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NFL Scout Rips Bucs' QB Mayfield
An anonymous evaluator slams the quarterback’s contract disappointment as a "crock," but fails miserably in his reasoning.
Canucks Could Have Interesting Comp for Petterson Trade
The Vancouver Canucks may have a comparable for a potential Elias Pettersson trade, as disappointing as it may seem. The post Canucks Could Have Interesting Comp for Petterson Trade appeared first on HEAVY.
Abdul El-Sayed wins Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, notching a Midwest victory for the left
The former public health official has defeated Rep. Haley Stevens, NBC News projects, despite facing a huge advertising disadvantage.
'Brazilian blow-drying treatments ruined my life'
Former hairdresser Louisa Curtis says exposure to formaldehyde gas left her unable to work.
Google finally reveals exactly when your Android phone will lose Google Assistant
It looks like Google has started emailing users that Google Assistant will start disappearing from Android phones on September 4.
Longer careers may leave younger, disadvantaged workers spending more years in poor health
The average age of the German population is rising. Coupled with the growing labor shortage, these demographic trends pose major challenges for pension systems. According to proposals from the Pension ...
Countries put science and precaution above race to start deep seabed m
More member states of the International Seabed Authority announced support for a precautionary pause or moratorium during its annual meeting, citing a lack of science and concerns for the long-term ef
Disney Moves Consumer Products to Studios
Disney is restructuring its Consumer Products division, moving operations from Experiences to Entertainment Studios in October.
GOP Leadership pushing Edwards to drop re-election bid over ethics report
The bipartisan House Ethics Committee on Monday released a 20-page report on the investigation, recommending that the chamber censure Edwards.
The Beauty Of Settled Science
Commenters convinced me I made a subtle mis-step in my framing of Psychology Research Is Mostly Fine. My framing emphasized that social priming studies had failed to replicate, but that many other subfields of psychology hadn’t. This naturally led commenters to point to failed replications in other subfields. Although none of these were as bad as social priming, few or none were entirely problem-free. Instead of emphasizing the difference between social priming and other subfields, I should have emphasized the difference between settled science and novel research. Here are some of my favorite psychology findings: The brain is sculpted by reinforcement learning, and a key driver of this learning is a prediction-error-based algorithm located in the nucleus accumbens and implemented through dopamine. Psychedelic drugs exert their effects through 5-HT2A receptors, pointing to a role for these receptors in some sort of construct like the balance between priors and new evidence. Certain cognitive functions are localized to certain brain areas (for example, impulse control to the frontal lobes; linguistic structure to Broca’s area, linguistic meaning to Wernicke’s area. But injure one of these areas, or render a certain function useless (eg a blind person having no more use for their visual cortex), and these mappings can gradually shift - suggesting that neurons are general-purpose compute whose specialization is a contingent fact about convenience and efficiency rather than a necessity. Most personality traits and general capabilities are about 50% genetic and 50% random, with little role for family environment or childhood history, with a few notable exceptions like partisan preference. Recent research complicates this story, but the further you go from this basic picture, the gnarlier the chains of indirect causation you require. Neurons fire together in “brain waves”, whose exact frequency corresponds with the character of consciousness; These divide neurons into natural subpopulations and linked graphs. The gamma rhythm corresponds surprisingly well to items in conscious awareness. GABA receptors seem to be involved in something like relaxation. By hitting different GABA receptors in different ways, you can modulate the exact type of relaxation you produce. Hitting GABA-A directly is too powerful and can cause dangerous levels of sedation, but allosteric modulation of GABA is an incredibly fruitful strategy that underlies drugs from benzos to barbituates to alcohol. If you know your GABA-A subunits, you can target specific subtypes of relaxation; for example, Ambien hits GABA-A1 and induces sleep. Memory divides somewhat fuzzily into bins of immediate-sensory, short-term, and long-term, with separate retrieval and storage functions, and separate systems for declarative vs. procedural learning. These can be harmed selectively, usually by hippocampal injury, so that some patients can remember their life stories but not form new long-term memories, or learn new skills like bike-riding but not new facts. The exact substrate of memory is unclear but seems to involve new synaptic connections between neurons in at least some way. The ability of modern psychology and psychiatry to treat mental illness is real but limited. SSRIs work for half or slightly fewer than half of patients; antipsychotics work with extreme side effects; benzodiazpines work but produce addiction and tolerance in many (not all) people. Most supplements are stuck in Poor Quality Study Replication Crisis Hell, but melatonin and l-theanine stand out as especially promising. Psychotherapy works with moderate effect size, but (with a few exceptions) seems to be more about the relationship with the provider than the details of the therapy itself. Mental hospitalization can sometimes defuse immediate crises but work less well than mental hospitals would like, with some studies showing overall negative effects. Schizophrenia is mostly genetic, but risk also increases with prenatal infection (especially rubella) and obstetric complications; there is suggestive evidence for roles of social stress and drug use (with psychedelics and marijuana making things worse, and nicotine if anything making things better). Bipolar and schizophrenia are so closely linked on a pathophysiological level that it seems like they might be the same disease; on the clinical level, they do seem to follow two separate courses/prognoses but can sometimes surprise clinicians by eg someone who seemed condemned to permanent schizophrenia unexpectedly recovering. The brain’s native reinforcement learning algorithms cash out in the phenomena of classical and operant conditioning; different reinforcement schedules reinforce at different levels, which can be exploited by bad actors to make especially compelling products (eg slot machines). None of these are immune to doubt. A few are speculative; one or two are genuinely unorthodox. But they’re all a step above one p = 0.049 paper that might not replicate. If they get overturned, they’ll be overturned by the same sort of genuine scientific shift that replaced Ptolemy with Copernicus or Lamarck with Darwin, not some sort of sordid discovery about someone entering random numbers into a spreadsheet. In 2008, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote about The Beauty Of Settled Science: If you only care about scientific issues that are controversial, you will end up with a head stuffed full of garbage. The media thinks that only the cutting edge of science is worth reporting on. How often do you see headlines like “General Relativity still governing planetary orbits” or “Phlogiston theory remains false”? So, by the time anything is solid science, it is no longer a breaking headline. “Newsworthy” science is often based on the thinnest of evidence and wrong half the time—if it were not on the uttermost fringes of the scientific frontier, it would not be breaking news. Scientific controversies are problems so difficult that even people who’ve spent years mastering the field can still fool themselves. That’s what makes for the heated arguments that attract all the media attention. Worse, if you aren’t in the field and part of the game, controversies aren’t even fun. Don’t be embarrassed to read elementary science textbooks, either. If you want to pretend to be sophisticated, go find a play to sneer at. If you just want to have fun, remember that simplicity is at the core of scientific beauty [...] A steady diet of science news is bad for you: You are what you eat, and if you eat only science reporting on fluid situations, without a solid textbook now and then, your brain will turn to liquid. Psychology isn’t centrally the new paper in Annals Of Recently-Breaking News saying that an n=5 study showing that large portion sizes increase support for terrorism. Psychology is centrally ideas like brain waves, GABA receptors, reinforcement learning, twin studies, and connectionism. People who think differently are worrying too much about BREAKING NEWS!!!, and should stop. The key distinction isn’t “recent research in social psychology” vs. “recent research in cognitive/bio/behavioral psychology”, as my essay last week unfortunately implied. It’s recent research in general vs. the deposit of settled science, battle-tested hypotheses, and carefully-earmarked speculation. And part of the reason social priming in particular was such a disaster was that it defied that heuristic, building itself up over hundreds of studies until it approached or even entered the pantheon of settled science - before collapsing (5-HTTLPR was also sort of like this). This isn’t a claim that settled science is always right - Freud was “settled science” for a long time - just that there’s an intuitive distinction between the level of credence you should have in the existence of power posing vs. the existence of Broca’s Area. (I compounded this error by calling the last post “Psychology Research Is Mostly Fine”, which suggested I was talking about the new research rather than the settled science. I actually meant to distinguish between research-psychology-the-field vs. clinical-psychology-aka-therapy, but this framing unintentionally pushed against the point I wanted to make) Some commenters on the previous article understood this point, but challenged its weight. It’s very cool, they said, to know how many neurons are in which brain lobe, but the main way that Psychology affected their lives was through bad clickbait studies used to buttress dumb policies; some p = 0.049 study says that exposure to microaggressions makes minorities’ brains shrivel into raisins, and now their company has to implement punitive DEI or be sued for hazardous work conditions. I won’t dispute this as an accurate description of how the sausage gets made, but it’s worth examining the trains of thought that connect this observation to a campaign against psychology in general: The dumb woke psychology was wrong and bad, and I don’t have good heuristics for distinguishing dumb woke psychology from other psychology, so I’m going to assume it’s all wrong and bad. The dumb woke psychology was wrong and bad; it seems useful to punish/discredit psychology as a whole to assist my campaign against it, so for propaganda purposes I will try to discredit psychology as a whole. To people in the first camp, my response is: come on, your heuristics aren’t that bad. “Microaggressions makes minorities’ brains shrivel up like raisins” is in the woke category; “the hippocampal theta rhythm seems to be associated with both memory and pathfinding, suggesting an unexpected yet surprisingly compelling relationship between the two” is in the not-woke category, don’t play dumb here. To people in the second camp, my response is: deliberately exaggerated propaganda campaigns are bad and this is a confession, not an excuse. Inability to view science through anything but a political lens was what got us into this problem; doubling down on it is a temporary solution but a recipe for permanent disaster. If you pronounce entire fields of science to be acceptable collateral damage in your campaign against bad political actors, you will alienate not just scientists but patients, clinicians, and general lovers of truth. Instead, you can say the thing you mean - that woke partisans shouldn’t try to occupy and exploit the otherwise-noble science of psychology for their own political gain - and wage the same campaign with a halo rather than a comic-book-villain goatee. From the font of oracular wisdom that is Weird Sun Twitter: [ Vessel Of Spirit@VesselOfSpirit i love you all conditionally but i love the good part of you unconditionally. even if it becomes a very small part 2:11 AM · Jan 22, 2015 1 Reply · 5 Reposts · 29 Likes ](https://x.com/VesselOfSpirit/status/558084551772471298) This is how I feel about psychology1, too, but with a touch more optimism. The good part of psychology is enormous, a hoard of endless treasures. You just have to look past the headlines! 1 To play devil’s advocate - should one always be so magnamious? Astrology? Phrenology? These seem different in that their entire orientation was flawed from the start; they didn’t simply fail to find the correct constellation-personality connections, the whole project of searching for connections between constellations and personality was doomed from the start. More difficult might be asking the same question about education research, which is notoriously bad. I don’t know enough about education research to know if there’s some settled science of correct and enlightening results lurking in the background beyond the day-to-day froth of poorly-conducted and politically-motivated studies. I think if it’s 90% bad, 10% good, it’s correct to call it bad as a compact way of communicating a useful truth; I think psychology is better than that, but admit it’s a tough judgment call.
