Dear Commons Community,

The following is a recap of a talk given yesterday by Mark Cuban as reported by Time magazine.

“Mark Cuban is no fan of Donald Trump. The business moguls have a long, complicated relationship that colored plenty of the 2024 presidential campaign as the reality stars sparred from afar. The frenemy-ship was one of the best subplots of last year’s hard-fought campaign, and one that is showing no sign of abating.

Speaking Saturday to a conference of traditionalist Republicans, the Dallas Mavericks owner and serial entrepreneur suggested Trump merits slim admiration as he continues to hock anything that will slap his name on it, from cryptocurrency to clothing to the U.S. government itself.

“The only reason someone sells all that shit is because they have to,” Cuban trolled.

Cuban by contrast said he doesn’t need to slum it with such petty endeavors. “I don’t need to sell gold tennis shoes that may not ship,” he said, noting Trump’s effort in footwear that warned might never materialize. “He doesn’t want to govern. He wants to sell.”

Bravado of that order is easy when you’re a billionaire. It’s just not clear that it translates to a viable governance strategy, especially with a rival billionaire holding the most consequential job on the planet.

Cuban, a swaggering independent, was regrouping in Washington with anti-Trump Republicans at the Principles First summit, as the Trumpist wing of the party huddled across the river at this year’s CPAC, where Trump was set to speak this afternoon, and Elon Musk brandishing a chainsaw stole the show earlier this week.

The striking split-screen Saturday hinted at the deeply unsettled moment in politics, as our most famous billionaires offer competing views of how to fix Washington. And for Cuban, that prescription was wrapped up in his withering assessment of the Democratic Party, and Vice President Kamala Harris, who he believes failed to reach voters last year.

“If you gave the Democrats a dollar bill and said, ‘You can sell these for 50 cents,’ they would hire 50 people … and then would not know how to sell the dollar bill for 50 cents,” said Cuban, who hit the trail last year for Harris. “If you gave it to Donald Trump and said, ‘Sell this dollar bill for $2,’ he’d figure out a way, right? He’d tell you that $2 bill is, you know, huge.”

All of which leads Cuban to having little optimism that Democrats can steer the country away from the Trumpian skid the nation finds itself enduring.

“I learned the Democrats can’t sell worth shit,” Cuban said.

In Cuban’s estimation, Democratic candidates did not demonstrate having any understanding of small businesses, the impact of inflation, the anxiety about immigration, or even the basics of the tax code. All of that conspired, thanks to bloated consultants looking over their shoulders, to their losses when a win was achievable. It’s also why, after his first event for Harris, he banned her consultants from chirping in his ear, he said, and why he’s watching with frustration and shock that they haven’t learned any lessons from last year’s loss.

Cuban heaped scorn on those Democrats who keep repeating the arguments from the unsuccessful 2024 bid about Trump being a threat to democracy and a challenge to everything that Americans hold dear.

“How’d that work in the campaign?” Cuban said.

As Trump and Musk set about to scrap whole pillars of the federal bureaucracy, Cuban argued that the fascination on the wrecking ball is not a winning tactic because neither he nor Musk need to get it all right to change government in ways that will be difficult to unwind.

“Elon doesn’t give a shit,” Cuban said. “He’s, like, ‘F— it, I’ll be rich no matter what.’”

That said, Cuban was clear he has zero interest in being an elected player in a system he carries avowed contempt toward. “I don’t want to be President,” he said.

As both parties fret over the outsized influence of the super-rich, it is telling how much the prescriptions of celebrities with deep pockets continue to draw so much interest. Cuban’s needling of Democrats was rooted in how much he blames them for everything unfolding now.

“Chaos is not good for this country,” Cuban warned. “There’s no amount of money that overcomes that.”

Sadly, Cuban is telling it like it is!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The above was sent to me by my colleague, Patsy Moskal, at the University of Central Florida.

