Sign in

Ames Grawert

@amescg.bsky.social
979 followers 1.7K following 310 posts

Senior Counsel at the Brennan Center, working on criminal justice policy and understanding the impact of federal funding cuts. Hopefully building a better world for everyone, especially two little girls. Views my own, dad jokes and sci-fi takes welcome.

PostsRepliesMedia
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Some of these arbitrary funding cuts get unwound in litigation. But that takes time and money, and even then, for some, the damage is done. We talked about this problem in a recent analysis of the President's attempt to unilaterally remake FEMA. www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...
brennancenter.org
Administration’s Arbitrary, Unlawful Cuts to FEMA Funding and Staff Threaten American Communities
Grant cancellations, staff reductions, and other policy changes far overstep the president’s authority while limiting FEMA’s ability to respond to disasters.
000
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Tom “T.M.” Wolf @tomtmwolf.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Key read from @jrakove.bsky.social ⬇️
02110
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Murder rates fell 38% from 2020 to 2025. What changed? Billions in federal dollars went to community violence prevention, mental health services, and related work. Increasing evidence says those investments may have contributed. We unpack what happened and how. www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...
brennancenter.org
Crime Prevention and Mental Health Spending May Have Contributed to Drop in Violent Crime
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the federal government spent billions of dollars shoring up state and local budgets and funding new public safety initiatives.
03816
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Stalled infrastructure, politicized aid payments, and communities left covering the costs of more frequent natural disasters. We document the impacts of the Administration's attempts to work around Congress and unilaterally remake FEMA. www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...
brennancenter.org
Administration’s Arbitrary, Unlawful Cuts to FEMA Funding and Staff Threaten American Communities
Grant cancellations, staff reductions, and other policy changes far overstep the president’s authority while limiting FEMA’s ability to respond to disasters.
12317
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 22/09/2026
In the past five years #NIH created an on-campus lab to study neural development, exactly because NIH scientists anticipated that this research line will be important. This is an example of scientific judgement White House political appointees setting priorities are unlikely to have.
15014
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Massimo (mirror) @rainmaker1973-m.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
14 years ago Today, the Space Shuttle Endeavour had its last flight. Here's a photo captured over Los Angeles, few minutes its landing at LAX [📷 Stephen Confer] Original post
Image 1
1495355734
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Every day offers a new beginning, but today more so than others. Wishing all those observing Yom Kippur a meaningful day and an uplifting year ahead.
010
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Friendly reminder that if you use Claude, your Fable promotional credits expire today!
000
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 17/09/2026
Trump: "We spent more than $2 billion in FEMA funding. You're waiting for some additional funding. I'm gonna get that to you. Now if Michael loses, I'm not sending it." Crowd: *groans*
3602058574
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Last week I got to check off a longtime personal goal. Listen to me narrowly eke out a win on @npr.org's legendary "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!" www.npr.org/programs/wai...
npr.org
‘Wait Wait’ for September 5, 2026: Live in Ohio with Maggie Smith!
Recorded in Huber Heights, Ohio with host Peter Sagal, judge and scorekeeper Alzo Slade, Not My Job guest Maggie Smith, and panelists Annie Rauwerda, Mo Rocca, and Shane Torres
020
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Mark Carney @mark-carney.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
On 9/11, the people of Gander stepped up. They showed the very best of Canada.
29972581646
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Matt Ford @mford.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Tolkien wept.
1132
Reposted by Ames Grawert
George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Sixty years ago today, the starship Enterprise launched and with it, a vision of the future where humanity had moved beyond its divisions. I was there at the beginning, and I can tell you...
686265994799
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Politicizing federal grant determinations could have sweeping consequences, for public safety and beyond. We explain what's happening, and what's at stake:
000
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Carey @distraughtcarey.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
My job is to provide grants/loans to wastewater infrastructure in a blue state. We are very concerned over the rule that could cancel funding in the middle of construction of one of our treatment plants.
021
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Captain Mark Kelly @captmarkkelly.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Before losing her life in 1986 aboard Space Shuttle Challenger, Christa McAuliffe was set to be the first teacher in space with plans to teach a lesson to kids around the world from orbit. Today is her birthday, and even now, her courage and dedication to education continues to inspire.
486236974254
Reposted by Ames Grawert
mcc @dryad.technology · 01/09/2026
This is the single biggest physics discovery of my entire lifetime. Or something's wrong with one of the cables. One of the two
9961231240
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Leah Litman @leahlitman.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I have a piece in the Atlantic about SCOTUS’s ballroom order - and how the Court has a very wrongheaded and destructive account of the separation of powers www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
“The court is totally wrong on separation of powers”
441423424
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
People deserve to be welcomed and accepted everywhere they go. Always love seeing communities, like Magic, that go out of their way to include people with different experiences. www.npr.org/2026/08/26/n...
npr.org
How 'Magic: The Gathering' creates transgender community
Magic: The Gathering, the fantasy card game with over 50 million enthusiasts worldwide, has become an important social outlet for some real people: the transgender community.
110
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Will Oremus @willoremus.com · 26/08/2026
randomly giving out genuine compliments is such an easy way to make the world a little nicer, i'm always surprised more people haven't figured that out and have a ton of respect for those who have
Screenshot of tweet by Eminem. Text of Eminem's post reads: 

I'm sorry we never got a chance to meet, but getting this note from Dolly really had a an impact on me. She definitely didn't have to take the time to do it.  Even for a kid who mostly listened to rap music, she was an icon. A superstar in every sense. Rest easy Dolly. And thank you for the kind words.