Trump admin revokes visa of Brazilian ambassador to US
The Trump administration has revoked the visa of Brazil’s ambassador to the US, escalating a rift between Washington and Brasilia.
FDA's Draft MDUFA VI Commitment Letter: What It Means for AI and Digital Health
On July 7, FDA posted its draft commitment letter for the sixth MDUFA reauthorization (MDUFA VI). The letter outlines how the FDA will fund and operate its device review program for fiscal years 2028 through 2032. Under MDUFA, industry actors pay user fees and, in return, FDA commits to measurable review performance goals, such as … Continued
Bridging the Political Divides: Rural Women Running
Rural women running for political office this year gathered in a park near the Mississippi River in central Minnesota. Here is some of what they said. "It is going to be fast, and it is going to be hard, but we can get this done. I am done hearing that women cannot win, because look at us here.”
Physics PhDs Are Leaving the US at a Record-high Rate
The exodus of non-US citizens has “certainly” been influenced by science funding and visa policy changes under Trump, a new AIP report says.
When A Disease Scare Fizzles Out, Did Scientists Just Get It Wrong? What We Can Learn From The Pandemics That Weren't
Since the start of the century, we have witnessed various diseases that could have been a global threat but didn't quite live up to it. Was this a failure of science or is there a more interesting story going on?
Dr. Jolisa Williams Earns Women Leaders in Sports Resilience Award
BOWIE, MD — Bowie State University Interim Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics and Recreation Dr. Jolisa Williams has been selected as the recipient of the 2026 Women Leaders in Sports Resilience Award, one of the organization's prestigious BSN Sports Awards recognizing exceptional leadership across the sports industry.
Answer Man: Helene Business Recovery Fund borrowers facing skyrocketing rates? Messy I-26 median?
Today’s round of questions, my smart-aleck replies and the real answers: Question: You should look into the disaster bridge loans a lot of people took out through Mountain BizWorks and the Golden Leaf Foundation after Helene. These were loans with a 1 percent interest rate for 12 months, which was later extended to 24 months. […]
Holstein reelected state GOP chairman; party disavows Pritt
The West Virginia Republican Executive Committee reelected Delegate Josh Holstein, R-Boone, as chairman of the state Republican Party during a meeting in Charleston, West Virginia on Aug. 1, 2026. Also during the meeting, the GOP diavowed former Delegate Elliott Pritt, R-Fayette, who has been arrested and faces charges related to enticement of a minor.
Former GOP Sen. Jeff Flake backs Jon Ossoff, saying ‘character matters’
The Arizona Republican has been one of the loudest critics of President Donald Trump. He says Ossoff's character outweighs any policy disagreements they might have.
Raiders’ Maxx Crosby Has Blunt Message for Fernando Mendoza
The Las Vegas Raiders are looking to be competitive this upcoming 2026 NFL season after a disastrous 2025 campaign under former head coach Pete Carroll. One of the new faces on the team is No. 1 pick Fernando Mendoza, and Maxx Crosby is already taking him under his wing.Despite both players being on opposite sides […] The post Raiders’ Maxx Crosby Has Blunt Message for Fernando Mendoza appeared first on HEAVY.
Jackie the eagle faces health complications as anemia worsens despite transfusion
KMPH Fox 26 is the Central Valley's news leader, covering Fresno, California and the surrounding area, including Clovis, Madera, Hanford, Visalia, Biola, Kerman, Tranquillity, San Joaquin, Reedley, Coalinga, Avenal, Lemoore, Tulare, Selma, Caruthers, Tollhouse, Three Rivers, Porterville, and Merced.
People With Disabilities Fear Service Cuts as Trump’s DOJ Questions Legal Protections
By Stephanie Armour | KFF Health News Amanda DeSimone-Shabrack relies on a home healthcare aide to help her high-needs autistic 12-year-old son. Virginia’s Medicaid program covers the assistance, enabling her to work as both an education technology specialist and a professor, run errands, and keep ...
Ethics panel finds GOP Rep. Chuck Edwards violated House sexual harassment rules and recommends censure
The bipartisan House Ethics Committee said Monday it has found “substantial evidence” that GOP Rep. Chuck Edwards repeatedly made unwanted advances toward two of his female staffers and is recommending that the full House vote to punish him on the floor.
Effective August 12: Bipartisan Legislation to Prevent Harms Caused by Addictive Sports Betting
DENVER, CO – Bipartisan legislation to prevent harms caused by addictive sports betting practices will go into effect on August 12. SB26-1 31 , spon sored by Senator Matt Ball, D-Denver, addresses problems arising from the growing online sports betting industry by implement
With state funding, Harrisburg co-working space to offer free small business help
Local entrepreneurs can get a business boost through a new program that is kickstarting during National Black Business Month. Harrisburg-based Culture & Commerce on Monday announced that it is opening a business assistance center for historically disadvantaged businesses inside its downtown space. With partnership from the Covation Center, based in Williamsport, Culture and Commerce will […]
Maryland Democrats considering partisan redistricting for 2028 election
Maryland lawmakers are kicking off a special session to consider a first step in a partisan redistricting initiative that could help Democrats pick up an additional U.S. House seat by 2028.
If Not AOC, Then Who?