Roald Dahl was a British author of popular children’s literature and short stories, a poet, screenwriter and a World War II fighter pilot. His books have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide. He has been called “one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century”.  In November 1962, Dahl’s daughter Olivia died of measles encephalitis, age seven. Her death left Dahl “limp with despair”, and feeling guilty about not having been able to do anything for her.

Tony

Former federal workers protest against cuts to government agencies in Washington D.C.  Courtesy of Fortune.

Dear Commons Community,

On  February 13th, a research entomologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) was among the first, receiving an email after the close of business hours saying they were being “removed” from his job, studying a key problem in agriculture science. The change had gone into effect 14 minutes before the email arrived. “The letter said I was being let go due to poor performance, which is nonsensical since they had just invited me to apply for a promotion…” the stunned researcher says.  As reported by Science.

Thousands of other federal scientists were similarly shocked over subsequent days as President Donald Trump’s administration unleashed a massive, unprecedented, and chaotic wave of firings across the U.S. government. The job losses—guided by the White House’s semiofficial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) run by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk—struck tens of thousands of workers. Most were among some 200,000 probationary workers in the 2.4 million person federal workforce—people who had recently been hired or transferred to a new position, and enjoyed fewer job protections. The layoffs decimated the foot soldiers of many health and science agencies, sweeping up early-career scientists as well as old hands in new positions. Scores of scientists working as federal contractors received termination notices as well.

The total tally of dismissed scientists remains unclear. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—which includes the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—planned to cut “∼5200” employees, according to a 14 February internal NIH memo, but some got eleventh hour reprieves.

At NIH, where institute directors were alerted to the imminent firings at a hastily called Friday morning meeting, about 1500 employees were initially scheduled to be cut, but the list dropped below 1200 after some got designated as essential; at CDC an early list targeted almost 1300 but later shrank to 750. On 18 February, the National Science Foundation dismissed 168 employees, roughly 10% of its workforce. After broad firings at FDA, its deputy commissioner for human food resigned over the 89 people cut from his division. Other science agencies expect dismissals as DOGE marches on.

Senior members of U.S. scientific leadership were also axed last week. Lawrence Tabak, former acting director of NIH who still held the second highest role there, was forced to retire. HHS also fired bioengineer Renee Wegrzyn, director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, a $1.5 billion agency created 3 years ago to fund high-risk, high-payoff biomedical research.

Although the final toll on science agencies may not exceed the number of staff who retire, resign, or otherwise leave government each year, observers fear the abrupt and seemingly indiscriminate firings could hamper vital research and waste money. “This is truly a national tragedy and one that is being executed by people who do not understand the value of scientific research,” says molecular biologist Shirley Tilghman, former president of Princeton University and longtime adviser to NIH directors.

Administration statements and sources defended the cuts as strategic measures to increase efficiency, saying they are well-planned and affect less important employees. But critics note the probationary firings swept away recently promoted veteran federal scientists and experienced researchers who had just been lured to government service. They also say the chaotic rollout, which included lastminute scrambles to remove employees from to-be-fired lists and rehire needed people, reflected hastiness.

For example, dozens of physicians in subspecialty training, research nurses, and other essential staff at NIH’s massive Clinical Center were short-listed to be fired, according to sources. But hours before notification they were removed from the list; their absence could have closed the facility, jeopardizing hundreds of often deeply ill patients and ruining biomedical studies.

Members of CDC’s famed disease outbreak training program, the Epidemic Intelligence Services were told last week that their positions had been eliminated. But the decision was reversed over the weekend after an uproar. Those in an equally prestigious but less visible CDC program, the Laboratory Leadership Service, were not spared. And despite the stated intent of the new HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to focus on combating chronic diseases, CDC eliminated contractors at its National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

One, who worked on cardiovascular disease, messaged on Signal: “Half of my team (we work on epidemiology and surveillance) is contractors and we have all been terminated within a few short hours.”

At the National Nuclear Security Administration, a part of the Department of Energy that manages nuclear weapons, officials reportedly scrambled to rehire key technical staff—but couldn’t reach them because their government emails had been disconnected.

