The Future of Weather Prediction Is Here. Maybe.; The New York Times, July 13, 2025

Tim Fernholz

Photographs by Jason Henry

, The New York Times ; The Future of Weather Prediction Is Here. Maybe.

Thanks to A.I., companies like WindBorne hope to usher in a golden age of forecasting. But they rely in part on government data — and the agency that provides it is in turmoil.

"The good news is that we may be poised to enter a new golden age of A.I.-enabled weather prediction. That heat wave that scorched the East Coast last month? WindBorne says its software first flagged that 15 days out, two to four days before competing forecasts.

There’s a catch, though. These new deep learning forecasts are built on data provided for free by public science agencies. In the United States, that relationship is threatened by the Trump administration’s heavy cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, which houses the National Weather Service."

Libraries Pay More for E-Books. Some States Want to Change That.; The New York Times, July 16, 2025

 Erik Ofgang, The New York Times; Libraries Pay More for E-Books. Some States Want to Change That.

Proposed legislation would pressure publishers to adjust borrowing limits and find other ways to widen access. 

"Librarians complain that publishers charge so much to license e-books that it’s busting library budgets and frustrating efforts to provide equitable access to reading materials. Big publishers and many authors say that e-book library access undermines their already struggling business models. Smaller presses are split."

GOP-led Senate votes to cancel $9 billion in funding for foreign aid, NPR and PBS; NBC News, July 16, 2025

Sahil Kapur, Frank Thorp V and Brennan Leach , NBC News; GOP-led Senate votes to cancel $9 billion in funding for foreign aid, NPR and PBS

[Kip Currier: Notice how Trump 2.0 and the GOP (except for a couple of legislators) are going after sources of information: cutting funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Voice of America, PBS, NPR, etc. 

Control the information sources and you can more easily influence and control how people get their information and what they think.

Autocracies restrict access to information; democracies don't.]

[Excerpt]

"The Republican-led Senate Republicans voted Thursday morning to pass a package of spending cuts requested by President Donald Trump, sending it to the House. 

The rescissions package cancels previously approved funding totaling $9 billion for foreign aid and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS. Republicans passed it through a rarely used process to evade the 60-vote threshold and modify a bipartisan spending deal on party lines.

The vote of 51-48 followed a 13-hour series of votes on amendments, with two Republicans joining Democrats in opposition to the final bill: Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska."

Hungary opposition figures urge Democrats to organize against autocratic takeover by Trump; The Guardian, July 16, 2025

Robert Tait , The Guardian; Hungary opposition figures urge Democrats to organize against autocratic takeover by Trump

[Kip Currier: It's clear Trump 2.0 is using the autocratic takeover playbook of Hungary's Viktor Orbán. As this article points out, autocrats work to cut off access to public broadcasting where people can get fact-based information. Just look to what the Trump and the GOP are doing to public media in the U.S. right now: 

"GOP-led Senate votes to cancel $9 billion in funding for foreign aid, NPR and PBS".]

[Excerpt]

"Hungary, a European Union and Nato member, is often cited as an example of a formerly liberal democracy devolving into a competitive autocracy. Orbán – who has trumpeted his belief in “illiberal democracy” – has cemented his power over the courts, the media and universities during 15 years in office and four consecutive election victories.

Addressing a webinar organized by the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based thinktank, Cseh warned US voters against believing their country was immune to such developments.

“I do believe that many Americans think this is something that also only happens to others, and I think that mindset has to be fought,” she said.

“Start preparing for the midterms like yesterday. Go to every protest, go to every march, stand right beside everybody who is being attacked, no matter if it is a group you belong to, or something that you do not share personally. You have to stand side by side [with] each other and help and support those who might feel isolated and alone.”

She urged Democrats and activists to form a widely inclusive “movement” and find “candidates for the midterms or any election that is coming your way who can get people excited – not necessarily the same old faces they have been seeing all the time that they don’t really trust that much, but visionary leaders … who are part of a community, who are being persecuted.”