What do we do if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decides not to run for president in 2028? It makes sense that many leftists are currently focused on calling on her to take the plunge. But the absence of a Plan B, or even much discussion about one, is worrisome. The US Left can’t afford to sit out the 2028 Democratic primary. Doing so in 2024 was a disaster: our abstention self-marginalized anti-billionaire politics from the national conversation and thereby gave space for Harris to pivot to the “center” (i.e. the policy preferences of corporate donors, establishment hacks, and AIPAC). Abstaining again in 2028 would be especially counterproductive since democratic socialists now have so much wind in our sails after our big electoral wins in NYC and across the country. It’s time to deepen our momentum, organization, and profile — not to retreat to the margins during America’s single most important political battle. Even more urgently, keeping Trump’s heir out of the White House may depend on whether leftists and the party’s unprecedentedly disenchanted base can force the Democrats in 2028 to take meaningful steps towards a very angry electorate and away from the corporate-consultant blob that has helped get us into this mess. If AOC (or Abdul El-Sayed) decides to run, we should enthusiastically go all in — DSA, fighting unions, progressive organizations, anybody who wants to see a better country and world. But, as far as I can tell from the outside, there’s a real chance that she doesn’t run. And we can’t just wait and see where she lands before discussing alternatives, since AOC’s decision might not come for quite a while, giving us little time to scramble at the last minute for an alternative. So we should start working now on getting a Plan B into motion, and recruiting a good candidate for the role. Here’s one idea. A Worker Candidate — Healthcare Not Warfare 2028 Run a union worker Leftists don’t need to always run experienced, well-known socialist politicians for high-profile contests. Lula, the current president of Brazil, began his political career as a metalworker militant who ran for governor of São Paulo in 1982. Especially in an era of institutional distrust, it’s possible to lean hard into making a virtue out of a working-class comrade’s distance from traditional politics. Experience abroad shows this clearly. Rachel Kéké — an immigrant hotel housekeeper — ran as the candidate of the leftist La France Insoumise for the National Assembly in 2022, defeating a former minister in the Macron government. The Belgian Workers’ Party in 2024 won its first Flemish seat in the European Parliament by running Rudi Kennes, a three-decade veteran of the Opel Antwerp auto factory. And the South Korean left in 2024 elected auto factory militant Yoon Jong-oh to the National Assembly. If a tiny French Trotskyist organization could make such a big splash in 2002 and 2007 by running a well-spoken postal worker cadre for office — the LCR’s Olivier Besancenot received about 1.5 million first-round votes — it’s not far-fetched to expect that a much larger organization like DSA, together with a broader coalition of the willing, could run this playbook to much greater effect. This is especially the case now that almost everything DSA does immediately becomes a national news story. We don’t need someone famous. We just need a charismatic, well-vetted comrade who works in a relatable working-class occupation — e.g. a nurse, or a worker in auto or construction, or at Amazon. Ideally, they have a compelling personal story or have been part of a significant strike or organizing campaign, but even those criteria don’t necessarily have to be deal-breakers. The main lesson of the Graham Platner fiasco isn’t that we should never run outsiders for office (the momentum he generated proves the exact opposite), but that they need proper vetting and roots in democratic membership organizations like DSA or a union. In any case, there are plenty of ways to signal working-class authenticity without resorting to Platner’s or Fetterman’s performative macho white dude affect. Better to have someone of any gender or race who is actually working class, with firm socialist politics, who can speak from experience about the day-to-day realities of trying to make it in America. There are surely at least a dozen such worker leaders in our movement nationwide; we just need to sit down and convince one that their personal sacrifice for the greater good (i.e. running for president) will be worth it. If we don’t have a frontrunner with a clear path to victory like AOC (or El-Sayed, were he to win Michigan), it’s better to embrace someone whose decision to run in itself tells an important story about US politics: workers have been iced out of our political system and are now fighting hard to break back in. The novelty factor, in itself, would generate press. And it would help democratic socialists signal to the American public that our movement’s defining characteristic is that we represent workers vs. bosses, not that we’re “the furthest left” force in American politics — a framework that suggests we’re extremists and that helps our opponents isolate us from non-college-educated voters by highlighting extremely minoritarian (and misguided) stances included in DSA’s platform like prison abolition. We don’t get many opportunities to speak to tens of millions of Americans; we need to use these opportunities to broaden our appeal beyond those already in our orbit. Run to polarize the 2028 primary and general election around “Medicare for All” and “End All Aid to Israel” Why should democratic socialists use our scarce time and volunteer energy to run in a race we’re unlikely to win? Running in the 2028 primary will not only recruit us scores of members (imagine having a DSA member intervening in eleven nationally televised primary debates!), but — more importantly — it has the potential to be a decisive leap forward towards an America that finally starts meeting the needs of working people instead of HMO and AIPAC billionaire donors. Polarizing litmus tests are good, actually — as long as they’re fought for around popular demands in a thoughtful and strategic way. Democratic socialists have an opportunity and responsibility to make the 2028 primary about two of the most widely and deeply felt issues of our moment: domestically, America’s unaffordable, family-breaking private healthcare system; internationally, America’s bankrolling of the genocidal Israeli government. A candidacy relentlessly demanding Medicare for All and No Aid to Israel would pose a sharp question to the American public, the Democratic Party, and other 2028 contenders: Why can’t working-class Americans afford their healthcare bills at the same time that our government is spending at least $3.8 billion yearly to fund an Israeli regime eager to keep dragging us and the world into more forever wars? Our candidate can agitate around a clear message: I’m running to give voice to all those working-class Americans who are struggling to get by. No matter what state you live in, who you voted for in 2024, or your background, it’s just plain common sense that we should make healthcare more affordable instead of spending billions to enable the Israeli government’s crimes against humanity. Every American who agrees with me when I say ‘Medicare for All — Not a Dime for Israel’ should make their voice heard through our campaign. Racking up a high number of votes for this agenda is a crucial way to show the Democratic Party and the country as a whole that we can’t keep supporting a life-destroying status quo in our healthcare system and in the Middle East. If we want to defeat Trump’s handpicked crony this coming November, we need to speak to ordinary people’s frustrations with the status quo — we can’t keep running the same tired establishment playbook and expecting a different result. For those highly engaged voters (or skeptical media pundits) who raise concerns about wasting votes, the candidate can take the time to explain why this isn’t the case: It's true I'm a long shot. But Zohran showed anything can happen — and voting for me is a pragmatic decision, not a wasted vote. In a heavily divided primary with a large number of candidates and a very discredited establishment, my campaign and the democratic socialist movement I’m part of are positioned to be the balance of power if we can get a large enough number of voters to loudly demand Healthcare Not Warfare. Since there’s a high chance no candidate will get to 50% in the 2028 primaries, the Democrats could very well be heading towards a brokered convention, where a disciplined, principled current committed to breaking from corporate donors can play an outsized role in making sure whoever ends up with the nomination raises the banner of single-payer healthcare and cutting aid to Israel. How exactly could running this sort of primary campaign be translated into actual leverage? The candidate replies: I’m aiming to win the nomination, but if I don’t achieve that goal, my delegates and I will pledge our support in the primary only for a candidate who agrees in the general election to call for ending US aid to Israel and establishing Medicare for All at home. These are both winning planks for November against the Republicans, and the only reason I can see that other candidates haven’t yet raised these is that they’re still more scared of the donor class than they are of the people. That needs to change. If Democratic leaders want young people, workers, and those sick of the status quo to show up in big numbers this November, they need to meet us halfway. In this way, whether or not we win the nomination, democratic socialists could still play a decisive role in 2028. The approach outlined here is similar to what radical left parties periodically do in parliamentary democracies like Denmark or Sweden when they find themselves as a junior partner electorally: they dictate to center-left allies what their terms would be for enabling, from the outside, the formation of a new government. Running a Healthcare Not Warfare candidate will make it significantly more likely that the 2028 Democratic candidate stands with ordinary people instead of donors on these two pivotal planks — a shift that will, in turn, make it easier to achieve the existentially important task of defeating MAGA’s heir in November. Look at how much popular traction the Uncommitted movement got with a similar strategy in 2024 with so little on-the-ground organization — surely we can go much further with a working-class candidate, a much bigger DSA, and a Democratic Party base that has turned against Israel, billionaires, and the hacks in the party who prop them up. Objections and Responses There are quite a few objections to this proposal, many of which are very reasonable. Let me briefly address each here. Socialists shouldn’t waste their scarce time and resources on a candidate unlikely to win. This is a good rule in general, but there are important exceptions, and presidential elections are the main one. There’s no other political contest that gets anything like this level of attention and engagement in the US, so if you want to be a serious force in nationwide politics, you basically can’t afford not to have a candidate. Far from being an overall drain on our resources, running a dynamic 2028 campaign would likely result in a major net increase in members and capacity. In that spirit, the very pragmatic Milwaukee sewer socialists — who mostly ran to win at home in Wisconsin — supported Eugene Debs’s propagandistic presidential campaigns, which they correctly saw as a crucial means of recruiting to the Socialist Party. And now that the (post-1972) Democratic Party gives more weight to voters than party operatives in determining its presidential nomination, it’s become feasible to run as a socialist in primaries without risking a split in the vote against the Republicans in November. We should just support Ro Khanna, who also supports M4A and ending aid to Israel. I like Ro Khanna and would enthusiastically vote and canvass for him for president were he to get the nomination. But there’s a real chance that Khanna’s bid for office doesn’t catch on; he lacks the grassroots organizational apparatus of DSA, and, because he’s not really of the Left or labor (despite his current very good positions), he’s unlikely to generate the type of buy-in and enthusiasm that a DSA candidate would. Moreover, Khanna would be running as an individual, not as someone emerging from and building an organized movement — his campaign would not likely focus