Federal charges, international isolation, ideological purges and the administration's plan to create regime scientists in the US
I wish this wasn't a real headline either
Sometimes constantly being hit by the news cycle creates a bit of a boiling frog syndrome, where terrible injustices, corruption, abuses of power and atrocities blend together into a cacophony of exhaustion that gradually gets accepted as the new normal of our times.
We all know that it is too much, the offenses are too severe, that they can not be allowed to continue, and yet how and when exactly we have to pull the trigger of drastic action, to figuratively jump out before being boiled alive, becomes quite difficult when it turns into collective action problem.
Yet this is the current hostage state of US science.
First movers and individual outspoken actors and resistors at federal institutions and universities have become, and continue to be, more likely targets to face the full wreath of the current anti-science administration compared to their peers who keep their heads down and their mouths shut. The warming waters just seems more tolerable for too many, certainly better than the prospect of consequences followed by jumping out, losing your job, employees, career track or life’s work and facing the threat of retribution without institutional protection.
Well, this week the temperature increase was neither subtle nor gradual.
Let’s revisit.
Trumped up federal crime charges for transporting inactivated virus samples
What do round worm materials, frog embryos, fungi and deactivated virus samples have in common? Apparently, criminal prosecution under the Trump administration.
Yesterday, a flurry of news outlets reported a rather dramatic story about two “foreign scientists” being charged with a “conspiracy to smuggle monkeypox” virus into the US.
What sounds like the start of a terrorist plot is of course much more mundane for some rather minor offenses. It goes back to Jan 2026, when two virologists working for the NIH’s Rocky Mountain laboratory returned from a trip to the Congo where they have been collaboration with local scientists on containing a monkeypox outbreak. It appears from court documents that the researchers had brought back deactivated monkeypox samples (non-infectious, harmless) for either diagnostic or research purposes while declaring to customs and border patrol agents that they were transporting a diagnostic kit; and according to one unreliable whistleblower, the virologists later clarified that it was just “DNA samples”.
Researchers transferring research materials between countries is very common; but often these involve some paperwork and institutional guidelines and specialized carriers. That does not mean that carrying research materials, including certain biological specimen or DNA samples for diagnostics, by commercial aircraft is necessarily illegal or improper, it usually just requires a proper documentation and declaration at customs. The prosecution alleges that the researchers did not have proper documentation and did not declare their materials upfront, which they allege is evidence of a deliberate conspiracy to smuggle those materials in, and lying about it.
The defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty, and the virologists in question have previously published on using inactivated monkeypox virus in exactly such diagnostic research context.
Now what struck me were not the facts of the case, where the offenses appear to be minor at best, but the tone of the indictment.
And that within ~24 hours of the DOJ press release, roughly 10–12 major outlets picked up the story, including Politico, Newsweek, Associated Press (via Yahoo and U.S. News), FOX (multiple affiliates), CBS local, NewsNation, and widely distributed aggregators like MSN and Yahoo.
“Foreign nationals” “NIH “conspiracy to smuggle” “lying”
That seemed like odd and very decided word choices; and I started to wonder whether this is just normal language for these type of DoJ press releases.
Other press releases from the same Eastern District of Michigan U.S. Attorney in recent months read similarly off.
Chinese. Wuhan. Dangerous pathogens. Labs…. Now I don’t know about you, but I have spend five years writing about the lab leak narrative and its weaponization by anti-science manipulators and politicians, and my pattern recognition spider senses were not only tingling, but hitting me with a sledge hammer.
So I started to look deeper….
Let’s start with where I started yesterday night. The unusual language. Maybe these type of DoJ press releases are just how things are in America when it comes to “biological” materials?
So first thing I did is look into the press release history of 10+ other US attorney offices (out of 94 DoJ districts in the US). I focused on districts containing major airports and big research centers, such as Southern and Eastern District of New York, all districts in California, Texas, Florida, Massachussets.
Until 2025, I was not able to find a single press release about biological material smuggling or related items in a collective of over 50.000 press release records for those 10+ districts, including the same Eastern District of Michigan that now so overeagerly has went on a spree against Chinese researchers.
With the sole exception of Massachussets, where in July 2025 a Trump-appointed prosecutor charges a Russian scientist for bringing undeclared frog embryo research materials in, the Eastern District of Michigan US attorney seems to stand out, with a flurry of press releases on foreign aliens from Wuhan allegedly “smuggling” biological material.
As Jon Cohen from Science Magazine notes on this story, this recent charge “comes amid a recent U.S. crackdown on potential violations by researchers of the rules and regulations regarding the import of biological materials”.
Now that attorney, Jerome F. Gorgon, Jr., who was appointed to serve as Interim U.S. Attorney by Pam Bondi, has been at the center of these cases against virologists and Chinese researchers.
But is it really a crack down or biological material violations or something maybe a bit more performative?
Let´s remember the press release. They alleged deliberate lying. That there was a smuggling conspiracy to bring in monkeypox. But the court documents themselves acknowledge that these samples were not monkeypox but inactivated virus or DNA; not-infectious, not harmful. Same is true for the other “biological materials”, i.e round worms and frog embryos.