Some science leaders argued the Trump administration is not specifically targeting research. “Science seems to be collateral damage to these [downsizing] efforts that are almost random, by date of hire or date of promotion,” says Sudip Parikh, CEO of AAAS, the world’s largest science society. “It’s not strategic. It’s not based on the needs of the future, the needs of science.” (AAAS publishes Science but the News team operates independently.)

Much remained uncertain as Science went to press, including whether some firings will withstand legal challenges. Congress may also eventually push back; NIH, for example, has strong bipartisan support.

Parikh and others said this year’s funding levels for the science agencies, due to be decided in Congress over the next few weeks, will determine the fate of many more federal scientists and the research they oversee. “The next month is probably one of the most important months in the history of science and technology in the United States—and I’m not one to tend to hyperbole,” Parikh told attendees at the AAAS annual meeting in Boston last weekend.

Since the firings began, Science has communicated with dozens of current and former federal scientists, who often asked to remain anonymous. They have described tear-filled meetings and critical work being interrupted. “It’s pretty horrific,” one said. “The abrupt way this was implemented prevented us from even being able to prioritize what data needed to be collected or to transfer that data in an orderly way to collaborators,” another wrote.

Dismissed federal scientists expressed fear over finances and lamented the destruction of a long-running bargain where they provide applied research or services for the U.S. government in exchange for a secure career. One fired U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) postdoc was working on an invasive species problem with “huge economic implications” and had wanted to mirror his mom who worked for a federal agency for 20 years. After his termination notice, the shocked postdoc still hoped to salvage work before losing computer access. “I’m trying to quickly share code and files with people who are still going to be at the research center … I don’t know who’s going to be able to pick up this,” he said on the day of his firing.

At NIH, some newly hired or promoted division directors had to call junior staff to inform them of their impending firings while knowing they, too, were targeted for termination. And one U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) employee who serves in a manager role described a colleague who is living in government housing and had 7 days to move out. “It’s insane,” the manager says. “We lost about 40% of the staff” at that office, they add.

Many of the fired workers worry about finding another job in a private or academic market flooded with government scientists. “My wife is 6 months pregnant and we are scrambling to make sure we stay insured through the birth and beyond,” one former USDA researcher told Science. “[I feel] betrayed, gutted, lost, anxious, and furious,” says one biologist who received a termination notice from FWS. “I have a mortgage, a car payment, prescriptions, and other bills to pay and not much savings to fall back on.”

Beyond the personal toll, the firings threaten ongoing science, including key agricultural and health surveillance efforts. One USDA bird flu scientist kept a job but had to say goodbye to several colleagues. “We all work on high pathogenicity avian influenza—seems like an absolutely reckless time to fire qualified scientists who are directly involved in monitoring and responding to this virus right now,” the scientist wrote.

Many of the termination notices seen by or described to Science cite inadequate performance as justification. For example, letters emailed to multiple USDA researchers reference a 2005 report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board that stated that until an employee’s probationary period is over, they have “the burden to demonstrate why it is in the public interest for the Government to finalize an appointment to the civil service.” The letters then go on to say: “The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest.”

But some employees had never even had a manager’s review. “The claim this is performance based is objectively false,” one USDA scientist says. “To argue that I’m not adequate in my job is asinine, delinquent, delirious,” vented a fired USGS scientist.

Risa Lieberwitz, a labor and employment law expert at Cornell University, says the way the mass firings were implemented contradicts regulations written by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. She notes that the purpose of the probationary period is to thoroughly evaluate a person’s performance before they’re given a permanent government post. “The regulations are not written in a way to simply give carte blanche to the government to decide to terminate an employee … for any reason.”

Some of the fired employees have formed chat groups outside official channels. One former USGS biologist is part of a Signal group that is discussing “how and if we can file for unemployment, how to make a formal complaint to our supervisors about our firing if we believe it was illegal, [how] and what class action lawsuits that are popping up might be applicable.” Last week five unions representing federal workers filed a class action lawsuit to stop the firings; the first emergency court hearing on the matter was scheduled for this week.

