Doug Hibbard
banner
dhibbard.bsky.social
Doug Hibbard
@dhibbard.bsky.social
Civil rights attorney, former U.S. federal policymaker, nerd, dog dad. Views are my own.
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
Experimental evidence that students are more likely to contest grades when they are delivered by an evaluator with a female-sounding name.

"These findings suggest that women in evaluative positions face disproportionate resistance when delivering negative assessments."
December 24, 2025 at 11:21 PM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
This means the VA won't cover abortions EVEN in the case of rape, incest, or serious threat to the health of the patient.

The DOJ memo was authored by Josh Craddock, one of the chief legal advocates for fetal personhood, i.e. imposing a nationwide abortion ban through the courts.
🚨🚨 SCOOP @ms.now : The Department of Veteran Affairs has quietly implemented its abortion ban following a DOJ memo issued last week.

This will affect 9 million veterans and their dependents, and has been a long time coming: It was outlined in Project 2025.

Read/share 👇
Department of Veterans Affairs quietly implements abortion ban
A VA spokesperson confirmed to MS NOW that the ban was in place following a Department of Justice memo issued last week.
www.ms.now
December 23, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
Gift link, probably the funniest thing the Wall Street Journal has done this year.
We Let AI Run Our Office Vending Machine. It Lost Hundreds of Dollars.
An AI agent ran a snack operation in the WSJ newsroom. It gave away a free PlayStation, ordered a live fish—and taught us lessons about the future of AI.
www.wsj.com
December 18, 2025 at 3:48 PM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
LOSES?!?!?!!?!

No.

HHS canceled grants previously awarded to AAP — in what certainly looks like a retaliatory act.
December 18, 2025 at 1:43 AM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
[Nixon voice] My God.

My reaction:

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...
This Is What Presidential Panic Looks Like
Donald Trump delivered a fear-drenched rant live from the White House.
www.theatlantic.com
December 18, 2025 at 3:38 AM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
A remarkable DOJ filing in a lawsuit over the deadly DCA crash:

"The United States admits that it owed a duty of care to Plaintiffs, which it breached, thereby proximately causing the tragic accident on January 29, 2025, as specifically set forth below."
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
December 18, 2025 at 4:26 AM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
Trump Announces 5,000% Increase In All Numbers
Trump Announces 5,000% Increase In All Numbers
WASHINGTON—Touting his latest executive order as a historic win for the U.S. economy, President Donald Trump announced Friday that he was mandating a 5,000% increase in all numbers nationwide. “Effect...
theonion.com
December 18, 2025 at 2:22 AM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
Art. I, Sec. 9: "No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequences of Appropriations made by Law." Yet he claims he's already sending out his supposed "Warrior Dividend" without an appropriation from Congress. He simply doesn't care about Constitutional limits on his power.
December 18, 2025 at 2:15 AM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
NEW: Louisiana and lawyer Erin Hawley of ADF just asked a federal judge to IMMEDIATELY end telemedicine prescriptions of the abortion drug mifepristone while their lawsuit against the FDA proceeds. They cite Fifth Circuit opinion and the Comstock Act of 1873
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
December 17, 2025 at 9:47 PM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
I'm told that HHS has just terminated all funding agreements with the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Here's a letter HHS sent canceling one of the grants, relating to work on birth defects. Canceled because the project "emphasizes equity, diversity, and inclusion as key foundational components"
December 17, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
Ex-Trump lawyer John Dowd defends Jack Smith:

