Ryan Volz

This is our satellite. Bought and paid for with taxpayer dollars, appropriated for this specific mission by the elected Congress. Those who would destroy it on purpose are our enemies.

And I'll go farther than this: Democrats are never going to start winning elections again until they're willing to call a thing just what it is. Texas Democrats should be clear and persistent in saying that public service cuts overseen by non-experts desperate for billionaire tax cuts killed people.

I have no difficulty saying Trump and Musk caused the deaths of some of the 50+ people who died in the floods in Texas.

And here's why: these two men with no expertise in disaster preparedness were told not to cut the positions they cut—and were told people would die if they did.

Then people died.

“ICE gets a bigger budget than the Marine Corps” is a simple fact that should be communicated very widely because it clearly expresses how crazy and radical this is

If a 33 year old socialist immigrant Muslim can win the Dem mayoral nomination in a landslide in the biggest city in the entire country

Fuck it man, the game is on, get this shit moving and start fighting

Cool cool cool. I’m not allowed to have a drink with dinner or buy modest upgrades from cattle car seats on transatlantic flights on federal grants, plus we’re audited every year…but it is somehow absolutely necessary for the head of HUD to kick out NSF to have an executive dining room?

Maybe quit voting for their fucking bills then? Maybe quit confirming their nominees? Maybe shut down the Senate with the many procedural tools available to you? Maybe do something other than send sternly worded letters?

We should never let ourselves get desensitized to this. It can’t be overstated how outrageously unpresidential and un-American it is for Donald Trump to speak to the US military like they’re his partisan personal army.

do you ever think about how this is all happening for no reason at all?

Hell of a photo

Last week, NASA and NSF released their FY26 budget requests. We list the detailed impacts on the astronomical sciences in this blog post, and share how you can take action today.
aas.org/posts/news/2...

@policy.aas.org

saw a post saying we're not gonna see a human land on mars in our lifetime.

i mostly agree but wanna sort of point out why.

getting to mars: ez. solved. we've done it dozens of times with satellites, rovers and stuff. getting to mars has been solved for 60 years.

but:

Cutting research at the National Science Foundation by more than half(!) is intentionally sabotaging the future. These are contracts the federal government competitively awards to universities to develop breakthroughs and train graduate students to become future leaders & experts. Future is at risk.

I realize that as a retired professor I have a responsibility to say more on this than I have.

International students are essential to the fiscal bottom line of almost every university. This is an unambiguous attempt to destroy Harvard—permanently.

And he won’t stop with Harvard. This is madness.

Trump Has Cut Science Funding to Its Lowest Level in Decades (Gift Article) The lag in funding extends far beyond D.E.I. initiatives, affecting almost every area of science: chemistry, computing, engineering, materials and more.

NSF Physics was cut by 85%, basically wiping out most of its capacity for supporting research.

NSF Astronomy was cut by 53%

Undergrad education was cut by 71% and research on learning by 79%

Graduate education was cut by 100% to ZERO.

#GiftLink ⚛️🔭

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

people clapping in an audience sitting at small tables

a man registering attendees at a conference welcoming table

a group of conference attendees standing on an inside stairway looking up at the camera

It's #NEWSDR time again (already)!

The New England Workshop for Software Defined Radio is May 29-30 @wpiedu.bsky.social (WPI): newsdr.org/workshops/ne...

Haystack researchers Ryan Volz & Kazu Akiyama will give invite talks this year!

Register by May 22 to attend:

newsdr.org/workshops/ne...

This is absolutely devastating.

ACAB. Regardless of what it says on their vests. Fascists, one and all.

We need a way to aggregate what Donald Trump is doing to this country | Press Watch I'm calling for an army of volunteers to build a massive wiki that enumerates the things that are broken and will need fixing

I'm calling for an army of volunteers to build a massive wiki that enumerates the things that Trump has broken and that will need fixing: presswatchers.org/2025/05/we-n... Are you with me?

Because no one spends as much on science as the US does, destroying NIH, NSF, NOAA, NASA, EPA, USDA, USGS, etc. is leading to a brain drain, but it's not to other countries but rather from science. This senseless destruction of US science will hurt the US and the world for a very long time.

US ground-based astronomy has been largely funded by NSF, including EHT, as well as NRAO that operates world-leading radio telescopes. This will cut ~70%+ of the budget for the infrastructure, including buildings, equipment, and administrators, causing catastrophic damage to basic science research.

I’m pretty sure all the astronomers already heard this bad news, but idk how many other folks know about this proposal—NASA science would be absolutely GUTTED if this passed. US astronomy & astrophysics would be dead. We can’t let this happen—tell your reps, & your friends!

🔭

Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been sitting in a Salvadoran prison for over a month because the Trump Admin made a mistake.

Now, the Admin is defying SCOTUS & refusing to bring him back.

If we allow Trump to violate Kilmar's rights, none of our rights are safe.

Kilmar is all of us.

HAPPY TAX DAY!
How much would you spend on a year of tornado warnings? The average US taxpayer spends only $4 a year to help fund the NWS. It’s a smart investment—every $1 invested in NWS yields approx. $73 in social benefits.
🌪️❄️ Support science. Support the NWS.
Stay tuned for more this #TaxDay

Trump’s Wildly Unconstitutional Plot to Banish U.S. Citizens to Gulags His plan to send American citizens to foreign prisons is the latest in a long series of affronts to the American constitutional order.

Among the Declaration of Independence’s grievances against the Crown was “transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences.”

There are some things obviously I won't and can't say publicly, but I will certainly say this much: anyone in the Trump administration involved in sending innocent people to prisons in El Salvador should be sentenced to an American prison for the rest of their natural lives.

I'm serious about this.

NSF slashes prestigious PhD fellowship awards by half US National Science Foundation announces lowest number of Graduate Research Fellowship Programme recipients in 15 years.

The GRFP is an extremely cost-effective way to nurture young talent in science. Cuts are short-sighted and cruel, but that's the aim of this administration, isn't it? 🧪💔

This is terrorism and those men are fascists. #AbolishIce Not one more dollar for these blackshirt fucks too cowardly to show their faces.

We are speedrunning the Declaration of Independence, folks.