OUR PICKS: ASSAULT ON SCIENCEHarvard Derangement Syndrome | America Is Becoming Less Ready for Natural Disasters | RFK Jr. May Bar Scientists from Publishing in Top Medical Journals, and more

Trump’s Crackdown on Foreign Student Visas Could Derail Critical AI Research  (Will Knight et al., Wired)
The US says it will “aggressively revoke” Chinese student visas and has paused interviews for all student visa applicants. Experts warn the moves could weaken American leadership in STEM.

Harvard Derangement Syndrome  (Steven Pinker, New York Times)
In my 22 years as a Harvard professor, I have not been afraid to bite the hand that feeds me. So I’m hardly an apologist for my employer when I say that the invective now being aimed at Harvard has become unhinged. According to its critics, Harvard is a “national disgrace,” a “woke madrasa,” a “Maoist indoctrination camp,” a “ship of fools,” a “bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment,” a “cesspool of extremist riots” and an “Islamist outpost” in which the “dominant view on campus” is “destroy the Jews, and you’ve destroyed the root of Western civilization.”
And that’s before we get to President Trump’s opinion that Harvard is “an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institution,” a “Liberal mess” and a “threat to Democracy,” which has been “hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called future leaders.”
This is not just trash talk. On top of its savage slashing of research funding across the board, the Trump administration has singled out Harvard to receive no federal grants at all. Not satisfied with these punishments, the administration just moved to stop Harvard from enrolling foreign students and has threatened to multiply the tax on its endowment as much as fifteenfold, as well as to remove its tax-free nonprofit status.
Call it Harvard Derangement Syndrome. 

Republican Lawmakers and Agriculture Groups Question MAHA Report  (Maya C. Miller, New York Times)
The G.O.P. chairmen of the House and Senate agriculture committees said they were “troubled” by the Make America Healthy Again Commission’s findings and urged it to use sounder science.

Watch Out: America Is Becoming Less Ready for Natural Disasters  (Editorial Board, Washington Post)
The president is destroying programs that help communities prepare for climate effects.

The EPA Will Likely Gut Team That Studies Health Risks from Chemicals  (Molly Taft, Wired)
Reorganizations at the EPA may get rid of the agency’s fundamental program for research around the risks of toxic chemicals.

Dismantling NOAA Threatens the World’s Ability to Monitor Carbon Dioxide Levels  (Eric Morgan and Ralph Keeling, Wired)
The agency maintains the global backbone of measurements of CO2 and other gases, but these are at risk of being curtailed if the foreshadowed cuts to NOAA are realized.

Trump Administration Plans to End Greenhouse Gas Limits on Power Plants  (Tobi Raji, Washington Post)
Climate experts say the proposal prevents the U.S.— the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases — from averting catastrophic climate change.

RFK Jr. Says He May Bar Scientists from Publishing in Top Medical Journals  (Niha Masih and Amy B Wang, Washington Post)
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took aim at reputed journals such as the Lancet and said his agency will create “in-house” publications instead.