Hello friends,
Earlier this week, I spent a nourishing day in Seattle with the good people of UW’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP).¹ This came just a couple days after a seminar where I explored why and how Unbreaking works the way we do for the SJSU Center for Ethics. Whether they happen online or in person, there is nothing like meaningful conversations with deeply principled people. Especially those who are capable of breaking down arguments and processing new claims in real time.

Sensemaking is a skill that feels inextricably linked to the work ahead of us. It is what helps a person to take a headline or soundbite like, “New census report shows that median household income is up, and the official poverty rate fell a half a percentage point!” and ask a pointed question like, “Cool. Does the data reflect on-the-ground reality?”² Or to take a claim like “nearly all the jobs created during the second Trump administration have gone to women” and think to ask, “But how many women lost their jobs because of the administration?”³ Or maybe, “Do you have a breakdown by sector? Is the entire signal the rise in care work?”

Seeing through the spin is better and easier together than alone. That true for rapid-response research teams like the CIP has built, and it's true for the informal networks of friends and folks I depend on in my own work and life. I hope you take things I share here and work through it in conversation with your people too.

This was Year 2, Week 41. Let’s get to it.

What’s happening in science & higher ed

• The federal fiscal year is over and the numbers are in. $1.4 billion dollars have been diverted from NSF to “to invest in agency priorities that are aligned with broader administration initiatives. This represents almost 20% of the agency’s entire budget and you can explore the data over at Grant Witness. We first saw reporting on the intention to do this back in from Science in June and Nature in July. I am not seeing it in today’s funding, but NIH program officers did however manage to send out all $34 billion in allocated research funding.⁴ Unfortunately, grant review remains much slower, less transparent, and uncertain in that agency too.

• The ACLU and Amnesty International have issued a new report on oppressive university responses to pro-Palestinian speech acts and student protests against the genocide in Gaza. The historical comparison with comparable demonstrations in the past is useful, as is the report’s documentation of the use of excessive force and unusually severe academic punishments. I think it makes sense to read that report in tandem with new public records reporting from 404 Media on the mechanisms that schools are using to discourage or censor student reporters working on subjects administrators would prefer to keep quiet. Early career journalists are particularly on my mind right now, especially The Cornell Daily Sun’s editorial team. Their relentless pursuit of one campus rape has forced the critical issue of sexual assault back into the national discourse and contributed to the case being reopened with state Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor. Talk about academic freedom rings pretty hollow if we aren’t defending fundamental rights of assembly, speech, and bodily autonomy.

• Following up on past issues:

  • The cyclospora investigation into Taylor Farms has officially been closed. Two months ago,⁵ I covered how a team had finally been sent to inspect the site, for the first time since 2019.

  • A few weeks ago,⁶ I wrote about the rollback of emissions controls for power plants and promised litigation would happen. Yesterday, New York city, DC, Chicago, Denver, and 21 states⁷ joined forces to sue the EPA over the policy. They argue that the administration failed to adequately weigh alternatives or to consider the health burdens and disaster toll linked to greater pollution. This suit is just one of over 3,400 climate lawsuits happening across the country right now.

• ProPublica published an absolutely wild story a few hours ago on how easy it was for their reporters to officially create private schools in Arkansas, North Carolina, and West Virginia. If you’re shocked and thinking, “But don’t we have processes for credentialing schools?” then you’re well on your way to understanding why fights over university accreditation schemes are anything other than academic.⁸

• If you’re in the mood for deeper dives, I have a trio in my to-read pile from AIP:

  • On the galling HHS request for information on the (already-established) impact of electromagnetic fields on human health. This is unfortunately related to 5G conspiracism.

  • On the prospect of flooding our skies with signals to and from satellite megaconstellations… at frequencies that will interfere with astronomers’ sensitive radio telescopes.⁹

  • On the proposal to start consolidating the storage and reprocessing of nuclear waste at new facilities across the country.

And what’s next

It’s hard to say. I sat here staring at that heading for a few minutes before I could respond.

My uncertainty is definitely linked to midterms. It's also fueled by the fact that I want to do some fall planting in the garden this weekend, but two things are making that feel more stressful:

1. it will be above 90°F here in the East Bay tomorrow¹⁰, and

2. El Niño projections just keep getting worse. Everything from flooding and sewage treatment overflow to food prices and hundreds of thousands of heat-related deaths are in the forecast. And of course we have defunded the exact research we need to understand it.

I’m talking about global consequences, but I’m thinking about the garden drowning outside my window in a few months. So I’ll be doing what I can actually do for the place I live: clearing my gutters, getting rain barrels in place, doing what I can to protect the soil and support healthy drainage.

This feels like distressingly little, and in the grand scheme of things, it is. But it’s not nothing.You and I both know that we cannot individual-action our way out of any of these systemic issues. And yet I do believe we have a solemn duty to prepare for disasters and build as much resilience as we can. I covered a lot of extremely distressing subjects in this newsletter, and while I’m out in the garden tomorrow, I’ll be thinking about what small but consequential actions I can take on those fronts too.

Whatever your (actual or metaphorical) hardiness zone may be, I hope you make the most of it.
Liz

As ever, thanks for reading & thinking with me!

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