Saving California Science

I caught the tail end of a rally in Sacramento today in support of California state senate bill SB 895, which would put a $23 billion bond measure on the November 2026 ballot to create a California Science and Health Research Foundation. This would essentially be California’s version of NSF and NIH (the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health), needed since federal funding for science has been decimated by the actions of the Trump administration.

I meant to attend most of the rally, but it was not where I expected it to be on the west side of the State Capitol Building which is where every other rally at the Capitol that I’ve been to has been. Instead, there was the surreal sight of hundreds of police officers in formal garb, with several troops of them mounted on horses, attending the annual memorial event for California peace officers fallen in the line of duty. No science activists were gathered on the west side of the building, nor on the north or south side of the building, and the east side of the building is now under heavy construction of a new capitol annex. After a long while I looked at the web page of the state senator sponsoring the bill (Sen. Scott Wiener), and discovered the rally was taking place at the State Capitol Rose Garden, several blocks to the east past all the construction.

I missed the speeches, but fortunately these are up on YouTube already (especially see Sen. Wiener at 21:25 and Shawn Fain at 52:27). Over at one side of the rally area there was a gallery of scientific posters highlighting research that has been cancelled by the loss of federal funding. The photo at left is a poster from Point Blue Conservation Science describing how they lost $2 million in USDA funding from their Climate-Smart Commodities program. The termination of that same program was the funding loss that led to my retirement last year.

The senate bill now has broad support including from universities in the state and labor organizations (Shawn Fain who spoke at the rally is the national president of the United Auto Workers, which represents 60,000 University of California employees). I think there is enough support to get the bill through the legislature, though the timeline is short. The bill would then need to be signed by Governor Gavin Newsom, but he is an agent of chaos when it comes to signing liberal legislation. The measure would then have to be approved by the voters of California, who may or may not be in a stingy mood in November. It is both a lot of money, and not very much compared to what has in past times come from the federal government.

More information about the initiative is at the site Save Science Save Lives.