So when I looked into the previous press releases against Chinese scientists, I found a familiar cast of characters who seemed all to willing to comment as if terrorist plots have been thwarted, such as:
“Allegedly attempting to smuggle biological materials under the guise of ‘research’ is a serious crime that threatens America’s national and agricultural security,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “We will remain vigilant to threats like these from foreign nationals who would take advantage of America’s generosity to advance a malicious agenda.”
“Three Chinese nationals are charged with smuggling dangerous biological materials into the country and made false statements to law enforcement,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. “Thanks to our brave DHS law enforcement and the FBI, they no longer pose a national security threat. Under President Trump’s leadership, we are ensuring foreign criminals cannot abuse our visa programs to harm the American people."
"This case underscores the vital importance of safeguarding the American people and addressing vulnerabilities within foreign student and exchange visitor programs," stated acting ICE Director Todd M. Lyons. "Educational institutions must enhance their admissions procedures to prevent exploitation, which can pose risks to national security, as demonstrated in this instance. I commend the ICE HSI agents and officers who work tirelessly to protect our nation and uphold the rule of law every day."
"These charges show the FBI and our partners will aggressively investigate and hold accountable those who violate our laws, and that academic research cannot excuse illegal activity," said FBI Director Kash Patel. "The Chinese nationals charged today allegedly were involved in smuggling biological materials into the U.S. on several occasions. The FBI and our partners are committed to defending the homeland and stopping any illegal smuggling into our country."
Huh, quite the cast of characters for the terrible offense of carrying… round worms (material) for research?
So what is really going on here?
About a year ago, Stephan Lewandowsky pulled together a team of scholars and academics to write the anti-autocracy handbook for scholars. In it, we describe how autocrats charge inconvenient citizens with often minor infractions to set an example, discourage dissent and create scapegoats.
The FBI famously scrutinized Martin Luther King´s travel receipts, wiretapped his phones, bugged his hotel rooms, and planted informants in hopes of finding ways to delegitimize him. One of our authors, Renee DiResta also wrote about how academics in the US are again facing process-as-punishment: “Often it is not the goal or outcome that matters, but the spectacle along the way.”
Now let´s quickly return to the virologists in question; Vincent Munster, head of the virus ecology section at a division of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
For years, he has become a target of conspiratorial communities with some far-out conspiracy theorists alleging - in the most convoluted game of incoherent connections and nonsensical speculations - that Vincent Munster is the creator of COVID-19 together with Ralph Baric. Absurd of course, but not unusual as these hate communities constantly churn out new villains to sustain their conspiratorial worldview and community. Point is, Munster has had a target put on his back by these conspiratorial communities for a long time, and since many in the administration share the same tendencies and information environments, I highly doubt that what has happened to Munster is just a coincidence.
But it does signal more than just a crackdown on biological material violations; it´s a signal to scientists that they will face the full force of the government if they do not comply with the administrations directives.
So what new directives exactly?
Russell Voughts new commandment: We want your obedience, not your knowledge
Russell Vought is the current director of the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB in short. The OMB’s powerful role in the administration are to manage and supervise the budget of executive agencies and to implement the agenda of the president.
Russell is of course also famously entangled with the Heritage Foundation´s Project 2025, a conservative policy magnum opus full of disdain for liberal democracy, human rights, science, the environment, and anything else that is good in the world in favor of enriching the billionaires who sponsored it and the white supremacists who ideologically shaped it.
Russell has been busy to implement the 2025 agenda and now, a good year and a half in power, and after crafting many devastating assaults on the independence of science and proposing dramatic cuts to scientific agencies (that Congress rejected), he offered his next policy plan to completely eliminate the independence of US science, punish US scientists and control their associations, and basically purge anybody not willing to go along with the fascist MAGA project.
This of course did not go unnoticed, and I will just refer to some excellent coverage from fromer NIH programm officer of 22 years Elizabeth Ginexi who first explained in detail what this new OMB rule would mean in practice:
Here is another high-profile emergency meeting organized two days ago by Colette Delawalla and Stand Up for Science discusses the proposal with historian Timothy Snyder, US Congresswoman Judy Chu, Nobel Laureate Carolyn Bertozzi, and of course Elizabeth Ginexi:
On the printed side, there have been two very good articles in the magazine science from Derek Lowe and Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp.
Rarely, there has been such uniform disagreement among scientists to a new policy proposal, and so much deserved attention on this topic.
The OMB´s rule to subjugate scientific grants to the whims of political appointees enforcing the presidents agenda comes on the back of NIH and NASA political appointees targeting international collaborations, banning “co-authorship with a scholar affiliated with a foreign institution, even if all the work was done in the United States” These “forbidden foreigners” could even include foreign students working in the U.S. and scientists who left the country after the research.
In short, it is mighty ugly and exactly what Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union under Stalin, and other autocratic regimes did to its scientists. Russel Vought and the second Trump administration has one clear message to US scientists:
Get on board, or get out (or later imprisoned and killed)
And now this brings us back to where we started. That they are already willing to make a spectacle out of criminally prosecuting scientists for minor offenses is not an exception or a tough on “biologics materials” policy stance.
It´s a foreboding what is to come if they are not stopped.
Too many academic society and institutional leaders still are just sitting frogs in the warm water, waiting for the temperature to come down again. (h/t Science Matters - Joshua Weitz)
It won´t by itself. You gotta jump.
Start with defeating the OMB rule here by commenting your opposition today.
I guess that is my message.
PS: For a larger battle-plan, here are some ideas: