Prairie Fire newsletter

On top of laying them off, the Trump administration did its best to undermine these scientists’ and information officers’ work, and turn the public against them. Civil servants who dedicated years of their lives to invaluable research and programs—like the Sixth National Climate Assessment or the Tips From Former Smokers campaign—found themselves dismissed, their projects in limbo. Meanwhile, steaming anti-science rhetoric boiled over into actual violence, including an armed attack on the CDC’s Atlanta headquarters.

But despite all that—despite the insults, the RIFs, and the violence—many ex-feds are refusing to abandon their work. They’re not running, they’re organizing.

Dozens of groups, made up of former and current government employees, are trying to keep their projects alive. There’s laid-off NOAA staff building Climate.us, a successor to Climate.gov; a former FEMA worker publishing studies of political favoritism in disaster response; Resistance Rangers republishing censored NPS exhibits about slavery and LGBTQ+ communities; and many more examples of civil servants going above and beyond to preserve public knowledge.

And they’re not alone. Established scientific societies and advocacy groups like the American Geophysical Union and Climate Central are jumping in to save databases and research projects. Watchdog organizations like the Council on Criminal Justice are countering concocted crime-stat claims, while data journalists like the Big Local News team are expanding data collection at the local level.

Across the nation, researchers, scientists, journalists, and academics are coming together to keep public knowledge where it belongs—in the hands of the public. The problem? They’re disconnected, underfunded, and you don’t know about each and every one of them.

Welcome

Welcome to Prairie fire, Newsjunkie’s spotlight on post-government research and data science. We hope to fan the flames of this exciting new data-resistance movement, acting as a hub to share and protect democracy’s most important resource: information. I’ll be your regular point of contact to a community of underground data-dealers, bringing you updates on the most exciting developments in the independent info-sphere.

Who am I? I’m Morgan Kriesel, an early-career reporter just naïve enough to think that I can make a difference. I’ve spent the past year analyzing the administration’s misinformation tactics and interviewing the people trying to counter them, which prepared me to throw myself into this, full-force. I’m a Gen Z kid; I traded in my chance at the American Dream for a degree in journalism and a lifetime of student debt, so what do I have to lose?

From the Prairie Fire blog

Back in October, I got the chance to interview one of the ex-feds trying to carry the torch of public service on their own—Aryn Melton Backus. Backus’s work at the CDC was disrupted after a February 2025 RIF put her on administrative leave. Now she’s the co-founder of two public health advocacy organizations, Fired but Fighting and the National Public Health Coalition, where she’s gathering data on the impact of CDC program cuts, and speaking out against them. Our full conversation included detours into the villainization of CDC staff, the questionable efficacy of privatizing public health services, and the challenge of communicating reliable information on social media. You can read the published interview here, on Newsjunkie.net.

The Information Conversation

This section of the newsletter is where I’ll be engaging with the conversation around independent data collection: What needs to change about the way data is collected, preserved, and shared? What’s possible outside of government? What makes an independent effort sustainable? I’ll be sharing commentary from other writers in the scene, and highlighting messages from you, the readers.

As the basis for our network, I want this conversation to flow both ways. Please feel free to respond to this email, or send me a separate message at morgan@newsjunkie.net, with any info, tips, suggestions, or comments. Prairie Fire is still in its early development, so let me know what would be most helpful to you and your work—I want this project to serve its readers at absolute maximum capacity.

I’ll leave it here

It’s easy to feel hopeless in the face of endless insults and attacks on our fundamental rights. It’s easy to believe that your own expertise and abilities are just a drop in the bucket, and won’t be enough to turn the tide. But there are people out there fighting for you, even though they’ve been handed every reason to give up. In turn, they need to know what you know. So please: let’s work together to build something stronger than an authoritarian’s ego.

As Aryn Melton Backus put it during her speech at the APHA’s Rally for the Public’s Health:

“We are standing together because we know the future of public health relies on us breaking down silos and partnering with each other. We encourage each of you to join our fight.”

Until next time, data-dealers. Over and out.

—Morgan Kriesel