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In his confirmation hearings to lead the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya pledged his openness to views that might conflict with his own. Dissent,” he said, is the very essence of science. That commitment is being put to the test. On Monday, scores of scientists at the agency sent their Trump-appointed leader a letter titled the “Bethesda Declaration,” challenging policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe. It says: “We dissent.” In a capital where insiders often insist on anonymity to say such things publicly, 92 NIH researchers, program directors, branch chiefs, and scientific review officers put their signatures on the letterand their careers on the line. An additional 250 of their colleagues across the agency endorsed the declaration without using their names. The four-page letter, addressed to Bhattacharya, also was sent to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and members of Congress who oversee the NIH. White House spokesman Kush Desai defended the administration’s approach to federal research and said President Donald Trump is focused on restoring a Gold Standard of science, not ideological activism. Confronting a “culture of fear” The signers went public in the face of a culture of fear and suppression they say Trump’s administration has spread through the federal civil service. We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources, the declaration says. Bhattacharya responded to the declaration by saying it has some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken in recent months.” Nevertheless, respectful dissent in science is productive, he said in a statement. “We all want the NIH to succeed. Named for the agency’s headquarters location in Maryland, the Bethesda Declaration details upheaval in the worlds premier public health research institution over the course of mere months. It addresses the termination of 2,100 research grants valued at more than $12 billion and some of the human costs that have resulted, such as cutting off medication regimens to participants in clinical trials or leaving them with unmonitored device implants. In one case, an NIH-supported study of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis in Haiti had to be stopped, ceasing antibiotic treatment midcourse for patients. In a number of cases, trials that were mostly completed were rendered useless without the money to finish and analyze the work, the letter says. Ending a $5 million research study when it is 80% complete does not save $1 million, it says. It wastes $4 million. The mask comes off Jenna Norton, who oversees health disparity research at the agency’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, recently appeared at a forum by Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) to talk about what’s happening at the NIH. At the event, she masked to conceal her identity. Now the mask is off. She was a lead organizer of the declaration. I want people to know how bad things are at NIH,” Norton told The Associated Press. The signers said they modeled their indictment after Bhattacharyas “Great Barrington Declaration” in 2020, when he was a professor at Stanford University Medical School. His declaration drew together like-minded infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists who dissented from what they saw as excessive COVID-19 lockdown policies and felt ostracized by the larger public health community that pushed those policies, including the NIH. He is proud of his statement, and we are proud of ours,” said Sarah Kobrin, a branch chief at the NIH’s National Cancer Institute who signed the Bethesda Declaration. Cancer research is sidelined As chief of the Health Systems and Interventions Research Branch, Kobrin provides scientific oversight of researchers across the country who’ve been funded by the cancer institute or want to be. Cuts in personnel and money have shifted her work from improving cancer care research to what she sees as minimizing its destruction. “So much of it is gonemy work, she said. The 21-year NIH veteran said she signed because she didn’t want to be “a collaborator in the political manipulation of biomedical science. Ian Morgan, a postdoctoral fellow with the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, also signed the declaration. We have a saying in basic science, he said. You go and become a physician if you want to treat thousands of patients. You go and become a researcher if you want to save billions of patients. We are doing the research that is going to go and create the cures of the future, he added. But that wont happen, he said, if Trump’s Republican administration prevails with its searing grant cuts. The NIH employees interviewed by the AP emphasized they were speaking for themselves and not for their institutes nor the NIH. Dissenters range across the breadth of NIH Employees from all 27 NIH institutes and centers gave their support to the declaration. Most who signed are intimately involved with evaluating and overseeing extramural research grants. The letter asserts NIH trials are being halted without regard to participant safety and the agency is shirking commitments to trial participants who braved personal risk to give the incredible gift of biological samples, understanding that their generosity would fuel scientific discovery and improve health. The Trump administration has gone at public health research on several fronts, both directly, as part of its broad effort to root out diversity, equity, and inclusion values throughout the bureaucracy, and as part of its drive to starve some universities of federal money. At the White House, Desai said Americans have lost confidence in our increasingly politicized healthcare and research apparatus that has been obsessed with DEI and COVID, which the majority of Americans moved on from years ago. A blunt axe swings This has forced indiscriminate grant terminations, payment freezes fr ongoing research, and blanket holds on awards regardless of the quality, progress, or impact of the science, the declaration says. Some NIH employees have previously come forward in televised protests to air grievances, and many walked out of Bhattacharya’s town hall with staff. The declaration is the first cohesive effort to register agency-wide dismay with the NIH’s direction. The dissenters remind Bhattacharya in their letter of his oft-stated ethic that academic freedom must be a linchpin in science. With that in place, he said in a statement in April: NIH scientists can be certain they are afforded the ability to engage in open, academic discourse as part of their official duties and in their personal capacities without risk of official interference, professional disadvantage, or workplace retaliation.” Now it will be seen whether that’s enough to protect those NIH employees challenging the Trump administration and him. There’s a book I read to my kids, and it talks about how you can’t be brave if you’re not scared, said Norton, who has three young children. “I am so scared about doing this, but I am trying to be brave for my kids because it’s only going to get harder to speak up. Maybe I’m putting my kids at risk by doing this,” she added. “And I’m doing it anyway because I couldn’t live with myself otherwise. By Calvin Woodward and Nathan Ellgren, Associated Press Associated Press Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard contributed to this report.
