Aidan Keaveney, 2022 AIP Mather Policy Intern

Biography

SPS Chapter: Appalachian State University

My name is Aidan Keaveney, and I’m a rising senior double majoring in Physics and Mathematics at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. My research interests are in experimental physics and applied mathematics. I am interested in using scientific tools to find creative solutions to challenging problems in a variety of disciplines. In the past, I’ve worked on research collaborations studying neutrinoless double beta decay, gravitational waves, and dark matter. I am also an avid science communicator and servant leader. I volunteer with traditional and alternative education groups in Boone to bring STEM opportunities to students who may not otherwise have them. As President of Appalachian State’s SPS Chapter, I strive to build connections between faculty, students, and community members through programming and outreach.

I am originally from Durham, North Carolina, simultaneously one of the academia and research capitals of the world and a city steeped in civil rights history. Even as I was afforded remarkable academic opportunities, it was impossible to grow up where I did without being exposed to troubling disparities in access to those opportunities. It was this dissonance that first drew me to advocacy, policy, and government. I published my first papers on inequalities in education in 2019 and 2021. This passion has only deepened while observing the changes in sociopolitical discourse in the era of social media. I believe scientists have a unique opportunity and responsibility to speak on some of the issues that most impact the collective good, be it climate change, infectious disease, energy, modern infrastructure, technology, and so on. I am so excited to join the SPS Summer Internship Program as an AIP Mather Policy Intern to explore the impact that scientists can have in these discussions.

In my spare time, I enjoy swimming, reading too many dystopian novels, and cheering for Tar Heels basketball with my two brothers, Caleb and Gabe, and parents, Eileen and David.

Internship

Host: U.S. Senate

Project

Abstract

With all the nuclear weapons in the world, humanity is currently capable of destroying itself and all life on Earth. It is in the interest of humanity, not to mention American national security, to prevent the spread and reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world. For the first time in history, Russia has threatened the use of nuclear weapons for strategic gain. While few expect Russia to act on these threats, if Russia is successful in their campaign in Ukraine, that will indicate the viability of the “nuclear threat” strategy to other nations with border disputes throughout the world. Thus, it is more important than ever for the United States to demonstrate a dedication to nuclear non-proliferation (NNP) efforts here at home and across the world. In this talk, I will discuss the status of NNP efforts, the role of scientists in NNP discussions, and Rep. Bill Foster’s leadership on NNP as the only Ph.D. physicist in Congress.”

Final Presentation

Internship Blog

Week 1: The First One

Hi y’all!

It’s a genuine pleasure to be a part of the SPS Summer Internship Program this summer. I first heard about this program from Dr. Brad Conrad himself when he graciously agreed to speak at my SPS chapter’s interest meeting in Fall 2020. I knew immediately that I wanted to be a part of this program, because as much as I love physics, I am never satisfied being confined to a single focus area. The SPS Internship Program offers opportunities for physics students to explore all of the different paths a physics education can lead to, not just research. As an SPS intern this summer, my mind is officially outside the box.

I am particularly excited to one of the AIP Mather Policy interns on Capitol Hill this summer. I am working in the office of Congressman Bill Foster (IL-11), who represents parts of southwest Chicago. Congressman Foster is also the only Ph.D. physicist in Congress. My internship this summer with be just like any other intern in any other Congressional office (except more awesome). My responsibilities will include answering constituent phone calls and letters, writing briefs on legislation Congressman Foster has been asked to sponsor, gathering the important news from the past day, giving constituent tours of the Capitol, and generally being a worker bee making everyone else’s lives easier.

I don’t have much content to report this week, since I was mostly getting set up in the office. I was hopeful that I would finally have a summer free of troubleshooting tech issues, but apparently that’s ubiquitous to every field, not just physics. Apart from my very important, very official email address I was assigned as an employee of the United States government spelling my name wrong, I also had to figure out how to access ethics trainings on a new laptop and an uncooperative WiFi network. Worst of all, I have to do it all on MICROSOFT OFFICE (insert disgust emoji). Long story short, I am not yet a fully ethical person. Hopefully I will be able to report back in my next blog post that I am, at long last, a good enough person to work in Congress.

I did get to do two very exciting things that are related to the Congressional office: press clips and a constituent letter. “Press clips” is exactly what it sounds like: I compile the important news from the day (particularly anything that mentions Congressman Foster) into a giant Google Doc to be sent to everybody in the office. The press clips are, believe it or not, mostly local news from the 11^th Congressional District of Illinois. I did the press clips for Friday, as I will for the remainder of the summer. It doesn’t sound like much, but I’m told the Congressman reads them at least some of the time, and I am going to choose to believe that. It feels much more exciting that way. I was also tasked with responding to a letter from a constituent concerned about H.R. 3755, the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would in effect codify in law the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. I’m still not sure yet how much I care share in this blog, so I won’t go into too much detail just yet, but in short, it’s my job to articulate Congressman Foster’s positions as best I can. That letter is then approved (or not) by Congressman Foster and his closest aides. We respond to every constituent letter that reaches our office. So, the lesson here is, write to your Congressperson(s), they (probably through an intermediary or two) are listening.

That was it! I imagine my next blog post will be much more interesting, but if it isn’t, well I’ll have learned something from that too. If you’re interested in learning more about me, feel free to read my bio here at SPS. See you, dear abstract reader, next week!

Week 2: The One with All the Haste

So, you may have noticed that it’s been a minute since I posted a blog. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about you, dear reader. I’m writing this preamble in the final week of my internship, which has been a very fulfilling, but very challenging, summer. I found it difficult to focus on writing these after very long days in Congress. I will be posting blogs for each week and giving a full accounting of what this summer was like, but I wanted to acknowledge that from Week 3 onward, these are all written after the conclusion of my internship. That said, I did write this one on time, but forgot to post it. Thanks for your consideration! ~AK, from the future.

Hi y’all! Last week was the first time I physically went into the office. Due to COVID protocols, our office typically only works in-person on days when there are votes in the House. It was basically my first day, the sequel. A lot of the issues of the first few days were quickly resolved once I was around other humans who know what’s going on. I got my laptop working, got my ID badge, figured out a bike route to the Rayburn House Office Building, and got lost several times trying to find the Jamba Juice. I like being able to work in my pajamas from my bed as much as the next person, but there really is no substitute for instantaneous human conversation to answer simple questions.

I hit the ground running with my principal three office duties: answering phone calls, responding to constituent letters, and drafting memos about pieces of legislation the Congressman might co-sponsor. I’ll also be giving tours of the Capitol building, but I don’t have my first tour for a couple of weeks.

I answered seven phone calls last week. Most were very kind, well-meaning people either trying to get the contact information for a policy expert in our office or expressing a position on an upcoming bill. In particular, I answered two phone calls from people asking us to vote NO on HR 7910 and HR 2177, which are gun control bills. They were very cordial in their disagreements with the Congressman. I did get one classic phone call, though, from a very disgruntled gentleman concerned with the January 6 committee hearings that started last week. I tried to engage the gentleman in conversation about his concerns, but he wasn’t interested. That’s when I learned a very important lesson from one of the members of the office: if someone is being rude, don’t engage, cordially or otherwise. In addition to being unproductive, apparently there are some individuals who will try to get interns to say something unfortunate that they can leak to the press as “a statement from a staff member in the Office of Congressman Bill Foster”. That idea is going to stick with me.

I also drafted four constituent letters on the following issues: marijuana legalization, pesticide protections, investigating Dr. Anthony Fauci, and cutting defense spending. Since we get thousands of emails, letters, and phone calls to respond to every month, I don’t respond to each individual letter, I write a response that is common to letters concerning similar issues. We tweak each letter as needed, but for the most part, we respond to several constituent concerns with the same letter. If we could, I’m sure we would respond to each letter individually, but it is in the nature of responding to each of thousands of constituent concerns that we just don’t have the time.

Finally, I drafted memos on two pieces of legislation: HR 7165, the Lead Safe Housing for Kids Act, and HR 2734, the Veteran Families Health Services Act. The former would place new regulations on lead-based paint contamination in federally sponsored housing, and the latter would ensure access to infertility care for active service members and veterans.

As you can see, I work on a lot of different issues, which I love! It’s fascinating to research all of the various issues the federal government is responsible for in so much detail that one doesn’t ordinarily come across in the news.

This is a fairly typical work week as an intern in Congressman Foster’s office. I’m sure in future blogs I will talk about other things, but I wanted to make sure at least one of my blog posts talked about what I actually do on a daily basis. When I was preparing for this internship, I read these blogs, so for future possible interns reading this, if you work in this office, this is about what you can expect in a typical week!

Week 3: The One with Joey’s Bag (of Snickers)

Hi y’all! For this blog, I thought I would cover one of the tried and true responsibilities of the intern in any field: The Favor. There are certain chores that an intern may find exciting that a full-time or senior employee typically has to do so frequently that they inevitably lose their charm. My first introduction to this was as a research student at UNC Chapel Hill when I was 17; I got to refill the liquid nitrogen dewar, and the graduate students didn’t have to. Capitol Hill is no different. This week, I performed three notable favors that I was excited about that a legislative assistant or another staff member would find dull: delivering a snack trade, and attending and summarizing two policy briefings.

A brief tangent about office hierarchy, before I forget to talk about this in another blog. Each office will of course be a little bit different, but most offices typically have a hierarchical structure that looks something like this. At the top, there’s the Member of Congress. Below him/her/them is the Chief of Staff, who manages basically everything. Below the Chief is typically a small collection of senior staff made up of some combination of Communications Director, Legislative Director, Senior Policy Advisor, Deputy Chief of Staff, District Coordinator, and other titles containing words like “Senior” or “Director”. In our office, we have a Communications Director and Legislative Director, as well as a District Coordinator who staffs the office in Aurora, IL. Below the Communications Director, there may be a speechwriter, social media coordinator, or something similar, depending on the office. We have a communications staffer who works in the district, but no other communications staffer in the DC office. Below the Legislative Director, there are Legislative Assistants, each of whom is responsible for a certain policy portfolio of issues. Below the LAs are the interns. So, I typically do favors for the LAs, or occasionally the LD, or very rarely the Communications Director or Chief of Staff.

Anyway, back to my very exciting favors. Firstly, I ran a bag of Snickers and a box of Skittles to another office in exchange for several cans of AHA drinks and Mountain Dew. Our office always has a surplus of Snickers and Skittles, so we will often trade for other snacks or beverages that other offices have in surplus. The majority of staff in Congress are 20-somethings or 30-somethings who work long hours; we get the munchies.

Okay, so the snack trade wasn’t too exciting, but the briefings very much were. The first was a briefing from the White House about the infant formula shortage. In case you don’t have babies or haven’t heard from every conservative media outlet (just kidding, most media outlets), a factory shutdown resulted in a shortage of infant formula across the United States. There are many issues that require significant explanation to convince someone of its importance; this is not one of those issues. Babies require food. Food was not available. That’s bad for babies. Which is bad. The briefing covered what caused the factory shutdown and the ongoing efforts to increase the supply of baby formula. First of all, the factory shut down because it did not meet FDA safety and sanitation standards, which seems important to me. So, what is the federal government doing about it? Turns out, a lot. By the end of this week, 13 million 8 oz servings of baby formula would be flown into the United States, with a priority placed on so-called “specialty” formula for infants with certain additional requirements for their formula. The first flights of formula will hit shelves by the end of this week. The federal government is also instructing other manufacturers who don’t typically produce infant formula how to do so safely to increase supply. The Department of Health and Human Services also invoked the Defense Production Act to prioritize shipment of infant formula over other products, while as much as possible avoiding exacerbating existing supply chain issues. Finally, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is working to ensure that WIC participants (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) have access to infant formula by authorizing certain waivers for imported formula and exchange waivers for recalled formula. WIC participants are primarily mothers in marginalized communities with heightened need for infant formula. My takeaway was that, while obviously systems and procedures need to be evaluated to prevent future issues, there are thousands of very smart civil servants working very diligently to solve the problem in the short-term as efficiently and safely as possible, and they’re actually doing a pretty bang-up job all things considered.

The other briefing I got to attend was from the Department of State regarding the conflict in Ukraine. The first half of the briefing was about the situation on the ground in Ukraine and the effect the war is having on global health and economics, while the second half focused on the impact the war is having on arms control. The short version of the first half is that things aren’t great. Both sides are suffering heavy losses, and it’s safe to expect the war will go on for a long time. The war is causing a rise in gas, diesel, and food prices, as well as a global wheat shortage likely to result in famine in Africa, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia. The military conflict in Ukraine and famine in other parts of the world are likely to cause a double wave of refugees fleeing to Europe, which will lead to further global humanitarian and economic crisis. It’s also worth noting that in mid-2010s, the refugee crisis in Syria likely contributed to the rise or solidification of authoritarianism and conservative populism in states like Hungary, India, the Philippines, Brazil, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and of course, the United States. As for arms control efforts and nuclear non-proliferation, I will save the full discussion for a later blog, because I have the benefit of knowing that future-Aidan will be talking about nuclear non-proliferation for his final project. So, here’s the short version: Russia is using nuclear threats for state strategy, which is basically unprecedented. We don’t think Russia will actually use nuclear weapons, but the use of nuclear threats is problematic on its own towards arms control efforts around the world. The United States needs to lead by example by continuing to reducing our own nuclear stockpiles, and provide support to Ukraine to ensure Russia’s strategy of nuclear aggression is not rewarded.

After those two briefings, I wrote memos about each of them summarizing their content and takeaways, and sent the memos to the appropriate Legislative Assistants who handle those policy issues, thus completing the traditional Favor. What will the LAs do with that information? Well, that depends. For the infant formula shortage, the information will likely go towards contacting constituents who reach out to us concerning the shortage, and to the Congressman as he makes decisions on how to vote on potential legislative action. For the Russia-Ukraine conflict, it will most likely be used to inform nuclear non-proliferation actions taken by the Congressman, since he is a leader on such issues. Finally, there is the simple reason that knowing things is good, not knowing things is bad. At least regarding issues of policy, that is.

So, that was this week! If I someday become a policy staffer, I can imagine how these briefings might become fairly dull, but as an intern, I still think they’re pretty interesting.

Week 4: The One with the Ick Factor

Hi y’all! Before I begin, I want to acknowledge that there were some Supreme Court decisions this week that you may find distressing, as I do. That said, I am saving a full discussion of the Supreme Court term for next week after the final decisions are released. You can find my thoughts there.

Instead, I thought I would talk about what is definitely my favorite thing to do as a Capitol Hill intern: giving tours of the U.S. Capitol Building. The Capitol is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful buildings in the world with an incredibly rich and complicated history. I am a big fan of nuance, and they’re are perhaps few subjects that require a more discerning eye than American history. The Capitol is a perfect example of that.

I give tours to constituents who request them through our office. Part of the reason I like giving tours so much is because I actually get to meet constituents face to face. I’m not from the district our office represents, or even Illinois, so the only times I really get to speak with constituents is through phone calls and Capitol tours. On the phone, people are often very animated, sometimes rude, and occasionally suspicious about sharing their information. That, combined with not being able to discuss policy openly, means that I usually just listen to constituents on the phone without much ability to build rapport or connection. While that has its merits, I much prefer the direct face-to-face interactions I get to have when I give tours to constituents. Tours give us something in common: an interest in the building. Once you have that, it doesn’t take much more to build a relationship that reminds you who you work for.