on building sustained power from below, nor would it likely polarize the 2028 primary around M4A and Israel aid. Also, and not inconsequentially, the poor electoral results for Tom Steyer and Saikat Chakrabarti this spring suggest that there’s perhaps not much of a popular appetite in the Democrats’ base to support multi-millionaire class traitors. Much better, then, to run a democratic socialist worker. If by Super Tuesday it’s clear that our campaign has captured the main left lane in the primary, Khanna should drop out and endorse us; conversely, if he’s managed to capture this lane, DSA could at that point transform its Healthcare Not Warfare campaign into an independent campaign to elect Ro Khanna focused on winning (and holding him accountable to) those two critical planks. An openness to consolidating an anti-corporate candidate by Super Tuesday is a necessary component of the strategy I’m proposing, because otherwise we risk splitting the primary votes (per DNC rules, you need at least 15% to get any delegates to convention). We should convince Shawn Fain or Sara Nelson to run for president instead. I agree it’d be great if either ran for president, but my impression is that there’s basically no chance that will happen in 2028, because both are firmly focused on their union leadership duties (and, in the case of Fain, beating back a federal witch-hunt). This plan could have DSA end up endorsing a non-socialist, non-DSAer for president. That’s against our principles. It’s a myth, and bad politics, that socialists can’t ever support candidates who aren’t members of their organization and/or who don’t call themselves socialists. Bernie, after all, was not a DSAer. And socialists abroad regularly make tactical decisions about if and when supporting a non-socialist candidate makes sense from the standpoint of promoting working-class interests, defending democracy, and building a socialist current in the process. If your “principles” prevent you and DSA from helping achieve the momentous stride forward of having a Democratic candidate in 2028 run on Medicare for All and ending aid to Israel, those “principles” are not very good. In fact, they actively undermine the causes they’re aiming to support. We shouldn’t confuse principles (working-class independence) with tactics (the best way to advance this in a given context). In my recent article in Catalyst on Milwaukee sewer socialism (I’ve uploaded the full text here), I have a section showing how similarly rigid rules about endorsements had to be eventually discarded in the old Socialist Party nationwide after WWI because they tended to lead socialists towards a sectarian abstention from broader anti-corporate electoral insurgencies beyond their party’s control. For what it’s worth, Lenin’s current under Tsarism frequently backed bourgeois candidates in the second round of elections and Lenin himself advocated that British Communists support Labour Party candidates; for his part, Kautsky in 1912 defended the German Social Democracy’s electoral pact with the Progressives in the runoffs. If our predecessors could be that tactically flexible in an era before the limits of their underlying strategic assumptions about intransigent class politics in capitalist democracies were made clear, then there’s no need to insist on being more tactically rigid today, after a century’s worth of accumulated experience. As long as you maintain your own political profile and organization while engaging in broader coalitional efforts, there’s zero inherent contradiction with the principle of political independence. More specifically: DSA and allied organizations should enthusiastically back Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed if AOC declines to run and he throws his hat in the presidential ring. (I have no idea whether he’s even considering this path, but there’ll surely be chatter about it if he wins his Senate race this November.) Though he doesn’t call himself a socialist, El-Sayed is a principled Berniecrat, a consistent fighter for Palestine, and would have a clear path to victory. Using the “s” word is far less important than whether a campaign fights for the interests of working people at home and abroad — and whether actively participating in it can grow the organized working class and the Left. And the same holds true if a less anti-corporate candidate were, under pressure, to adopt our two Healthcare Not Warfare planks. Why focus only on M4A and ending US aid to Israel? There are so many other important issues to fight for! Obviously there are many pivotal issues beyond healthcare and Israel, and our candidate — and especially our organizations involved in the campaign — should be prepared to speak on all of these. But one of the crucial lessons of the Zohran campaign is that you have to relentlessly stay on message if you want to cut through the noise. CNN and Fox News will want to talk about DSA’s views on Venezuela and abolishing the police; we need to polarize the debate on the widely and deeply felt issues that are most favorable for growing the Left, isolating our opponents, and winning urgently needed changes. One recent poll found 63% of Americans support M4A, even after respondents were told it would raise taxes and eliminate most private insurance. Another found that 74% of Democrats opposed “providing additional economic and military support to Israel.” And focusing on two demands sets the campaign up to be able to leverage its mandate to make clear demands upon other candidates (which we can’t do if we run with a laundry list of demands). Talking about a Plan B is a distraction from the more urgent work of building a groundswell of calls on AOC to run. It’s good for DSAers, fightback unionists, and progressive organizations to try to convince AOC to run. This proposal is meant as an addendum to pushes to get AOC to run and to line DSA up for that eventuality, not as a substitute for those efforts. But I’m worried that, like in 2024, we might eventually find ourselves with no time to find a viable alternative unless we start now. DSA, with its abundant deliberative processes, moves slowly. The approach you’re suggesting seems risky. If a DSA candidate runs but doesn’t receive a lot of votes, it’ll undercut our current national momentum. This is a reasonable worry. All big initiatives always carry risks, and the path I’m advocating is certainly not free of these. That said, if a Healthcare Not Warfare campaign doesn’t catch on like we envisioned, it’s a pretty simple pivot in March 2028 to explain that in the future we really need our standard-bearers like AOC, or our growing bench of national electeds, to step up in presidential primaries. Moreover, it’s worth noting that the risk of my Plan B proposal is on the whole significantly less than the risk entailed by an AOC run. We should all back her if she runs, since she’d fire up the base, provide huge openings for organizing, have a real shot at defeating a Republican (especially given MAGA’s unpopularity), be a great standard-bearer for our issues, particularly M4A and ending aid to Israel, and be less willing than mainstream candidates to capitulate to any anti-democratic machinations from Trump and co. But it’s also true that AOC could lose, which would be a devastating setback to the country and the Left. Or she could win and find herself unable to pass much, if any, of her (and our) program, a demoralizing prospect. So if we’re willing to take these risks with AOC (and we should), it follows that we should be able to take lower-level risks if she doesn’t throw her hat in the ring. What’s Your Plan B? The US Left is facing its biggest opening for growth and influence since the 1930s. Initiatives that would have been impossible a few months ago are now potentially feasible. A President AOC is now easier to imagine, but if she ultimately assesses that the risks aren’t worth the potential reward in 2028, we can’t be left flat-footed. So even if you’re not convinced by the specifics of my Plan B, I hope you can at least agree that it’d be a disaster for us not to have one — and not to start getting a Plan B into motion. Hopefully other organizers and political currents will put forward their responses and alternative ideas ASAP. The stakes are too high to just wait and see. More As always, please share this article widely. This newsletter depends on all you lovely people to get the word out. Thank you! I uploaded the full text of my Catalyst article on Milwaukee sewer socialism here (it’s updated and 3x as long as the version published earlier on this substack). If you haven’t yet, please make sure to subscribe to Catalyst here; I read every issue front to back, highly recommend. 🌹🎵 Ivan Lins (arranged by Arthur Verocai) — “General da Banda” 🌹🎵
THE WEEK OF AUG 3, 2026
- Senate stopgap bill counters OMB grantmaking rule - State Dept proposes changes to J visa cancellations - FCC bans foreign robots
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Good Communication Is Good Business by Geoffrey Losee
The following column was contributed by J.D. Fisher. Mixed-use communities are increasingly common. Restaurants, breweries, retail stores, entertainment venues, and professional offices often operate within walking distance of established neighborhoods. That proximity creates tremendous opportunity, but it also means that a business's decisions may affect more than just its customers. Many business owners understandably focus on obtaining the permits necessary to open their doors. However, municipal approval is rarely the end of the conversation. As a business evolves, whether by adding outdoor seating, live entertainment, extended operating hours, or other new amenities, the applicable zoning ordinance may require additional approvals or impose operational standards designed to balance commercial activity with nearby residential uses. From a business perspective, the question should not simply be, "Can we do this?" It should also be, "Have we communicated with everyone who may be affected?" Recent local news coverage highlighted how differing interpretations of a municipal ordinance can quickly become the subject of public hearings, legal arguments, and significant uncertainty for a business. While every situation turns on its own facts, one common theme emerged: practical solutions are more difficult to achieve if communication breaks down. Businesses can often reduce that risk by engaging early with the relevant stakeholders. That begins with municipal staff. Planning departments are oftentimes willing to discuss how an ordinance applies before substantial investments are made. Seeking clarification in advance may identify permitting requirements or operational limitations that can be addressed proactively rather than after enforcement action. Communication should not stop with local government. Nearby property owners and neighborhood representatives frequently appreciate being informed about proposed changes before they occur. A brief meeting, an informational email, or an invitation to discuss concerns can foster goodwill and reveal potential issues while there is still flexibility to adjust operations. That’s why such meetings often required for substantial projects and may be a good idea even if not required. Perhaps most importantly, businesses should view compliance as an ongoing process rather than a one-time event. Operational changes that seem minor from a business standpoint may have regulatory implications under local development ordinances. Periodically reviewing proposed changes with experienced land-use counsel or planning professionals can help identify issues before they become disputes. No ordinance can eliminate every conflict between commercial activity and residential expectations. Nor should every disagreement become a legal controversy. But businesses that invest in transparent, proactive communication place themselves in the strongest position to protect both their operations and their relationships within the community. In today's regulatory environment, good communication is more than good public relations, it is good risk management. If your business is planning to expand its operations, introduce a new use, or simply wants to better understand how local land development regulations apply, the attorneys at Rountree Losee LLP are available to help. Our land use and local government practice works with businesses throughout southeastern North Carolina to navigate municipal approval processes, identify potential issues before they become disputes, and keep projects moving forward with confidence. Read more at rountreelosee.com.
