSF this standardizes them
across every single federal agency.
>> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's I've yeah as I've
told my viewers we've been talking about
RFK's uh you know firings and all these
but it's just like this really gives it
the bigger picture. I mean and so the
thing is this hasn't even passed yet but
we are already seeing this kind of
crackdown. So like uh you were telling
me about this incident with the diabetes
researchers being removed from a
conference. Can you tell us uh more
about that? What happened there?
>> Yeah. So um every year the association
American diabetes association excuse me
ADA um holds an annual scientific
conference. This is our for the course
for any disease group. Um at these
conferences scientists, patients,
doctors gather to talk about the latest
science in the area. Um and these
organizations, these associations have
their own medical journals that are
peer-reviewed. Um it's sort of woven
into the fabric of what they do, right?
Like they are the premier scientific uh
place for anything related to diabetes.
and the editor-inchief of the number one
diabetes scientific journal uh who is
the editor-inchief you know through the
ADA uh wrote an editorial with his
colleagues about the you know Trump's
destruction of biomedical research and
uh they called the ADA had Jay
Badacharia as one of their keynote
speakers um and in protest of that they
the um you know this editor
and his colleagues printed out copies of
the editorial and they were passing it
out science at a scientific conference
>> and uh the leadership of the ADA called
the police and had them forcibly removed
from the meeting.
>> Yeah.
>> And threatened arrest um and then banned
from the rest of the meeting. Um so it
is complying in advance. So like just
textbook combined
>> the police the police removing
scientists from a scientific conference
for sharing science. It's insane. It
just reeks of insecure dictator. It's
crazy to me.
>> Yeah.
>> Um I mean so regarding these great it's
like I think that like MAGA base might
get by on going like oh some grad
student doesn't get to study Beatles
having sex now or something. But like
the the it's so I mean not only just all
of the science that we're all aware of,
but we're talking about when we're
talking about the scope of federal
grants, we're talking about labor,
agriculture, like help us understand
really the scope of what we're talking
about.
>> So veterans benefits, veterans housing
benefits, um you know, veterans benefits
that go towards making a veteran's home
appropriate for their wheelchair, making
it accessible for them to move around.
That is a federal grant. Um, and if that
is that is now, who knows what's going
to happen. Um, your grandma's wheelchair
from Medicare is a grant. Um, and her
doctors decided that she needed it and
so she's getting this wheelchair. Now,
Russell vote is the person who decides
whether your grandmother needs that
wheelchair. Um, this impacts I know it's
it's egregious. This impacts um small
business grants. It impacts uh
agriculture. So anything supporting any
any discretional or discretionary
funding um that supports agriculture is
now subject to
Russell vote and the administration and
political appointees. Um and so I think
that people just are not understanding
how deep this goes. The other thing is
that with the ban on international
collaboration,
75 times a day on average during the
span of a year, there are near misses
between United Statesowned, you know,
private and publiclyowned uh satellites
and satellites that are from China. And
there are and there's an office there
and there's an office here. Those
offices talk to each other. They're
colleagues. Their job is to make sure
that these satellites do not crash into
each other.
um this would pull that line of
communication down. So on day one, we're
going to have what looks like an
American sabotage on Chinese satellites,
>> right? And vice versa. I mean,
>> and vice versa. Yeah, that's right. Like
it goes both ways. But to this is so
much bigger than this side. Yeah, of
course.
>> It's our action. We cut the line off. um
the International Space Station,
Americans, I guess, are just gonna have
to come home. Uh because there are
grants, right? Like there are grants
that that fund projects there. We cannot
be in collaboration with um folks that
are from other countries, Russia, China,
or anybody who collaborates with people
from those countries,
>> right? Albania or whoever like the UK,
like all of our major all of our major
partners. Um we are our team is looking
through all of the active clinical
trials um that are happening right now
in the United States uh that are
federally funded that have some stream
of federal funding. Um there's about
10,000 and 100 of these of these trials.
By our conservative estimate, 49% of
these trials um will be shut down on day
one of this rule being enacted. Mhm. And
that that's the shocking thing is that I
I get the sense that the the
administration is obviously pure evil,
but also genuinely so [\h__\h] stupid
that it doesn't even occur to them like
what you said about satellites. They it
literally didn't even enter into their
mind because they're so dumb and they
have nobody advising them that they'll
actually listen to on these matters.