Okay, now that the obligatory “here’s my experience with this thing” section is out of the way, I’m just going to talk about the building because it. Is. Fascinating. If you don’t care about the building, feel free to skip ahead, but I think it’s worth thinking about.

Every tour is a bit different in path and content depending on who gives it, but my tour starts in the Capitol Visitor Center. There’s not much interesting about the CVC (I mean, relatively speaking), except for the statues it contains. The statues are a theme of my tour, so I might as well get you started here. Each state gets to send two statues to the Capitol for display. It can generally be anybody (seriously, Arkansas will soon have a statue of Johnny Cash in the Capitol), and they can be withdrawn or exchanged at any time. About 30-something statues are in the old House of Representatives chamber now called Statuary Hall, but the rest are scattered around the building, including the CVC. A few notable statues in the CVC: Jack Swigert, Apollo 13 astronaut from Colorado; Helen Keller, deaf-blind social advocate from Alabama; and Sakakawea, Native American explorer from North Dakota. There is also a replica of the Statue of Freedom that sits on top of the Capitol rotunda.

After the CVC, my tour goes to the Old Supreme Court chamber. Much of the furniture in the room was actually used by the Supreme Court when it was housed in the room from 1810-1860. This room was where a number of important decisions were made, including Dred Scott v. Sanford, in which Chief Justice Roger Taney informed Dred Scott that as a Black man and a slave, he had no rights to citizenship in the United States, and therefore no standing for suit in court. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. Chief Justice Taney actually told that to Dred Scott’s lawyers, because as a Black man, Dred Scott was not allowed in the building. A bust of Roger Taney currently sits in the Old Supreme Court chamber.

After the Old Supreme Court Chamber, my tour goes to the Crypt just beneath the Capitol rotunda. The Crypt and the rotunda serve as the symbolic center of Washington, D.C. The stone at the center of the Crypt marks the division between the four quadrants of the city. There is a myth that George Washington is buried underneath the Crypt, but there is an empty tomb where Congress intended that he be buried after his death (despite his wishes to be buried in Mount Vernon). There is a statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Crypt that is missing an ear. This was the style among statue artists at the time who wanted it to be known that they carved from an actual rock, so they left a little of the original rock in place. Right across the Crypt from Abraham Lincoln, the President who emancipated slaves, is a statuary hall statue from my home state, North Carolina. The statue is Charles Aycock, who made a name for himself as a fierce advocated for racial segregation in the early 20th century after Reconstruction.

After the Crypt, my tour goes upstairs to the rotunda. For a sense of scale, the Statue of Liberty could fit inside the rotunda with about 60 feet to spare. There is a lot to talk about with the rotunda, most notably the historically inaccurate (and in many cases offensive) depictions of Native Americans in the various paintings around the room, the painting depicting the history of the United States from colonization to the Wright brothers first flag wrapping around the entire dome, as well as some legitimately historic paintings depicting the signing of the Declaration of Independence and George Washington resigning his commission. There is also a women’s suffrage monument and a federally commissioned statue of Martin Luther King. The statuary hall statues in the rotunda are almost exclusively presidents, with one exception: Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary of the United States and future Broadway icon. The Presidents in the rotunda include Washington, Garfield, Eisenhower, Reagan, Jackson, and, of course, the only President never elected to national office, Gerald Ford.

After the rotunda comes the Old Senate Chamber, which also served as the Supreme Court chamber from 1860-1935 when they got their own building across the street. This is the room where Plessy v. Ferguson was decided, which enacted the legality of the “separate but equal” principle, effectively allowing for another century of de jure segregation after the conclusion of the Civil War. Plessy was an 8-1 decision. The lone dissenter was Justice John Marshall Harlan, also known as the Great Dissenter for his 30-something years of dissenting on the bench. As it happens, on June 30, Ketanji Brown Jackson will be sworn in as the first Black female Associate Justice on two Bibles: a family Bible, and John Marshall Harlan’s Bible.

Finally, we reach Statuary Hall, the former House of Representatives chamber. A number of Presidents served as Representatives in this chamber, including Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Pierce, and John Quincy Adams. John Quincy Adams actually died on a sofa in an adjoining room to Statuary Hall after collapsing on the floor. That sofa is still in that room. It has since been reupholstered. A few of the more interesting statues in this room to me: Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy from Mississippi; Alexander Hamilton Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy from Georgia; Zebulon Vance, former Governor and Confederate general from North Carolina. Alexander Hamilton Stephens statue, who as a reminder seceded from the union so he could own Black people, contains the inscription “Statesman - Author- Patriot”.

So, what’s the takeaway? History is messy. The history represented by the Capitol is messy. In addition to stunning artwork and architecture, we continue to honor the legacy of some seriously questionable people in our nation’s Capitol with statues placed immediately next to the chambers where our laws are made. I’m not saying these statues should be destroyed or anything, especially as someone who believes in taking a deep and discerning look at our history, good and bad. But maybe the leader of the literal rebellion against the United States doesn’t need a statue 50 feet from the current House of Representatives chamber? If we were Germany, would we put a statue of Adolf Hitler in the bundestag? I believe it is incumbent upon each of us, whether you work in government or not, to think about how we understand our history and reflect on what it means to us today. We can’t change the decisions made in the Old Supreme Court chamber or the laws made in the Old Senate Chamber, but we shouldn’t make the same mistakes we made then. We should acknowledge our shortcomings and failures, but we shouldn’t honor them. That’s the theme of my tour. I hope you enjoyed it :)

Week 5: The One Where Old Yeller Dies

I try to make these blogs somewhat light and enjoyable to read. This will not be one of those blog entries. Before I begin, I would like to fully acknowledge my limitations in the fields about which I intend to discuss for this week. I am a physics and mathematics student with a Wikipedia problem. Yes, I read a lot, and yes, I listen to a lot of podcasts, and yes, I work in Congress. But none of that makes me an expert on the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) or American jurisprudence. The opinions I am about to share are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Congressman Foster, SPS, or anyone other than myself. I fully claim any inaccuracies or misrepresentations as solely my own, though I don’t believe there to be any present.

On Friday, June 24, 2022, I was sitting at my desk having just finished press clips like any other Friday when MSNBC reported that the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade. I, a SCOTUS nerd, had been anticipating the decision any day at that point, so I had been intermittently refreshing the SCOTUS website waiting in trepidation for a decision that was sure to upend my day. I missed the announcement while reading one of the SCOTUS decisions released the previous day, Vega v. Tekoh. I didn’t know what was happening until I heard someone in the bullpen say “Holy s***, they f***ing did it”. I will never forget where I was, what I was doing, or how it felt when I heard those six words. Those six words were my introduction to the post-Roe world.

A socially acceptable number of minutes later, I excused myself, mumbling something about needing a smoothie before the phone calls came in, and managed to get to a bathroom stall before the tears came. I’m not usually a big cryer, so it only took a few minutes for me to compose myself for the long walk to Jamba Juice. On the walk, among the thoughts of all of the uterus-havers in my life who would soon have less autonomy in their health decisions, the sadness of knowing that lives would be lost for want of safe and accessible abortion care, the anger that the methods used to warp Senate and Supreme Court procedure and tradition to its breaking point had worked, and the anxiety of knowing I would spend the day speaking to distraught constituents, one thought dominated my mind: if I every run for office, today will be the reason why.

Twenty or so minutes later I returned to my desk, large Mango-a-go-go in tow, and sat awaiting the phone calls. Phone calls that never came. I recall maybe two callers that day who talked about the Dobbs decision. It was almost eerie, how silent it was. Everybody dealt with the news differently. I went for a comically large smoothie. A few staff members gathered in the Chief of Staff’s office hugging, weeping, and consoling one another. At 5:00 PM, the team gathered in Congressman Foster’s office and started drinking. Our constituents seemed to find the news depressing, not animating. I don’t claim to be able to psychoanalyze our constituents, but it’s the only explanation I can think of to justify the deafening silence.

Alright, enough of my melodrama. As destabilizing Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was, it was just one ruling, albeit a major one, among dozens in an unprecedented SCOTUS term. The nine days of Supreme Court decisions beginning with Carson v. Macon on June 21 and ending with West Virginia v. EPA and Biden v. Texas on June 30 may go down as among the most consequential in the history of American jurisprudence. I wish I could talk about every case, because to paraphrase my brother’s words regarding Stranger Things 4, “they just keep churning out bangers”, but I don’t have time. Instead, I will talk about just a few cases: Carson v. Macon, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and West Virginia v. EPA.

I tend to think of the first two as a pair of cases, as they both concern the relationship between religion and government. Carson v. Macon concerned a Maine school district that offered subsidies to secular private schools to compensate for a lack of public schools, but not religious-based private schools. To do so, Maine claimed, would constitute a government endorsement of religion, thus violating the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. The parents who brought suit argued that to not offer subsidies to religious-based schools constituted discrimination against a religious group, thus violating the Free Exercise Clause and Equal Protection Clause of the 1st and 14th Amendments. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the parents. In Kennedy v. Bremerton, a high school football coach insisted on praying at center field after games, which became widely publicized and often had crowds on-hand to participate. The football coach was told by the school district to stop holding these prayers, as in their view, it constituted an endorsement of religion on the part of the school district. The football coach eventually sued, citing the Free Exercise Clause. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the football coach. In both Macon and Bremerton, the Establishment Clause was weakened, and the Free Exercise Clause was strengthened. That much is relatively simple. What is particularly disturbing, however, is the transition in religious freedom cases from “may not” to “may” to “must”. Until the past 80 years or so, the idea that a school district would be required to provide scholarships to religious-based private schools was completely inconceivable. In the past several decades, the precedent in Establishment Clause cases has shifted from “may not endorse”, as in “may not provide scholarships”, to “may endorse”, as in “may allow a coach to pray if it chooses”, to now “must endorse”. It is this transition that Justice Sotomayor references when she writes in her Macon dissent, “What a difference five years makes. In 2017, I feared that the Court was ‘lead[ing] us . . . to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment.’... Today, the Court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation.” She adds in her Bremerton dissent, “the Court sets us further down a perilous path in forcing States to entangle themselves with religion, with all of our rights hanging in the balance.” Not to place my own words on the same level as the queen herself Justice Sotomayor, but if I could just add one thing: I’m not convinced this decision would have been the same if it was a Muslim with a prayer rug at the 50-yard line.

Now, for New York v. Bruen. It’s a common belief that the original intent of the 2nd Amendment was about gun ownership. In fact, most constitutional scholars agree that the primary intent of the Founders in including the 2nd Amendment among the Bill of Rights was to prevent a standing military. In reading the Federalist Papers, it’s pretty clear that the Founders considered one of the biggest threats to freedom to be a standing army controlled by a central government. Such an army, the Founders believed, was a danger to liberty because it could always be turned on its citizens. So, they wrote the 2nd Amendment to ensure that “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” That is, an organized resistance of citizens was necessary to defend itself from a standing army. There was a common law expectation of gun ownership, sure, but the Founders were not concerned with an individual right to gun ownership. They wanted every citizen to be a part of the militia, and they wanted the militia to have the right to be armed. It’s also worth noting that there were many, many restrictions on who could be a part of the militia, and therefore own a weapon. Chief among them: you had to be White, you had to be a man, and you had to own property. I would argue universal background checks seem comparably minimal, but I digress. It wasn’t until District of Columbia v. Heller (a 5-4 decision along ideological lines, by the way) in 2008 that the Supreme Court recognized an individual right to private gun ownership. And, of course, it wasn’t until 2022 that the Supreme Court recognized a constitutional right for an individual to carry a weapon in public for self-defense in New York v. Bruen. Early in the summer, I was jogging around the Washington Monument when I came upon a field of thousands of orange and white flowers. 45,222 bouquets, in fact; one for each person killed by a gun in 2020. Just a few miles away, almost exactly one month after 19 children and 2 adults were killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, the Supreme Court made it easier to carry a gun in public.

There’s not much I can say about Dobbs that hasn’t already been said a million times. I’ve also already mentioned most of my own feelings about this decision in the aforementioned melodrama, so I won’t go into that again, nor will I say much about Dobbs, although I could. What I will say is this: under Roe, those who held religious or any objections to abortion had a right to exercise those objections. Under Dobbs, those who hold religious or any objections to being forced into having a child do not have a right to exercise those objections. The only legal justification for that, in my view, is a public interest argument; does the government have a public interest in regulating abortion access? That comes down to an inescapable choice between unborn child and uterus-haver. I believe that any public interest in protecting an unborn child is superseded by the public interest in protecting the right of the uterus-haver to make their own health decisions on behalf of themselves and their potential child. I don’t believe it is the government’s role to interfere in a personal, independent medical decision that does not have an impact on public health.

Finally, I couldn’t claim to be a science policy intern if I didn’t talk about West Virginia v. EPA. The impact of the decision itself on climate change policy isn’t great, but it also could be worse. The EPA can still attempt to regulate certain emissions standards under various provisions of the Clean Air Act and Toxic Substances Control Act, and Congress still has the power (should it manage to wield it) to enact climate change legislation. That is not why I personally find this case so morbidly fascinating. The entire legal basis for this case is just bizarre. During the Obama Administration, the EPA introduced the Clean Power Plan, a relatively unambitious set of emissions standards for each state to meet in whatever way they saw fit, with the eventual goal of reducing carbon emissions by 32% by 2030. At the time, the Supreme Court blocked the Clean Power Plan from going into effect while various lawsuits made their way through the courts. Before it could be fully litigated, the Trump administration took over, repealed the Clean Power Plan, and replaced it with its own emissions “regulations”. Then, when the Biden administration took over, it announced that it would not be reenacting the Clean Power Plan, but instead enacting something else entirely to be announced later. In response, West Virginia and several other states sued the EPA, and requested that the Supreme Court rule on the legitimacy of the Clean Power Plan, in anticipation that the Biden administration’s policies would be similar. Astoundingly, the Supreme Court took up the case, thus deciding they would rule on the validity of a policy that never actually went into effect, nor will it ever go into effect, nor was it all that extreme (the goals set by the Clean Power Plan will soon be met anyway). So basically, the Supreme Court ruled on a policy that doesn’t exist, with the intent of restricting future policy that also doesn’t currently exist. I am not personally familiar with any case of the judiciary ruling on the constitutionality of policy before the policy is ever written. Almost as bizarre is the legal doctrine used by the majority to restrict the EPA’s potential action: the major questions doctrine. This relatively new, and until this case relatively unapplied, legal theory states that the Court will not recognize the authority of an agency to regulate issues of major political or economic impact unless that agency has been given that authority explicitly by Congress. This is really the first case that has applied the major questions doctrine so explicitly, and there’s really no precedent for it. This is a standard that the Supreme Court has chosen to make up for itself. So, as potentially problematic as the content of the ruling is, I am significantly more concerned as a climate change advocate by the evident hostility of this conservative majority to any EPA regulations not explicitly authorized by Congress. If the EPA can’t P the E, and Congress can’t get the votes for a climate change package, it will have an enormous impact on attempts to curb the effects of anthropogenic climate change.

