Want to see something really insane? Look at this website for USGS's Water Science Centers and Regions and see how many of their directors have "Former Employee" after their names. Everyone's gone! My best friend from grad school was one of them. Who's monitoring floods, droughts, etc?
The Merlin Bird ID app wouldn’t exist #WithoutNSF. 🪶
Excellent breakdown of yesterday's GDP report from @josephpolitano.bsky.social, who goes through all the ins and outs of how tariffs showed up in the numbers. #NumbersDay #EconSky
www.apricitas.io/p/tariffs-ar...
While there's little sign of elevated UI continued claims in the national data, there is a significant uptick in UI claims for DC (four-week average). Regular state continued claims rose just 5.1% overall, but by 100.1% in DC. Federal funding cuts are already having an impact.
#EconSky #NumbersDay
The request, spelled out in an email obtained by ProPublica, comes amid concerns that DOGE has overstepped its bounds in seeking highly restricted private information about taxpayers, public employees or federal agencies.
NEW: Nike says most of the 1.1M people making its products earn 1.9X their local minimum wage. We obtained a payroll ledger for a Cambodian factory that supplied Nike for two years.
1% of the workforce earned that much.
Team effort with @sbmaneyphoto.bsky.social. www.propublica.org/article/nike...
Why our planet (and not just its people) should have legal rights
www.ft.com/content/9fb7e995-eba8-43...
NEW PIECE: I've been working for a while on a piece on social security death notices and payment finality. Just as I was finalizing it, including with a new legal memo!- it was reported that DOGE declared four MILLION people dead. Read all about the issues here
www.crisesnotes.com/the-crisis-a...
Helpful framework for thinking about the implications of the US’s current economic policies: privatebank.jpmorgan.com/nam/en/insig...
NEW: A SECOND story was released today of a Venezuelan man disappeared by the Trump admin. Neiyerver Leon is a barber who entered legally seeking asylum in June 2023. ICE arrested him on March 13 and accused him of being in TdA.
Days later, he vanished off the face of the earth.
"As leaders of America’s colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education. We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses. We will always seek effective and fair financial practices, but we must reject the coercive use of public research funding. America’s system of higher learning is as varied as the goals and dreams of the students it serves. It includes research universities and community colleges; comprehensive universities and liberal arts colleges; public institutions and private ones; freestanding and multi-site campuses. Some institutions are designed for all students, and others are dedicated to serving particular groups. Yet, American institutions of higher learning have in common the essential freedom to determine, on academic grounds, whom to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom. Our colleges and universities share a commitment to serve as centers of open inquiry where, in their pursuit of truth, faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation. Because of these freedoms, American institutions of higher learning are essential to American prosperity and serve as productive partners with government in promoting the common good. Colleges and universities are engines of opportunity and mobility, anchor institutions that contribute to economic and cultural vitality regionally and in our local communities. They foster creativity and innovation, provide human resources to meet the fast-changing demands of our dynamic workforce, and are themselves major employers. They nurture the scholarly pursuits that ensure America’s leadership in research, and many prov…
NEW— Nearly 200 US college presidents affirm their schools as places where "faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions…without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation."
Signers include Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, UPenn, Brown, Tufts
Notably absent: Columbia
NEW PIECE: I've decided to finally publish a piece from four years ago that is unfortunately very relevant today: defending the Federal Reserve's status as an independent agency doesn't require embracing the ideology of "central bank independence"
www.crisesnotes.com/just-another...
New from @npr.org: Hundreds of scholars say U.S. is swiftly heading toward authoritarianism www.npr.org/2025/04/22/n... featuring our latest Bright Line Watch report brightlinewatch.org/accelerated-...
President Trump’s trade war will lead to slower economic growth around the world -- with the U.S. economy bearing the brunt of the damage.
Alan Rappeport reports on the latest IMF forecasts:
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/u...
From Nobel prize winning cancer researcher Bill Kaelin
Killing the Science Golden Goose - The American Journal of Medicine www.amjmed.com/article/S000...
The CDC eviscerated divisions that oversee a database on accidental deaths and injuries AND the team that maintains a tool for tracking sexually transmitted diseases.
The EPA will stop requiring that industry measures greenhouse gas emissions.
If you don't measure, it's not a problem, right?
We've reached the point where Republicans are flying to El Salvador to visit one of the most vicious prisons in the world to have photo ops so they can prove their loyalty to the President of the United States.
Trump says end of Fed chair Powell’s tenure ‘cannot come fast enough’
www.ft.com/content/8b8a6582-039d-4d...
Not the headline I want to post. But for everyone trying to understand what’s happening at UMass Chan, why things are so difficult, this is what’s happening. We are a service institution. We educate; we care; we give; we serve rural MA. We dont make money. Our own govt is crushing us. Link below
NEW: Amid increasing reports that U.S. citizens have been caught up in the Trump administration’s immigration dragnet, a dozen members of Congress have written to the government with pointed questions. None has received a reply.
By @nicolefoy.bsky.social
It's finally out! Drink coffee, drink soda, take whatever stimulate you prefer. This is extremely long, even by my verbose standards. But its the absolute minimum word count I thought I could tell the "foreign exchange liquidity crisis" aspect of this with.
www.crisesnotes.com/is-the-trump...
Previously, the arrests of pro-Palestinian voices on university campuses would’ve drawn instant attention from the DHS civil rights office’s First Amendment watchdogs, attorneys in the compliance branch said. That guardrail is gone.
By @davidmcswane.bsky.social & @hannahallam.bsky.social
This is bullshit—of course the US could apply diplomatic pressure to have him returned—but if it is allowed to stand, the executive branch has the power to disappear people permanently without any sort of due process.
That in turn will be the end of all other constitutionally guaranteed rights.
Climate experts expressed shock and dismay at the move.
“It would be a bit like unplugging the equipment that monitors the vital signs of a patient that is critically ill,” one said.
By @fastlerner.bsky.social
Just watched @stephaniekelton.bsky.social and @weisenthal.bsky.social on @allinwithchris.bsky.social and yikes brothers and sisters if you aren’t worried you aren’t paying attention… Trump thinks his trade war is icing out China but what he’s actually doing is isolating the United States.
Economic uncertainty update:
The thing about veering wildly between policy positions, favouring and then discarding a new maverick advisor each week, and using contradictory justifications at every turn, is that even if one particular pivot is in the direction of sanity, chaos is the constant.
NEW: Entire scientific fields have been wiped out by the nearly 800 grants cancelled at NIH, finds a @nature.com analysis of the unprecedented cuts.
About half of all 2024 NIH projects related to LGBT+ health or vaccine hesitancy — gone.
See the other topics and US states hardest hit here:
Column: The @tampabaytimes.bsky.social story on #Florida’s polluted waters included many remarkable things. But one line was more remarkable than most: “The Department of Environmental Protection declined to make its secretary or staff available for interviews.” www.tampabay.com/opinion/2025...