Many scientists also plan to appeal their termination directly. One fired worker, who spoke to Science a few minutes after taking a call from an attorney’s office, said, “It’s bad, but I’m not gonna lay down and roll over. I’m going to do my due diligence. … Got to stay positive.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

There was a great hockey game last night played by Team Canada and Team USA that the Canadians won 3-2 in overtime.  With the win, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took the outcome to score a direct political hit on Donald Trump.  As reported by The Independent.

“You can’t take our country — and you can’t take our game,” vowed Trudeau just minutes after the win, referring to Trump’s repeated demeaning taunts that Canada would become the 51st state in America.

Trump, who has been needling Trudeau for weeks, said in a post on Truth Social earlier that he was going to call Team USA to urge them to victory over the nation that will “someday, maybe soon, become our cherished, and very important, Fifty First State.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt piled on, telling reporters: “We look forward to the United States beating our soon-to-be 51st state, Canada.”

Earlier in the week Trump mocked Trudeau with an invitation to the Republican Governors Conference Thursday. The president said in an address to the governors that he would allow Canada to keep its national anthem even when it becomes merely a state.

While some hockey fans from both sides insisted before Thursday night’s competition that they wanted to keep politics out of the game, some Americans booed while the Canadian national anthem was sung at Boston’s TD Garden Arena. Canadians had booed the Star Spangled Banner in Montreal the previous week before Team USA won that faceoff.

Canadian Grammy award-winning singer Chantal Kreviazuk confirmed to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. yesterday that she had slightly altered the lyrics of her nation’s anthem O Canada before the game to make a point about continued independence and to protest the bullying Trump.

Kreviazuk, who is from Winnipeg, said she changed the words of the lyric “True patriot love, in all of us command” to “that only us command.“

She wrote about the lyric change on Instagram: “In this very peculiar and potentially consequential moment I truly believe that we must stand up, use our voices and try to protect ourselves.”

Kreviaszuk added: “We should express our outrage in the face of any abuses of power.”

Congratulations to players on both teams who gave their all in an exceptional game.

Tony

Kirsten Baesler

Dear Commons Community,

President Trump has tapped North Dakota’s Kirsten Baesler—a former school leader and technology integration coach and the nation’s longest-serving state superintendent, with a record of working across the political aisle—to a key post overseeing K-12 policy at the U.S. Department of Education.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate as assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education, Baesler would be one of two nationally respected officials from the state chief ranks to serve in the department during Trump’s second term. She would join Penny Schwinn, who led schools in Tennessee and has been nominated to the post of deputy secretary.

Baesler’s would-be boss, Linda McMahon, a former wrestling executive and head of the federal small business administration, had her confirmation hearing last week and is heading for confirmation by the full Senate.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading A Crack in Everything:  How Black Holes Came in from the Cold and Took Cosmic Centre Stage by Marcus Chown.  The author is a science writer, broadcaster and former radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology. As the title suggests, Chown sets out to establish that black holes rather than some cosmic anomaly are at the center of how galaxies and our universe operate.   He clarifies several important aspects of them. For instance:

• they are not black but colorful;
• they are abundant in our universe and probably exist in all galaxies;
• Albert Einstein correctly predicted the existence of black holes but his theory of general relativity is not universal and does not apply to a black hole’s singularity.  

Chown also gives due credit to the individuals both well-known and less well-known who have made significant contributions to our understanding of black holes.

An astrophysicist will have no problem reading this book. Others may struggle with parts of it.  The book could have also used some photos or illustrations.

Below is a review that appeared in The New York Times.

Tony

———————————————————

The New York Times

Want to Get Sucked Into a Black Hole? Try This Book.

Marcus Chown’s “A Crack in Everything” is a journey through space and time with the people studying one of the most enigmatic objects in the universe.

By Katrina Miller

Katrina Miller is a science reporter at The Times.

