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As I’ve grown older and experienced the vagaries of my ageing memory, I’ve often reflected on the possibility of a miracle cure that would rejuvenate it. As if in answer to my wishful thinking, not one but several reports recently appeared simultaneously in the scientific news, highlighting a trending solution of which I was blissfully unaware.

A welter of articles – The Times of India, MSN, New York Post and others – spoke of an Indian herb called bacopa, or to give it its full botanical name, Bacopa monnieri, an aquatic flower. This wave of publicity resulted in a massive spike in interest: 2,000 monthly searches on Google and a weekly average of 13,000 views on TikTok.

The reason for its global popularity? A new study which concluded that ingesting bacopa brought significant improvements in both memory and cognition skills (concentration, alertness, reasoning and mental flexibility).

All types of memory were improved – short-term memory (verbal and spatial), working memory and episodic memory (memory of everyday events).

The researchers also reported other brain health-related benefits. Anxiety and cortisol levels in the blood were significantly reduced, and sleep quality and serum BDNF were increased by taking a bacopa supplement (BDNF is a naturally produced protein in the brain that stimulates the production of new brain cells in every decade of our life). If I had wanted a miracle, perhaps I had found it.

But one swallow doesn’t make a summer. And neither should a single study set a law in stone.

So, curious as to the weight of evidence, I delved deeper. My search led me to a surprising source – Ayurvedic medicine.

Over many thousands of years, this traditional Indian medical system has expounded the benefits of bacopa. Bacopa is a medhya rasayana, meaning a class of herbs believed to improve mental health, memory and intellect, and promote rejuvenation and longevity.

It would be true to say that millions of people over the centuries have relied on this supplement for health and mental health benefits. However, history and tradition teach us many things, but not all of them are true. And, therefore, I asked myself: what of the scientific evidence?

Flowering bacopa.
bonilook / Alamy Stock Photo

One of the earliest papers on the effects of taking bacopa was in 2008. And though, over the years, it stimulated several more studies favourable to the use of bacopa, the picture of its effectiveness is mixed.

It’s true to say that most of the papers – many of them using the gold standard method of a randomised controlled trial – find that bacopa is positive for improved memory and reduced anxiety. And there is a biological explanation.

Bacopa extract contains many potent substances called “bacosides” that have, among other effects, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anxiolytic (anxiety-reducing) properties. But by no means do all studies show that bacopa improves memory and anxiety. In fact, in 2021 a review of bacopa research stated that there are only limited studies (six to date) to establish the memory-enhancing and brain-protecting effects of bacopa.

Safety

Then I asked myself, is it safe? I turned to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). If there is an issue with safety and side-effects, the FDA would know.

The FDA has not approved bacopa as a drug and therefore has not made any statements as to its safety or efficacy. However, the way in which a supplement is marketed can lead to the FDA categorising it as a drug. For example, in 2024, a US company selling veterinary products was censured because their marketing of one of them intended it to be used in the cure of chronic seizures and epilepsy in dogs.

The FDA can investigate, censor or fine – without limit – any company which says that its supplement acts like a drug by implying it can be used to prevent, mitigate, treat or cure any illness.

There is a very fine line here. For example, marketing such as, “the control of blood pressure” may lead to a US federal investigation. A company in Houston, Texas, making medical claims for bacopa was given 15 days in a warning letter by the FDA to correct their marketing or face sanctions including fines.

The FDA states: “Dietary supplements are regulated by the FDA as food, not as drugs. However, many dietary supplements contain ingredients that have strong biological effects which may conflict with a medicine you are taking or a medical condition you may have.”

Such effects are known in bacopa because it inhibits an important brain chemical called acetylcholine and therefore could counteract cholinergic drugs for conditions such as dementia, glaucoma and urinary retention.

It is generally safe for most people, but is inadvisable where there are thyroid conditions, asthma, COPD, genital problems, stomach ulcers or if pregnant.

What are we to make of all this? All that glisters is not gold. And the wisdom of the ages is not irrevocable. There may be a frenzy of popularity in the media but that makes bacopa neither effective nor safe.

The moral here is that before spending your hard-earned money on a promising product that has been seized upon by millions, you should pause, read, research, think and then, based on real evidence, commit – one way or the other. After all, since the days of Newton, science has served us pretty well. Läs mer…

Before January 27 2025, it’s fair to say that Chinese tech company DeepSeek was flying under the radar. And then it came dramatically into view.

Suddenly, everyone was talking about it – not least the shareholders and executives at US tech firms like Nvidia, Microsoft and Google, which all saw their company values tumble thanks to the success of this AI startup research lab.

Founded by a successful Chinese hedge fund manager, the lab has taken a different approach to artificial intelligence. One of the major differences is cost.

The development costs for Open AI’s ChatGPT-4 were said to be in excess of US$100 million (£81 million). DeepSeek’s R1 model – which is used to generate content, solve logic problems and create computer code – was reportedly made using much fewer, less powerful computer chips than the likes of GPT-4, resulting in costs claimed (but unverified) to be as low as US$6 million.

This has both financial and geopolitical effects. China is subject to US sanctions on importing the most advanced computer chips. But the fact that a Chinese startup has been able to build such an advanced model raises questions about the effectiveness of these sanctions, and whether Chinese innovators can work around them.

The timing of DeepSeek’s new release on January 20, as Donald Trump was being sworn in as president, signalled a challenge to US dominance in AI. Trump responded by describing the moment as a “wake-up call”.

From a financial point of view, the most noticeable effect may be on consumers. Unlike rivals such as OpenAI, which recently began charging US$200 per month for access to their premium models, DeepSeek’s comparable tools are currently free. They are also “open source”, allowing anyone to poke around in the code and reconfigure things as they wish.

Low costs of development and efficient use of hardware seem to have afforded DeepSeek this cost advantage, and have already forced some Chinese rivals to lower their prices. Consumers should anticipate lower costs from other AI services too.

Artificial investment

Longer term – which, in the AI industry, can still be remarkably soon – the success of DeepSeek could have a big impact on AI investment.

This is because so far, almost all of the big AI companies – OpenAI, Meta, Google – have been struggling to commercialise their models and be profitable.

Until now, this was not necessarily a problem. Companies like Twitter and Uber went years without making profits, prioritising a commanding market share (lots of users) instead.

And companies like OpenAI have been doing the same. In exchange for continuous investment from hedge funds and other organisations, they promise to build even more powerful models.