Attached is an image of a classy and generous letter Dolly Parton sent to Eminem after missing a chance to meet him at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
625449859
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Kevin Morris @kevintmorris.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Well what have we here?
846282
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
As family head chef & grocery shopper, $8.99 for 1.5 pounds of salmon doesn't pass the laugh test
010
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Finally, this has gone a bit under the radar, so I want to highlight it: The social, behavioral and economic sciences directorate (SBE) has simply ceased to deliver grants to many of its subareas. Any topic not specifically OK'd by the Trump administration is receiving zero new awards.
All of the NSF’s directorates are awarding fewer new grants, but the hardest hit is the social, behavioural and economic sciences (SBE) directorate, which the White House proposed eliminating in its 2027 budget request to Congress. SBE has so far awarded 84 new grants this year, about 11% of its average, mainly in areas of artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience and decision-making. Much of its portfolio, such as sociology, archaeology, political science, economics and geography, has received zero new awards. “I don’t think they’ve realized yet that there’s no awards,” one NSF staff member says of researchers in those fields. “That’s going to be clear soon.”
6422226
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Scoop: For nearly a year, NSF has struggled to make new grants. Now we know that it will not catch up. In fact, NSF will award just 6,100 new grants—a 30% y/o/y decline, itself down from a previous avg. of 11,000+. In fact, the last time NSF awarded so few grants was in the early '80s.
nature.com
Exclusive: NSF set to issue lowest number of new grants in four decades
The US science-funding agency is withholding $1 billion of its budget so that the money can go to a special White House project.
14754470
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Brennan Center @brennancenter.org · 11/08/2026
The American people should not accept troops in the streets as "just a fact of life," says @josephanunn.bsky.social "Armed military personnel standing on the street corners in an American city should never be normal."
npr.org
Armed troops have patrolled D.C. for 1 year now. It's challenging democratic norms
The deployment is expected to cost in the billions after it was quietly extended until Inauguration Day of 2029.
513855
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Brennan Center @brennancenter.org · 12/08/2026
No president has ever attempted to use the military for domestic law enforcement "in such a wide variety of ways and on the scale" that President Trump has, says @josephanunn.bsky.social. That's dangerous to democracy and to public safety.
pbs.org
The effectiveness and cost of the National Guard deployment in D.C.
It has now been one year since President Trump declared a “crime emergency” in the nation’s capital and deployed thousands of members of the National Guard to its streets. Questions continue to mount ...
57035
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Don’t miss my vertical video for the @brennancenter.org on arbitrary, unlawful cuts to federal research funding. Unfortunately, two months later, the picture has only worsened. bsky.app/profile/bren...
231
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Dan Weiner @danw329.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
The cyclosporiasis outbreak that has sickened tens of thousands in the Midwest and reportedly killed two people is not just a story about food safety. It’s also a story about corruption.
110731
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 17/08/2026
This is why science needs to care about democracy. US science depends on state capacity—the ability of NIH and NSF to continue to fund fundamental research is what built the US science superpower. But we can’t rebuild that without also supporting the people who care about the collapse of democracy.
210941
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Jeff Asher @jeffasher.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
There's no new newsletter today because the president decided to release the FBI's 2025 crime stats at 4 PM ET on a Friday to highlight the historic drop in crime in the US. Instead you can read what I wrote on Friday summarizing the crime report: jasher.substack.com/p/the-fbi-re...
jasher.substack.com
The FBI Reports That Murder Officially Fell At The Fastest Pace Ever Recorded in 2025
That and more takeaways from the FBI's 2025 Crime in the United States report.
0101
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Is Billy Joel’s last song on his last full length album set in… New Jersey? (“Sitting here in Avalon, looking at the pouring rain…”) This merits a full, exegetical analysis by the tristate Joel community.
Wikipedia header for Avalon, NJ
000
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Eric Rauchway @rauchway.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Every answer to this should be Aubrey/Maturin
1510716
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
It is an unwritten rule among New Jersey dads that one must always be willing to help another set up their beach gear
000
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Jenna Norton @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Getting rid of clinical trial K awards will reduce the number of clinician scientists, a critical part of our research workforce. This will especially impact the group of folks doing implementation science (where we figure out how to get evidence into practice). www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers
Agency will no longer allow K career awards to fund clinical trials
911370
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Jeff Asher @jeffasher.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Friday afternoon is the ideal time to release data on how much reported crime is improving in the US. For example, murder fell at the fastest pace ever recorded in 2025 to the lowest rate since before 1960. I wrote some thoughts on the FBI's annual crime report. jasher.substack.com/p/the-fbi-re...
jasher.substack.com
The FBI Reports That Murder Officially Fell At The Fastest Pace Ever Recorded in 2025
That and more takeaways from the FBI's 2025 Crime in the United States report.
1137
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Soldiers literally tried to self-vaccinate against smallpox during the Revolutionary War, on the Canadian front and at Valley Forge. Our ancestors were desperate for things we now take for granted.
110
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Be careful when searching for song lyrics with Google’s AI enabled, it might get the wrong idea
AI Overview

