Updates & News
Many people will say that we have to focus on the science, it’s more important now than ever. But science has a long history of being weaponized to justify all kinds of cruelty, from racism and medical exploitation to colonial exploitation and weapons development.
People in the US are feeling helpless, frustrated, and at the same time, activated. Meet your neighborhood resistance.
In the 1st two weeks of 2026, we have seen the US government kidnap and kill people on US soil and abroad. Even in the US's sorted and dark history of imperialism and colonialism, this is a new low. The villains in this story are us. And complicity is shared, whether we voted for the US administration that is responsible for this wave of violence or voted another way. We own this horror and its up to us to stop it and spend the rest of our lives making amends to the rest of the world.
Kelly Hayes, a veteran organizer for justice, published her remarks from a vigil held for Renee Nicole Good, who was murdered by an ICE agent in Minneapolis on January 7th. We strongly encourage you to read the entirely of Kelly’s remarks but wanted to share a quote here:
“We are not here to ask for a gentler boot on our neighbors’ necks. Nor are we in search of a detour back to the road that brought us here. We are here to say no — no to the kidnapping of our neighbors, no to the normalization of fascist violence. We are here because our love and decency are stronger than our fears, and because we know we will find courage in each other.”
This is what we owe to ourselves and each other. To keep our humanity, to feel grief and horror and not become numb to this ever expanding violence, and to continue to show up and fight.
There is no alternative.
Support communities in Minnesota. This list is in no way comprehensive but a great place to start (and another round-up on Reddit).
The American Academy of Pediatrics continues to publish the recommended vaccination schedule based on credible science.
VanguardSTEM is hosting a Guerilla Mentoring: Beyond the Bench event on January 28th - register, volunteer, support!
A US judge issued an order protecting pro-Palestine activists on university campuses.
The US Senate approved billions in funding for science, rejecting cuts from the Trump administration.
A federal judge ruled against Trump’s cancellation of millions in energy grants to Democratic states.
Dogs can learn words and listen in on conversations not directed at them! We dog owners somehow knew this all along 🐶
NASA just evacuated astronauts from the International Space Station, after one of the astronauts needed medical attention.
No safe spaces for fascists: the training guide from The Existentialist Republic newsletter.
You can defund ICE in two weeks from Politics Made Easy newsletter.
Frances Colón’s op-ed in El Pais Trump’s climate war could cost America a generation, if we let it.
Protests across Iran have been brutally suppressed by the government, with thousands dead.
An energy emergency has been declared in Ukraine, as energy infrastructure has been heavily damaged by Russian attacks, which also target and kill many civilians.
More than 450 Palestinians have been killed since the cease-fire, many of them children.
Fighting in Sudan is again escalating, even as peace talks resumed in Cairo, Egypt
Avelo airlines is ending its contract with ICE and will no longer deport people on their flights. Boycotts and pressure work!
Upwards of $98 million in planned data center work has been derailed by community pushback across the US
Several US DOJ prosecutors resigned over how DOJ is handing the investigation into the murder of Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota.
Ordinary people fighting back
We continue to recommend Rebecca Solnit’s Meditations in an Emergency blog
If you’re not already reading or listening to Dr. Heather Cox Richardson’s daily newsletter, we cannot recommend it enough for historical context and a longer view than what is happening day to day in the US.
The All We Can Save Project has a page of book recommendations, all linked to the work people are doing to advance climate action. Check it out and find the right book for this moment.
Tree by David Suzuki and Wayne Grady is the story of a single tree, from the moment the seed is released from its cone until, more than five hundred years later, it lies on the forest floor as a nurse log, giving life to ferns, mosses, and hemlocks, even as its own life is ending.
Can we solve the misinformation crisis with more information? Check out this episode of the Volts podcast to learn what might work.
Check out the Project Censored Show, an increasingly rare independent journalism project covering topics that do not get fair shake from the mainstream media.
We cannot recommend the Upstream podcast enough. Critical assessment of capitalism and inspiration for the world we want to build.
ICE is using facial recognition systems to identify people. Oh, and ICE murders people. We are in that phase of our democracy backslide when we have goons in the streets across the US, searching for people that fit a particular racial profile, asking for papers, and then disappearing people. It needed to be said.
Former CDC head Susan Monarez testified in front of Congress and shared the directives she received from RFK Jr., many to disregard science, and his disregard for the agency and staff he is charged with leading . “On August 25, I could have stayed silent, agreed to the demands, and no one would have known,” Monarez said. “What the public would have seen were scientists dismissed without cause and vaccine protections quietly eroded — all under the authority of a Senate-confirmed director with ‘unimpeachable credentials.’ I could have kept the office, the title, but I would have lost the one thing that cannot be replaced: my integrity.”
Sexual harassment and abuse (and misogyny, discrimination, assault, and bullying) are so rampant that there is a whole National Academies of Science report on the topic. Accountability has to start in our home institutions. Accountability has to start with us.
Numbers matter. If they didn’t matter, wanna-be authoritarians wouldn’t be censoring labor statistics that don’t show them in favorable terms. The “flood the zone” strategy the Trump administration has been implementing is causing harm on a scale that is truly difficult to enumerate but all those numbers matter too.
As the good folks at Stroika point out, the authoritarian playbook is a playbook for a reason. This is, in fact, precedented. And that means we can learn from what has worked previously.
Our mission is to serve society by making science open, inclusive, and accessible, and to transform society by fighting racism, patriarchy, and oppressive societal norms
