Brandon Jones 
Brandon Jones is the 2023-2024 AGU President. Jones is the Program Director for Education and Broadening Participation in the Geosciences Directorate at the National Science Foundation (NSF), where he oversees programs that focus on early career workforce preparation and diversity.
Throughout his career, Jones has been a champion for increasing DEI in STEM. Jones served 13 years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where, among other responsibilities, he led higher education student support programs. In this role, he was also the EPA’s Agency Representative to The White House’s Office of Science, Technology and Policy’s Federal Committee on STEM (FC-STEM).
The Office of Management and Budget has proposed sweeping revisions to the regulations that govern all federal grants, cooperative agreements, and other forms of federal financial assistance.
Last Friday, President Trump released the fiscal year 2027 President’s Budget Request. What we are seeing is devastating, and it demands a forceful response. As our policy team details on The Bridge, this budget is largely a repeat of last year’s proposal, but repetition does not soften the blow. NASA’s Science Mission Directorate is cut by nearly half its budget. The National Science Foundation is losing more than half. NOAA is down nearly 28%. The … Read more
AGU decries the recent removal of a chapter on climate science from the 2025 4th edition of the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, particularly at a moment when judges are likely to encounter increasingly complex and critical issues related to climate change. The Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence is one of the judiciary’s most widely used resources for understanding complex scientific and technical issues. … Read more
In 1856, American scientist Eunice Foote made history by publishing the first academic paper demonstrating that carbon dioxide traps heat from the Sun, a discovery that laid the foundation for climate science. Over the next 170 years, researchers have tested and built on that insight with the rigor of the scientific method, publishing hundreds of thousands of peer-reviewed studies that have not only affirmed Foote’s original … Read more
The Trump Administration’s announcement that the United States will withdraw from a multitude of international organizations and treaties that support global cooperation on climate and environmental issues is a grievous setback at a moment when the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are only accelerating and when scientific expertise and collaboration are indispensable to addressing them. Some of these bodies and treaties form … Read more
The United States has just come through the longest government shutdown in its history—a period of deep uncertainty that exacerbated hardships for the nation. Some scientists still reported for duty, delivering life-saving forecasts and monitoring hazards without pay. But with labs closed and research halted, the critical work behind those services—modeling, maintenance, and long-term observations—was … Read more
I write to you today outraged on behalf of everyone who depends on a functioning government. Last Wednesday, the U.S. government shut down. Now, the threat of mass firings looms over our federal workforce. Many of our members are hardworking U.S. federal scientists who have dedicated their careers to serving the public. When federal scientists … Read more
A government shutdown at any time is devastating for U.S. science and the public it serves. Immobilizing the government halts critical research, disrupts data collection and delays life-saving work on climate, health and natural disasters. AGU stands firmly against these harmful disruptions and calls on Congress and the Administration to work together in a … Read more
At the end of this week, federal agencies will have submitted their plans to the White House outlining implementation of the Administration’s executive order on “Gold Standard Science.” The order and accompanying guidance memo have been met with rightful outrage and grave concern across our Earth and space sciences community. I am heartened to see … Read more
I am pleased to share that longtime AGU member and volunteer leader Dr. Mark Moldwin has been appointed to fill an open seat on the AGU Board of Directors. Mark brings a wealth of organizational expertise as the inaugural president of the Education section and a past member of the AGU Audit Committee, Ethics Task … Read more