Like it's crazy to me.
>> Um
>> that's right. But yeah, so it's like all
right, there's all of that and then I
mean, but the problem is that even what
MAGA would like get behind like yeah,
all that gender stuff, you know, like
even that is so much broader than than
they think. What does that uh umbrella
include,
>> all women's healthcare,
>> right?
all women's health,
breast cancer treatments, ovarian cancer
treatments, you know, all there's this
whole like maja push on studying, you
know, menopause, right? Like they did
this whole thing of like we're going to
study menopause. Okay. Well, um, no,
you're not. This cancels all of that
work.
>> Mhm.
>> Like women's health is a gender study.
I don't know, you know, how much more
explicit you could be about this. This
doesn't mean that we're cancelling
research on making mice trans. Okay?
This means that when your mother or your
sister or your wife or your daughter,
god forbid, has a terrible case of
breast cancer, there's not a clinical
trial for her to enroll in.
>> Like that's what this means.
>> I don't think that I don't think that
people are understanding that like when
we talk about gender work, it is the
study of a uterus. like it's a
scientific study of a uterus. It's a
scientific study of infertility and
causes for female uh you know you know
woman's based infertility um
>> and hormones that men and women have
both have and Yeah.
>> Yeah. and and that you know differ
between biological sex. Um so you know
folks are folks are not understanding
that like this is not about the trans
mice that
>> right which never was a thing in the
first place
>> which was never a freaking thing. Okay.
It's transgenic. It's not transgender.
And even if it was trans mice
sorry like so what?
>> Yeah. Well mice can't be trans. But but
but it was just like uh you know oh
we're going to study the effects of
endogenous sex hormones on something
like wound healing and we have to
control for sex because there you know
that's how science works. You control
every variable. So we we administer this
sex hormone to male and female mice so
that we can see the effects you know
it's just like it they just don't know
how science works basically. Yeah.
>> My favorite current example of this is
um one of our advisory board members uh
is a Nobel laureate. Um he won the Nobel
Prize for studying interosception which
is how um it's like how we know where we
are in space like how we feel things and
you know the nerve connections between
this I mean he's brilliant. I I I'm not
I'm butchering his line of research so
bad. Um they wanted to investigate the
uterus uh and interception in the uterus
which is really really different from um
other areas in the body because of
ability to grow a human. And the grant
got flagged and not funded because they
had to justify why there was only
biological females in the study
>> to study the uterus.
>> This is their thing. This is their
thing. The whole, oh, biological
reality, uterus, women, etc., etc.
>> Yeah.
>> What are we doing? Like, obviously, I I
just it's beyond me. So, it's so stupid.
>> Yeah. So, this is what's interesting to
me. So, it's like I feel like even MAGA,
like especially like the veteran stuff,
like they're all support our troops and
oh, guess what? Trump doesn't care about
veterans at all. Uh I mean America the
American government hasn't for for
decades but um the veteran stuff the
assault on women even MAGA should be
able to get their heads around how this
is a disaster but them aside all of you
know the vast majority of my viewers
anyone even remotely science-minded does
not need any further convincing that
this is a complete disaster. So the
question is how and this is something
that I need to I need some help with as
well. How far along are we on the
timeline? When might this go through?
How likely is it to go through? Um, you
know, uh, assuage my fears a little bit
here if you can.
>> Okay. I I'm I don't know that I can
assuage your fears. However, I can give
you action steps and I can tell you how
we are fighting back. That's what we can
do.
>> So, this is an open comment period. This
is not legislation. This is regulation
which means that it skirts Congress and
it skirt it skirts the the uh you know
all the branches of the government and
allows the executive to sort of just
plow on through. U so we have until July
13th to leave as many public comments as
humanly possible in this public comment
portal. Um we have a you know we've got
a guide on our site. We've got um how to
talk about it. We've got an overview. We
also have a direct portal where you can
just in one stop so you don't have to go
find it on the government um website
because of course they have it hidden
right like it's way way way under under
a bunch of stuff.
