Remember when Naomi Wolf came out as a right-wing kook, and people kept confusing Naomi Klein for Wolf, giving the Good Naomi misdirected grief online? I still recall this rhyme when I see one of their names:
If your Naomi be Klein
You’re doing just fine
If your Naomi be Wolf
Oh buddy, big oof
It was sort of like what happened to a left-learning journalist named Matt with a surname similar to Gaetz on Twitter. Anyway, on Bluesky, Naomi KLEIN shared a theory on why the kleptocrats are attacking science:
This is, in large part, pandemic revenge.
As far as these oligarchs are concerned, all science does is tell them stuff they cannot do.
They can’t keep spewing carbon.
They can’t keep businesses open as usual when millions are dying.
They have concluded that research is the enemy of profit.
— Naomi Klein (@naomiaklein.bsky.social) April 1, 2025 at 10:29 PM
Here’s the content in the embedded images in case you don’t want to/can’t leave the boat: (Source)
MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN: The mass culling of the labor force of the Department of Health and Human Services began on Tuesday morning. And early indications are that it’s a bloodbath.
Multiple officials who work in the department told The Bulwark that entire offices were being eliminated. Much of the focus appeared to be on the administrative side of things. But not all of it. We were sent an email, for instance, that Vence Bonham, the acting deputy director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, told colleagues this morning that he had been “unexpectedly” placed on administrative leave. He had a 20-year career as a researcher and leader at NIH. Within a few moments, it was gone.
To get a fuller sense of the despair, head over to the NIH’s Reddit forum; or the HHS forum. It’s bleak. That’s what happens, we suppose, when a weeks-old administration decides that it will eliminate 10,000 full-time employees from one of its most critical departments.
Elsewhere in HHS, another email we were sent shows that people put on leave were told they would no longer have access to their buildings starting today. That today happened to be April Fools was treated as a nice little sadistic touch. Was this a ruse?
Of course not. In fact, quite the opposite. Colleagues said they were spending their mornings fielding distraught emails and calls from friends whose lives had been upended, while simultaneously checking their own inbox to see if the ax would drop on them.
“These were dream jobs,” one told The Bulwark. “And these jobs are tough to get. I hate what will happen to science and health care and education . . . for all of it for the coming decades.”
—Sam Stein
Rings true as at least part of the explanation. Like many here and elsewhere have said, the pandemic changed society in ways we haven’t yet processed. I didn’t expect U.S. scientific leadership and innovation to be among the pandemic’s casualties, but I probably should have.
Open thread.
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