Travis Seaborn

With Grant Cuts, Trump Pressures UCLA to Make Deal Like it did for prestigious private universities, the administration has cut off federal grants for UCLA, alleging it failed to address antisemitism. The UC system must tell the DOJ by today whether i...

The government is “using levers of power that are completely unrelated to the underlying allegations…Cutting off research for diabetes, cancer, heart disease will not improve the safety of Jewish faculty & students on campus & will not address antisemitism.”

—Mia McIver, AAUP Executive Director

Faculty Are Latest Targets of Higher Ed’s AI-ification A new partnership between OpenAI and Instructure will embed generative AI in Canvas. It may make grading easier, but faculty are skeptical it will enhance teaching and learning.

Faculty Latest Targets of Big Tech’s AI-ification of Higher Ed

Last week, Instructure, which owns the widely used learning management system Canvas, announced a partnership with OpenAI to integrate into the platform native AI tools and agents... bit.ly/3H5zSm0

#HigherEd #EDUSky #AcademicSky

Right then...

A quick review of the DOE's new 'critical review' of climate science. Whether it's worth a formal community response - I'm still not sure, but here's my first thoughts

/thread/

Federal agencies hiding out in a bunker

What Does Trump’s Budget Bill Mean for the Farm Bill? The recently passed budget bill slashes funding for SNAP. That may make it harder for congressional Democrats to support a food and farm bill.

"The bill slashes SNAP by more than $100 billion, which is a devastating blow to families trying to make ends meet. But there’s more to the story than the cuts themselves." Learn what's at stake in Melissa Kaplan's blog.

a man with a beard wearing a nike hat and jacket ALT: a man with a beard wearing a nike hat and jacket

So depressing submitting grants while knowing the funding rate is going to be extra abysmal. Just hoping for the calls to not be cancelled or some sort of weird desk reject because of the subject matter.

Keeping fingers tightly crossed for the one going out today.

The entire point of good reporting or good scholarship is to tell us something we didn’t already know and the idea that they could ever be replaced by AI tools that rely on scraping the internet database of what we *do* know is just ludicrous.

Congress eliminated public media funding. At a time of deep division, public media brings us together.

Help keep it strong. Join our monthly donors today: n.pr/458sOhq

This is theft. These reports belong to the American people - they should be easily accessible by all.

NASA Website Will Not Provide Previous National Climate Reports

NYTimes: NASA Website Will Not Provide Previous National Climate Reports www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/c...

One of our “green new scam” research grants that USDOT terminated focused on making transit infrastructure more resilient to more frequent and severe weather events. But “climate change adaptation” was too woke, obviously, and doing this research is clearly unnecessary

The Trump regime is about to burn 500 tons of USAID emergency food. Why?
Because it expired after its shipment was delayed.

1.5 million children could have eaten for a week. Now, taxpayers will spend $130K for it to be destroyed.

This isn’t just inefficient – it’s cruel.

The National Science Foundation continues to be threatened with major cuts.

The link below lists the Congresspeople who are on the frontlines of deciding these cuts this week and would be well worth a quick call today if they’re in your state to advocate for not cutting NSF’s budget.

What happens now that SCOTUS has lifted the injunction preserving the Education Department?

•Mass firings will move forward
•Offices will be downsized, transferred to other agencies, or shuttered altogether
•Civil rights adjudication will likely freeze
•Billions in school funding is imperiled

According to this Supreme Court, President Biden's Department of Education was exceeding its power by trying to forgive peoples' student loans.

President Trump, on the other hand, has the power to just completely dismantle the entire Education Department.

It’s absolutely impossible to think this is the result of good faith legal analysis, especially when they refuse to provide any reasons!

Trying to be a bit better w/ engaging here, and so apologies that this is so delayed but...

Congrats to @rhall01.bsky.social successfully defending her MS last Thursday! Really cool work spanning spatial scales for bumble bees: landscape genetics across the state and nesting within cattle pastures.