>> Um so more than happy to make sure that
everybody has all of those links. Um
>> so
there are several ways that this could
go down. In theory, somebody like Katie
Brit could call the president and say,
"Mr. President, this is really really
bad. You like we can't be doing this."
Um, at this point this has been uh
available and around for two weeks and
nobody has done that and we know that
members of Congress have been briefed on
this because our team has briefed them.
Um, and nobody has called Trump yet to
say walk this rule back. So, we don't
necessarily think that's going to happen
in the next month. Um, so that's option
one. We should try it, but it's very
unlikely. The next option is that we get
some sort of uh sort of baseline. It's
called a writer in the, you know, fiscal
year appropriations. Um that basically
says we're ignoring this rule. Um we
were I was just in, you know, 30 plus
member meetings uh congressional
meetings um in the last three days. We
did a marathon on the hill uh to talk
about this. It is a possibility they're
going to try. Um that would also be a
relatively easy way that we could just
kind of bypass this. Uh what is more
likely to happen is
um that this rule will effectively go
through um to be determined when it
would actually like take you know take
effect there. There's some talk that it
would take effect on October 1st, but
technically there's nothing stopping
Russell vote from moving forward on July
14th as if this rule is in effect.
And so we are planning for like the most
catastrophic version of this, which is
on July 14th, every grantee in the
United States gets a email from Russell
Vote that says, "Your grants are all
canceled." Um, and because of the way
that they have it set up there, it it
they that would just be what happens.
Um, so leaving public comment does two
things. Number one, it we have to get
like the public outrage here is a
critical component because Republicans
need to know that we are going to be an
extraordinary pain in their ass and this
is going to impact their chances at
reelection during the midterms. Right?
So, like
>> you're dealing with me now. Like, we
tried the nice way. We tried to get you
to go with appropriations. We tried to
get somebody with a sick kid to call
Trump and be like, "Hey, we're not doing
this. Didn't work." Okay, but you get to
deal with the extremists now. And that's
me.
>> Yeah.
>> Um, so, so there is this, you know,
public outrage, court of public opinion
piece that matters deeply. And because
this is so wide ranging, pick a pick an
issue. This is this will impact that
group of people,
>> right?
>> Um you know, pick a special interest.
This this will impact it. This by our
current estimate uh will touch about $2
trillion of federal funding a year,
which is about a fourth of the budget of
the annual budget. I mean, it's not a
small number. and it makes this $2
trillion a slush fund uh for the
executive branch. So, the other thing if
you're if you've got any lawyers that
are listening um or any folks who are
like ready to make this their mission,
the other reason why we need a ton of
public comments and ones that are both
like, you know, [\h__\h] Trump, [\h__\h]
Russell, vote, [\h__\h] this rule, uh but
also really in-depth like legal
policybased
this is a scenario that you haven't
thought about which means that you know
you should not pass this rule type of um
comments is because it puts in what we
call litigation hooks. And this means
that across all of these organizations,
across all these people who have a deep
understanding of the ways that they're
going to be impacted by this rule, um
they can say in the comment, hey, this
is what's going to happen. And then the
second that that thing happens, they can
file a lawsuit. So, we are heavily
heavily heavily preparing for uh
litigation. We have um about a dozen
like pathways for litigation here. Um
and and we're actively fundraising to
hire and to like pull in a legal team.
Um because we think that this is going
to basically pass through as rule and
we're just going to have to go the um
litigation route to stop it.
>> Okay, let's sue the pants off of them. I
like that. That's one that's one route.
>> Like I'm gonna I'm gonna sue you out of
house and home. That's what we're doing.
I mean, what what other recourse do you
have when the when he's potentially
poised to just basically send a a mass
email to every scientist in the country
that's just a a gif of Trump going,
"You're fired." Like, it's just
>> it's literally that they don't have to
provide reason.
>> No reason.
>> Like, no reason. They can just say it's
done.
>> Don't like your science. Um, it's just
like I can't I I it's even this far into
knowing everything about Trump and and
Bobby and and all, you know, and I admit
I did not know who Roosevelt was until
this happened and it's just like it just
I am flabbergasted. I continue to be
shocked at the depravity uh of this
administration. It's crazy to me. But
yeah.
