Trump administration halts research to help babies with heart defects
For James Antaki, a biomedical engineering professor at Cornell University, the $6.7 million government grant meant babies would be saved. Awarded by the Department of Defense on March 30, it would allow his team at Cornell to ramp up production and testing of PediaFlow, a device that boosts blood flow in infants with heart defects.
A week later, that all changed.
The Defense Department sent Antaki a stop-work order on April 8 informing him that his team wouldn’t get the money, intended to be distributed over four years. Three decades of research is now at risk, and Antaki said he has no idea why the government cut off funding.
“I feel that it’s my calling in life to complete this project,” he said Friday, in his first news interview since losing funding. “Once a week, I go through this mental process of, ‘Is it time to give up?’ But it is not my prerogative to give up.”
Neither the Defense Department nor the White House press office responded to requests for comment.
Antaki is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of academics nationwide who’ve lost funding in a variety of fields since President Donald Trump came to office, due to a mix of new executive orders limiting what government money can support and the sweeping grant cancellations ordered by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
One in 100 babies in the U.S. are born with heart defects, and about a quarter of them need surgery or other procedures in their first year to survive, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Worldwide, it’s estimated that 240,000 babies die within their first 28 days due to congenital birth defects.
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Life in Post Democracy Era: The Trump 2/Elon Dictatatorship
U.S. spy agencies told to gather intelligence on Greenland
U.S. officials have ordered spy agencies to ramp up efforts to gather intelligence on Greenland, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter, in a sign President Donald Trump apparently remains focused on acquiring the island.
The directive was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The move has drawn objections from Denmark, a NATO ally which rules the semi-autonomous island.
Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, has said he will summon the American ambassador over the report. “It worries me greatly because we do not spy on friends,” Rasmussen said, according to the Ritzau news agency.
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U.S. officials have ordered spy agencies to ramp up efforts to gather intelligence on Greenland, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter, in a sign President Donald Trump apparently remains focused on acquiring the island.
The directive was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The move has drawn objections from Denmark, a NATO ally which rules the semi-autonomous island.
Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, has said he will summon the American ambassador over the report. “It worries me greatly because we do not spy on friends,” Rasmussen said, according to the Ritzau news agency.
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