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40 YEARS
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Does public health *need* MAHA?
Last week, our friend Dr. Craig Spencer sparked an ongoing volatile discussion with his Atlantic article “Public Health Needs MAHA.” Some have come out in strong dissent, others are cheering, and others are simply lamenting that we find ourselves in such a divided world to begin with. We will dare to dip our toes in these controversial waters, too. Does public health need MAHA? We think in some ways yes, and in other ways, no. MAHA leaders versus the everyday MAHA supporter The vitriol in this debate mostly comes from one collapsed distinction: the leadership of MAHA is not necessarily the same as the people who support it. Say “MAHA” and most people picture RFK Jr. Fair enough, as he coined the term and holds most of the power. And, yes, some MAHA followers treat Kennedy as something close to a saint. But talk to the grassroots, and it’s not a monolith. They’re Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. People who distrust vaccines and vaccine supporters. It’s a wide, eclectic coalition. The data backs this too: 4 in 10 Americans support the movement—that’s a lot of people! But according to polls, vaccines and medical choice (the issues most tied to Kennedy personally) are cited by only 4% as their reason for supporting the movement. For many, the motivations are much broader. Many MAHA supporters are signing up for the idea that “something needs to change” with health in this country. They’re asking good-faith questions about corporate influence on our health systems, health care costs, nutrition, chemicals, and clean air and water. These are all questions that plenty of public health professionals recognize as legitimate and also care about very deeply. Blurring the lines between the leadership and grassroots does real damage in two important ways: It hands the 4 in 10 exactly the narrative already fed—that the health ecosystem doesn’t listen, doesn’t care, and paints every critic with the same brush. It gives the actual bad actor more power. RFK Jr. has done irreparable damage and can’t be trusted. What the MAHA movement gets right A healthy population is something the public health field was literally built on, and many of these topics are things we have dedicated our lives to. Yet the MAHA movement has captivated nearly half the country in a way the public health establishment has failed to achieve. So that means MAHA is doing something right. Some of it may be timing (after a Covid-19 pandemic and deep frustration and mistrust with institutions). The movement also does three other things really well: 1. It gives a new, louder voice to system failures. While MAHA is not a monolith, one theme stays consistent across their stories: the system failed them. For some, it was the system that flooded their communities with opioids and then walked away. For others, it was the system that let their business collapse during Covid with no safety net in sight. For others still, it was the system that failed to help them manage a complex chronic illness, bouncing them from physician to physician without any real answers. And in many ways, our health ecosystems are failing Americans. Why are medical bills so incomprehensible? Why do some kids get a healthy school lunch and others don’t? Why do an epidemiologist and a MD/PhD student have to start newsletters in the middle of the biggest public health emergency in a century, just so people can get straight information? Because the systems failed. This deep-seated frustration driving many Americans to search for solutions elsewhere needs to be recognized. 2. MAHA has brilliant comms central to their efforts. MAHA figured out something most health institutions still have not: the information landscape changed. It’s participatory now, not top-down; influence runs through many nodes in a community, not one institution; and storytelling and telling audiences “what you really think” moves people more than data dumps do. MAHA goes where audiences are listening, using podcasts, social media, and memes in ways most health institutions would scoff at—but it works. 3. They are very good at organizing. A MAHA meeting feels like a rally: energy, speakers, music, and most importantly, an action for everyone. Someone’s writing the next policy brief, someone’s seeding a narrative, someone knows the next legislative deadline, someone’s sending the text messages for a campaign. None of this is new (ask the civil rights movement), but MAHA knows it works and has capitalized on it. What MAHA gets wrong This list could be much longer, and this newsletter has spent a lot of time covering it, but here are a few things: Poor use of scientific evidence. This is the fundamental problem with many MAHA policies: the hype outpaces the science, and experts are often villainized for pointing this out. MAHA leadership has traded real solutions for cheap wins. For example, instead of taking on the powerful food industry and passing real reforms, it has celebrated french fries made of beef tallow and taken out artificial dyes from still very sugary children’s cereal. These changes won’t move the needle on America’s diet. MAHA leadership has tried to dismantle vaccine access in the U.S. While many MAHA supporters emphasize other issues, the effort to change vaccine policy has become MAHA’s signature effort. This is not surprising given RFK Jr.’s extensive track record campaigning against vaccines. It has rallied behind the wrong leader. RFK Jr. has a decades-long track record of villifying doctors, scientists, and public health workers, well before he became HHS secretary. He is known for his decades-long work sowing distrust in vaccines as well as life-saving treatments like antiretroviral therapy for HIV. This is not a serious person who can move the needle on health in the U.S, and he has already done serious damage. Public health needs more than defense Defending the evidence is absolutely necessary so health in the U.S. doesn’t move further backward. The public health establishment is very good at defense. The problem is this defense often sounds like defending the status quo, which has failed many people. Public health needs to offer an alternative to RFK Jr.’s MAHA—one that is rooted in evidence, truly listens to and addresses people’s frustrations, and has innovative solutions and the courage to change the systems. How do we get there? Find common ground. Do you know what most people care most about? The abysmal cost of healthcare. Start there. Fight for the human loudly. Too often, communications and engagement center on science with a capital S, funding mechanisms, or the CDC/FDA/NIH. Not the person. So the public doesn’t see themselves in it. Instead, they see people fighting for the very powerful systems that they feel negatively impact their health and well-being. Let the public feel and hear that you see their frustrations, you get it, and you’re fighting for them within the system. Recognize when pro-science messages are alienating people. Facts absolutely matter, but angrily venting only alienates people further. Our friend Elisabeth Marnik recently wrote a New York Times article about her experience growing up unvaccinated and how listening and empathetic conversation are the only ways to reach people that really work (a position backed by communication science). Her comments section was full of hateful comments from pro-vaccine individuals attacking her for daring to suggest we approach vaccine-hesitant individuals with empathy. It is possible to both stand firm behind scientific evidence and empathize with people who don’t trust it. Lean into politics smartly. Often, public health has shied away from politics: Don’t touch it, lest you get burned. But this fails to recognize that the third rail is what fuels the train: who is elected determines our budgets, our priorities, and our authority. Being political means being very savvy in strategy on both sides of the aisle, knowing your audience, and recognizing that political capital is as scarce as financial resources and needs to be allocated accordingly. Bottom line So does public health need MAHA? That’s not really the right question. Public health has a responsibility not to dismiss 40% of the country who feel heard by this movement and are frustrated that the system has failed them. And it has a responsibility to stick to the evidence and recognize MAHA leadership for what it is: a danger to our nation’s health. Both can, and should, be done. Love, YLE and KP A big thanks to Craig Spencer, who had the courage to put his neck out there to start a much-needed discussion at such a critical moment—one that is determining the identity of an entire field. Kristen Panthagani, MD, PhD is completing an emergency medicine residency and research fellowship focusing on health literacy and communication. In her free time, she writes the newsletters You Can Know Things debunking health myths and rumors and The Public Health Roundup. Views expressed belong to KP, not her employer. Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) comprises a team of experts, ranging from physicians to immunologists to epidemiologists to nutritionists, working together with one goal: to “translate” ever-evolving public health science so that people are well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. The YLE suite of newsletters reaches over 475,000 people across more than 132 countries. This newsletter is free to everyone, thanks to the generous support of fellow YLE community members. To support the effort, subscribe or upgrade below: Subscribe
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The new "science golden age" looks suspiciously like a grift
This edition of PN is made possible by paid subscribers. Become one ⬇️ 🚀 Subscribe to PN 🚀 The Trump regime is trying to usher in a “Golden Age in Science” where scientific research is run like a Trump family business, artificial intelligence is all that matters, profit is everything, and expertise is for chumps. Or at least that’s the vision emerging from a new 123-page “Report to the President” from Michael Kratsios, the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In a normal administration, you could probably skip over learning about a science policy document — but this is no normal administration, and this is no normal science policy document. Instead, it’s Trump’s attempt to end the actual golden age of science that was kicked off in 1945 with the publication of '“The Endless Frontier” by Vannevar Bush. [ ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/harmeet-dhillon-portland) [ Harmeet Dhillon demonstrates danger of posting through it ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/harmeet-dhillon-portland) Liz Dye · Jul 29 [ Read full story ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/harmeet-dhillon-portland) Bush, at President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s request, laid out a vision of federal support for science that centered on funding universities to do basic research, saying that as long as those institutions were “vigorous and healthy and their scientists are free to pursue the truth wherever it may lead, there will be a flow of new scientific knowledge to those who can apply it to practical problems in Government, in industry, or elsewhere.” Kratsios’s report is supposed to be the successor to Bush’s, and even apes the format, but this isn’t really a document about science policy. It’s one about ending science research as we know it in favor of shoveling cash at big tech companies. While it might be temping to wave this away as an aspirational policy document, Trump has already begun to shift billions in research funds to AI projects and has taken a hatchet to science funding across the board. He’s teed up the shift Kratsios proposes here, and since neither