I am under no illusions that this blog post will be widely read or distributed. I would be surprised if 5 people read this, including my Mom. I also know that any readers who do find their way here, on accident or otherwise, are not here to read about a 21 year old physics student’s take on American jurisprudence. That’s not why I write all of this. I spent 5 hours writing this because of all the words that come to mind when I think about how this Supreme Court term has affected me, one sticks out beyond all others: destabilizing. My foundational beliefs about life and morality, not just government, were completely upended this summer. I was raised on the idea that people are inherently good, and that goodness should be responded to with generosity. Kindness and respect, towards people and institutions, are free to give and valuable to receive. Beyond perhaps all of these, my overriding guiding principle is empathy. Allowing yourself to be impacted by another’s experience makes you a better person and the world a better place. I suppose some part of me always thought, and continues to think, however irrationally, however arrogantly, that if I just continue to believe in those principles of generosity, respect, and empathy, then maybe they would win the day. I can recall three periods of my post-pubescent years where those beliefs and principles were fundamentally shaken: the 2016 presidential election, the COVID-19 pandemic, and this Supreme Court term. I am not writing this so that someone might read it. I am writing this because for most of this summer, it’s all that I’ve been able to think about. So dang it, I’m gonna write about it.

Week 6: The One Where Phoebe Hates PBS

Hi y’all! Last week’s blog was a real bummer, so as a palette cleanser, this week I’m going to talk about the phone calls we receive in Congressman Foster’s office. Over the next three blogs, I will go into more detail about my three chief responsibilities as an intern in order of priority: phone calls, memos, and constituent letters.

The hardest job in any congressional office is the Member of Congress, there’s no doubt about that. That said, there is an argument to be made that the second hardest job in any congressional office is the intern, because we have to talk to you people on the phone. You people are crazy.

Of course, I’m kidding, but I mean it when I say that apart from everything I talked about in last week’s blog, answering the phones is the hardest part of my job. There are a few archetypical phone calls that we get, and I’ll try to describe each of them as best I can with a few examples. These categories will be imperfect, but hopefully you’ll get a sense of what it’s like to be the first point of contact for our constituents and various other stakeholders in a congressional office.

The first archetype is the cattle egret. Cattle egrets are herons that feed off of the insects that the cattle stir up while grazing. When the egrets aren’t feeding, they hop on the backs of the cattle for a free ride. They’re very light, so they don’t impede the movement of the cow or horse, but they benefit from the cattle’s ability to release the various types of food the egret needs. In our office, we get several calls a day from lobbyists or other congressional offices asking for the contact information of the staffer who works on their favorite policy issue. We can provide what they need, and these calls are very short and simple. I can be helpful without too much effort. Hence, I am the cow, and the caller is the egret.

The second archetype is the tourist. I don’t have a clever animal analogy here, they just want a tour of the Capitol building or the White House. I just take their information and our legislative assistant for constituent relations will try to reserve them a tour if there is a slot available. These are also fairly easy; it’s always nice to actually be able to help a constituent with what they ask for. As you’ll soon see, that’s most certainly not a given.

Another archetype is the enriched astrophage of Andy Weir’s novel Project Hail Mary. In this book, Weir imagines a single-celled organism that gets energy from high temperatures (i.e. stars), and reproduces in the presence of carbon dioxide. An astrophage that has all of the energy it needs from a star, a so-called “enriched” astrophage, then needs to look for the telltale emission wavelengths of carbon dioxide. Since it is usually in the presence of too much light to resolve these emission wavelengths, it first follows a magnetic field away from the light, then once it sees carbon dioxide (i.e. Venus), it makes a beeline straight there. This type of caller is someone who needs something from our District office (i.e. immigration casework, IRS tax refunds, passport appointments, etc.), but doesn’t know who to talk to or where to find the right contact information. So, they wander generally in the direction of Congressman Foster, and eventually reach me on the phone. After that, I give them the phone number for the District office, and they make a beeline there to get their problem solved. These are also fairly easy.

There are two more typical callers that we get in our office. Of course, my experience is limited, so I’m certain these last two don’t describe every caller in every office, but these two describe most of the constituents I spoke to this summer. The first is the vervet monkey. Vervet monkeys will sound an alarm call in the presence of a predator, but are typically docile and won’t engage if it doesn’t have to. I am referring here to constituents who have a concern about a piece of legislation or an action, and are simply voicing their concerns to their representative in Congress. They’re not hostile or angry in any way, they just want the Congressman to know where they stand on the issue, and hope that he will take their concerns into account in his public statements, votes in Congress, etc. Most constituents who are likely to vote for Congressman Foster (i.e. Democrats and other progressives) fall into this category, but we also get a lot of conservative vervet monkeys as well. Examples of this type of caller include “please vote Yes/No on H.R.1808, the Assault Weapons Ban” and “please tell Congressman Foster to work with Senate colleagues to pass climate change legislation”. These calls are not difficult, per se, and certainly not as difficult as the last category, but they are also not easy. I often find myself saying things like “I’ll make sure the Congressman gets your message”, or “please know that the Congressman takes your concerns very seriously”. It’s not that these statements are untrue, but they do feel misleading sometimes.

When I get calls like this, my job is to take down the caller’s contact information and the nature of their concerns, then put that information into a database where we collect all of our constituent correspondence. After that, I don’t really know what happens to it. Eventually it will be lumped in with emails, faxes, and phone calls about similar issues, and we will send out a constituent letter detailing the Congressman’s view on that particular issue and the various actions that he has taken. I’m not sure that the Congressman ever actually sees or hears about the opinions expressed, apart from an aggregate summary given at each staff meeting by the legislative assistant responsible for constituent correspondence. It is highly unlikely that a constituent will individually influence the Congressman’s position or action in a meaningful way unless they are a part of a massive grassroots campaign that gets the attention of our staff or the Congressman, especially if the individual disagrees with the Congressman’s stated position. To be clear, that is nothing against Congressman Foster. Our office gets about 1500 incoming correspondence every week. It’s unreasonable to expect that Congressman Foster would be able to hear every constituent concern, and it’s probably even a good thing that one constituent can’t influence their Congressman when there are almost 700,000 other constituents to consider. None of what I just said should be construed as a statement of quality about Congressman Foster or our office’s handling of constituent correspondence, I tend to think we do an okay job all things considered. It’s just the nature of the thing that most vervet monkeys will only have an impact if they are a member of a large troop.

That said, vervet monkeys are far more likely to have an impact than the last archetype: dolphins. Dolphins are highly intelligent jerks. Dolphins have been known to use baby sharks as a volleyball. They hunt in rigorously coordinated and creative packs so that nothing can escape. They kill the children of other species, and even their own species. Worst of all, dolphins can go for five days without sleeping and lose no mental acuity. Don’t even get me started on their various problematic mating habits. If you’ll forgive the strong imagery, I am referring to callers who are typically hostile, talk for long periods of time, call very often, insult who they are speaking to, and are generally mean all the way through. These are not things I say lightly; I really try to find nice things to say about these callers, and I will later. Generally speaking though, these callers are the most difficult to deal with, the most emotionally draining, the most time consuming, and the least likely to get their opinion heard by the Congressman or any staff member other than an intern. In my experience, dolphins are almost always conservative, though I suspect Republican offices often get liberal dolphins too. Here are a few examples of actually dolphin callers I’ve spoken with this summer:

• “Tell Foster to stop smoking Hunter Biden’s crack”

• “You’re a piece of s***, you f***ing fa**ot.”