These models, the business pitch probably goes, will massively boost productivity and then profitability for businesses, which will end up happy to pay for AI products. In the mean time, all the tech companies need to do is collect more data, buy more powerful chips (and more of them), and develop their models for longer.

But this costs a lot of money.

Nvidia’s Blackwell chip – the world’s most powerful AI chip to date – costs around US$40,000 per unit, and AI companies often need tens of thousands of them. But up to now, AI companies haven’t really struggled to attract the necessary investment, even if the sums are huge.

DeepSeek might change all this.

By demonstrating that innovations with existing (and perhaps less advanced) hardware can achieve similar performance, it has given a warning that throwing money at AI is not guaranteed to pay off.

For example, prior to January 20, it may have been assumed that the most advanced AI models require massive data centres and other infrastructure. This meant the likes of Google, Microsoft and OpenAI would face limited competition because of the high barriers (the vast expense) to enter this industry.

Money worries

But if those barriers to entry are much lower than everyone thinks – as DeepSeek’s success suggests – then many massive AI investments suddenly look a lot riskier. Hence the abrupt effect on big tech share prices.

Shares in chipmaker Nvidia fell by around 17% and ASML, which creates the machines needed to manufacture advanced chips, also saw its share price fall. (While there has been a slight bounceback in Nvidia’s stock price, it appears to have settled below its previous highs, reflecting a new market reality.)

Nvidia and ASML are “pick-and-shovel” companies that make the tools necessary to create a product, rather than the product itself. (The term comes from the idea that in a goldrush, the only person guaranteed to make money is the one selling the picks and shovels.)

The “shovels” they sell are chips and chip-making equipment. The fall in their share prices came from the sense that if DeepSeek’s much cheaper approach works, the billions of dollars of future sales that investors have priced into these companies may not materialise.

‘When we find some gold we can invest in AI.’
Everett Collection/Shutterstock

For the likes of Microsoft, Google and Meta (OpenAI is not publicly traded), the cost of building advanced AI may now have fallen, meaning these firms will have to spend less to remain competitive. That, for them, could be a good thing.

But there is now doubt as to whether these companies can successfully monetise their AI programmes.

US stocks make up a historically large percentage of global investment right now, and technology companies make up a historically large percentage of the value of the US stock market. Losses in this industry might force investors to sell off other investments to cover their losses in tech, leading to a whole-market downturn.

And it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. In 2023, a leaked Google memo warned that the AI industry was exposed to outsider disruption. The memo argued that AI companies “had no moat” – no protection – against rival models. DeepSeek’s success may be the proof that this is true. Läs mer…

The pairing of British prime minister Keir Starmer and US president Donald Trump connotes many imponderables. The only certainty happens to be the most significant: they will be in office together for four years.

It is rare for a prime minister and a president to have the luxury of knowing – barring extreme unpredictabilities, such as death or incapacity – they have a full term in harness. And personal chemistry matters.

Trump emphasises (rather too much for the liking of America’s allies) the deal, the handshake, the gaze; the bond that only the lonely, only those who lead, can have. Starmer emphasises level-headedness (although his government has not been particulary conspicuous in evincing it).

Opposites may well attract, but the precedents for coterminous presidents and prime ministers are not encouraging. John Major and Bill Clinton, elected seven months apart, spent 1992 to 1997 together. But in the very definition of what not to do before an election, London had made its preference for the result of the election in America known – and the other guy won. The Conservative and the Democrat were no more than coolly cordial thereafter.

Major awks.
Alamy/Michael Stephens

On his re-election in 2001, Tony Blair knew he had George W. Bush for at least four years – it turned out to be eight – but the consequences for him were disastrous once the two decided to partake in a war on “terror”.

In 1964, Harold Wilson and Lyndon Johnson were elected almost simultaneously, and spent 1964 to 1968 together. Though they were Labour and Democrat, and therefore from sister parties, it was not a harmonious pairing. Wilson’s meddling in, but lack of support for, Johnson’s war in Vietnam was a source of unbridled irritation in the White House.

Trump and May

The last time Trump became president, Theresa May was prime minister and she travelled with undisguised haste to the White House. There she achieved a highly untypical diplomatic coup in getting Trump to commit publicly to Nato (that bars should be so low was a general feature of the presidency).

Their subsequent relationship was, however, toxic. No prime minister has been less likely to gaze, to bond (despite pictures of them holding hands), and the president held her as having mangled Brexit, a bid for freedom with which he was keen to associate himself.

Theresa May and Donald Trump during her visit to the White House, before relations turned sour.
EPA

Before the US election, Starmer displayed a unfamiliar deftness of touch, and banked some credit. His immediate phone call to candidate Trump following an attempt on his life in July was both bold and smart. There followed the fabled Trump Tower two-hour chicken dinner.

It was more typical for Starmer that when it emerged, in a most unfortunate echo of 1992, Labour activists – and Starmer’s own pollster – were working on the Kamala Harris campaign, Trump’s people cried foreign interference and threatened legal action.

And the two in Starmer’s team who will have the most exposure to the new administration have both been publicly rude about Trump. David Lammy, now foreign secretary, called him “deluded, dishonest, xenophobic [and] narcissistic” in 2019.

Peter Mandelson, nominated but not yet confirmed as the UK ambassador to the US, has made comments about Trump being a “bully” and a “danger to the world”. To appease opposition in DC on his appointment, Mandelson has since turned on a sixpence (or perhaps a dime).

This is, at root, about Trump. No other president would have attracted such comments from frontline politicians. But from TV studio to TV studio, Lammy and Mandelson will have those quotes hung about their necks as if they were modern-day ancient mariners. Starmer’s innate caution in public utterance, in this area at least, has inured him.

Indeed, the repercussions of his unusual boldness in picking Mandelson over a career diplomat may discourage Starmer from ever thinking imaginatively again.

Most members of the Trump administration would be naturally hostile to a Labour government even without its leading figures insulting their boss or campaigning for his opponent. Certainly, the grounds for disagreement are great: the threat of tariffs, demanded increases in defence spending, the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, co-operation with China and support for Ukraine.

Thus Morgan McSweeney – architect of Labour’s 2024 victory, planner of its re-election and Starmer’s chief of staff – flew out to meet Susie Wiles, his equivalent in the White House. (It did not, a person privy to such information told me, go well. Voices were raised.)

Elon Musk, this moment’s most prominent presidential acolyte inveighed on X, “Starmer must go”, adding for good measure, “He is a national embarrassment.” It is indeed embarrassing – for Starmer – but he will be consoled with the well-founded suspicion that the life-expectancy of Musk and Trump’s tech bromance will be much less than four years.

Cause for self-reflection

The return of Trump, emboldened and more powerful than before, has effectively forced the posing of the age-old question: over which expanse of sea should Britain gaze – the Channel or the Atlantic? Churchill thought it should – and that only Britain could – do both.

Hence, perhaps, Trump’s own public statement about the possible destination of his first international trip: “It could be UK. Traditionally, it’s been UK.”

It hasn’t. Only Jimmy Carter, in 1977, and Joe Biden, in 2021, visited the UK first – and then because of summits. More than a few presidents (most recently Ford and Johnson) didn’t visit at all.

But even what might have been a supportive comment was laced with arsenic: “Last time, I went to Saudi Arabia because they agreed to buy 450 billion dollars’ worth of United States merchandise … And if that offer were right, I’d do that again.” Which at least may free the British government to be as unsentimentally transactional.

Trump and Starmer achieved big victories, albeit when painted in the most flattering terms. Starmer’s came on a historically low combination of vote share and voter turnout, Trump’s with fewer votes than Biden. But Trump will like that Starmer won a large majority. When May managed to lose hers in 2017, what little respect Trump had for her went with it.

Starmer would much rather have had four years with Biden, and even more with Harris, another public prosecutor of the left. But he has to deal with the transatlantic relationship as it is, rather than as he would wish it to be, and this one is most unlikely to be special.

Starmer is, moreover, a realist. Which is why he’ll also know that the second Trump presidency will be much more consequential than the first. Caution may have limited effect. Läs mer…

A vote in Germany’s national parliament (Bundestag) has led to fears that the firewall supposedly separating mainstream political parties and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been blown apart.

Until now, Germany’s largest parties, including the union of Christian democratic parties the CDU and CSU, and the social democrat SPD, have ruled out any form of cooperation with the AfD. Friedrich Merz, CDU leader and most likely chancellor following the election to be held on February 23, had previously said that decisions in the Bundestag should not be passed if they relied on AfD votes.

And while Merz’s commitment to the firewall had occasionally wavered in some interviews, the CDU had resisted any temptation to do deals with the AfD nationally or in state parliaments. There is some cooperation on a local level, but beyond a vote on local taxation in Thuringia in 2023, mainstream parties have eschewed any hint of state or national level cooperation.

That has now changed. Apparently in response to the AfD’s promising polling ahead of the election on February 23, the CDU has tacked dramatically to the right on immigration policy. Merz introduced a five-point plan into the Bundestag proposing a significant tightening of Germany’s immigration system.

Most radical among the proposals is the reintroduction of border controls at German borders and for migrants without permission to reside in Germany to be turned back. These measures would be questionable, at best, in their conformity with European law.

Merz made it plain he would put this plan to a vote, even if it could pass only with AfD support. This it did, by 348 to 345. The CDU and its sister party the CSU voted in favour, alongside the AfD and the Free Democratic Party (barring a handful of rebels). The SPD, Greens and Left party voted against while the anti-immigration “left populist” Sarah Wagenknecht Alliance abstained.

This was not a binding vote but Merz can now push for a more formal process to make his five-point plan law. It is also highly symbolic.

The AfD was gleeful, hailing a “turning point”, or Zeitenwende, in migration policy. It celebrated the “fall of the firewall” and a “great day for democracy”. The SPD and Greens were furious, with outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz accusing Merz of breaking his word – and breaking with the tradition of former chancellors from Konrad Adenauer to Angela Merkel by relying on votes from the far right. Merkel subsequently underlined Scholz’s point by criticising Merz’s move.

The Greens talked of a “dark day for our democracy”. A Left Party parliamentarian called out “to the barricades”, and some spontaneous demonstrations occurred around the country. Merz said he “regretted” that the vote had only been possible with AfD support but added that “doing the right thing does not become wrong when the wrong people – the AfD – vote for it”.

An election ahead

Merz’s changed position on immigration and the AfD has come a few weeks ahead of an election that had initially got off to a slow start. The campaign is now suddenly polarised and angry on all sides.

The election is being held because the three-party governing coalition of social democratic SPD, Greens and liberal FDP collapsed in November over disputes on fiscal policy. Opinion polls have been quite stable, showing the CDU/CSU leading. However, Merz’s party would need a coalition partner.

The AfD has been consistently in second place but the firewall would prevent a coalition. This helps explain why reactions to the Bundestag vote have been so fierce.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz looks on while Friedrich Merz speaks during the Bundestag debate.
Alamy/dpa picture alliance

And while the government collapsed because of disagreements over the economy, several high-profile stabbings by migrants have turned this into an election about immigration. Indeed, migration, asylum and security questions are now right at the top of the list of voters’ concerns.

The AfD has the wind in its sails and is basking in the glow of Elon Musk’s noisy endorsements. It has adopted an even more hardline manifesto than its previous offerings, proposing “remigration” as a policy – code for removing legal migrants who are no longer welcome.

However, it is important to note that with this vote, Merz has not declared open season for a coalition with the AfD. And if a coalition was formed with the SPD or Greens, there is no way it would survive Merz turning to the AfD for support on issues where the coalition partner disagreed.

Scholz has warned of the risk of events similar to Austria, where the CDU/CSU’s sister party, the ÖVP, initially ruled out going into government with the far-right FPÖ but changed its stance when negotiations with mainstream parties failed. Merz insists this won’t happen but moderate CDU/CSU voters may heed Scholz’s warnings and look elsewhere. Merz’s gamble is that such losses would be offset by voters who support a harder line on migration – and even that he will win voters back from the AfD.

These events highlight the debate being had ever more often across Europe. Are far-right parties weakened if their positions are, to a degree, accommodated by the political mainstream? Or does this in fact strengthen and embolden them?

That debate will continue but there are more immediate consequences in the wake of the Bundestag vote. Germany’s neighbours will look on uneasily, both because of the febrile political atmosphere in the largest EU member state at a time of substantial geopolitical pressure and because, if Germany were to be found to have set aside European law, that could trigger a total unravelling. Läs mer…

“Just Because I am a Librarian doesn’t mean I have to dress like one.”

With this breezy pronouncement, Belle da Costa Greene handily differentiated herself from most librarians.

She stood out for other reasons, too.

In the early 20th century – a time when men held most positions of authority – Greene was a celebrated book agent, a curator and the first director of the Morgan Library. She also earned US$10,000 a year, about $280,000 today, while other librarians were making roughly $400.

She was also a Black woman who passed as white.

Born in 1879, Belle was the daughter of two light-skinned Black Americans, Genevieve Fleet and Richard T. Greener, the first Black man to graduate from Harvard. When the two separated in 1897, Fleet changed the family’s last name to Greene and, along with her five children, crossed the color line. Belle Marion Greener became Belle da Costa Greene – the “da Costa” a subtle claim to her Portuguese ancestry.

One of the nine known portraits of Belle da Costa Greene that photographer Clarence H. White made in 1911.
Biblioteca Berenson, I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies

When banking magnate J.P. Morgan sought a librarian in 1905, his nephew Junius Morgan recommended Greene, who had been one of his co-workers at the Princeton Library.

Henceforth, Greene’s life didn’t just kick into a higher gear. It was supercharged. She became a lively fixture at social gatherings among America’s wealthiest families. Her world encompassed Gilded Age mansions, country retreats, rare book enclaves, auction houses, museums and art galleries. Bold, vivacious and glamorous, the keenly intelligent Greene attracted attention wherever she went.

I found myself drawn to the worlds Greene entered and the people she described in her lively letters to her lover, art scholar Bernard Berenson. In 2024, I published a book, “Becoming Belle Da Costa Greene,” which explores her voice, her self-invention, her love of art and literature, and her path-breaking work as a librarian.

Yet I’m often asked whether Greene mentions her passing as white in her writings. She did not. Greene was one of hundreds of thousands of light-skinned Black Americans who passed as white in the Jim Crow era. While speculation about Greene’s background circulated in her lifetime, nothing was confirmed until historian Jean Strouse revealed the identities of Greene’s parents in her 1999 biography, “Morgan: American Financier.” Until that point, only Greene’s mother and siblings knew the story of their Black heritage.

“Passing” can often raise more questions than answers. But Greene did not largely define herself through one category, such as her racial identity. Instead, she constructed a self through the things she loved.

‘I love this life – don’t you?’

In my view, any consideration of Greene’s attitudes toward her own race must remain an open question. And uncertainty can be acknowledged – even embraced – with judgments suspended.

The Morgan Library & Museum currently has an exhibition on Greene that will run until May 4, 2025 – one that’s already generated debates about Greene and the significance of her passing.

One section of the exhibition, “Questioning the Color Line,” includes novels on passing, paintings such as Archibald J. Motley Jr.’s “The Octoroon Girl,” photographs of Greene, and clips from Oscar Micheaux’s 1932 film “Veiled Aristocrats” and John M. Stahl’s 1934 film “Imitation of Life,” which portray painful scenes between white-passing characters and their family members.

None of these objects clarifies Greene’s particular relationship to passing. Instead, they place the librarian within melodramatic and conventional representations about passing that stress self-division and angst.

We don’t know – perhaps we will never know – whether Greene had similar moments of self-doubt.

Greene frequently received glowing press coverage.
The Morgan Library & Museum

Yet some critics have concluded as much. In his review of the exhibition for The New Yorker, critic Hilton Als laments what Greene’s passing had cost her. He describes her as a “girl who loved power,” a woman who “became a member of another race – not Black or white but alternately grandiose and self-despising.”

There’s a lot of certainty in such a pronouncement – and scant evidence furnished to support such declarations.

New York Times columnist John McWhorter takes issue with Als’s depiction of the librarian’s passing in a Jan. 23, 2025, article.

Citing passages from her letters in which Greene excitedly describes reading the Arabic folktales “The Thousand and One Nights” and seeing exhibitions of modern art, McWhorter asks readers to reconsider this “witty, puckish soul who savored books and art” and “had an active social life.”

What if Greene gave her race little thought, McWhorter wonders. What if she simply saw the notion of race and racial categorization as “a fiction” and instead lived her life to its fullest? Of course, her light skin afforded her the opportunity that other Black people of her era didn’t have. But does that necessarily mean that she was self-loathing or conflicted?

“[W]e are all wearing trousers and I love them,” Greene writes in one letter to Berenson, adding, “The Library grows more wonderful every day and I am terribly happy in my work here … I love this life – don’t you?”

Greene’s vitality captivated Berenson, who once described the librarian as “incredibly and miraculously responsive.”

The connoisseur was not the only contemporary who admired Greene’s effervescence. In “The Living Present,” an account of the activities of women before and after World War II, Greene’s friend Gertrude Atherton paid tribute to Greene, a “girl so fond of society, so fashionable in dress and appointments” that she could impress any stranger with her “overflowing joie de vivre.”

Crafting an aura

Viewed through a more expansive lens, Greene’s passing can be seen as part of an exercise in self-fashioning and self-invention.

Greene dressed to be noticed – and she was. Meta Harrsen, the librarian Greene hired in 1922, offers a rare eye-witness account. On the day Greene interviewed Harrsen, “she wore a dress of dark red Italian brocade shot with silver threads, a gold braided girdle, and an emerald necklace.”

Greene understood well the power of clothes to project a distinct identity – a highly crafted one in this case, and one befitting a connoisseur of rare books.

Greene poses for a Time magazine portrait in 1915.
The Morgan Library & Museum

At that, she excelled. She became known for her stunning acquisition coups: her purchase of 16 rare editions of the works of English printer William Caxton at an auction; her procurement of the highly coveted Crusader’s Bible through a private negotiation; and her acquisition of the Spanish Apocalypse Commentary, a medieval text written by a Spanish monk that Greene was able to buy at a steep discount.

To me, a 1915 photo captures Greene’s confidence and aura more than any other image of the librarian.

She posed in her home and wasn’t shot in soft focus with a studio backdrop as other photographs tend to portray her. Sitting on the arm of a large chair upholstered in a tapestry weave, she wears an elaborate hat with a large ostrich plume, a high-necked blouse under a long, loosely belted jacket with a ruffled cuff over a long dark skirt. The decor is no less striking: Flemish tapestries decorate the walls behind her, and a liturgical vestment is draped over the bookcase. Looking directly at the viewer, Greene is assured and poised.

Greene’s stylish flair was not simply decorative. It was a testament to her vibrant personality and the joy she took in her work. Rather than judge her according to contemporary notions of racial identity, I prefer to marvel over her achievements and how she became a model for generations of future librarians.

Greene didn’t just pass. She surpassed – in spectacular ways. Läs mer…

Over the past decade, furtive commercial entities around the world have industrialized the production, sale and dissemination of bogus scholarly research. These paper mills are profiting by undermining the literature that everyone from doctors to engineers rely on to make decisions about human lives.

It is exceedingly difficult to get a handle on exactly how big the problem is. About 55,000 scholarly papers have been retracted to date, for a variety of reasons, but scientists and companies who screen the scientific literature for telltale signs of fraud estimate that there are many more fake papers circulating – possibly as many as several hundred thousand. This fake research can confound legitimate researchers who must wade through dense equations, evidence, images and methodologies, only to find that they were made up.

Even when bogus papers are spotted – usually by amateur sleuths on their own time – academic journals are often slow to retract the papers, allowing the articles to taint what many consider sacrosanct: the vast global library of scholarly work that introduces new ideas, reviews and other research and discusses findings.

These fake papers are slowing research that has helped millions of people with lifesaving medicine and therapies, from cancer to COVID-19. Analysts’ data shows that fields related to cancer and medicine are particularly hard-hit, while areas such as philosophy and art are less affected.

To better understand the scope, ramifications and potential solutions of this metastasizing assault on science, we – a contributing editor at Retraction Watch, a website that reports on retractions of scientific papers and related topics, and two computer scientists at France’s Université Toulouse III–Paul Sabatier and Université Grenoble Alpes who specialize in detecting bogus publications – spent six months investigating paper mills.

Co-author Guillaume Cabanac also developed the Problematic Paper Screener, which filters 130 million new and old scholarly papers every week looking for nine types of clues that a paper might be fake or contain errors.

An obscure molecule

Frank Cackowski at Detroit’s Wayne State University was confused.

The oncologist was studying a sequence of chemical reactions in cells to see whether they could be a target for drugs against prostate cancer. A paper from 2018 in the American Journal of Cancer Research piqued his interest when he read that a little-known molecule called SNHG1 might interact with the chemical reactions he was exploring. He and fellow Wayne State researcher Steven Zielske began experiments but found no link.

Meanwhile, Zielske had grown suspicious of the paper. Two graphs showing results for different cell lines were identical, he noticed, which “would be like pouring water into two glasses with your eyes closed and the levels coming out exactly the same.” Another graph and a table in the article also inexplicably contained identical data.

Zielske described his misgivings in an anonymous post in 2020 at PubPeer, an online forum where many scientists report potential research misconduct, and also contacted the journal’s editor. The journal pulled the paper, citing “falsified materials and/or data.”

“Science is hard enough as it is if people are actually being genuine and trying to do real work,” said Cackowski, who also works at the Karmanos Cancer Institute in Michigan.

Wayne State scientists Cackowsi and Zielske carried out experiments based on a paper they later found to contain false data.
Amy Sacka, CC BY-ND

Legitimate academic journals evaluate papers before publication by having other researchers in the field carefully read them over. But this peer review process is far from perfect. Reviewers volunteer their time, typically assume research is real and so don’t look for fraud.

Some publishers may try to pick reviewers they deem more likely to accept papers, because rejecting a manuscript can mean losing out on thousands of dollars in publication fees.

Worse, some corrupt scientists form peer review rings. Paper mills may create fake peer reviewers. Others may bribe editors or plant agents on journal editorial boards.

An ‘absolutely huge’ problem

It’s unclear when paper mills began to operate at scale. The earliest suspected paper mill article retracted was published in 2004, according to the Retraction Watch database, which details retractions and is operated by The Center for Scientific Integrity, the parent nonprofit of Retraction Watch.

An analysis of 53,000 papers submitted to six publishers – but not necessarily published – found 2% to 46% suspect submissions across journals. The American publisher Wiley, which has retracted more than 11,300 articles and closed 19 heavily affected journals in its erstwhile Hindawi division, said its new paper mill detection tool flags up to 1 in 7 submissions.

As many as 2% of the several million scientific works published in 2022 were milled, according to Adam Day, who directs Clear Skies, a company in London that develops tools to spot fake papers. Some fields are worse than others: biology and medicine are closer to 3%, and some subfields, such as cancer, may be much larger, Day said.

The paper mill problem is “absolutely huge,” said Sabina Alam, director of Publishing Ethics and Integrity at Taylor & Francis, a major academic publisher. In 2019, none of the 175 ethics cases escalated to her team was about paper mills, Alam said. Ethics cases include submissions and already published papers. “We had almost 4,000 cases” in 2023, she said. “And half of those were paper mills.”

Jennifer Byrne, an Australian scientist who now heads up a research group to improve the reliability of medical research, testified at a July 2022 U.S. House of Representatives hearing that nearly 6% of 12,000 cancer research papers screened had errors that could signal paper mill involvement. Byrne shuttered her cancer research lab in 2017 because genes she had spent two decades researching and writing about became the target of fake papers.

In 2022, Byrne and colleagues, including two of us, found that suspect genetics research, despite not immediately affecting patient care, informs scientists’ work, including clinical trials. But publishers are often slow to retract tainted papers, even when alerted to obvious fraud. We found that 97% of the 712 problematic genetics research articles we identified remained uncorrected.

Potential solutions

The Cochrane Collaboration has a policy excluding suspect studies from its analyses of medical evidence and is developing a tool to spot problematic medical trials. And publishers have begun to share data and technologies among themselves to combat fraud, including image fraud.

Technology startups are also offering help. The website Argos, launched in September 2024 by Scitility, an alert service based in Sparks, Nevada, allows authors to check collaborators for retractions or misconduct. Morressier, a scientific conference and communications company in Berlin, offers research integrity tools. Paper-checking tools include Signals, by London-based Research Signals, and Clear Skies’ Papermill Alarm.

But Alam acknowledges that the fight against paper mills won’t be won as long as the booming demand for papers remains.

Today’s commercial publishing is part of the problem, Byrne said. Cleaning up the literature is a vast and expensive undertaking. “Either we have to monetize corrections such that publishers are paid for their work, or forget the publishers and do it ourselves,” she said.

There’s a fundamental bias in for-profit publishing: “We pay them for accepting papers,” said Bodo Stern, a former editor of the journal Cell and chief of Strategic Initiatives at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a nonprofit research organization and funder in Chevy Chase, Maryland. With more than 50,000 journals on the market, bad papers shopped around long enough eventually find a home, Stern said.

To prevent this, we could stop paying journals for accepting papers and look at them as public utilities that serve a greater good. “We should pay for transparent and rigorous quality-control mechanisms,” he said.

Peer review, meanwhile, “should be recognized as a true scholarly product, just like the original article,” Stern said. And journals should make all peer-review reports publicly available, even for manuscripts they turn down.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. This is a condensed version. To learn more about how fraudsters around the globe use paper mills to enrich themselves and harm scientific research, read the full version. Läs mer…

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether Oklahoma can open St. Isidore: an online Roman Catholic charter school named after the patron saint of the internet. If affirmed, the school would be the nation’s first faith-based charter – a sea change in education law, expanding the boundaries of government aid to faith-based schools.

On Jan. 24, 2025, the justices agreed to hear two consolidated cases: Oklahoma Charter School Board v. Drummond and St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond. Gentner Drummond, the state’s attorney general, filed suit in 2023 to block the school’s contract. In Oklahoma’s courts, Drummond argued that St. Isidore’s creation would violate state statutes, Oklahoma’s Constitution and the U.S. Constitution – and the Supreme Court of Oklahoma agreed with the attorney general.

The ruling involving St. Isidore “stands to be one of the most significant religious and education freedom decisions in our lifetime,” noted Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who backs the school. Opponents such as Drummond, another Republican, fear just the opposite: that a judgment in favor of St. Isidore would threaten religious liberty by allowing closer ties between the government and religious organizations.

Indeed, St. Isidore is a potential blockbuster. At stake is whether, or how far, the Supreme Court may continue to expand the boundaries of permissible government aid to faith-based institutions and their students – a trend I have often written about in my work on education law.

Testing the limits

In a trio of recent cases, the majority of justices held that states cannot deny institutions or individuals generally available aid based solely on their religions. The first, decided in 2017, dealt with a Lutheran church applying for grants to enhance playground protection in a preschool and child care facility in Missouri. The court reached similar conclusions about an educational tax-credit program in Montana, and providing tuition assistance to parents in districts lacking public secondary schools in Maine.

This time around, the justices will face two key questions. First, do the teachings of “a privately owned and run school constitute state action simply because it contracts with the state”? In other words, is a charter school a state actor?

Second, the justices will weigh how the First Amendment religion clauses apply to a faith-based charter school. According to the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The question is whether a state violates the free exercise clause by excluding schools from the charter program “solely because they are religious.” If so, is the exclusion justified by concerns about the government “establishing” religion?

Key arguments

The first issue – the “state actor” question – essentially asks whether a state-funded school teaching Catholicism would constitute the government promoting a religion, in violation of the First Amendment prohibition against doing so.

Drummond, Oklahoma’s attorney general, argues that St. Isidore “misuses the concept of religious liberty by employing it as a means to justify state-funded religion.” The state’s “charter schools bear all of the hallmarks of a public school,” such as being entirely state-funded, he wrote in a brief to the Supreme Court. Thus, as a government actor, St. Isidore may not promote religion or one religion over another.

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond has argued the school is unconstitutional – and the state’s Supreme Court agreed.
AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki

This “state actor” argument may be difficult for St. Isidore’s proponents to rebut. Yet, supporters of St. Isidore have an ace in the hole: that trio of recent Supreme Court opinions expanding the boundaries of aid to faith-based schools and their students.

In the first of the trilogy – the 2017 playground case from Missouri – Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that excluding the Christian child care center “from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution all the same, and cannot stand.”

Roberts authored the opinions in all three of those cases, which reflect the dominant view of the court in recent years: the accommodationist wing. Accommodationists tend to take the position that the First Amendment promotes cooperation between religion and government, so long as the government does not favor a particular religion.

However, the justices’ support for faith-based charter schools may not prove as strong. One reason is that previous cases expanding permissible aid to religious organizations have used what is called the child-benefit test: The students or their parents, rather than the institutions themselves, like St. Isidore, are the primary beneficiaries of the government funds.

Another factor is that Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who has joined the majority in previous decisions increasing aid to faith-based schools and their students, recused herself from participating in the decision over whether to hear the dispute over St. Isidore. She did not say why, and it remains to be seen whether she will take part in its resolution.

In the earlier cases, the five accommodationist justices – led by Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, along with Roberts, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh – supported increased aid. The remaining three justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – are less likely to support St. Isidore’s position. Thus, St. Isidore’s supporters may have little wiggle room.

What’s next?

St. Isidore is a potential game changer, because it may expand the limits of aid to faith-based schools and their students more than ever before.

If the court does uphold the creation of St. Isidore, the full implications remain to be seen. This much appears clear: Other states may follow suit, further blurring the line between church and state.

The Supreme Court will likely release a decision in late spring.
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

A decision in the school’s favor could have other consequences, as well. One issue Oklahoma’s courts considered was whether St. Isidore had to admit and serve students with disabilities. By state law, charter schools are required to, but critics argued that St. Isidore failed to demonstrate that it would.

Nonpublic schools, on the other hand, have no legal duty to admit particular students, including those with disabilities. When they do attend nonpublic schools, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and its regulations require local public school boards to fund some services. But that amount is limited, with the upshot that faith-based schools often are not equipped to serve students with disabilities.

If the court were to uphold the creation of St. Isidore, I believe the ruling could provide the impetus for Congress and the federal Department of Education to modify these laws to increase funding for children with disabilities at faith-based schools.

As I learned in law school, “the Supreme Court does not take cases to affirm them.” That lesson, combined with the court’s three most recent cases on religion and schools, suggests more change may be in the offing when the justices issue their decision – likely in late June. Läs mer…

Private citizens and companies may one day begin to permanently settle outer space and celestial bodies. But if we don’t enact governing laws in the meantime, space settlers may face legal chaos.

Many wars on Earth start over territorial disputes. In order to avoid such disputes in outer space, nations should consider enacting national laws that specify the extent of each settler’s authority in outer space and provide a process to resolve conflicts.

I have been researching and writing about space law for over 40 years. Through my work, I’ve studied ways to avoid war and resolve disputes in space.

Property in space

Space is an international area, and companies and individuals are free to land their space objects – including satellites, human-crewed and robotic spacecraft and human-inhabited facilities – on celestial bodies and conduct operations anywhere they please. This includes both outer space and celestial bodies such as the Moon.

Space objects include landers, rovers, satellites and other objects on the surface of or in orbit around a celestial body.
Stocktrek Images/Stocktrek Images via Getty Images

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits territorial claims in outer space and on celestial bodies in order to avoid disputes. But without national laws governing space settlers, a nation might attempt to protect its citizens’ and companies’ interests by withdrawing from the treaty. They could then claim the territory where its citizens have placed their space objects.

