June 20, 2025

Week 22

Some good news for a change! New court rulings on NIH grant terminations, NSF indirects, and more.

This newsletter is my part of an ongoing conversation among colleagues who’ve had a rough week. I share two or three pieces of the puzzle that feel are most important, hazard a guess about what to expect next, and offer at least one useful thing to do.

MEETING THE MOMENT: 2025-06-20

Hello friends,

I’m about to embark on my favorite adventure of the year. Each summer since 2022, I have had the honor of leading the USC Wrigley Storymakers Fellowship. This week-long creative retreat is one of the very first projects I designed when I founded Liminal. It’s an environmental storytelling incubator, and it’s been a remarkable success by every measure.¹ Our fellows are landing deals, writing books,² producing podcasts, and doing all the kinds of things you would expect a program like this to brag about. They’re also launching new institutes, leading massive research collaborations, and creating incredible partnerships with art organizations. These are still CV-worthy accomplishments, though it’s harder to convey the depth and quality of such work. Everything our fellows are doing is on top of their day jobs, while also raising children, nursing elders, surviving cancer, helping their communities survive deadly wildfires, and so much more. And now we are adding institutional collapse to that list. 

Our vision has always been wildly ambitious, but the broader context this year is just so much worse. I know we must create conditions that allow the group not just to strategize, but to actually play with ideas and dream of a different future. I’m glad I don’t have to do this alone - my co-lead Victoria Fine and our team of instructors (Ed Yong, John Asante, and Catherine Connors) are walking marvels. We know it will be necessary to hold the news at a distance while we do our work. I am afraid of how that will feel and of what will happen while I’m not plugged in. But despite all my anxiety, I’m incredibly excited and so hungry to dig in. 

But let me not get ahead of myself. This was week 22, let’s talk about it. 

What’s happening now

• I’m starting with TWO pieces of good news! The first is that on Monday, District Judge William G. Young handed down a major ruling on a case I’ve been watching closely for months. In short, he determined that the grant terminations in the suit were arbitrary and capricious, egregiously discriminatory, illegal, and must be reinstated. During the hearing, Judge Young said, “This represents racial discrimination, and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community... My duty is to call it out, and I do so.” Now, it’s true that big questions remain about which and how many grant terminations will be covered by the decision, and of course, whether the administration will continue to defy court orders. But the plaintiffs have taken on so much in bringing this case to court, and they have done such important service by doing so. So for now, we celebrate. The second piece of good news is that, just a few hours ago, District Judge Indira Talwani struck down the attempt to cut NSF indirects to 15% too! There’s not much news coverage yet, but you can read all the gritty details in the filings on CourtListener. Thanks to Dan Garisto for the alert! Again, I’ll encourage everyone who reads me to bite back any “but for how long?” or “it doesn’t matter, they’ll do what they want anyways.” In the realm of laws and powers, nothing matters unless we believe and insist that it does. Yes, none of these are the final word, but it is neither savvy nor principled to give up on the rule of law. Speaking of not giving up…

• SURPRISE there is even more good news. Mahmoud Khalil, who I first wrote about all the way back in week 8, was released today after 104 days. Federal Judge Michael E. Farbiarz agreed that the immigration charge against him was a punitive move by the administration, in retaliation for his pro-Palestinian advocacy. Khalil is not able to travel freely while he is on bond, but says, “Justice will prevail no matter what this administration may try.”

• The National Research Council’s governing board has authorized a restructuring of the National Academies. The new structure consolidates work from multiple divisions into two new centers. Few details are available beyond the linked press release, but although it seems like programs are largely continuing, several hundred employees will likely be laid off (25% of the workforce). They are not the only ones. Many universities are conducting workforce reductions. I’ve been seeing news out of Cornell, Duke, University of Maryland, and Vanderbilt, and I haven’t even been particularly searching for it. Forbes just published a round-up of budget cuts at six major research universities while the New York Times notes that staff reductions are happening at the same time tuition is going up. Whatever your situation or institutional affiliation is, I hope you can find ways to cover your needs and take care of your lab group, department, university, and broader community too. As we figure out how to cope with increasing resource restrictions, I am also thinking about the new Lewandowsky et al report that came out this week. It’s titled “The Anti-Autocracy Handbook: A Scholars' Guide to Navigating Democratic Backsliding” and I like how the authors work to couch their advice within an action framework that is calibrated to variable personal risk levels. It’s definitely worth a read. 

• And finally, I’ll just say that the ongoing budget negotiations are horrifying. Whether we’re talking about massive sales of national park lands or stripping health care coverage from millions of people, it feels difficult to understand the scope and scale of what we are on the cusp of losing, much less how to avert disaster. This is where I’m especially grateful for all the work coming out of the Unbreaking team. I’ll point you to our Medicaid page as particularly useful right now.

What’s next & what to do

Sometimes it’s time to slow down, think things through, and talk about them, and sometimes you just need to… send out the newsletter and finish packing for the trip! 

I’m making light of it, but I do genuinely think there are periods of time where I need to just put my head down and dig in. Here’s a snippet of the poetic last sentences from Maxine Hong Kingston’s Fifth Book of Peace:

“The reasons for peace, the definitions of peace, the very idea of peace have to be invented, and invented again. Children, everybody, here's what we do during war: In a time of destruction, create something. A poem. A parade. A community. A school. A vow. A moral principle. One peaceful moment.”

I hope we can all create some this week.

Liz

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