NASA Deletes Comic Book About How Women Can Be Astronauts
Things have gotten really weird when comic books are verboten in this Orwellian present. NASA has deleted two comic books about women astronauts from all its websites, according to NASA Watch, the latest victim of the Trump’s administration’s purge of “DEI” content from federal agencies. This is apparently due to a directive sent out just days after Trump’s inauguration, as NASA personnel were commanded to excise all mentions of anything “specifically targeting” women on the space agency’s public websites according to 404 Media.
NASA Deletes Comic Book About How Women Can Be Astronauts
Frank Landymore (Mar 25, 2025)
Additionally, NASA’s upcoming Artemis missions had been set to see the first female astronaut set foot on the lunar surface. Oh, except that promise has been dropped, too.
The two volumes have been featured on NASA’s website since being issued in 2021 and 2023, respectively. But as of March 2025, both have now been conspicuously wiped from the space agency’s online presence.
But luckily, they’ve been posted on wikipedia AND preserved in the Internet Archive!
First Woman: NASA’s promise for humanity
Pentagon Culls Social Science Research, deletes 91 funded projects
Today the Pentagon announced that “The Office of the Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)) is scrapping its social science research portfolio as part of a broader effort to ensure fiscal responsibility and prioritize mission-critical activities.”
Examples of cancelled research include:
- The Climate-Food-Urbanization Nexus and the Precursors of Instability in Africa
- Social and Institutional Determinants of Vulnerability and Resilience to Climate Hazards in the African Sahel
- Anticipating Costal Population Mobility: Path to Maladaptation or Sociopolitical Stability
- Comparing Underlying Drivers of South-North Migration in Central America and West Africa
- Democracy Quest (couldn’t find this project in minerva)
- The Language of Parasocial Influence and the Emergence of Extremism
- Weaponized Conspiracies
- Beyond the Clock: Understanding Cross-Cultural Temporal Orientation of Military Officers
- Food Fights: War Narratives and Identity Reproduction in Evolving Conflicts
- Future Fish Wars: Chasing Ocean Ecosystem Wealth
Luckily the End of Term Archive and the Wayback Machine have snapshots of the “Minerva Research Initiative”. Maybe it’s just me, but I would think that funding social science research on global migration patterns, climate change impacts, and social trends is extremely important for long-term planning for the “future battlefield.”
JCP and JCL house members
House Resolution 190, introduced on March 5, 2025, names Mike Carey (R, OH:15), Joseph Morelle (D, NY:25), and Julie Johnson (D, TX:32) to the the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library and Joseph Morelle (D, NY:25), Gregory Murphy (R, NC:3), Terri Sewell (D, AL:7), and Mary Miller (R, IL:15) to the Joint Committee on Printing.
PEGI Project Urges Preservation of Public Federal Data
[Editor’s note: This was originally posted on the PEGI Project blog, of which jrj is a member. In the interest of increasing the reach of PEGI’s important message, we re-post here w permission from PEGI.]
Rapid political events have led to an upheaval in access to data and other information resources produced by the U.S. government, particularly content associated with Executive Orders (EOs) seeking to upend prior federal government activity associated with diversity and inclusion, gender identity, immigration, the climate crisis, public health, consumer safety, and a host of related topics. Within just the past four weeks, federal agencies that are impacted by these EOs have removed access to content or substituted modified content.
While we at the PEGI Project have been aware of the potential for a crisis like this since the start of our project in 2017, both the pace and extent of the removals and changes have been astonishing to witness. What has also been astonishing (and heartening!) is the willingness of a broad community to join together in quick action to save content, particularly data that cannot be easily captured as part of the End of Term Archive. The Public Environmental Data Partners, a project launched by the Environmental Data Governance Initiative (EDGI), has been working on collecting and preserving hard-to-crawl environmental data for the past couple of months. In the past two weeks, a coalition has formed to launch the Data Rescue Project, which then debuted its Data Rescue Tracker. They also have a helpful (and well-vetted!) list of Resources that can guide individuals and organizations wanting to contribute to this work.
There is still an urgent need to act right now, particularly as court challenges are being filed to the EOs, which have led to some pauses in content removal or modification. See the Data Rescue Project’s list of Current Efforts or connect with them directly if you are able to help. And keep an eye on updates from Free Government Information for more on how access to government information is changing and what you can do to help. Recent posts of particular interest include:
The government information crisis is bigger than you think it is
Times of crisis and change bring many challenges, and each of us has an opportunity to decide how our priorities, skills, and bandwidth guide us in acting. There are many activities out there, and this Data Rescue Need to Know Bluesky starter pack can connect you with them. We are here to help you navigate what’s happening. Reach out to us at info AT pegiproject DOT org.
Public letter re the firing of the Archivist of the United States
[Patrice McDermott sent the following to GOVDOC-L. In the interest of time, I’m pasting her message below with just a touch of editing of the email addresses.]
As you may know, Trump has fired the Archivist of the United States, Colleen Shogan. Even though it is extremely unlikely Trump will reconsider firing Dr. Shogan, we should not let this moment pass without comment.
We’re hoping to get this out today – so please let Lauren Harper (leharper AT gmail DOT com or Lauren AT freedom DOT press) or Daniel Schuman (Daniel AT americalabs DOT org) know if you’d like to sign on by 3 ET today. Individual and orgnanizational signatories are welcomed. Please share with deadline.
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