• “While you and Congressman Foster are off murdering babies and shipping immigrants into our cities, real Americans are paying $5 a gallon for gas”

• “If Biden is willing to ship ‘illegals’ out of central America fleeing gang violence, why isn’t he willing to ship Black people out of Chicago?”

• “Did you hear about the insurrection Stephen Colbert’s staff committed in the Capitol last week?”

• “I watched some of the sham Stalinist kangaroo court the January 6 committee put on last night...”

You get the idea. As much as I try not to let these callers affect me, and as much as I know their goal is at least in part to make my life difficult, I do find it very challenging to speak with these callers. Sure, part of it is that they disagree with me and Congressman Foster; that is admittedly difficult at times, but that’s not the problem for me. The problem for me is that I genuinely want to hear from these constituents. As I said before, these constituents are often highly intelligent, incredibly persistent, and genuinely disillusioned from the political process. I want to hear from them. I want to know what they believe, what they are concerned about, and why they think we aren’t doing anything or enough to help them. More often than not, I generally think we do care about their concerns and work hard to address them. I work really hard to understand the issues that are affecting dolphins and respect dolphins enough to give them an opportunity to impact me. Hard as it is, every time I pick up the phone, I try to give the person on the other end an opportunity to affect me, because I believe that makes me and the world a better place. For the most part, dolphins take that opportunity and pass it back and forth like a volleyball. That is what I find so difficult about answering phone calls.

I like to believe that every person who calls our office has a legitimate reason to do so, and they are looking for us to serve their needs. By opening myself up to what they have to say, particularly in the cases of vervet monkeys and dolphins, I am hearing directly about the issues troubling our constituents, the challenges and tragedies they face daily. Afterwards, I write down what they said to me in a database, and it goes off into the ether somewhere. Like I said, I know it’s probably the best system possible, and everyone in our office works really hard to listen to and serve our constituents as best we know how. But when I tell a constituent “I’ll make sure the Congressman gets your message” or write in a constituent letter “Please know that I will keep your thoughts in mind”, it feels disingenuous to me. I’ll talk more about that when I talk about constituent letters. So that is why I believe the second hardest job in our office is the intern.

Don’t get me wrong, I genuinely enjoy my job, and I am so thankful to Congressman Foster and SPS for making this summer possible. This experience has been amazing, and I am so so so happy I’ve gotten to do everything that I’ve gotten to do this summer. I am just also trying to be honest about the challenges it has posed.

Week 7: The One with [Seven] Parts

Hi y’all! This week, I’m going to talk about bill memos. When there is a piece of legislation that Congressman Foster might be interested in cosponsoring, the staffer in charge of the general policy area the bill falls into will either research the bill themselves, or have an intern draft a memo to be revised and updated later.

The memo will typically include seven sections: background, summary, arguments for, arguments against, recommendation, cosponsor list, and press release or Dear Colleague letter. The background section covers the state of the problem the bill is trying to address. This is often pretty self-explanatory, as with legislation addressing abortion access or gun violence. Sometimes, the issues can be pretty niche, and require more explanation, such as with H.R.7374, the Jumpstart Act, which would allow unused green cards from one fiscal year to roll over to the next. The number of unused immigrant visas is not common knowledge, so that would go under background. The summary section details the actual provisions of the bill. A summary of most bills is provided by the Congressional Research Service, so I often draw much of my summaries from that. Arguments for and against are exactly what they sound like. Why would one support it? Why would one oppose it? The recommendation section is just a few words: either cosponsor, or do not cosponsor. The cosponsor list is, well, a list of all of the cosponsors currently on the bill. We put the names of Members who are in the same caucuses as Congressman Foster (i.e. the New Democrat Coalition) in bold. The final section contains the Dear Colleague letter for the bill, or the press release if a Dear Colleague cannot be found. A Dear Colleague letter is a correspondence written by the office of the Congressperson introducing the bill, detailing what the bill does and why other Congresspeople might be interested in cosponsoring it. If a Dear Colleague cannot be found, usually the Congressperson will have released a public statement about introducing the bill, and we will steal that for the memo.

That’s it! Generally when I am asked to write a memo, it’s pretty clear what position we will take on it. This summer, I only wrote memos about legislation Congressman Foster would almost certainly cosponsor. Since I usually already know what Congressman Foster’s position will be, the most difficult sections of the memo are the background information and the summary. The summary is easier, since I can usually draw on the Dear Colleague, press release, and Congressional Research Service information for that. For background information, though, a higher standard of evidence and literature review is required.

Fortunately, my background in physics and mathematics is very helpful for the background section. Anyone who has done research in STEM knows that research forces you to become a very effective Googler. Quickly becoming a mini-expert on something I’ve never heard of before very quickly is perhaps the most valuable skill I’ve learned in science. Research for memos is no different, except instead of reading scientific journals and textbooks, I’m reading whitepapers and articles from various government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and interest groups. I also happen to have a significant background in this kind of literature review for my research on gifted education programs, but the skill comes just as much from science as anything else. In fact, policy articles are easy compared to scientific articles, with the notable exception of anything related to taxes and finance. None of that makes sense. Anyway, it turns out that my physics background actually makes me more well suited to memo writing. The only skill needed after being able to learn quickly is being able to write well. I’ll leave my writing skills for you to judge.

For anyone who is interested, here is the list of the memos I wrote this summer and a quick one-liner about them:

• H.R.7374 Jumpstart Act: this bill aims to reduce immigration backlogs by allowing Congressionally authorized but unused immigrant visas (green cards) to roll over into the next fiscal year, rather than going unused. Recommendation: cosponsor.

• H.J.Res.87 War Powers Act in Yemen: this resolution directs President Biden to remove the U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities against Houthis in Yemen. Recommendation: cosponsor.

• H.R.6557 Striking Workers Healthcare Protection Act: this bill would require employers to continue to provide health insurance to workers on strike. Recommendation: cosponsor.

• H.R.8051 Assault Weapons Excise Act: this devilishly clever bill would place a 1000% excise tax on the sale of assault weapons, effectively making them prohibitively expensive for manufacturers, distributors, and customers. Recommendation: cosponsor. (Sidenote: Congressman Foster already cosponsors H.R.1808, an outright assault weapons ban)

• H.R.6117 PrEP Access and Coverage Act: this bill would require that insurance providers cover HIV medication and related treatment costs. Recommendation: cosponsor.

• H.Con.Res.89 Opposition to Criminalizing Reproductive Care: this resolution would basically say “hey don’t litigate women trying to access reproductive care”. It doesn’t really have a concrete impact, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important. Recommendation: cosponsor.

• H.R.8210 Stop Anti-Abortion Disinformation (SAD) Act: this bill would direct the Federal Trade Commission to create and enforce rules preventing the dissemination of false information about or advertising for abortion services by Crisis Pregnancy Centers and other organizations. Recommendation: cosponsor.

• H.R.2734 Veteran Families Health Services Act: this bill would require the Departments of Defense and Veterans affairs to cover infertility treatments for active duty service members and veterans, unless it can be proven that the infertility condition existed prior to service. Recommendation: cosponsor.

So far, Congressman Foster has cosponsored one of these bills. One July 26, 2022, Congressman Foster became the most recent cosponsor of H.J.Res.87, to invoke the War Powers Act in Yemen. Did I have anything to do with that? Not really, but I also didn’t have nothing to do with that. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’ve officially made it.