Congress nor the Supreme Court seem inclined to stop him from doing whatever he wants with taxpayer money, it isn’t doomering or hyperbole to say we are staring down the barrel of a world where the only “science” the government intends to support is for-profit tech and defense advancements. Science for dummies Part of how you can tell this isn’t a document about science is that you are immediately faced with an absolute wall of business-speak of the worst sort. Did you know we must “tightly couple our science and technology enterprises to ensure that groundbreaking ideas invented in the United States are rapidly prototyped, tested, manufactured, and scaled domestically”? You do now! That tone isn’t surprising, because Kratsios has no background in science or research. He has a bachelor’s in political science and spent most of his career working for Peter Thiel at Thiel Capital. After a stint in the first Trump administration as Chief Technology Officer, where he also did not do any science, Kratsios was tasked in 2020 with overseeing the Pentagon’s research budget for a brief time, a position that, as the Wall Street Journal put it, “carries a great deal of power in terms of dictating investment allocations.” He spent the Biden years at Scale AI as “head of strategy,” which you will also note is neither a science nor a research job. But Scale AI has contracts with the Department of Defense and, as the Washington Post wrote in 2023, “has been aggressively pitching itself as the company that will help the US military in its existential battle with China.” And now you have the necessary background for our new golden age, which is going to be a golden age of taking money away from scientists and universities and giving it to companies like Scale AI. A note from Aaron: Working with brilliant contributors like Lisa takes resources. If you aren’t already a paid subscriber, please become one to support our work. 👇 Subscribe In a genuinely galling move, Katsios spends a lot of time slamming universities because of “administrative burdens on researchers” and the “well-documented inefficiencies” in academia, the message being that those damn universities waste the time of amazing researchers with paperwork. Except it’s the administration that is attempting to impose inefficient, unnecessary burdens on those researchers with a proposed Office of Management and Budget rule that would require senior political appointees to approve every science grant and ensure it aligns with Trump’s personal priorities. Researchers would also have to seek prior government approval to attend conferences or publicize their research. And political appointees could terminate any grant at any time if they feel like it. [ ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/omb-rule-science-funding) [ The murder of expertise ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/omb-rule-science-funding) Lisa Needham · Jun 11 [ Read full story ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/omb-rule-science-funding) But when it comes to AI, we’re going to “restore permissionless innovation.” The report proposes to give lucky ducky innovators a pile of cash up front for grants lasting five years or longer, saying “awards should be fully-funded in year one, with all resources earmarked upfront, to minimize administrative burdens and reduce pressure for researchers to generate intermediate results to secure continued funding.” Yeah, wouldn’t want to have to make the Very Special Tech Bros show results or get money parceled out year by year like the plebes at universities. The report also proposes that we should have “fast grants” with “simplified applications requiring just a few pages of writing” because that is definitely how science works, just writing a bit off the dome and getting some cash. [ ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-ai-action-plan-altman-llms) [ Tech elites are turning AI into ChatGPTrump ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-ai-action-plan-altman-llms) Paul Waldman · July 29, 2025 [ Read full story ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-ai-action-plan-altman-llms) Oh, and we should have prizes and challenges, where multiple teams compete. The proposed prizes include incentives like “advance procurement commitments,” which means the federal government agrees to buy whatever is being developed. There’s also “regulatory fast-tracking,” making sure all those great AI thingies don’t have to wait too long to be unleashed on a market. These aren’t incentives to do science. These are incentives to develop things with tax dollars that you can then sell to the government for more tax dollars. In the suggestion that might be the most unhinged, the most very opposite of how both government and research work, our new age will include “golden tickets.” That’s where an individual reviewer in an agency — yes, just one person — can “recommend unconventional proposals that may not pass consensus-driven review panels” because somehow this will “surface valuable ideas too divisive for committees and attract higher quality reviewers by empowering them to exercise independent scientific judgment.” Yes, that’s saying that a random person in an agency should be able to shovel money at some idea even if it can’t pass a review panel, and that the opportunity to do so will attract better employees because apparently all the best minds in science are chomping at the bit to be allowed to unilaterally fund AI research based on their personal vibes. But that isn’t at all how actual science works, and actual scientists aren’t unhappy about review panels. They work collaboratively, not siloed in some secret race to create the next AI chatbot. A 2020 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research examined whether peer review panels succeed in helping agencies predict which research ideas will best advance science. Peer review was better at finding “diamond in the rough” applicants than a single government program official. How about that. Trump always wants a taste It’s painfully clear that what Katsios is trying to do here is turn the whole of government science research and funding into the sort of “move fast and break things” paradigm that is the hallmark of big tech. That method works to line the pockets of tech executives, but it isn’t science. There’s a reason the government funds different kinds of research than private tech companies do. What Katsios either fails to understand or deliberately ignores is that the federal government is the main funder of basic research precisely because it can take a long time for it to bear fruit and is not intended to be profitable as such. “Basic” here does not mean rudimentary or simple, but rather research that is designed to advance scientific knowledge instead of achieving a specific outcome or product. Big tech companies don’t widely fund that sort of research, because it doesn’t make them money. Industry dollars account for only about 20 percent of basic research funding, while the government contributes around 60 percent. Big tech companies and startups do, however, rely on and benefit from that basic research. A 2019 study found that 35 percent of all patents obtained by venture-backed startups from 1976 to 2016 cited federally supported research. Basic research funded by the NIH contributed to every single drug the FDA approved from 2010 to 2016. [ ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-saudi-nuclear-deal) [ The Saudi nuclear farce and governance by whim and meme ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-saudi-nuclear-deal) Noah Berlatsky · Jul 27 [ Read full story ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-saudi-nuclear-deal) Unlike inventing the next ChatGPT, actual science is slow and iterative. Government funding of research that, on its face, would not appear to lead to any big new invention is actually what underpins those big new inventions. If the government hadn’t funded research into desert lizard venom, we wouldn’t know about semaglutide, and we wouldn’t have Ozempic. If research scientists hadn’t studied how bees optimize nectar foraging within a colony, we wouldn’t have the algorithm that assigns internet traffic across computer servers. The report assiduously ignores that a symbiotic, profitable relationship between the federal government, universities, and private companies already exists. Each federal research dollar generates about $1.50 to $3.00 in long-term economic benefits. The $36 billion the government awarded in NIH research funding in fiscal year 2025 generated $94 billion in new economic activity. Trump’s proposed new golden age is intended to strip those billions from universities, resulting in the dismantling of departments and the shuttering of labs. But Katsios has a plan for that: Universities should just become trade schools to churn out no-show STEM degrees! “Require universities and community colleges to embed practical technical training and externships into STEM curricula. Let hands-on experience and industry credentials count toward degrees.” It’s quite the feat to, on the one hand, strip schools of funding for scientific research while simultaneously demanding to control what is taught and, oh, also, colleges need to give degrees to employees at big tech companies just for being employees at big tech companies. The new golden age would also exacerbate the brain drain Trump’s policies have already caused. Nature found that in the first quarter of 2025, US scientists submitted 32 percent more job applications abroad than in 2024. A March 2025 poll by Nature of roughly 1,600 scientists found that over 1,200 said they were considering leaving the country. Europe is investing $565 million to make it a “magnet for researchers” and provide funding for scientists who relocate. The new golden age is also about embedding Trump’s xenophobia into the fabric of American science. The report complains of an “over-reliance on foreign students” that “creates a security challenge our institutions are ill-equipped to address” and that a “reliance on foreign talent sidelines American students.” This is, to put it mildly, nonsense. International students pay far higher tuition and often receive no financial aid. Their tuition dollars are what make it possible for American students to get financial aid. In the 2023-2024 school year alone, international students contributed $43.8 billion to the US economy and supported over 378,000 jobs. Those 1.1 million international students accounted for only six percent of the total number of students in higher education that year, but were such an economic engine that for every three international students, one job was created or supported. It’s impossible not to wonder whether part of Trump’s loathing for universities and their leading role in scientific research is that there is no way for him to corrupt the process and make money off it in the same way he can by giving millions and billions to Silicon Valley types who, in turn, give him millions in cash. There’s no way for his children to invest in universities that the government then gives no-bid contracts to, fattening the family’s bottom line, which is pretty much the Trump sons’ current venture capital practice. Trump and Katsios’s view of science is narrow, cramped, and wrong. We’re not in a crisis, we’re not a failed state. We’ve been a science superpower for decades, and the only thing that threatens that is Donald Trump. Tech bros are already living high off the hog in this administration. They don’t need any more of our tax dollars. Hopefully this new golden age never comes to pass. Thanks for reading Public Notice. This post is public so feel free to share it. Share We’ll be back with more tomorrow. If you appreciate today’s PN, please do your part to keep us free by signing up for a paid subscription. 🚀 Subscribe to PN 🚀 Thanks for reading, and for your support.