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More American CEOs are optimistic about the nation’s economy ahead of July’s major trade deadline than they were in the last few months, following the beginning of President Donald Trump’s tariff wars, according to this month’s CEO Confidence Index survey from the Chief Executive Group. On Monday, the US and China restarted trade talks in London, following talks between Trump and China’s Xi Jinping last week. The U.S. is trying to speed up negotiations before Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs go back into effect on July 9 after a 90-day pause. CEOs and business leaders in the United States are also less likely to say the country is headed toward a recession, according to the survey data. While some 62% of CEOs predicted a recession within 6 months back in April, now less than half of that, or 30%, forecast either a mild or severe recession over the next six months. The latest CEO Confidence Index survey polled 277 U.S. CEOs just last week on June 3 and 4. Other key takeaways: 40% of those CEOs polled expected the U.S. economy to grow; while only 23% held that view back in April. In fact, in June, 51% of those CEOs polled said they expect conditions to continue to improve as trade negotiations settle. The monthly survey first began in 2002, and includes several data points that show how U.S. business leaders view the economy.
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E-Commerce
Waymo vehicles, the self-driving taxis from Google parent company Alphabet, have emerged as a literal flashpoint in the Los Angeles ICE protests, which ramped up heavily over the weekend. The protests against the presidents immigration crackdown in the city began on Friday, as ICE raids broke out among several majority-Latino neighborhoods such as Paramount. Although the subsequent protests were reportedly mostly peaceful, Trump deemed them sufficiently disruptive to warrant sending in 2,000 National Guard troops on Saturday. It was a historic escalation, the first time a president has activated the National Guard without request from a state’s governor since 1965and it provoked an incendiary reaction. On Sunday, amid rising tensions, protesters ultimately set at least five Waymo vehicles ablaze. Though their reasons for doing so remain unconfirmed, plenty of evidence suggests what might have fueled their actions. Waymo, one of Fast Companys Most Innovative Companies for 2025, first began as a Google self-driving car project in 2009, before launching commercially in Phoenix in 2020. The company then spread out to San Francisco in 2022, before hitting Los Angeles last November. As of last December, the service had driven over 50 million rider-only miles, according to the companys website. Around 100 of Waymos 1,500 total robotaxis currently operate in Los Angeles during normal conditions, covering roughly 79 square miles from Santa Monica to downtown L.A. After those five cars were destroyed on Sunday, though, the company removed vehicles from downtown L.A. and shut down service in that area for the time being. (We are in touch with law enforcement, a representative from the company confirmed to Fast Company.) Before the end of the day, both X and Bluesky ensured that images and videos of the fiery vehicles had circulated widely, leaving a trail of jokes and finger-wagging in their wake. Setting vehicles on fire has a long history in protest going back at least to the 1992 Los Angeles riots following the verdict in the Rodney King trial, and before that, the 1968 Paris Student & Workers Uprising in Paris. Though obviously illegal, igniting cars tends to serve as a defiant expression of rage and hopelessness in the face of perceived oppression. On a practical level, one reason protesters might be choosing Waymos is because they are owned by a massive tech company, rather than any one individual. (Alphabet led a $5.6 billion funding round for Waymo last fall, to cover costs through the divisions next growth period.) Destroying these cars comes with a guarantee that no drivers will be injured, financially or otherwise, since no such drivers exist. Protesters can simply order up a Waymo to incinerate as easily as ordering a pizza. Their very lack of humanity makes them ripe targets in a civil uprising. Of course, there appear to be strategic reasons for targeting Waymos as well. According to a report from 404 Media back in April, the LAPD is known to requisition and publish footage from these autonomous vehicles, which are equipped with roving cameras, to solve various crimes around the city. Since Waymos can function as mobile panoramic Ring cameras, protesters who prefer to limit the amount they are captured on film have incentive to disable as many Waymos as possible. Rumors circulated on Bluesky late on Sunday that some protesters may have set Waymos on fire strictly because the cars may be essentially collecting evidence for future trials, although vandalism of the cars seems extremely traceable. However, one final reason why protesters may have targeted Waymos is because there is an overlap between the people defending their immigrant neighbors and the people who are generally against societys automated future. No civil unrest was necessary, after all, for a fired-up Lunar New Year crowd in San Francisco to set a Waymo on fire in February 2024. All it took was an autonomous cab jamming its way into an intersection packed with revelers who happened to be loaded for bear with fireworksand an increasing sense that driverless cabs are now a symbol of everything people hate about AI. There have been further incidents of Waymo vandalism, though, in both San Francisco and Los Angeles in the months since. CNNs Brian Stelter described the blaze on Sunday as something out of a dystopian sci-fi novel, but really, whats more dystopian: robotaxis being destroyed in a protest, or automated taxis working perfectly and putting thousands in an immigrant-friendly profession out of a job?
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