Quick takes

Update (January 28): Marco Rubio has now issued a temporary waiver for "humanitarian programs that provide life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter and subsistence assistance."[1] PEPFAR's funding was recently paused as a result of the recent executive order on foreign aid.[2] (It was previously reauthorized until March 25, 2025.[3]) If not exempted, this would pause PEPFAR's work for three months, effective immediately. Marco Rubio has issued waivers for some forms of aid, including emergency food aid, and has the authority to issue a similar waiver for PEPFAR, allowing it to resume work immediately.[4] Rubio has previously expressed (relatively generic) positive sentiments about PEPFAR on Twitter,[5] and I don't have specific reason to think he's opposed to PEPFAR, as opposed to simply not caring strongly enough to give it a waiver without anyone encouraging him to. I think it is worth considering calling your representatives to suggest that they encourage Rubio to give PEPFAR a waiver, similarly to the waiver he provided to programs giving emergency food aid. I have a lot of uncertainty here — in particular, I'm not sure whether this is likely to persuade Rubio — but I think it is fairly unlikely to make things actively worse. I think the argument in favor of calling is likely stronger for people who are represented by Republicans in Congress; I expect Rubio would care much more about pressure from his own party than about pressure from the Democrats.   1. ^ https://apnews.com/article/trump-foreign-assistance-freeze-684ff394662986eb38e0c84d3e73350b 2. ^ My primary source for this quick take is Kelsey Piper's Twitter thread, as well as the Tweets it quotes and the articles it and the quoted Tweet link to. For a brief discussion of what PEPFAR is, see my previous Quick Take. 3. ^ https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/pepfars-short-term-reauthorization-sets-an-uncertain-course-for-its-long-term-future/ 4. ^ htt

Is anyone in EA coordinating a response to the PEPFAR pause? Seems like a very high priority thing for US-based EAs to do, and I'm keen to help if so and start something if not.

How might EA-aligned orgs in global health and wellness need to adapt calculations of cost-effective interventions given the slash-and-burn campaign currently underway against US foreign aid? Has anyone tried gaming out what different scenarios of funding loss look like (e.g., one where most of the destruction is reversed by the courts, or where that reversal is partial, or where nothing happens and the days are numbered for things like PEPFAR)? Since US foreign aid is so varied, I imagine that's a tall order, but I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately!

While quartz countertop sales grow, millions of people have silicosis from inhaling silica dust: https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-023-16295-2 Hundreds of thousands died in the last couple decades from the incurable disease. Australia's the first country to enact a ban: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/dec/14/australia-will-become-the-first-county-to-ban-engineered-stone-bench-tops-will-others-follow

The Belgian senate votes to add animal welfare to the constitution. It's been a journey. I work for GAIA, a Belgian animal advocacy group that for years has tried to get animal welfare added to the constitution. Today we were present as a supermajority of the senate came out in favor of our proposed constitutional amendment. The relevant section reads: It's a very good day for Belgian animals but I do want to note that: 1. This does not mean an effective shutdown of the meat industry, merely that all future pro-animal welfare laws and lawsuits will have an easier time.  And, 2. It still needs to pass the Chamber of Representatives. If there's interest I will make a full post about it if once it passes the Chamber. EDIT: Translated the linked article on our site into English.

Are you an EU citizen? If so, please sign this citizen’s initiative to phase out factory farms (this is an approved EU citizen’s initiative, so if it gets enough signatures the EU has to respond): stopcrueltystopslaughter.com It also calls for reducing the number of animal farms over time, and introducing more incentives for the production of plant proteins. (If initiatives like these interest you, I occasionally share more of them on my blog) EDIT: If it doesn't work, try again in a couple hours/days. The collection has just started and the site may be overloaded. The deadline is in a year, so no need to worry about running out of time.

The recently released 2024 Republican platform said they'll repeal the recent White House Executive Order on AI, which many in this community thought is a necessary first step to make future AI progress more safe/secure. This seems bad. From https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24795758/read-the-2024-republican-party-platform.pdf, see bottom of pg 9.

USA has ~85k annual mowing injury ER visits: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29395756/ ~44% of which are fractures and amputation: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30067452/ Lawncare's also ~5% of USA pollution: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-21/lawn-mowers-are-the-next-electric-frontier https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-09/documents/banks.pdf Autonomous mowing robots eliminate most of mowing's danger, pollution, labor cost/time, and noise