Laura Lopez

@ohdearz.bsky.social

Professor of astronomy 🔭 at Ohio State. Co-chair of @aascsma.bsky.social. Alum of UCSC and MIT. She/her 🇲🇽

Answer: New NSF Astro-Core has "target submission date" of Nov 16! From the NASEM Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics meeting last week, Chris Smith said this "is not a deadline but proposals submitted after the target date may be considered for funding in the following fiscal year" (see pic). 🔭

FY27 Core Astronomical Sciences
• Similar to previous AAG solicitation:
o All areas of astronomy are eligible
o Observational, archival data analysis, laboratory, theoretical, computational,
ML/AI.
• Target submission date: Monday, November 16.
o Target date is not a deadline, but proposals submitted after the target date
may be considered for funding in the following fiscal year.
• Can be combined with Dear Colleague Letter and supplement
programs
• Genesis-Mission, CDS&E, RUI, REU, RET, ROA
Dr. Jessie Christiansen@aussiastronomer.bsky.social · 2d ago

Ummm until yesterday there were actual deadlines listed here 👀 (Maybe this is just the previously discussed move to rolling deadlines, but it seems ominous when bundled with all the rest of the new "The Astro-Core program is anticipated to be especially competitive in Fiscal Year 2027" guidelines.)

Screenshot of the NSF MPS Astro core program solicitation page, which has, under 'Full Proposal Deadlines', the highlighted text 'Proposals Accepted Anytime'.

Nikole Hannah-Jones w/ a sobering follow-up on her decision yrs ago to enroll her daughter in a poor, majority-Black public school rather than a wealthier, whiter private school. You leave heartbroken for the kids being failed by this grossly unequal system. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/m...

In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own? (Gift Article)

A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter’s education that I hoped would challenge New York City’s separate and unequal school system. Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice.

nytimes.com

This morning in Biddeford, Maine, a 26-year-old man said goodbye to his wife and daughter and left for work. Moments later he was dead, shot in the head by ICE agents, the second man ICE has killed in six days. ICE is killing our neighbors. ICE cannot be reformed. Abolish ICE.

As part of the BiA x Astrobites collaboration for Black Space Week, Astrobites would like to highlight those in the BiA community who will be attending AAS and presenting! To be considered, please fill out the Google form linked in the QR code. 🔭 🌌

Bild

lots of discussion on how this will affect tech jobs, but once again this applies to academia also every professor you know on a visa will now have to leave the US for a green card, sometimes for multiple years. many will give up in the process. universities may not give them back their jobs.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 4mo ago

🚨 🚨 🚨 NEW: A shocking @USCIS memo seems to declare that hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in this country and applying for green cards must instead apply for visas abroad; which could MASSIVELY disrupt lives. 🧵 on what we know, and what we don’t.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services
PM-602-0199
May 21, 2026
Policy Memorandum
SUBJECT: Adjustment of Status is a Matter of Discretion and Administrative Grace, and an Extraordinary Relief that Permits Applicants to Dispense with the Ordinary Consular Visa Process
Purpose
This memorandum reminds officers and the public that adjustment of status under section 245 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) is a matter of discretion and administrative grace not designed to supersede the regular consular processing of immigrant visas. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reaffirms this consistent and longstanding approach and declares as a matter of general policy its intention to faithfully apply the statutes consistently with this understanding.

As a Costco aficionado, I would like to share that a * on the top right of a Costco price display indicates the item will no longer be sold there once current stock runs out. The * is your secret cue to buy all of that thing if you love it/need it/want it.

Actual picture I took in Costco of the price display for laminate flooring. The price is in big black letters in the bottom right and above it is a discrete asterisk * in the top right that indicates the item will no longer be in Costco's inventory once the current stock is sold.
Kalvin the Reindeer@kalvinmacleod.bsky.social · 5mo ago

COSTCO: here, try this ME: oh yummy COSTCO: so you like it? ME: yes, it's delicious COSTCO: well, we don’t sell it anymore and you'll never see it again.

To understand what the Supreme Court is doing, you have to recognize that this is how authoritarians in Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela consolidated power. Scholars call it autocratic legalism. The Court isn’t complicit. It’s an active participant. Roberts is following a script.

The conservative majority has learned to use anti-discrimination language as the vehicle for preserving discrimination. Justice Kavanaugh’s suggestion that remedies for racism must have an “end point” inverts the logic of the Reconstruction Amendments. They were written to empower Congress to act against racial domination, not to set an expiration date on equality. This will be the Roberts Court’s legacy: using the Constitution not to expand freedom, but to protect established hierarchies. The Court has simply found a new minority to protect—not racial or religious minorities, but a political party whose power endures through structural advantage, even when it commands fewer votes.Where the Court has shown the greatest deference is to power itself, culminating in the decision granting Donald Trump sweeping legal immunity for “official acts”—a ruling that defies global democratic norms, where dozens of presidents and prime ministers have been prosecuted and convicted of crimes in recent years. The Court is thus working on two fronts: shielding the leader of the anti-democratic movement from accountability while simultaneously dismantling the electoral rules that allow the majority to vote his party out.

I feel like we’re willing to make Pluto a planet again, at least provisionally, if they’re willing to fund astrophysics. I’d say $100 billion/year is reasonable But if you keep cutting our budgets, I swear we’ll keep eliminating them. Hope you like a three planet solar system!

Jeff Foust@jfoust.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Isaacman: very much in the camp of making Pluto a planet again. Working on some papers right now to escalate through the scientific community to revisit this. And that's it.

Rep. Dean (D-PA) asks who made the decision to omit the >50 science missions proposed for cancellation from the budget request. Isaacman doesn't clearly answer, but says other missions can fill the gap.