Leaders such as Trump and Orbán could only be effectively opposed, she said, by ditching a “legalistic, technical, technocratic approach” in favor of “something for the electorate to be excited about”.

“Autocrats are not always good in governing. So cost of living, crisis of healthcare, education – if the focus is shifted to these areas, and not only technical descriptions of what’s going on in the courts, this is something that people can relate to more.”

The parallels with Hungary came as opinion polls show Orbán on course to lose next year’s general election to the opposition Tisza party, led by Péter Magyar, a former member of the prime minister’s party...

Panyi said Trump’s attempts to slash funding for public broadcasters such as PBS and Voice of America were also inspired by Orbán.

“[Orbán] went after public radio, public TV, and in a matter of a couple of months, it was already transformed into propaganda,” he said. “It’s scary to see similar things happening in the United States. Solidarity is especially important, so whenever there are similar things happening, there should be protests. Journalists should support their colleagues and tell readers that if it happens to one outlet, it can happen to others as well.”

WaPo Columnist Flames Jeff Bezos After Quitting in Protest; The Daily Beast, July 10, 2025

Corbin Bolies  , The Daily Beast; WaPo Columnist Flames Jeff Bezos After Quitting in Protest

"Davidson said in the Facebook post the spiked piece centered on what he believed was a hallmark of President Donald Trump’s second term, “his widespread, ominous attack on thought, belief and speech,” and referenced federal officials’ comments and Trump’s own executive orders. 

But the Post spiked the column, according to Davidson. He said he tried to write two more pieces to test his resilience under the new policy, but that he bristled when editors objected to his use of “well-deserved” when describing a potential pay raise for federal employees...

“Bezos’s policies and activities have projected the image of a Donald Trump supplicant. The result: fleeing journalists, plummeting morale and disappearing subscriptions,” Davidson wrote.

“Nonetheless, Post coverage of Trump remains strong,” he added. “Yet the policy against opinion in News section columns means less critical scrutiny of Trump—a result coinciding with Bezos’ unseemly and well-documented coziness with the president.”

Privacy under siege: DOGE’s one big, beautiful database; Brookings, June 25, 2025

 Stephanie K. Pell,  Josie Stewart, and  Brooke Tanner, Brookings; Privacy under siege: DOGE’s one big, beautiful database

"The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), according to reporting in the Washington Post, recently set its sights on creating “a single centralized [government] database” that would enable broad access across government agencies to vast amounts of information currently collected and held by individual federal agencies.  

Government data aggregation and unification on this scale is antithetical to the purpose-driven requirements for data sharing among government agencies that lie at the heart of the Privacy Act, a 1974 law passed in the aftermath of Watergate and the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) scandals."

RFK Jr. wants everyone to use wearables. What are the benefits, risks?; ABC News, July 3, 2025

Mary Kekatos , ABC News; RFK Jr. wants everyone to use wearables. What are the benefits, risks?

[Kip Currier: Probably not a good idea, given the current administration's documented disregard for the rights of people to control access to their own data.

See here, here, here, and here.]

[Excerpt]

"Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the agency was launching a campaign to encourage all Americans to use wearables to track health metrics.

Wearables come in the form of watches, bands, rings, patches and clothes that can be used for a variety of reasons including monitoring glucose levels, measuring activity levels, track heart health and observe sleeping patterns.

"It's a way … people can take control over their own heath. They can take responsibility," Kennedy said during a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Health."

Bill Moyers, a Face of Public TV and Once a White House Voice, Dies at 91; The New York Times, June 26, 2025

Janny Scott, The New York Times; Bill Moyers, a Face of Public TV and Once a White House Voice, Dies at 91

"In an age of broadcast blowhards, the soft-spoken Mr. Moyers applied his earnest, deferential style to interviews with poets, philosophers and educators, often on the subject of values and ideas. His 1988 PBS series, “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth,” drew 30 million viewers, posthumously turned Mr. Campbell — at the time a little-known mythologist — into a public broadcasting star, and popularized the Campbell dictum “Follow your bliss.” 