EPA Punishes Employees Who Sent Zeldin “Declaration of Dissent” The Environmental Protection Agency is targeting employees who raised concerns about the direction of the agency under the Trump administration.

On Thursday, the #EPA placed at least 139 employees on administrative leave after they signed and publicized a “declaration of #dissent” against Administrator Lee Zeldin and the greater Trump administration. newrepublic.com/post/197616/...

It's a 100-year-old lesson that was obvious 2 years ago:

Every living NASA science chief unites in opposition to unprecedented… The entire past leadership of NASA’s science activities have released a joint statement condemning the proposed 47% cuts proposed to the agency’s science…

Today, *every* living prior leader of NASA's science directorate have released a joint letter condemning the proposed cuts to NASA science. These individuals every administration from Reagan to Biden, and all believe these cuts are insanely destructive: www.planetary.org/press-releas...

scientists work like crazy to get tenure, but that kind of pace and lack of work-life balance is not sustainable...

Image of firefighters standing in a circle getting a briefing. Text: July 7 A crew of firefighters from Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, gather for a briefing as they aid in search and rescue efforts near the Guadalupe River after a flash flood swept through the area. Eli Hartman/AP

This picture broke me. The US and Texas governments have treated our Mexican neighbors so poorly for so many years now. But here the first responders are, crossing the border without another thought to help with flood rescue & recovery in Kerr County. www.npr.org/sections/the...

A full 25% of my clinical practice is just sitting with terrified parents who don’t know what will happen to their child’s services in the next school year. I can’t help them plan because it’s completely uncertain, except for certainly not as adequate as last school year.

Text from the 1990 global change research act (see link above).

The US Global Change Research Program's website, including all its sub-domains that host the National Climate Assessments and related reports, is now offline.

The 1990 Global Change Research Act (see below) mandates its research findings be available to all federal agencies & departments.

we worked so hard on this, nights and weekends, trying our best to do a good job for the American people

The website www.globalchange.gov, which hosted the federally mandated US Global Change Research Program and all the National Climate Assessment reports and data, has been deleted.

The Nazis burned books, attacked universities, and crippled German science.
The MAGAs delete websites, attack universities, and cripple American science.

The website www.globalchange.gov of the mandated Global Change Research Program & all the National Climate Assessment reports has been deleted.

Excerpt from proposed NOAA budget showing zero funding for Climate Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes

Proposed NOAA budget zeros out ALL climate laboratories and cooperative institutions.

GFDL, NSSL, GML, etc.

This appears to also end the US greenhouse gas sampling network, including at Mauna Loa, the oldest continuous carbon dioxide monitoring site on Earth.

www.commerce.gov/sites/defaul...

It shouldn't get lost that just today, Senate Republicans have voted to close nursing homes, close rural hospitals, and cut food stamp benefits for children and veterans.

Since Trump’s inauguration, the National Science Foundation has awarded about half as many grants as it did in the same period in 2024, according to a Post analysis of the NSF database. The agency has terminated about 1,700 grants in the past few weeks and slowed new funding to a trickle, according to public records, internal data obtained by The Post and an employee familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. So far this year, the agency has received only $6.5 billion of the congressionally appropriated $9 billion that it is supposed to spend on research, according to the employee and the records. No money at all has gone into a “facilities” spending account that is supposed to contain $230 million for fiscal 2025, the employee said and the records show. Because of the halt in funding, new research in areas including environmental science and neuroscience is not getting underway, the employee said. The agency is also mostly not giving out awards this year, the employee said. The Office of the Director will not “release money into our accounts to do anything,” the employee said. “Essentially, money has been vaporized.”

Beyond today's annexation of the NSF building, this new budget detail in WaPo is also 🤯 and needs investigation:

"So far this year, [NSF] has received only $6.5 billion of the congressionally appropriated $9 billion that it is supposed to spend on research"

www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

ICE press release: Johnny Noviello, a 49 year old Canadian, has died in the custody of ICE. The cause of death is under investigation.

A 49 year old Canadian has died while in ICE custody.