Jan. 19, 2025

A CRACK IN EVERYTHING: How Black Holes Came In From the Cold and Took Cosmic Centre Stage, by Marcus Chown

When writing about the complexities of our universe, the astronomer turned author Marcus Chown goes straight to the deep end. His book, “A Crack in Everything,” tells the stories of scientists on the quest to demystify black holes, and it starts with Albert Einstein’s counterintuitive description of gravity.

That gravity is a force — some invisible pull attracting your pencil to the floor — is an illusion, Einstein suggested. What we perceive as gravity is instead the warping of space and time around a massive object, like how plopping a bowling ball onto a soft mattress will curve the sheets surrounding it.

It was a revelation that completely upended the way physicists thought about the universe. But, Chown explains, it also led to a horrifying realization. If that massive object was squeezed small enough, like a star that has run out of fuel and collapsed under its own weight, the warping around it would grow so steep and so powerful that the object would simply cease to exist. Einstein’s new theory of gravity, known as general relativity, gave birth to a monster that he never escaped: the black hole, a cosmic entity with the mass of millions or billions of suns that will devour anything in its wake.

“They are the stuff of physicists’ nightmares,” Chown writes, the afterlives of too-big, burned-out stars swallowed by their own gravity, creating an infinitely dense pit of who-knows-what, because in the belly of a black hole, the laws of physics just stop making sense. As the author concludes, “No wonder Einstein never believed in black holes.”

Chown’s book is primarily a chronicle of the researchers who helped make black holes believable, not just for the Einsteins but for everyone else. He has plumbed the historical record and conducted interviews with pioneers like the New Zealand mathematician Roy Kerr and the British astronomer Paul Murdin, weaving into the stories of their lives and work the uncanny mechanics of the invisible bête noire they helped reveal.

At times, Chown’s writing is downright poetic. Two black holes “locked in a death spiral,” he writes, “launched a tsunami of tortured space-time” — gravitational waves that reverberated across the cosmos and, notably in 2015, into the detectors of eagerly awaiting astronomers on Earth, direct proof that black holes exist. But elsewhere, Chown’s scientific descriptions are difficult to follow, even dizzying. How does the average reader comprehend, for example, that inside a black hole, “space and time become so distorted that they effectively swap places”?

The best parts of “A Crack in Everything” lie between the passages of scientific flair, where Chown brings the heroes of physics past alive. We see Karl Schwarzschild of the Schwarzschild radius, the equation describing the size of a black hole, making his discovery while suffering from painful, chronic skin blisters as a soldier in World War I. Years later, we glimpse Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar of the Chandrasekhar limit, a way to identify the stars that might someday become black holes, doing his calculations by starlight on the deck of a steamship bound for Cambridge, his mind ranging “freely among the embers of dying suns.”

Each chapter in the first half of the book introduces one or two protagonists to root for on their way to the next big discovery. But as the knowledge develops, so too do the scientific instruments and methods, and the number of people needed to push the science forward balloons. By the 1990s it is impossible to keep track of all of the players involved, and Chown mostly abandons his main-character strategy. That does not, however, impact his ability to set up the stakes for each new breakthrough and detail all of the magic and mishaps that come with doing science.

It may be difficult to relate to the genius required to ponder cosmic enigmas. But Chown makes sure you empathize with the rush to get to publication first; the utter exhaustion of consecutive 16-hour night shifts at the observatory, piecing together the first picture of a black hole; and the despair that astronomers felt when the first images from the Hubble Space Telescope came back blurry.

Chown wants us to think a little more tenderly of black holes, too. They are not destructive monsters gobbling up everything in their vicinity, but rather passive predators, waiting for prey to fall their way. Nor are they always ominously black, but often “the most brilliant beacons in creation,” stirring up some of the brightest light in the universe as they feed. By the time you finish “A Crack in Everything” you will see black holes for what they really are: vibrant, spinning hearts around which star matter whirls, coaxing the growth of galaxies and forming a path for the emergence of planets, even life itself.