I am a computer program. I do not have feelings or a heart. I cannot be your baby or love you back.
010
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Delighted to discover @robertjbennett.bsky.social wrote a short story to complement his Ana & Din series. It's called "The Lion's Tusk," seems to be free(?), and it's excellent. You can (and should) read it in one sitting, before or after picking up "Trade of Blood." www.amazon.com/dp/B0GTMT2FC...
amazon.com
The Lion’s Tusk (Magic & Mystery collection)
Amazon.com: The Lion’s Tusk (Magic & Mystery collection) eBook : Bennett, Robert Jackson: Kindle Store
010
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Until very recently, most American crime data consisted of yearly summary statistics tracking fewer than ten offenses.
110
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 13/08/2026
“formalists understand the Article II Vesting Clause to give the President plenary power to fire a broad range of executive officials, under the so-called “unitary executive theory.” But the Vesting Clauses are not sources of substantive law, … and the way we can tell is by reading them.” Nice
1103
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Happy tomato season to my fellow New Jerseyans!
A frankly shocking amount of yellow cherry tomatoes in a colander and two heirloom tomatoes
210
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Historical chatbots don't make sense to me. LLMs operate by drawing on an immense amount of training data; no historical figure I'm aware of was anywhere *near* prolific enough to generate a real, authentic AI "voice." In almost any case you're better off calling up a scholar of the person's work.
010
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 10/08/2026
reskeeting w alt text
screenshot of text, excerpted from Anthony's article, reading as follows:

Careful study of the historical constitution shows how the rules of natural-born subjecthood mutated in form and function early in the Americas. The colonial regime diminished birthplace and privileged blood through racial classifications. These colonial pathologies persisted in the laws of the antebellum republic, culminating in Dred Scott v. Sandford. When the Supreme Court held in Dred Scott that no person of African descent-though born on American soil-could truly be part of the country's political community, the Court preserved the Anglo-American tradition for white America while casting out Black men and women as strangers. The Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause blotted out that stain by stripping the racial hierarchy out of the citizenship rule. In this, the Fourteenth Amendment was as much a revolution as it was a recovery. It reclaimed the common law principle that from a child's first breath, their place of birth conferred the great inheritance of the law's protection. America's legal tradition bears the accumulated weight of each of these transformations. America broke the historical constitution's ancient promise of the law's protection to every native-born child on the auction block. Reconstruction renewed it.
1467
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
New from me: More than a trillion dollars flow through the federal government in grants. We have more and more evidence that the Trump administration has been directing those grants on purely partisan grounds, denying them to blue states. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/governing-...
donmoynihan.substack.com
Governing without Accountability
Trump only wants to be President of some of America, not all of America
391802789
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Kevin Morris @kevintmorris.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
I forgot to post this working paper when we put it online a couple months ago, but we think it's really cool and you should read it. tl;dr: State targeting of even a small group of people can have an absolutely massive effect on turnout of the larger group bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.mit.ed...
03613
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Song of Roland, with a Kingdom of Heaven-esque update that asks the viewer to question and rethink clash of civilizations narratives
010
Reposted by Ames Grawert
Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 27/07/2026
“Miller owes his entire career to government investments in research and education. He grew up in Chicago and went to public schools. Neither of his parents went to college.” This is what public investment does, allow people to follow this path
propublica.org
How Trump’s “America First” Administration Could Shut U.S. Scientists Out of the Next Nobel-Worthy Discovery
A proposed White House rule would give political appointees unprecedented control over scientific funding. One physicist, who helped discover the Higgs boson, explains how the rule would’ve stifled that breakthrough.
13211
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Now is the moment for a Silmarillion movie. Utúlie'n aurë! Auta i lómë!!!!
011
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
While we're talking about the Odyssey: It's arguably the origin of some of the most famous fanfic in world history, including the Aeneid ("What if another guy got lost coming home from Troy and then founded Rome?") and a British foundation myth ("then what if his grandson got exiled?")
110
Ames Grawert @amescg.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
If you haven't picked up Emily Wilson's translation, please do! And don't miss this interview about a fascinating, tough call she had to make while translating one of the poem's very first words. www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/m...
nytimes.com
The First Woman to Translate the ‘Odyssey’ Into English (Published 2017)
The classicist Emily Wilson has given Homer’s epic a radically contemporary voice.
010