A Sense of Moral Urgency’

To admirers, many of them liberals, Mr. Moyers was the nation’s conscience, bringing to his work what one television critic called “a sense of moral urgency and decency.” Others, mostly conservatives, found him sanctimonious and accused him of bias. In a 2004 retrospective, the conservative website FrontPageMag.com called him a “sweater-wearing pundit who delivered socialist and neo-Marxist propaganda with a soft Texas accent.”...

PBS to CBS and Back

Mr. Moyers turned down offers to edit newspapers, run colleges and co-host the “Today” show on NBC. (“I just didn’t like the idea of selling dog food in a world where so many people were eating it,” he told People magazine.) Instead, he began producing a weekly public affairs program on PBS, devoting entire shows to topics like the Watergate scandal and public education. John J. O’Connor of The Times called his show, “Bill Moyers Journal,” “one of the most outstanding series on television.”

Ohio libraries celebrate veto of budget measure censoring materials; Ohio Capital Journal, July 1, 2025

SUSAN TEBBEN , Ohio Capital Journal; Ohio libraries celebrate veto of budget measure censoring materials

"The General Assembly still has the chance to override the veto with a three-fifths vote, but it would do so after libraries and advocates across the state stood staunchly against the measure.

The Columbus Metropolitan Library posted a statement to their social media applauding DeWine’s veto, calling it “a significant win for intellectual freedom and the right of every Ohioan to freely access information at their library.”

Jade Braden, a circulation assistant for Worthington Libraries, said the veto “helps ensure that library professionals, not statehouse politicians, continue to make choices about how we serve our entire community, what materials we provide and how we display those materials in our libraries.”

“Protecting intellectual freedom is an ongoing battle in which we will always need to be vigilant,” Braden told the OCJ. “The fight for our community and their right to read is one we continually dedicate ourselves to.”"

Inside the battle for control of the Library of Congress; Federal News Network, July 1, 2025

 Terry Gerton , Federal News Network; Inside the battle for control of the Library of Congress

"Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Kevin Kosar. He’s a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. So those are interesting theories. And as you mentioned though, the library is a research library, not a lending library. So AI is not going to train itself on printed books. It needs electronic information. What is the impact on the day-to-day operations of the library and the copyright office?

Kevin Kosar Well, right now, certainly, it’s a little anxiety-provoking for people at the Library of Congress, this kind of peculiar state of, are we suddenly going to find ourselves answering to a new boss in the form of the president? They are more than aware of what’s happened at other executive agencies where the president has sent in people from the Department of Government Efficiency and started turning off people’s computers and telling them not to come into work and canceling contracts and doing any number of other things that are, you know, hugely disruptive to workers’ day-to-day life. So there’s that anxiety there. And if this move by the Trump administration plays out, it’s really hard to see what could ultimately occur. One thing that that’s clear to me is that if you have presidential control of the Library of Congress, then the Congressional Research Service is doomed. For those listeners out there who are not familiar with the Congressional Research Service, this is Congress’ think tank. This is about 600 individual civil servants whose job is to provide nonpartisan research, analysis and facts to legislators and their staff to help them better do their jobs. And if you have a president who takes over the library, that president can point the head of the Congressional Research Service and turn it into basically a presidential tool, which would make it useless.

Terry Gerton And the administration has sort of already said that it puts no stock in CRS’s products."

KY library book challenges rose 1,000% in 2024. That’s not a typo. What happened?; Lexington Herald Leader, June 30, 2025

John Cheves , Lexington Herald Leader; KY library book challenges rose 1,000% in 2024. That’s not a typo. What happened?

"Challenges to Kentucky public library books soared by 1,061% last year, rising from 26 incidents in 2023 to 302 incidents in 2024, according to a recently released state report. That eye-popping number is buried in small type at the bottom of page six of the annual Statistical Report of Kentucky Public Libraries, published in April by the Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives."

DeWine vetoes library material restriction in Ohio budget; WFMJ, July 1, 2025

 

WFMJ; DeWine vetoes library material restriction in Ohio budget

"Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Monday vetoed a controversial provision in the state's new budget that would have imposed restrictions on public libraries regarding the placement of materials related to sexual orientation or gender identity.

The veto came as DeWine signed the state budget bill. In his statement, the Republican governor expressed concerns about what he described as the "vague restrictions" proposed for libraries.

"No child should have access to inappropriate materials or to materials that their parents or guardians deem inappropriate," DeWine said. "In Ohio, we have strong laws on obscenity and material harmful to juveniles, and the DeWine-Tressel Administration expects those laws to be enforced. Therefore, a veto of this item is in the public interest."

The provision, which had drawn strong opposition from library systems across the state, including the Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County, would have required libraries to segregate such materials so they were not visible to patrons under 18.

Library advocates, including the Ohio Library Council (OLC), argued that the language was "overly vague and broad" and "ultimately unworkable." Aimee Fifarek, CEO and director of the Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County, previously warned that complying with the mandate could force libraries to "close down" to review and re-code materials, potentially leading to "unconstitutional censorship."

Philly has 3 librarians for 218 district schools. People from across the U.S. held a ‘read-in’ to call out problem.; The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 27, 2025

Kristen A. Graham , The Philadelphia Inquirer; Philly has 3 librarians for 218 district schools. People from across the U.S. held a ‘read-in’ to call out problem.

Carla Hayden, former Librarian of Congress, speaks on her dismissal, the future of libraries at Philadelphia event; WHYY, June 29, 2025

Emily Neil, WHYY ; Carla Hayden, former Librarian of Congress, speaks on her dismissal, the future of libraries at Philadelphia event

"Former Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden spoke at the Free Library of Philadelphia Parkway Central Branch on Saturday night, where she sat down for a fireside chat with Ashley Jordan, president and CEO of the African American Museum in Philadelphia...

In his introductory remarks, Kelly Richards, president and director of the Free Library of Philadelphia, said that Hayden has always been a “tireless advocate” for the library systems throughout her career. He said libraries are not just “repositories of knowledge” in a democratic society, but “vibrant centers of community life, education and inclusion.”

“Libraries have a reputation for being a quiet place, but not tonight,” Richards said, as audience members gave Hayden and Jordan a standing ovation when they entered the stage."

Microsoft says AI system better than doctors at diagnosing complex health conditions; The Guardian, June 30, 2025

 Dan Milmo, The Guardian; Microsoft says AI system better than doctors at diagnosing complex health conditions

"Microsoft has revealed details of an artificial intelligence system that performs better than human doctors at complex health diagnoses, creating a “path to medical superintelligence”.

The company’s AI unit, which is led by the British tech pioneer Mustafa Suleyman, has developed a system that imitates a panel of expert physicians tackling “diagnostically complex and intellectually demanding” cases.

Microsoft said that when paired with OpenAI’s advanced o3 AI model, its approach “solved” more than eight of 10 case studies specially chosen for the diagnostic challenge. When those case studies were tried on practising physicians – who had no access to colleagues, textbooks or chatbots – the accuracy rate was two out of 10.

Microsoft said it was also a cheaper option than using human doctors because it was more efficient at ordering tests."

How IMLS Funding Cuts Will Impact Prison Libraries; Medium, June 11, 2025

Lauren Triola , Medium; How IMLS Funding Cuts Will Impact Prison Libraries

"With the recent chaos surrounding the future of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), people are concerned about libraries around the country losing vital government funding. Most of the uproar against the proposed cuts has centered on how important public libraries are to their communities. However, there’s another type of library that will also be affected by these funding cuts — one that is indispensable to the community it serves.

Prison libraries are a lifeline to many people who are incarcerated. They depend heavily on IMLS grants, and if IMLS is dismantled or suffers severe funding cuts, then prison libraries will struggle to exist."

Supreme Court decides whether to allow parents to shield children from LGBTQ books in school; Fox News, June 27, 2025

Ashley Oliver , Fox News ; Supreme Court decides whether to allow parents to shield children from LGBTQ books in school

"The Supreme Court held Friday that a group of Maryland parents are entitled to opt their children out of school lessons that could violate their beliefs in a case centered on religious freedom. 

The justices decided 6-3 along ideological lines in Mahmoud v. Taylor that parents can exclude their children from a Maryland public school system's lessons that contain themes about homosexuality and transgenderism if they feel it conflicts with their religious faith."

Manzanar teaches about Japanese American incarceration in the US. That’s in jeopardy under Trump; The Guardian, June 26, 2025

 Victoria Namkung, The Guardian; Manzanar teaches about Japanese American incarceration in the US. That’s in jeopardy under Trump

"Since then, Manzanar, which now has a museum and reconstructed barracks that visitors can walk through, has been transformed into a popular pilgrimage destination for Japanese Americans to remember and teach others about this history. (Manzanar was one of 10 concentration camps where the US government forcibly relocated and held more than 110,000 people of Japanese descent during the second world war.)

But recently, under the direction of the Trump administration, National Park Service (NPS) employees have hung new signs at Manzanar that historians and community advocates say will undermine these public education efforts. The notices encourage visitors to report “any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features” via a QR code. The signs, which have been posted at all national parks, monuments and historic sites, were displayed in support of Donald Trump’s executive order Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History...

“Any attempt to constrain or sanitize the stories that are told at Manzanar should concern every American,” said Naomi Ostwald Kawamura, executive director of Densho, an organization that documents the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were held in concentration camps. “I’m incredibly disappointed that this is happening in the United States because museums, monuments and memorials are public spaces where we can explore difficult history, confront our past, engage with what’s uncomfortable and then be able to imagine the future that we want to collectively share.”"

Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County raises concerns regarding potential censorship provisions; WFMJ, June 25, 2025

Zach Mosca , 21WFMJ; Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County raises concerns regarding potential censorship provisions

"The Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County (PLYMC) along with the Ohio Library Commission (OLC) are sounding the alarm over provisions in the Ohio State Budget that a representative for the library says will not only affect the library's funding, but the content guests have access to.

21 News has already highlighted concerns regarding potential budget cuts, which could put certain library programs at risk. Now, the library is raising the alarm about language in the budget that could restrict access to certain material for guests under 18.

According to the OLC, who represents Ohio's 251 public library systems including PLYMC, a provision in Ohio's budget proposal would require public libraries to segregate material related to sexual orientation or gender identity or expression so they are not visible to guests under 18.

OLC Executive Director Michelle Francis says this language is overly vague and broad and "ultimately unworkable."

"It opens the door to unconstitutional censorship and undermines the core mission of libraries - to provide free and open access to information," Francis said."

Trump knocks down barriers around personal data, raising alarm; The Hill, June 25, 2025

 AMALIA HUOT-MARCHAND, The Hill ; Trump knocks down barriers around personal data, raising alarm

"The Trump administration is shattering norms around the handling of Americans’ personal — and sometimes private — information, dismantling barriers around data in the name of government efficiency and rooting out fraud. 

Privacy experts say the moves bring the country closer to a surveillance state, increase the government’s vulnerability to cyberattacks and risk pushing people away from public services. 

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has sought and nearly always received access to Social Security numbers, addresses, medical histories, tax histories, welfare benefits, bank accounts, immigration statuses and federal employee databases.

These moves have shattered walls that have long kept data within the agencies that collect it."