Eric Adams and Kathy Hochul

Dear Commons Community,

The major story in New York City is whether Mayor Eric Adams will be removed from office. For a moment, it looked like he might walk away scot free. But as pressure mounts amid concerns that his ability to govern is compromised, Governor Kathy Hochul said Monday she would weigh whether to remove the Democratic mayor from his office in what would be an unprecedented action in New York State history.  She held a series of meetings on the matter on Tuesday.

On Feb. 10, the Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against Adams on the basis that the case “unduly restricted” Adams’ ability to execute President Donald Trump’s agenda to crack down on illegal immigration. The news was followed by a series of resignations from high-ranking Justice Department officials as well as the city’s four deputy mayors.

Now, more and more Democratic politicians are joining calls for Adams to resign—or for Hochul to remove him if he doesn’t. Here’s what to know about how that would work—and what might come next courtesy of Time.

How could Adams be removed from office?

The governor of New York is empowered to remove the New York City mayor from office by both state law and the City Charter. In accordance with the City Charter, Hochul can remove Adams from office after providing him with a “copy of the charges and an opportunity to be heard in his defense.”

In that case, Adams would be suspended from his post for up to 30 days, during which Adams would need to present his defense. Once Adams has had a chance to make a case for himself, the governor could either restore him to his office or permanently remove him as mayor.

What these proceedings might look like isn’t entirely clear, primarily because this has never happened before. Adams is the first New York City mayor to face criminal charges while in office, and if Hochul discharges him of his duties, he would be the first to be removed from office. Two former mayors—Jimmy Walker in 1932 and William O’Dwyer in 1950—resigned.

After Adams’ indictment in September, Hochul and her office reportedly began to examine her power to remove the mayor, before she expressed support for him in October. But on Feb. 17, she signaled her calculus may have changed.

There’s also another path to removing Adams: the City Charter says that an “Inability Committee”—consisting of the corporation counsel, the comptroller, the City Council speaker, a deputy mayor designated by the mayor, and the borough president who has served for the longest consecutive period of time—could convene to vote on whether the mayor is temporarily or permanently unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.

If four of five members of the committee declare that the mayor is unable to carry out his duties, then a panel consisting of the 51-member City Council will have 21 days to vote on whether or not to remove the mayor, which requires a two-thirds majority. Until that vote, the mayor can remain in office if he declares within 48 hours of the five-member committee’s declaration of his inability that he believes he is able to carry out his duties.

The provision for the “Inability Committee” was established in 1987 after former Mayor Ed Koch had a stroke. But in the wake of Adams’ indictment last September, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said she believed the removal process wouldn’t apply in Adams’ case because precedent suggested it was reserved for physical inability.

Who would replace Adams?

If Adams is removed from office, or if he resigns, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, the official next in line of succession, would become acting mayor. Williams has already indicated that he is prepared to serve.

The office, however, would officially be vacant, and Williams would need to call a special election within 80 days to elect a new mayor for the rest of Adams’ term, which runs through the end of the calendar year. Such a scenario would not logistically impact the mayoral election in November to elect Adams’ successor for a new four-year term.

Tony

Mackensie Scott.  Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Dear Commons Community,

USA Today has a featured article on MacKensie Scott, entitled, “MacKenzie Scott has donated $19 billion. The impact? ‘Transformational.” It references The Center for Effective Philanthropy which released a study that analyzes Scott’s donations of more than $19.25 billion to more than 2,450 nonprofits domestically and abroad over a three-year period. In 2019, Scott, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezo’s ex-wife, received approximately $38 billion through her divorce settlement and pledged to donate at least half of her wealth to charity.

The study looked at seven nonprofits that have received donations from Scott. Through data collection and interviews, the center’s study found that each of the organizations were able to expand their annual operating budgets, make necessary equipment and programming purchases, and hire and fairly compensate staff, among other improvements. Below is an excerpt.

Scott has become a beacon in the philanthropic world and a shining example for other billionaires such as Bill Gates to emulate.

