Why Is the DOJ Telling NIH Staff They Can't Attend a Public Health Conference?
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On Wednesday, employees at various parts of the National Institutes of Health received an odd email. Shared with me by multiple sources, the messages informed them that they should not attend the upcoming American Public Health Association's Annual Meeting, to take place November 2-5 in the far-flung locale of the Washington, D.C. convention center.
Though a bit strange, this is on its face arguably largely in keeping with the flood of restrictions, chilled speech, hamstrung scientific efforts, and other indignities flung toward NIH and other agencies over the last eight months.
But odder still, from one of the messages I viewed: "DOJ has advised" that NIH staffers "should NOT" — emphasis theirs — participate in the APHA meeting. It went on to specify that not only will new travel requests for the meeting not be accepted, any prior arrangements will need to be canceled.
One NIH source simply called this move "crazy." Another, paraphrased slightly: "What the actual fuck?"
The initial instructions did not include any particular reason why the Department of Justice might be sticking its nose into the generally routine business of which scientific conferences NIH employees attend. However, one source speculated that it was due to a lawsuit filed in part by the APHA, and messages I subsequently viewed from NIH leadership did later clarify that the move was "due to ongoing litigation."
There wasn't much further in terms of details, but a decent guess, then, is that this is essentially retaliation, somehow laundered through DOJ, for the APHA's filing along with several co-plaintiffs of a lawsuit back in April regarding the new regime's canceling and curtailing of NIH funding at the dire expense of scientific progress and public health. In what the ACLU — acting as lead counsel in the case — called "a significant setback for public health," the Supreme Court weighed in on the case in August, ruling that a Massachusetts district court lacked the authority to keep the grant money flowing.
That case is ongoing, with some perhaps coincidental timing: the final pretrial conference is taking place tomorrow, September 18. The order to avoid the APHA conference did leave a bit more time for one thing: The deadline to cancel a registration is still 12 days off, leaving plenty of time for the government to claw its money back from the villainous, litigious public health association.
Since January, travel restrictions for government scientists have come and gone multiple times, sometimes while those scientists were already physically at a meeting they were then semi-trapped at. This new order, obviously, isn't particularly important in the grand scheme of a government-wide assault on scientific progress. But the sudden, shadowy involvement of the DOJ, itself now fully weaponized against anyone the administration decides is an enemy, is an escalation that scientific enterprise could do without.