It is worth noting, however, that it’s unlikely that any of these bills will make it past committee. It’s not uncommon for bills to have literally a majority of the House as cosponsors and still not get an up or down vote on the floor. About 5.5% of bills that Congressman Foster has cosponsored in his 12 years in Congress became law, a rate that is a bit more than seven times above average. In fact, the likelihood that any bill I worked on this summer, be it memo, constituent letter, or otherwise, will pass is exceedingly low, even if its text gets included on a larger package that does pass. Thus is the nature of Congress.

Week 8: The One with the Ultimate Fighting Champion

Hi y’all! This week, I’m going to talk about constituent letters. When we get a correspondence from a constituent, be it phone call, email, fax, letter, or smoke signal, it is the policy of our office to respond to it. We get about 1500 incoming correspondence each week. To make this manageable, we group incoming correspondence regarding similar issues into batches, to whom we will send one letter. This is not as difficult as it sounds – the majority of correspondence we get come from email or letter campaigns. Our system detects duplicate letters from different people and puts them in their own batch. After that, we just have to go through and add the personal letters. Each week, I am assigned three batches to which I draft the response. This response is what we colloquially call a constituent letter, though the confusion that term may cause is not lost on me. Congress is the wrong place to be if you want everything to make sense.

When I am assigned a batch, the first thing I do is read all of the unique letters in the batch. Usually this is just a couple of campaign emails, and perhaps one or two personal messages. I try to make sure something ends up in the final letter that directly addresses each unique message, especially personalized letters. Once I have a sense of what the constituents are contacting us about, I start researching. If they are asking about a specific bill, I look up the bill. If they want to know Congressman Foster’s position on a very specific issue, I Google around and become a mini-expert on the issue in question, just like with memos.

Next comes the hardest step: formulating a message. More often than not, I’ll be responding to a letter about a very, very specific issue (see the list below), so it’s unlikely that Congressman Foster will have a stated position on the issue. So, I tend to look for broader themes that align with the Congressman’s values, like expanding healthcare access, standing up for human rights, valuing scientific research and innovation, and so on. Most of the time, even if the letters we are responding to disagree with Congressman Foster’s position, the fundamental value is shared, so I can focus on that.

Once I have the message, writing is the easy part. I will typically write two paragraphs, in addition to a salutation and conclusion. The first paragraph describes the issue in question. This is somewhat similar to the background section of a memo, but more colloquial. I place the issue in the context of Congressman’s values. If Congressman Foster does have a stated position on the issue, I will include it here, but more often than not, I have to avoid explicitly taking a position. I find that frustrating, but then again, in the 117th Congress, over 29,000 bills have been introduced. Congressman Foster can’t be expected to have a stated position on every single one of them. In the second paragraph, I usually divert somewhat from the main topic to discuss actions Congressman Foster has taken that fit the message or theme. For instance, Congressman Foster might not have an explicitly stated position on the extension of Obamacare subsidies (though in this case I believe he does), but he has taken other actions that are also focused on expanding healthcare access, so I might talk about those instead.

This process is often frustrating for me. We often cite cosponsorship of various bills, like an assault weapons ban, as an “action” Congressman Foster has taken on gun violence, even though there is little chance the bill will become law. 100 bills that Congressman Foster has cosponsored have eventually become law. 50 of those bills were ceremonial (naming post offices, awarding Congressional Gold Medals, etc.). His cosponsorship success rate is about 5.5%, which is about seven times higher than the average bill passage rate of 0.77%, but it is not so high that I would consider cosponsorship alone an “action”. Then again, in many cases, it’s often the best we can do in this political environment and with the various systemic obstacles we face. Like I’ve said before, this is nothing against Congressman Foster, or our office. It’s just the nature of the system we operate in. That doesn’t mean it’s easy for me to talk about our “accomplishments”, though.

Week 9: The One Where [Putin] Crosses the Line

Hi y’all! For my second-to-last blog, I thought I would talk about my final presentation topic: nuclear non-proliferation. Most of the other interns either work in traditional physics research or have more well-defined projects than I do. Since my internship site is a Congressional office, I don’t have a specific project to present. That means I get to talk about whatever I am interested in for my final presentation at the symposium next week. I considered several topics for my talk, including the 2021-22 Supreme Court term, interesting Congressional statistics, the America COMPETES Act, and a simple accounting of all of the issues I worked on this summer. I settled on nuclear disarmament because I wanted to talk about something with an obvious need for scientists in policy-making. It also helps that Congressman Foster is a leader on nuclear non-proliferation issues and I am a world-class foreign policy nerd.

So, to the issue. Nuclear non-proliferation is the term used to describe world-wide efforts aimed at preventing catastrophe related to nuclear weapons. The goal of nuclear non-proliferation could most generally be characterized as “strategic stability.” Basically, whatever situation involves not blowing up everything and everyone. This usually means decreasing the number of nuclear weapons around the world and preventing new states from acquiring nuclear weapons, but there are schools of thought that advocate for theoretically stable scenarios where some or many countries have some or many nuclear weapons. I am personally not particularly enchanted by the latter ideas, so I won’t talk about them much, but they deserve mention.

I am more interested in efforts that reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world and make it very difficult (and illegal) for other countries to obtain nuclear weapons. The reason for that is simple: right now, humanity is capable of destroying itself and all life on Earth several times over. Well, maybe not all life, tardigrades are persistent little beasts, but you get the idea. In my view, no matter how “stable” the world may be with that many nuclear weapons, we should not be capable of that. To me, there is something fundamentally wrong about that possibility, no matter how unlikely it is to occur.

I also believe that almost any use of nuclear weapons is inherently unethical because there is no way to prevent civilian casualties, almost certainly hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings are an entirely different conversation to which I have a personal connection. My grandfather was in the Pacific fleet that would have invaded Japan had President Truman decided not to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If President Truman had gone the conventional route, it’s possible I would never have been born. Does that mean President Truman made the right decision? Despite my strongly pro-Me bias, not necessarily; it’s a very complicated issue. Regardless, that is why I hedge with almost any use of nuclear weapons.

We have now covered approximately 0 slides of my presentation, so I’ll speed things up now. The title of my presentation is “The Status of Nuclear Non-Proliferation in the Era of Renewed Russian Aggression.” Around the beginning of this year (2022), Russia started to take action that was perceived as nuclear threats surrounding their invasion of Ukraine. The Russian government altered the alert status of their nuclear weapons, they conducted a routine but technically unexpected maneuver with their nuclear forces, and President Putin threatened “unprecedented consequences” for any third-party (i.e. the United States or NATO) that intervened militarily in Ukraine. All of these actions were interpreted by the global community as nuclear threats. Regardless of whether or not Russia acts on these threats (it’s vanishingly unlikely, by the way), the threats themselves are unprecedented and incredibly damaging to nuclear non-proliferation efforts.

To illustrate why Russian threats are so problematic (beyond the obvious), consider a country like North Korea. Russia has wanted Ukraine to be a part of Russia again for decades, really ever since the fall of the Soviet Union. North Korea has had an ongoing conflict with South Korea for decades. Russia has now invaded Ukraine and used threats of nuclear action to shield themselves from direct military intervention by NATO and the United States. If Russia is successful in achieving their goals in Ukraine, whatever those goals are (which is not entirely clear, but almost irrelevant), what does North Korea learn from that? They learn that if they have enough nuclear weapons to shield themselves from global intervention, they get an upper hand should they ever decide to advance on South Korea. Worse, Kim Jong-un might just be crazy enough to use nuclear weapons in a way that Vladimir Putin is not.