Tony

———————————————————————-

“The financial contributions that billionaire MacKenzie Scott has made to more than 2,000 nonprofits over the past six years have proven to have a “transformational effect,” a new study says.

Here’s how Scott’s donations have affected organizations in the U.S.

Expanding a mission at Kaboom!

Kaboom!, a nonprofit founded in 1996 that creates playgrounds in areas where they have been historically denied, received $14 million from Scott in 2021, according to the study. Before the donation, the nonprofit’s annual operating budget was $9 million. As of summer 2024, Kaboom!’s operating budget was $21.5 million.

Kaboom! CEO Lysa Ratliff told USA TODAY that Scott’s donation was the “fuel in the tank that allowed us to turn the ship around.”

Before Scott’s donation, the nonprofit relied on corporate funding and service to complete one build project at a time, specifically in areas that offered free and reduced lunch programs or met the organization’s income standards. This “unhealthy” funding method, Ratliff said, kept the organization in a “perpetual trap.”

After Scott’s donation, Kaboom! was able to reorganize its infrastructure and create an inequity priority index, which has expanded the organization’s ability to assess where work is needed and complete projects in more areas than before.

Pre-2020, Kaboom! completed about 150 build projects each year, Ratliff said. This year, the organization expects to complete 85 to 90 projects. Though a smaller number, the playgrounds are larger in scale and of higher quality. On average, a pre-2020 Kaboom! playground was about 2,500 square feet, Ratliff said. Now, the organization is constructing playgrounds closer to 10,000 square feet in size with more unique features.

Scott’s donation also enabled Kaboom! to launch its 25 in 5 Initiative to End Playspace Inequity, which seeks to eliminate playspace inequity in 25 municipalities in five years. Kaboom! also has created a public policy and advocacy department with the donation, allowing the nonprofit to hone in on legislation to help their cause. Last year, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed legislation into law that was drafted with Kaboom’s help and prohibits the use of toxic chemicals on playground surfaces.

Providing higher quality resources to community, staff

The South Texas Food Bank is another organization that benefited from Scott. The billionaire donated $9 million in 2020 to the nonprofit that serves eight counties and one tribal nation in southern Texas, according to the study.

Scott’s donation allowed the South Texas Food Bank to provide higher quantities and a higher quality of items to its benefactors and raise staff compensation, the study said.

In 2019, the food bank distribution about 14 million pounds of food throughout eight counties. In 2020, with the help of Scott’s donation, that rose to 26 million pounds of food, according to the study.

Following the height of the pandemic, these numbers have decreased slightly but remain higher than before. In the fiscal year 2021-2022, the food bank distributed 19 million pounds, followed by 20 million pounds in 2022-2023 and 21 million pounds in 2023-2024, South Texas Food Bank CEO Alma Boubel told USA TODAY.

For the first time in decades, the food bank was able to prioritize staff, too, Boubel added.

Forty-two staff members received $1,000 bonuses, the nonprofit began providing free healthcare coverage for all staff and eight new staff members were hired, the study said. Since the donation, around 20 employees, who make less than $16 per hour or have a spouse out of work, have also earned $75 stipends every other week, Boubel said.

The food bank also used $1 million of the donation to purchase new equipment, including two generators and two tractor trailers for carrying perishables, and has spent about $3 million on improving the food bank’s facility in Laredo, Texas.

What other organizations has MacKenzie Scott donated to?

A full list of the 2,450-plus nonprofits Scott has donated to is available on the Yield Giving website at yieldgiving.com/gifts. Established by Scott, Yield Giving asks other wealthy people to give back to charities.

The five other nonprofits analyzed in The Center for Effective Philanthropy study were:

• Big Brothers Big Sisters of America: Received $25 million in 2022
• Pastoral Women’s Council: Received an undisclosed amount in 2022
• Goodwill Industries of East Texas: Received $5 million in 2020
• Equal Opportunity Schools: Received $8 million in 2021
• 317 Main Street Community Music Center: Received $1.5 million in 2021

Who is MacKenzie Scott?