Nations enforce territorial claims through military force, which would likely cost money and lives. An alternative to territorial claims, which I’ve been investigating and have come to prefer, would be to enact real property rights that are consistent with the Outer Space Treaty.

Territorial claims can be asserted only by national governments, while property rights apply to private citizens, companies and national governments that own property. A property rights law could specify how much authority settlers have and protect their investments in outer space and on celestial bodies.

The Outer Space Treaty

In 1967, the Outer Space Treaty went into effect. As of January 2025, 115 countries are party to this treaty, including the United States and most nations that have a space program.

The Outer Space Treaty is the main international agreement governing outer space. However, it is not self-executing.

The Outer Space Treaty outlines principles for the peaceful exploration and use of outer space and celestial bodies. However, the treaty does not specify how it will apply to the citizens and companies of nations that are parties to the treaty.

For this reason, the Outer Space Treaty is largely not a self-executing treaty. This means U.S. courts cannot apply the terms of the treaty to individual citizens and companies. For that to happen, the United States would need to enact national legislation that explains how the terms of the treaty apply to nongovernmental entities.

One article of the Outer Space Treaty says that participating countries should make sure that all of their citizens’ space activities comply with the treaty’s terms. Another article then gives these nations the authority to enact laws governing their citizens’ and companies’ private space activities.

This is particularly relevant to the U.S., where commercial activity in space is rapidly increasing.

UN Charter

It is important to note that the Outer Space Treaty requires participating nations to comply with international law and the United Nations Charter.

In the U.N. Charter, there are two international law concepts that are relevant to property rights. One is a country’s right to defend itself, and the other is the noninterference principle.

The international law principle of noninterference gives nations the right to exclude others from their space objects and the areas where they have ongoing activity.

But how will nations apply this concept to their private citizens and companies? Do individual people and companies have the right to exclude others in order to prevent interference with their activities? What can they do if a foreign person interferes or causes damage?

The noninterference principle in the U.N. Charter governs relations between nations, not individuals. Consequently, U.S. courts likely wouldn’t enforce the noninterference principle in a case involving two private parties.

So, U.S. citizens and companies do not have the right to exclude others from their space objects and areas of ongoing activity unless the U.S. enacts legislation giving them that right.

US laws and regulations

The United States has recognized the need for more specific laws to govern private space activities. It has sought international support for this effort through the nonbinding Artemis Accords.

The Artemis Accords outline a framework for the peaceful exploration of outer space.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

As of January 2025, 50 nations have signed the Artemis Accords.

The accords explain how important components of the Outer Space Treaty will apply to private space activities. One section of the accords allows for safety zones, where public and private personnel, equipment and operations are protected from harmful interference by other people. The rights to self-defense and noninterference from the U.N. Charter provide a legal basis for safety zones.

Aside from satellite and rocket-launch regulations, the United States has enacted only a few laws – including the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 – to govern private activities in outer space and on celestial bodies.

As part of this act, any U.S. citizen collecting mineral resources in outer space or on celestial bodies has a right to own, transport, use and sell those resources. This act is an example of national legislation that clarifies how the Outer Space Treaty applies to U.S. citizens and companies.

Property rights

Enacting property rights for outer space would make it clear what rights and obligations property owners have and the extent of their authority over their property.

All nations on Earth have a form of property rights in their legal systems. Property rights typically include the rights to possess, control, develop, exclude, enjoy, sell, lease and mortgage properties. Enacting real property rights in space would create a marketplace for buying, selling, renting and mortgaging property.

Because the Outer Space Treaty prohibits territorial claims, space property rights would not necessarily be “land grabs.” Property rights would operate a little differently in space than on Earth.

Property rights in space would have to be based on the authority that the Outer Space Treaty gives to nations. This authority allows them to govern their citizens and their assets by enacting laws and enforcing them in their courts.

Space property rights would include safety zones around property to prevent interference. So, people would have to get the property owner’s permission before entering a safety zone.

If a U.S. property owner were to sell a space property to a foreign citizen or company, the space objects on the property would have to stay on the property or be replaced with the purchaser’s space objects. That would ensure that the owner’s country still has authority over the property.

Also, if someone transferred their space objects to a foreign citizen or company, the buyer would have to change their objects’ international registration, which would give the buyer’s nation authority over the space objects and the surrounding property.

Nations could likely avoid some territorial disputes if they enact real property laws in space that clearly describe how national authority over property changes when it is sold. Enacting property rights could reduce the legal risks for commercial space companies and support the permanent settlement of outer space and celestial bodies.

U.S. property rights law could also contain a reciprocity provision, which would encourage other nations to pass similar laws and allow participating countries to mutually recognize each other’s property rights.

With a reciprocity provision, property rights could support economic development as commercial companies around the world begin to look to outer space as the next big area of economic growth. Läs mer…

What do you think there are more of: professional computer programmers or computer users who do a little programming?

It’s the second group. There are millions of so-called end-user programmers. They’re not going into a career as a professional programmer or computer scientist. They’re going into business, teaching, law, or any number of professions – and they just need a little programming to be more efficient. The days of programmers being confined to software development companies are long gone.

If you’ve written formulas in Excel, filtered your email based on rules, modded a game, written a script in Photoshop, used R to analyze some data, or automated a repetitive work process, you’re an end-user programmer.

As educators who teach programming, we want to help students in fields other than computer science achieve their goals. But learning how to program well enough to write finished programs can be hard to accomplish in a single course because there is so much to learn about the programming language itself. Artificial intelligence can help.

Lost in the weeds

Learning the syntax of a programming language – for example, where to place colons and where indentation is required – takes a lot of time for many students. Spending time at the level of syntax is a waste for students who simply want to use coding to help solve problems rather than learn the skill of programming.

As a result, we feel our existing classes haven’t served these students well. Indeed, many students end up barely able to write small functions – short, discrete pieces of code – let alone write a full program that can help make their lives better.

Learning a programming language can be difficult for those who are not computer science students.
LordHenriVoton/E+ via Getty Images

Tools built on large language models such as GitHub Copilot may allow us to change these outcomes. These tools have already changed how professionals program, and we believe we can use them to help future end-user programmers write software that is meaningful to them.

These AIs almost always write syntactically correct code and can often write small functions based on prompts in plain English. Because students can use these tools to handle some of the lower-level details of programming, it frees them to focus on bigger-picture questions that are at the heart of writing software programs. Numerous universities now offer programming courses that use Copilot.

