Here’s something shocking: Congress has actually defied the president by passing a bill that increases funding for the National Institutes of Health and rejects proposed billions of dollars in cuts to research overhead costs. The Globe has more. … Obviously, future funding is still up in the air as long as the current band of neo-Luddites occupy the White House. But local scientists, who are among the largest recipients of NIH dollars in the U.S.,  are at least “breathing sighs of relief now that federal funding levels have largely returned to the status quo after months of turmoil,” the Globe reports.

Ah, but then there’s Cambridge-based Moderna, which recently announced it’s curbing investments in late-stage vaccine trials largely due the anti-vax policies of President Trump and RFK Jr. et gang. The Washington Post isn’t mincing words for a change: “Moderna’s chilling announcement is a symptom of a deeper sickness.”