Happy Juneteenth!

I'm celebrating the holiday in various ways: neighborliness, catching up on errands, and writing to you about the federal government.

Let me start with a bit of bookkeeping--of a celebratory variety, albeit in celebration of a less epochal event. This newsletter is prospering, and I now have enough subscribers that I no longer qualify for a free Buttondown account. The message I'm sending you is a cross between a blog and a group email. Psychologically, I think it's easier to understand why someone would pay for a blog than for an email service. Making websites keep working, and look pretty while they're doing it, seems like a skill, whereas anyone can send an email. I suspect that under the hood the situation is reversed. Website architecture is standard, but email is a constant arms race between spammers and email providers. My shiny new Buttondown subscription pays for all the tricks that let me send a letter to over a hundred people and still appear in your inbox like a real person.

This does mean I'm contemplating the micro-business question of whether I should consider seeking out patrons of the arts. This newsletter will always be free, because I like writing it. But if you have an impulse toward patronage (or Patreonage, only not through that website), do let me know--I'd be open to writing an occasional sponsored essay, or poem, or piece of snail mail, if I thought there were sufficient takers.

Before we turn our attention to the Office of Management and Budget, let's take a cat break. Here is Kosmas posing like a cat who wants a role in a Swedish movie.

All right, federal government time. Here's the deal. Russell Vought, current head of the Office of Management and Budget, has proposed a new federal rule that would make all government science funding in the United States subject to political control. Comments on the rule are due July 13. If you'll be affected by the rule--that is, if you're a US resident or expat whose life is affected by science for any reason--you can and should comment. Then, once you've written your comment, you should share it with your representatives in Congress. Writing a public comment demonstrates public pressure (something even this administration responds to, on occasion!) It also sets up future lawsuits. The clearer we are about the harms these rules do now, the more opportunities open for lawsuits to block them.

Here are some more specific resources:

• An article from Ars Technica about why these rules are so scary.
• The full text of the proposed rule. Scroll to the very bottom for a link to the PDF.
• A list of specific worrying items from a public health expert. (Your comment should point to specific rules, such as these!)
• A specific set of prompts for community members from Courtney Gibbons, a mathematician and past AMS congressional fellow. Again, these prompts include specific proposed rules you could respond to.
• And, once more, the link to write a comment.

Let me end this section with an offer: if you're subscribed to my newsletter and you want help coming up with a public comment or editing a draft, or you have questions about what this would mean for a regular working mathematician, please reach out.

And let me end this letter as a whole with something unarguably good: the soft fur on Gennoveus's belly.

Yours,

Ursula.