Hi All, I came here to write a short post about how maintaining science infrastructure is critical to innovation – but instead I need to direct you to a real pivotal moment regarding US science infrastructure and I ask you to join me in acting.
There is a proposed change to the OMB (US Office of Management and Budget)’s universal legal framework that governs every federal grant to every recipient across every agency in the federal government (OMB-2026-0034 / 91 FR 32198). Effective Oct 1, 2026, these changes would affect science funding as well as funding across US society. Simply saying what these rule changes would do sounds hyperbolic: Giving explicit grant funding decision-making to political appointees, and removing the primacy of scientific peer review; Limit international collaboration; Prohibit grants from funding diversity, equity, and inclusion policies; Allow cancellation of any grant at any time; Prevent grants from covering conference and travel costs, memberships, and publication costs. You can see a point-by-point analysis in Liz Neeley’s recent Meeting the Moment - Year 2, Week 23, and explore track-changes via the Planetary Society’s tool, which shows exactly what language is changed between the previous version and this proposed regulation. Civic engagement is part of the process for funding science, and there are many groups calling for action. Please join me and submit public comment by July 13, and rally others to do the same.
I’ll close with two articles that originally brought me to write a post. Even as we cope with these shocks to the system, we need to remind ourselves that we are not alone, and that something our community is best at is the maintenance and care that drive innovation.
On moonshots and maintenance (+ what falls between the cracks) by Invest in Open Infrastructure’s Kaitlin Thaney
What We’re No Longer Seeing: AI and the Invisible Newcomer in Open Source by R hero and stdlib’s Mara Averick.
Citation
@online{lowndes2026,
author = {Lowndes, Julie},
title = {Call to {Action:} Civic Engagement for Science
Infrastructure},
date = {2026-06-16},
url = {https://openscapes.org/blog/2026-06-16-civic-engagement},
langid = {en}
}