The Korean Peninsula conflict is far from the only such regional dispute, and arguably far from the most dangerous. There are currently nine countries that have nuclear weapons: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. Iran is also very close to obtaining a nuclear weapon. Of those nine nuclear states, six of them are involved in ongoing border disputes. Russia has Ukraine, North Korea has South Korea, China has Taiwan, India and Pakistan have each other (the Kashmir region in northern India), and Israel has the Palestinian territories (although for nuclear non-proliferation purposes, Iran is actually a bigger concern than Palestine). If Russia is successful in Ukraine, what does that say to North Korea and China? Perhaps more importantly, what does that say to South Korea, Taiwan, and Iran, who want to defend their sovereignty from their nuclear neighbors and may feel nuclear weapons are the only way to do that? According to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, it sends “the worst possible message”. I haven’t even mentioned India and Pakistan, a conflict that has been hot for decades.

The point is, it is critical to nuclear non-proliferation efforts that Russia is not successful in Ukraine. Russia has already shown that they can prevent direct military intervention on the part of the United States and NATO, which is bad enough, but also not an entirely new concept. The damage would be limited if the global community came together and demonstrated that if you make these nuclear threats, you will be sanctioned into oblivion, you will unite and solidify your enemies against you, and you will not be able to achieve your goals. That is the short term goal for nuclear non-proliferation advocates.

The medium term goal is to re-enter negotiations with Russia for a new nuclear non-proliferation treaty. I know this may seem counterintuitive, but even throughout the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union were talking to each other and negotiating. When Russia invaded Ukraine, we stopped talking, understandably, but now it’s time to start talking again. Since 2005-ish, most nuclear non-proliferation treaties have been weakened or entirely abandoned. There is now only one nuclear non-proliferation treaty on the books, New START. New START was renewed for five years in February 2021. It cannot be renewed again. So, if no other treaty is negotiated, in 2026, there will be no treaties restricting access to or action with nuclear weapons for the first time in decades. Nuclear states will largely be free to resume building up nuclear stockpiles again after we’ve managed to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world by 70% from peak. The first START treaty took nine years to negotiate. We have less than four years to negotiate a new treaty. We need to start talking again.

In the long-term, it is in the United States interest to continue reducing our own nuclear stockpiles. We ought to lead by example, sure, but for what it’s worth, we would expect Russia to get on board with this too. The war in Ukraine has also shown that Russia’s conventional military is far weaker than expected, so it is in the United States’ defense interest to reduce the role of nuclear militarism in global affairs in favor of conventional militarism. We have reason to expect that after the war in Ukraine, the Russian military will be severely weakened and depleted regardless of the outcome. Their economy will also be crippled from global sanctions. We hope they will be desperate to use the money they currently spend on maintaining nuclear weapons on other economic and military interests. This would create optimal circumstances for nuclear disarmament.

So, what can you, dear scientist reader, do about this? Why do you care? Well, nuclear non-proliferation is very scientifically complicated. What does it mean for a country to be “close” to obtaining a nuclear weapon, for instance? Well, it has to do with the amount of enriched uranium a country has created, and to what percentage enrichment. Most policymakers will be the first to tell you that they don’t know off the top of their head the difference between 5% enriched uranium and 95% enriched uranium, or why one is more dangerous. That is if they even know what uranium is. This is nothing against policymakers, it just means that scientists need to be in the room to answer those questions. Scientists need to be translators of science in order for good policy to exist. That is the role Congressman Foster plays as the only Ph.D. Physicist in Congress. Indeed, during the Obama administration when the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was being negotiated (better known as the Iran nuclear deal), he would answer questions from other Members of Congress about the details of the policy. In short, having scientists in the room for policymaking leads to better policy, which leads to a safer world. So, to any readers who feel pressured to choose between pure science and other interests like the humanities, don’t choose. You are not only normal, you are necessary. You may save the world someday.

Week 10: The One After Vegas

Hi y’all! This will be my last blog of the SPS summer internship. This summer has been among the most challenging of my life. I witnessed the failure of our government to properly meet the needs of our people. I met people who called me horrible names and ridiculed everything I stand for. I saw how easy it would be to tumble into despair and lose faith in people. And yet, if I had to choose again, I would do this internship every time.

Okay, now that I have your attention, here’s an ice cube for that scalding hot tea: I also met a lot of wonderful people who work really hard to make the world a better place. I spoke to a lot of constituents who reminded me that even if as a species we’re a bit of a mess sometimes, most of us are pretty good people. My fellow interns in SPS and on Capitol Hill were uncommonly generous with their time, spirit, attention, and kindness. Even after weeks where I felt so drained from a constituent calling me a f***ing f***ot or Joe Manchin being Joe Manchin or just knowing that basically every bill I wrote about this summer would never make it out of committee, I knew I would be welcomed by the SPS interns to a potluck dinner. My only hang up from this summer was that I wish I had more energy to spend on getting to know my fellow interns more.

This internship scrambled my mind, which is a good thing. Even if in these blogs it sort of seems like I know what I’m talking about, I don’t. I learned so much and had so many experiences that it will take me a very very long time to digest all of it. My grandfather asked me when I got home from Washington, D.C., how I would describe my summer in one word. I think my precise word was “aaaaaahhhhhhgbgghh.” I am trying to embrace that feeling as much as I can, however anxiety inducing it may be. I honestly couldn’t tell you if I’m more likely to run for office someday or never work in politics again.

This isn’t just an internal mess either; people have noticed. At one of the last potlucks of the summer, the SPS interns played “Most Likely To”, where we voted who was Most Likely To do something. I was Most Likely To in three categories: to have children, to get a Ph.D. In physics (other than Valeria), and to do something completely unrelated to physics. I continue to find this endlessly hilarious and sharply insightful, not to mention deeply flattering. Yes, I am flattered by my peers also not knowing what I’m going to do with my life, but believing that I will be doing something.

Anyway, like my mind right now, this blog is a bit of a mess, but that’s okay because it’s honest. And, I would honestly take a complexly great experience over a simply good one every time.

I have wanted to participate in the SPS Summer Internship Program for years, ever since I first heard about it when Brad Conrad gave a talk for my SPS chapter at the beginning of my sophomore year. I applied for this internship twice and interviewed three times, four if you count interviewing with Congressman Foster’s office. Throughout all of it, my pitch was that my interests are too broad to be confined to just physics. I yearned for an opportunity to engage with science, community, and government, if possible. I’m sure in at least one of my interviews or applications, I said something like “I want to expand my horizons of what a physics education can lead to.” Well, this summer didn’t just expand my horizons; it destroyed them. Like the universe, the possibilities have no edge and are expanding.

I am so grateful to everybody who made this summer possible and the support SPS has provided me over the years. My thanks go out to Brad Conrad, Kayla Stephens, Mikayla Cleaver, Andrew Zeidell, and the entire SPS team that makes this internship happen every year. Thanks to Dr. John Mather and the John and Jane Mather foundation for creating and funding the Mather policy position. Thanks to Congressman Foster and Team Foster for opening up their office to a bright-eyed, if slightly tortured, physicist. Thanks to everyone at Appalachian State and my SPS chapter for writing recommendations, encouraging me to pursue this program, and being the people that make SPS so wonderful. Thanks to my family and friends for trying to keep me grounded, hard as I may resist. And, of course, thank you to the other SPS interns from this summer for sharing yourselves and your experiences with me. I am better for having met all of you, and I look forward to watching where you go. I will see you at PhysCon 2022.

This is far from the end of my time with SPS. As is tradition at my university, I am transitioning into the Vice Presidency of my SPS chapter for my senior year, to mentor and advise the new leadership team. They will be great. SPS continues to be incredibly generous in supporting my education with the Jack Hehn and SPS Leadership scholarship for this academic year. And, of course, I will be joining SPS National Council as the humble Associate Zone Councilor for Zone 5, North and South Carolina. I am thrilled at the opportunity to serve SPS and my physics communities in this role. So, this may be my last blog, but this is not goodbye. Thank you.