>> Yeah. Same here. I think the thing
that's really interesting about Russell
Vote as a political operative too is
that he is he is brilliant. He's evil,
but he's brilliant. And he has and very
intentionally for the last I mean 30
years, you know, basically the entirety
of his career. Kept a really low
profile.
>> Totally under the radar. totally under
the radar and just snuck his way up to I
mean one of the most powerful positions
without having to ever you know be the
president. Um
>> anyone in charge of $2 trillion
single-handedly that shouldn't happen.
Nobody should have power.
>> Nobody should have that power. Um and
and yet here we are. And you know he was
the mastermind behind Project 2025.
>> Um and so this is this was in Project
2025. they they effectively experimented
with every provision um in this rule
across various agencies. And now this
rule makes all of those experimentations
like it makes it the the rule across all
federal agencies. Um so they they're
very methodical. They're very very good
at what they do. And um people power is
the way that we're going to win this
one.
>> That's it. Yeah. So the message here is
uh everybody has the power to be a loud
angry troll.
>> Be a loud angry troll.
>> Yeah. Be a piece of [\h__\h] thorn in the
side of every who? Yeah. Where where
tell us once again where exactly we can
direct this anger.
>> Okay. So you should first of all you
should make a comment. Um and the one
thing I will say about comments is
10,000 of the same like copy and paste
comments will get counted as one. So
they do need to be unique. So so note
that. Um, but your members of Congress,
especially if you have Republican
members of Congress, um, but but also
your Democratic members of Congress,
like anybody in Congress, a handful of
Republicans could stop this yesterday.
>> Yeah.
>> Like there are even Republicans who it's
just a oneoff Republican who could have
stopped it yesterday. Mhm.
>> And so they have they're wielding this
power and they're not doing anything
with they are so afraid of Trump. They
are so afraid to, you know, be out of
favor with the king that they're willing
to sacrifice our children, our cures,
our I I mean our lifelines, our hope so
that they don't have to buck the king.
They're cowards.
>> Yeah. Yeah. We need a complete overhaul.
>> Yeah. throw the whole thing away and
start over. That's right.
>> Yes, I agree. Um, okay. So, give us the
website here. I want to direct everyone
very very deliberately to where they can
go.
>> Yes. Um, sorry, one second. Let me let
me give you the exact Okay, it is fight
to the number two
win.standupforscience.net.
Um, and that is our action center. On
there, you can donate. You can call your
members of Congress. Uh, we give you a
script. We tell you exactly what to say
or you could say whatever the hell you
want to say. I'm not releasing that. Um,
we also have an email your member of
Congress. Again, there's sort of a
template in there. You can do it, you
know, you can change it, you can add to
it, you can send it exactly as it is.
You can do it every single day if you
want. Um, and then of course, we have
our public comment portal. Um, and for
the public comment portal, we have, if
you keep scrolling down a little bit,
we've got some specific resources to
help you write your comment, to help you
talk about the OMB proposal. Um, and to
just give you an overview of what it is
because this is a very technical it's a
it's a super super technical uh process
and it's a very technical rule. It was
412 pages long. So, like this is meant
to be so over the heads of most
Americans that they just like sneak it
through. So, don't let them do that. Be
informed. Um, and we're making that
possible for you.
>> Thank you to everybody, all of you guys
doing the work, reading through that,
summarizing it for for the rest of us.
Uh, yeah, I like this uh I like this
synergy we have going on here of uh
awareness, spreading awareness on one
side and and tangible action on the
other. So yes, I will definitely I'll uh
everybody listening this uh the link all
the relevant links will be in the
description. As soon as you're done
watching this video, click the link, do
what it says, give the comment, make the
call, do what you can. Let's get this
done.
>> Yep. Thank you so much, Dave. Really
appreciate you getting your your people
on this one.
>> 100%. Have to do it. Thank you.
>> Yeah.
>> Hopefully that reinstated a modicum of
hope for our situation, but please
resist any urge to remain complacent. Do
not sit this one out. This is dire, even
by Trumpian standards. This is genuinely
the straw that should break the camel's
back and elicit fullscale revolution.
So, no matter how many douchebags shout
TDS at you, stay mad and stay loud. Use
the link in the description to visit
Stand Up for Science and make your voice
heard. Until next time.