Scott, 54, is both a philanthropist and author. She was married to to Bezos from 1993 to 2019 and contributed to Amazon’s success in the company’s early days.

As part of her divorce settlement, Bezos retained 75% of the couple’s Amazon stock, in addition to her voting control in the company, per previous USA TODAY reporting.

Jake Auchincloss

Dear Commons Community,

Ezra Klein podcaster and contributor to The New York Times, had an extensive interview with Democratic Congressman Jake Auchincloss, who makes several important comments on the state of the Democratic Party.  Here is an excerpt.

“After the election, I (Ezra Klein) started asking congressional Democrats I had talked to the same question: If they had won a trifecta, what would their first big bill have been? What was going to be their priority? In almost every case, they said, they didn’t know. That’s a problem.

Democrats are in the opposition now — that means fighting the worst of what Trump is doing. But it also means providing an alternative, creating another center of gravity in American politics.

So one thing I’m going to do on the show this year is talk to Democrats who sound like they are trying to find that alternative — crafting an agenda that is alive to this moment, not just one carried over from the past.

One Democrat who has interested me is Jake Auchincloss, a congressman from Massachusetts. Among the Democrats talking about the abundance agenda, he has had particularly interesting things to say.

It’s not that I agree with every idea he offers here. I don’t. But when I hear him, I hear someone wrestling with the questions I posed to other Democrats: What is your alternative? What did people need to hear from you over these last few years that they didn’t?

This conversation was recorded at the end of January. So you won’t hear the latest Trump news discussed. But that’s also not the point of this. The country needs a resistance. But it also needs an alternative.

Ezra Klein: Congressman Jake Auchincloss, welcome to the show.

Jake Auchincloss: Thanks for having me on Ezra.

After the election, a lot of Democrats have responded to Donald Trump’s particular form of populism by offering what you call a Diet Coke version of it. Tell me about your Diet Coke theory of the Democratic Party.

I’m concerned that boldface-name Democrats have been leaning into populism. They have said: Boy, Donald Trump has done what we dreamed of — which was building a multiethnic working-class coalition.

The biggest city in my district, Fall River, Mass., is the exemplar of a multiethnic working-class city and voted for a Republican in 2024 for the first time in 100 years. And Democrats across the country have been looking at cities like Fall River and have said: Well, if they’re doing populism, we’ve got to do populism, too — whether that’s immigration or trans issues or the culture wars.

And my view on that is that voters who ordered a Coca-Cola don’t want a Diet Coke. There are two different parties. We have to start by understanding who our voters are not and then understanding who our voters could be — and go and try to win them over. If you’re walking to the polls and your No. 1 issue is guns, immigration or trans participation in sports, you’re probably not going to be a Democratic voter. That’s OK. There are two parties.

But if you are a voter who went Obama, Trump, Biden, Trump, and you’re walking to the polls and your No. 1 issue is cost of living — boy, we’d better win you back.

Democrats used to have a multiracial working-class coalition. They won voters making less than $50,000 by significant margins. They won nonwhite voters by significant margins. That was their coalition. What is your explanation of what broke it?

I think we were seen as taking our eye off the ball on both kitchen-table and front-porch issues. The notorious ad “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you” was not just about the particular salience of trans issues in this election but about a broader cultural thesis: that Democrats have taken their finger off the cultural mainstream.

Between the time when Bill Clinton played saxophone on live TV and peaking, I think, with Obama’s election in 2008 but persisting all the way through 2018, Democrats broadly were winning the culture wars. And MAGA’s big idea was: Maybe we can win the culture wars.

To a certain extent, they did. And I think Democrats now have to make very clear that has been a mask for an agenda that is not actually going to help people.

What you’ve seen in Donald Trump’s first week in office is that he’s siding with cop beaters and tech oligarchs. He’s not doing anything on housing, health care and taxes for the typical American family. We’ve got to drive that cost of living message home.”

The entire interview should be read and reread by the Democratic leadership.

Tony