"Smith was once my adversary in a high-profile investigation of a Republican client. In that investigation, Smith proved himself to be fair, impartial and fearlessly committed to the facts … [R]ecent attacks on Smith are motivated by partisan politics."
Opinion | I'm Trump's former lawyer. Jack Smith should be celebrated, not vilified.
John Dowd: Jack Smith was once my adversary in a high-profile investigation of a Republican client. Smith was fair, impartial and fearlessly committed to the facts and the law.
www.ms.now
December 17, 2025 at 7:10 PM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
Unbelievable. This would be a terrible blow to American science, writ large. It would decimate not only climate research, but also the kind of weather, wildfire, and disaster research that has underpinned half a century of progress in prediction, early warning, and increased resilience.
Exclusive: The Trump administration is moving to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, according to a senior White House official, taking aim at one of the world's leading climate research labs.
Trump moves to dismantle major US climate research center in Colorado
The Trump administration is breaking up the National Center for Atmospheric Research, taking aim at one of the world's leading climate research labs.
bit.ly
December 17, 2025 at 2:49 AM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
NEW: President Trump is expanding the previous 19-country travel ban to a whopping 39 countries (plus the Palestinian Authority), and appears to expand a block on legal immigration to now include spouses, children, and parents of U.S. citizens, who were previously exempted.
December 16, 2025 at 8:32 PM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
December 16, 2025 at 4:43 PM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
Grading and googling hallucinated citations, as one does nowadays, and now that LLMs have been around for a while, I've discovered new horrors: hallucinated journals are now appearing in Google Scholar with dozens of citations bc so many people are citing these fake things
December 15, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
Jimmy Lai found guilty of sedition and collusion with foreign forces. He may be in prison for the rest of his life.
Hong Kong court convicts pro-democracy newspaper founder Jimmy Lai
The verdict exemplifies the way Beijing, through Hong Kong’s national security law, has swept away any last remaining press freedoms and judicial independence in the city.
www.washingtonpost.com
December 15, 2025 at 2:59 AM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
The ACA isn't just "health care for people who don't have a conventional employer." It also disallows something that was incredibly common 20 years ago, which I fear is getting lost to generational memory: insurance companies could deny you health care for essentially any previous health problem.
I'm dubious about Amazon's commitment to keeping pre-existing conditions a thing of the past.
December 14, 2025 at 11:50 PM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
President Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act will shift billions in costs for SNAP and Medicaid to states.

But with 26 having cut or eliminated state income taxes just since 2021, they may not have the money to continue the programs.
Wave of Tax Cuts Has Left Many States Vulnerable to Trump SNAP and Medicaid Crisis
President Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act will shift billions in costs for SNAP and Medicaid to states. But with 26 having cut or eliminated state income taxes just since 2021, the...
www.propublica.org
December 14, 2025 at 11:00 PM
This is the ultimate outcome of the "students as consumers" mode of thinking.
From the Oklahoma U student paper: the school is now saying it will automatically suspend faculty (with pay) in response to student complaints
www.oudaily.com/news/ou-poli...
December 13, 2025 at 11:04 PM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
It's been a long week, so here's some Looney Tunes kind of video.
#cats
December 11, 2025 at 9:21 PM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
One of the most blatantly authoritarian threats in a Trump term full of them
December 11, 2025 at 4:51 PM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
BREAKING: The Senate rejected dueling health care bills, virtually guaranteeing Obamacare subsidies will lapse for over 20 million Americans.
Senate rejects dueling health care bills as Obamacare deadline looms
The result virtually guarantees insurance subsidies used by more than 20 million Americans will lapse at the end of the year.
www.politico.com
December 11, 2025 at 6:14 PM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
Requiring temporary visitors to surrender five years of social media to the U.S. sends the message that the American commitment to free speech is pretense. This simply is not the behavior of a country confident in its freedoms.

It's a threat to free speech around the world and must be opposed.
Foreign tourists could be required to disclose 5 years of social media histories under Trump administration plan
The Customs and Border Protection proposal would apply even to countries that don't require visas to enter.
www.nbcnews.com
December 10, 2025 at 3:57 PM
Reposted by Doug Hibbard
Conspiracy theorist Mike Benz will start looking for proof of non-existent plots at USAID. He won't find any. What then?
www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
USAID Hired the Right-Wing Influencer Responsible for Its Decimation
Mike Benz was brought aboard to find evidence for his claims that the agency is secretly a spy operation.
www.theatlantic.com
December 10, 2025 at 1:54 AM