A more serious political observation is that this administration operates on the theory that possession is 9/10ths of the law. If they control a pot of funding that you need to maintain normal business operations, they’ll block its payment until you’re out of business. What are the courts going to do about it? The law is not something they respect.<p>The flip side is that in other areas their powers are much more limited. Revoke Harvard’s tax exempt status? That’ll filter through the courts and years from now Harvard might actually have to make a tax payment (I expect they won’t.)<p>From a societal perspective, however, we’re in deep shit. There’s an excellent chance that you or a loved one will die from a potentially curable disease (cancer, dementia) because the research and clinical trials that should be bringing us those drugs are all being murdered. We should be reacting to this the same way we respond when someone shoots up a school or hospital. A friend who is a breast cancer survivor just had her trial moved from NIH funding to industry funding, but she is one of the lucky ones.
American medicine is also going to suffer from the brain-drain due to other crimes by the administration, as it goes after foreign students and would-be citizens. (Both capriciously, and also in First-Amendment-breaking retaliation.)<p><a href="https://xkcd.com/3081/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/3081/</a>
To me, ignoring the courts means impeachment and conviction. But the US Gov is full of cowards who are only there to extort money from their campaign donors.