By: Michael Villafranca

Protecting NCAR

When the Trump Administration announced plans to dismantle NCAR in December, AGU’s SPGR team moved quickly. Within weeks, we had launched grassroots tools that generated 36,000 emails and more than 2,300 phone calls to Congress, coordinated with partner societies behind a joint letter to the White House, and submitted a formal organizational response to NSF—all while providing individual members a direct channel to submit their own comments. That sustained, coordinated pressure had real impact: Senator Hickenlooper, who received more than 4,000 constituent messages driven by AGU’s outreach, took to the Senate floor to defend NCAR. What stands out to me is how this effort brought together current and new partners, our membership, and AGU leadership into a unified response across multiple fronts simultaneously. The scientific community needed a fast-acting leader, and AGU filled that role—driven largely by the SPGR team’s efforts. 

A steady drumbeat of science voices on Capitol Hill

In just over the course of three months, AGU’s SPGR team maintained a near-constant presence of scientists’ voices on Capitol Hill—not as a single push, but as a sustained, deliberate effort. We led three Congressional Visits Day events: Local Science Partners in March, Days of Action in April, and Voices for Science in June. Between and around those events, we also trained and supported external groups—science policy students from the University of Maryland and Yale, the Heliophysics Coalition, and the DMV chapter of the Sustainable Ocean Alliance—ensuring the drumbeat never stopped even when AGU wasn’t the one holding the baton. The scale was significant: more than a hundred scientists from across the U.S. attending hundreds of congressional meetings in roughly 90 days, all making the case for funding and protecting science. However, what makes me most proud is what that represents: a growing bench of scientists who are confident, prepared, and actively engaged in the policy process because AGU’s SPGR team built that infrastructure. 

AGU Program Manager Michael Villafranca focuses on engaging Members of Congress and ensuring science policy is part of their agenda. In his role, he manages AGU’s policy portfolio on issues related to NOAA, USGS, and NIEHS, as well as oceans, hazards, and weather more generally.