Michigan’s Platform for Advanced Nuclear Energy
Michigan is building an advanced nuclear platform around small modular reactors, nuclear manufacturing, research depth and coordinated project support.
The US ‘golden age’ science strategy: what Europeans need to know
The US has unveiled what officials claim is the most radical overhaul of the public R&D system in a generation, which if implemented could have significant implications for transatlantic research collaboration. Science: A New Golden Age derides universities as “legacy institutions” and instead wants to prioritise funding on technological challenges, new research labs and funding that follows individual scientists, rather than being linked to their institutions. “Too much of our research enterprise has come to serve itself rather than the scientists within it,” writes Michael Kratsios, director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the only named author of the report. “Federal funding agencies should support a broader range of performers.” But some critics argue that the strategy is a smokescreen, using genuine problems in academia as an excuse to further weaken US universities, which US vice-president JD Vance has labelled “the enemy..”Even as it talks of a “golden age” for science, the White House has proposed halving the 2027 budget of the US National Science Foundation (NSF), and has put forward double-digit cuts for other funding bodies, such as the National Institutes for Health. It asked for similarly steep savings in 2026, but Congress stopped them going through. Science: A New Golden Age says success will be measured by the extent to which scientists are “free” to pursue the most “vital questions,,” painting academia as currently hidebound by bureaucracy, sluggishness and consensual conservatism. And yet the Trump administration is simultaneously planning new rules that will hand political appointees unprecedented powers to screen and cancel grants. The report has pretentions to be the successor to Science: The Endless Frontier, the seminal 1945 document in which presidential science advisor Vannevar Bush set out the case for post-war government funding of basic research, helping to spur the creation of funders such as the NSF. Even the title page font is the same. But it remains unclear if the latest report will leave anything like as lasting a legacy.Here, Science|Business explains some of the biggest proposed changes in Science: A New Golden Age, and how Europeans think it might change the landscape of their biggest science partner.Universities under fireA key target of the report are US universities, which it repeatedly suggests are outmoded as research institutions. It criticises the NSF for channelling resources “overwhelmingly to a single type of performer, the university-based, principal investigator-led research group..” Universities “extract” money from researchers’ grants to support “growing administrative bloat,” alongside legitimate uses. The Trump administration has been trying to cut the overhead costs in federal research grants that flow to universities. Instead, new institutions are being built. In May, the NSF announced it would spend $1.5 billion on two new so-called X-Labs, focused on scientific instrumentation and quantum systems. The idea is that they fill a niche in the landscape, tackling problems that are too big for a university lab, but too early stage for private start-up funding. Parallel with Europe?This shift to new research organisations parallels moves in Europe to set up new innovation agencies, such as Germany’s Sprind, the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency, and the EU’s European Innovation Council. The Dutch and French governments are looking to set up their own entities too. There’s now an emerging consensus, evident in a number of new strategies, that public R&D needs to be shaken up, Charles McIvor, an economist at the OECD, has written in response to Kratsios’s plans. “What stands out for me across these strategies [in the US, Germany, South Korea and Japan] is that governments are realising that the old ways of delivering STI [science, technology and innovation] programming no longer works,” he said in a LinkedIn post. Metascience wins?The document is, at least on the face of it, also a big win for some policy thinkers in the US who want far more experimentation with new forms of research grant and institution.It name-checks a litany of new public R&D ideas, from focused research organisations and advance market commitments to “golden tickets,” which allow grant reviewers the power to hand applicants money without requiring the consensus of other review panellists.Related articlesEuropean researchers sound the alarm that Trump rule changes will hit cooperationFocused research organisations: what are they, and how do you set them up? NIH turmoil risks reciprocal EU-US access to health research funding In addition, every federal research funding agency should set up a metascience unit, the strategy says, “with authority to run controlled experiments on review and funding mechanisms.” The UK has already set one up, the strategy points out. This mirrors recommendations to the European Commission. In 2024, a report led by former Portuguese science minister Manuel Heitor also advised the EU to set up an “experimental unit” to test out new methods of funding research. So far, however, Brussels hasn’t put forward any plans to do so. Bypass universitiesBut there’s a worry that the Trump administration is using the metascience movement to justify an overhaul of public R&D that punishes universities, which it sees as centres of political resistance. Last year, it threatened to cut Harvard University’s federal funding unless it hired and admitted a “critical mass” of new faculty and students to create “viewpoint diversity” across campus. It’s also attempted to strip academics of funding for working on politically forbidden areas, like LGBTIQ people’s health.The new strategy appears to be a “move to bypass the power of universities full stop and allow funders and political bureaucracies to handpick the projects and people who will execute them,” said Jean-Claude Burgelman, a former senior official in the Commission’s research directorate, on LinkedIn.The EU’s science counsellor in Washington, Florent Bernard, wrote that the plans risk diverting public research funding so that it “solely serves private interests.” “Who, if not independent universities, will do research that demonstrates the impact of tobacco on lung cancer or the role of human activities in our current climate crisis?” he wrote.Should we take it seriously?“I would view the overall document as a bad faith argument,” said Cole Donovan, director of science policy at the campaigning group Stand Up for Science, and a former OSTP official. “I don’t see the project itself as something that can be isolated from the broader attack on the system.” He thinks the argument that academia has become dysfunctional and in need of radical reform is being deployed as part of a “PR argument” to legitimate moves against US scientists. The strategy presents ideas like metascience units as new, whereas there were moves to set them up at the NSF during the previous administration of Joe Biden, Donovan said. The other caveat here is that the OSTP has limited power to carry out any of these recommendations. While Kratsios has issued a memo to research agencies telling them to implement the recommendations in the report, he doesn’t have direct budgetary control. “As a former OSTPer myself, this does not seem like a document that is realistic,” said Donovan.
