Dec 29, 2025 - Jan 2, 2026 we begin again

Hello friends, we’re back!    

It is now January 2026, and I took the rest I knew I needed to keep up the marathon. I’m glad you opened this email. Thank you for reading and caring about the world. I hope you know how much that matters. Persistent attention is a small and precious candle we can carry through the most terrible storm.  

The calendar has changed but the challenge has not: we must cope with a viciously racist authoritarian government, under late-stage capitalism, in a rapidly changing climate. It is horrible.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

In 2026 I want all of the decent people to remember one thing. You aren’t meant to be this disciplined, this self-sacrificing to survive. The environment is supposed to support good living. We can have that. You are not a failure. That is politics. That is all.

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The conditions that are shaping our lives right now are the result of long-term, deliberate efforts to amass power. No matter how often some leaders wishfully describe science as “apolitical”, as a competing source of social influence, it is both political and politically targeted. As I prepare for the year ahead, here are three interrelated themes I’ll be closely watching:

1. Research interference - As 2025 wrapped up, my strong sense is that the attacks on science are not easing, but the tactics are shifting. Rather than massive cuts to funding or blatantly illegal grant terminations, there is a shift to more procedural manipulation. At every level of federal science, legitimate experts are being replaced by political operatives. While we hear endless propaganda about  “gold standard science” the facts have never been more distorted. In the next few months, I'll be specifically watching for more on grant review (like the NIH shift away from paylines)  and public health recommendations (like the pediatric vaccine schedule), and thinking about how researchers cope under oppressive regimes.
2. Financial pressure - On top of dire outlooks on Americans’ personal finances, I keep hearing quiet but desperate updates about institutional stability. I sincerely hope that layoffs, departmental closures, and severe budget cuts are rare exceptions to the norm, but that’s because I am not afraid to hope for things that are unlikely. Again, I think there is a shift: the chaos of last spring and summer has eased, but that does not mean funding is flowing normally now, nor that it will be dependable over time. I’ll be watching the space covered by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, reading up on labor organizing success stories, and looking for resources to help researchers manage the moral hazards of entrepreneurial solutions to their funding gaps.
3. Institutional betrayal - The threat here is that organizations won’t just fail to protect their communities, but they’ll become agents of the state. Our government is already denying visas to people who have worked on misinformation and defining their ideological opponents as “domestic terrorists”. As I’ve learned more about data security through my work with Unbreaking, I’ve become increasingly worried about all the new and awful risks posed by the collection and consolidation of our sensitive personal data from our schools, hospitals, employers, and more. Constant surveillance and unfettered, unvetted AI create a nightmarish pairing that I feel hesitant to even bring up in what was supposed to be a brief top-of-the-year reflection.

So… that was a lot. But for as horrible as it is, our situation is not hopeless. Far from it.

I keep seeing the most intentional and inspirational work happening all around me, on every front. Brilliant campaigning, acts of courage, breakthroughs in basic research, community organizing, new alt-weeklies, and more. It’s important not to lose sight of all of this, either.

This briefing will continue as it started: as a place to share what has happened to science & higher education each week. I do this not to recite a litany of loss and damages, but so that we know where our attention is needed and can figure out how to take action together. And wow, we’ve got work to do: protecting people, defending civic institutions, and building better alternatives.

Our time and attention are precious - here’s to using them well this year and always.

Liz

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