At the University of California, San Diego, we’ve created an introductory programming course primarily for those who are not computer science students that incorporates Copilot. In this course, students learn how to program with Copilot as their AI assistant, following the curriculum from our book. In our course, students learn high-level skills such as decomposing large tasks into smaller tasks, testing code to ensure its correctness, and reading and fixing buggy code.

Freed to solve problems

In this course, we’ve been giving students large, open-ended projects and couldn’t be happier with what they have created.

For example, in a project where students had to find and analyze online datasets, we had a neuroscience major create a data visualization tool that illustrated how age and other factors affected stroke risk. Or, for example, in another project, students were able to integrate their personal art into a collage, after applying filters that they had created using the programming language Python. These projects were well beyond the scope of what we could ask students to do before the advent of large language model AIs.

Given the rhetoric about how AI is ruining education by writing papers for students and doing their homework, you might be surprised to hear educators like us talking about its benefits. AI, like any other tool people have created, can be helpful in some circumstances and unhelpful in others.

In our introductory programming course with a majority of students who are not computer science majors, we see firsthand how AI can empower students in specific ways – and promises to expand the ranks of end-user programmers. Läs mer…

On Jan. 27, 2025, the Trump administration ordered a freeze on federal grants and contracts covering a wide array of aid programs to take effect at 5 p.m. the following day. This freeze was partially prevented when a judge responded to a lawsuit filed by the National Council of Nonprofits and other organizations. The flow of funds on grants that had already been awarded was at least temporarily protected by the judge’s action. The attorneys general of 22 states and the District of Columbia have also sued to block this funding freeze.

The Trump administration, which on Jan. 29 rescinded the memo ordering the funding suspension, has made clear that it may again seek to reduce or eliminate much of the money, totaling several hundred billion dollars, that funds many services that nonprofits provide, such as support for foster parents, after-school care and distributing food for free.

Dyana Mason and Mirae Kim, two scholars of nonprofits, explain the role that federal funding plays in the nonprofit sector.

How much do nonprofits rely on federal funding?

Nonprofits partner with the government to deliver social services, such as child care for low-income families, housing for people experiencing homelessness, and job training and placement. These partnerships can form with local or state governments, as well as with the federal government, with this collaboration mostly taking place through grants and contracts.

Government funding makes up about 33% of the revenue flowing into the nonprofit sector annually, according to the Urban Institute. The institute, a think tank, also found that nearly 40% of all nonprofits in the United States applied for federal grants in 2021, 2022 and 2023, and that about 10% applied for federal contracts. The share of government funding can be far larger for some kinds of social service nonprofits.

Many other nonprofits applied for local and state grants during that three-year period. Those grants, however, are often themselves funded by the federal government indirectly through grants it makes to state and local government agencies. Those agencies, in turn, then provide grants or maintain contracts with local nonprofits to provide services.

Although it’s hard to track with absolute precision due to those complex arrangements, government revenue is the second-largest source of income for nonprofits after the money these organizations and institutions earn through commercial activities.

Also called “fee-for-service,” this revenue includes the money nonprofit hospitals get when patients and insurers pay medical bills, nonprofit theaters receive when they sell tickets to performances, and nonprofit private schools obtain when parents pay tuition.

Some social service nonprofits charge fees too, typically on a sliding scale. That is, their clients with relatively higher incomes pay more, and those with extremely low incomes pay very little or nothing at all.

How could freezing federal funding affect nonprofits?

We have no doubt that a long freeze on federal grants and contracts would be devastating for nonprofits and the communities they serve.

For example, Meals on Wheels, a program that delivers hot meals to more than 2 million homebound people over 65 and helps them maintain social connections, gets 37% of its funding from the federal government.

Clackamas Women’s Services, a domestic and sexual violence organization based near Portland, Oregon, is one of the many local organizations that have expressed concern about what to expect. The group says it could lose half of its annual budget if federal funding were to be eliminated.

Without federal funding, organizations like these – many of which already have waitlists – would have to cut back on the services they provide.

Nonprofits are confused and concerned about the stability of federal funding, Scripps News reports.

What’s the role of nonprofits in the US safety net?

It’s very significant.

For the past several decades, attempts to scale back the size of the government have led to government agencies essentially hiring nonprofits to do much of their work.

Through contracts and grants, nonprofits then do such things as assist people who are recovering from fires, hurricanes and other disasters; provide services for veterans and active-duty members of the military; and help people with mental health conditions, including substance use problems, just to name a few.

This arrangement typically provides nonprofits with a reliable and predictable source of funds that they can use to serve their communities. But it can also leave them vulnerable to policy changes – especially when new administrations take over, as the second Trump administration’s actions illustrate.

Research we conducted about what happened to nonprofits during the COVID-19 pandemic showed that volatility in the economy has serious effects on the ability of nonprofits to do their work.

For example, social service nonprofits struggled in March and April 2020 due to falling revenue at a time of increasing demand. Many of these organizations had to scale back their services. In some cases, they canceled them.

We followed up with another survey in November and December 2020. By then, we found, 61% of the groups had received forgivable federal loans through the government’s Paycheck Protection Program.

Nearly half of the nonprofits told us that they had, in addition, received other forms of emergency funding from the federal government, including Economic Injury Disaster Loans and emergency food distributions.

This federal assistance made it possible for thousands of nonprofits to keep their staff employed and continue to provide important services as the economy recovered.

What happens when nonprofits lose federal funds?

It’s hard for social service organizations to replace federal funding.

Nonprofits can, of course, appeal to their donors to help bridge the gap. But donations from individuals, foundations, corporations and bequests only amount to no more than 15% of the funds flowing into the nonprofit sector.

The outcome of freezing, eliminating or scaling back federal funding for nonprofits would mean that those in need would get fewer services. We would also expect mass layoffs, which could harm the U.S. economy.

Nonprofits employ more than 12 million people in the United States. That’s more workers than big industries such as construction, transportation and finance employ. Should millions of them suddenly become unemployed, demand would grow further for social services from providers already unable to meet lower levels of demand due to funding cuts.

Has there ever been upheaval like this before?

Congress appropriates money to provide for the services that the public needs and demands. These moves have led to great fear and uncertainty among organizations that serve people in need in the United States and abroad.

Although it’s not unusual for funding priorities to change from one administration to the next, Donald Trump’s executive orders on international aid and nonprofit grants and contracts that underpin the U.S. safety net are unprecedented. Läs mer…