After Hobbes vs Rousseau: Politics must move beyond human nature
Since the great debate between Hobbes and Rousseau, our political theory has been organised around a single question: is human nature essentially good or essentially corrupt? Graham Harman, the philosopher behind object-oriented ontology, argues that this is simply the wrong question to be asking. The real forces governing our collective fate - climate change, artificial intelligence, geography, and pandemics - are non-human; therefore, questions about human nature are not the central ones. Instead, Harman proposes a politics reorganised around our relationship to non-human objects and environments, in which quasi-government institutions incentivise and deter actions with the aim of extending the survival of the human race. “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” This has become one of the most popular phrases among twenty-first-century intellectuals. Often misattributed to Fredric Jameson, it has been warmly embraced by such influential authors as Slavoj Žižek and the tragically departed Mark Fisher, and has fueled the notion that the major problem with the political Left is that it simply needs to become more speculative and creative. Naturally, this is never a bad idea in any human pursuit. But what if the political distinction between Left, Right, and Center itself results from a failure of imagination? SUGGESTED READING Hobbes vs Rousseau: are we inherently evil? By Robin Douglass This particular division has been with us only since the summer of 1789. During the simmering prelude to the French Revolution, it referred originally to the physical position in the National Assembly of radical figures on one side and loyal monarchists on the other. These positions are linked with two entirely different camps of modern political theory. On the Left we find a series of authors ranging from the moderate (Locke) to the supercharged (Rousseau) to the truly radical (Marx), all of them contending that exploitation of the many by the few justifies revolutionary overthrow of the existing order. On the Right they are countered by the likes of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Schmitt, a group of thinkers convinced that corrupt human nature can be tamed only by force. In the words of the Nazi supporter Schmitt: “One could test all theories of nature and state and political ideas according to their anthropology and classify these as to whether they consciously or unconsciously presuppose [humans] to be by nature evil or by nature good.” This is the division we continue to face today, even in the daily retail politics of Western democracies.___Our species has regularly proven itself capable of both the noblest gestures and the most scathing cruelties, making it hard to define us as essentially either emancipatory or brutal in our aims.___The most refreshing feature of David Graeber and David Wengrow’s 2021 book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity was their awareness that the forced choice between Rousseau and Hobbes (as they put it) is no longer sufficient. Our species has regularly proven itself capable of both the noblest gestures and the most scathing cruelties, making it hard to define us as essentially either emancipatory or brutal in our aims. Far from being stationed “beyond good and evil,” we seem to be fully entangled with both. We are not naturally good or evil, Graeber and Wengrow contend, but naturally experimental and imaginative. They rest their case on the archaeological record, which seems to bear witness to numerous episodes of seasonally shifting governments and festivals, which vacillate in the same society (even in the same year) between the egalitarian and the dictatorial. Such praise of political experiment makes a good fit with the generally anarchist position defended by these authors. Yet it is also what I find most disappointing in their position. Although they are right that the forced choice between Hobbes and Rousseau falls short of what our new situation requires, the authors simply replace it with praise for the human being as a political tinkerer and performer. In other words, they give us just another theory of human nature, one that would not have been out of place in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. What other options might we have?___The time is ripe for a retheorization of politics on the basis of something other than human nature… We are not just alienated and limited by objects, but also empowered and unleashed by them___One fresh approach would be to treat politics within a broader framework than human nature, given that the polis does not exist in a vacuum filled exclusively with people. When Bruno Latour went to observe the baboons of Kenya with the San Diego anthropologist Shirley Strum, they jointly concluded that these primates were more socially interdependent than our own species. Each baboon is so reliant on the dynamics of the group that they find themselves locked into constant surveillance of their potentially dangerous peers. The group structure turns out to be inherently volatile. Humans, by contrast, are able to stabilize their societies to a large degree through the mediation of inanimate objects. Although one’s position in society may seem to fluctuate over time, considerable stability is produced through such items as apartment keys, wedding rings, and identification cards, all of them serving to secure us a place distinct from that of our fellows. The Italian philosopher Maurizio Ferraris has written at length about the crucial role of documents in establishing social relations, making him a hero among notaries in his country. Proper names and license plates cement our position amidst other humans, as do symbolic achievements such as graduation from a top university or distinguished wartime service with its various medals and ribbons. None of this is found among baboons, despite their closeness to us on the evolutionary tree: after all, we did share a common ancestor just 25 to 30 million years ago. SUGGESTED VIEWING The goodness paradox With Richard Wrangham The time is ripe for a retheorization of politics on the basis of something other than human nature, whether understood in the manner of the Left or of the Right. We are not just alienated and limited by objects, but also empowered and unleashed by them. But initially, it is true, we face non-human things primarily in the form of constraints. It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to form a human civilization underwater, deep underground, atop Mount Everest, or in outer space. Human dependence on the non-social background takes on subtler form in discussions of political geography, especially unloved on the more idealistic Left. Consider the luckless position of Poland during World War II, sandwiched between Hitler on one side and Stalin on the other. By contrast, note the good fortune of the United States in not having a military peer positioned on any land border. Anglo-American geopolitics, since the writings of the American naval commander Alfred Thayer Mahan and the British geographer Sir Halford Mackinder, has been wedded to the notion that one or more liberal offshore naval powers should prevent any authoritarian “heartland” regime from gaining effective control of Eurasia. That remains the case whether the opponent is the impatient Napoleon, the swashbuckling German Kaiser, the villainous Hitler, the murderous Stalin, or the industrial juggernaut Chinese. In their current Foreign Affairs article “Heartland vs. Rimland,” Michael Beckley and Hal Brands analyze the current and coming state of the world on the basis of these same rather durable principles. In recent years a similar outlook has been embraced, in inverted form, by the Putin-loving Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, an icon of the Rightist intellectual underworld. For Dugin, the Anglo-Saxons are an evil force bent on destroying the spiritually superior people of the land: much like Athens in its failed war with Sparta, or Carthage in its eventual collapse against Rome. But the shared notion on both sides is that any strategy that fails to take geography into account is likely to end up as a defeated form of excessive optimism.___When dealing with environmental degradation, then, we are doing business with forces that promise dire effects on our species as a whole.___More striking for us today than geography is the non-human object called climate, which threatens rimland and heartland equally. Even if we contend that humans are one hundred percent responsible for triggering the climate crisis, it remains non-human in the sense of being an independent force beyond our effective control. In a major work published just before his death in 2002, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, the American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould noted the tendency of evolutionary theorists to focus too closely on the fate of individuals in view of their successful or failed adaptation to circumstances. With climate change, however, we confront a force that goes well beyond the scope of any individual life. Whereas Richard Dawkins extended evolutionary questions downward from individuals to the sub-individual gene, Gould pushed it upward, speaking of entire species or clades as impacted by environmental change. The asteroid that struck the Yucatán 66 million years ago is only the most famous example of this sort. In the wake of that catastrophe, large animals needing abundant supplies of food were at a fatal disadvantage by contrast with the smaller birds and mammals of the planet. When dealing with environmental degradation, then, we are doing business with forces that promise dire effects on our species as a whole. The effect is to shift our attention away from individual beings towards the survival of the group.In the United States in particular, the COVID-19 pandemic sparked considerable backlash among those who asserted a nearly absolute degree of individual freedom. In California I encountered those who demanded that their businesses be allowed to reopen, that it was enough to cover their mouths but not their noses, or that they should have the right to enter any public area despite refusing vaccination. Yet public health is probably the clearest argument against libertarianism, which often merely asserts the autonomy of individuals against any claims of the commons. In normal times the individual is worth defending; under conditions that threaten the survival of part or all of our species, compulsion may be our only resort, as with perfectly reasonable blackouts and rations in wartime. To rebuild human society under the constraints of climate change will be one of the great challenges of the century to come, as will our improvised grappling with artificial intelligence. Such phenomena pose existential risks for humanity, and leave far less room for tolerance of individual brattiness. Cases are mounting of devastating wildfires caused by arson. Recently it was reported that there is even a website where one can bet on the location of coming wildfires, raising the specter of deliberate blazes set to collect on wagers. The death penalty has steadily lost support in a world where many stress the infinite value of human life. But if we focus instead on entire ecosystems, those who purposely burn the forests may begin to look worse than serial murderers.___The politics of the future may be splintered by disagreement over such topics as how to manage our environing background and how to permit or restrict the entry of new objects into the political sphere.___So far I have spoken of force, authority, and punishment: measures sure to have greater appeal to those who identify with what we know as the Right. But other implications of the post-anthropocentric world are likely to have different backers. If non-human objects are seen as structuring political space, it stands to reason that they can no longer be introduced solely by the pace of technical breakthrough. Fields ranging from cybernetics to energy will demand increased politicization once they are reconceived not just as products of individual human investment, but as renovations of collective political geography. This need not involve world government, with its inherent risk of tyranny, but may involve quasi-governmental enforcers of prestige along the lines of a less corrupt FIFA or International Olympic Committee, punishing deviant states not with violence but with less tangible incentives.Politics will never lose its historic links with conflict and faction. But rather than factions aligned by differing theories of human nature, the politics of the future may be splintered by disagreement over such topics as how to manage our environing background and how to permit or restrict the entry of new objects into the political sphere. This will prove just as incommensurable with the modern Left/Right spectrum as a globe is with a two-dimensional map.
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