LUBBOCK — Every winter, after the sea of cotton has been harvested in the South Plains and the ground looks barren, technicians with the High Plains Underground Water Conservation District check the water levels in nearly 75,000 wells across 16 counties. For years, their measurements have shown what farmers and water conservationists fear most—the Ogallala Aquifer, an underground water source that’s the lifeblood of the South Plains agriculture industry, is running dry. That’s because of a century-old law called the rule of capture. The rule is simple: If you own the land above an aquifer in Texas, the water underneath is yours. You can use as much as you want, as long as it’s not wasted or taken maliciously. The same applies to your neighbor. If they happen to use more water than you, then that’s just bad luck. To put it another way, landowners can mostly pump as much water as they choose without facing liability to surrounding landowners whose wells might be depleted as a result. Following the Dust Bowl—and to stave off catastrophe—state lawmakers created groundwater conservation districts in 1949 to protect what water is left. But their power to restrict landowners is limited. “The mission is to save as much water possible for as long as possible, with as little impact on private property rights as possible,” said Jason Coleman, manager for the High Plains Underground Water Conservation District. “How do you do that? It’s a difficult task.” A 1953 map of the wells in Lubbock County hangs in the office of the groundwater district. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] Rapid population growth, climate change, and aging water infrastructure all threaten the state’s water supply. Texas does not have enough water to meet demand if the state is stricken with a historic drought, according to the Texas Water Development Board, the state agency that manages Texas’ water supply. Lawmakers want to invest in every corner to save the state’s water. This week, they reached a historic $20 billion deal on water projects. High Plains Underground Water District General Manager Jason Coleman stands in the district’s meeting room on May 21 in Lubbock. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] But no one wants to touch the rule of capture. In a state known for rugged individualism, politically speaking, reforming the law is tantamount to stripping away freedoms. “There probably are opportunities to vest groundwater districts with additional authority,” said Amy Hardberger, director for the Texas Tech University Center for Water Law and Policy. “I don’t think the political climate is going to do that.” State Sen. Charles Perry, a Lubbock Republican, and Rep. Cody Harris, a Palestine Republican, led the effort on water in Austin this year. Neither responded to requests for comment. Carlos Rubinstein, a water expert with consulting firm RSAH2O and a former chairman of the water development board, said the rule has been relied upon so long that it would be near impossible to undo the law. “I think it’s better to spend time working within the rules,” Rubinstein said. “And respect the rule of capture, yet also recognize that, in and of itself, it causes problems.” Even though groundwater districts were created to regulate groundwater, the law effectively stops them from doing so, or they risk major lawsuits. The state water plan, which spells out how the state’s water is to be used, acknowledges the shortfall. Groundwater availability is expected to decline by 25% by 2070, mostly due to reduced supply in the Ogallala and Edwards-Trinity aquifers. Together, the aquifers stretch across West Texas and up through the Panhandle. By itself, the Ogallala has an estimated three trillion gallons of water. Though the overwhelming majority in Texas is used by farmers. It’s expected to face a 50% decline by 2070. Groundwater is 54% of the state’s total water supply and is the state’s most vulnerable natural resource. It’s created by rainfall and other precipitation, and seeps into the ground. Like surface water, groundwater is heavily affected by ongoing droughts and prolonged heat waves. However, the state has more say in regulating surface water than it does groundwater. Surface water laws have provisions that cut supply to newer users in a drought and prohibit transferring surface water outside of basins. Historically, groundwater has been used by agriculture in the High Plains. However, as surface water evaporates at a quicker clip, cities and businesses are increasingly interested in tapping the underground resource. As Texas’ population continues to grow and surface water declines, groundwater will be the prize in future fights for water. In many ways, the damage is done in the High Plains, a region that spans from the top of the Panhandle down past Lubbock. The Ogallala Aquifer runs beneath the region, and it’s faced depletion to the point of no return, according to experts. Simply put: The Ogallala is not refilling to keep up with demand. “It’s a creeping disaster,” said Robert Mace, executive director of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment. “It isn’t like you wake up tomorrow and nobody can pump anymore. It’s just happening slowly, every year.” [Image: Yuriko Schumacher/The Texas Tribune] Groundwater districts and the law The High Plains Water District was the first groundwater district created in Texas. Over a protracted multi-year fight, the Legislature created these new local government bodies in 1949, with voter approval, enshrining the new stewards of groundwater into the state Constitution. If the lawmakers hoped to embolden local officials to manage the troves of water under the soil, they failed. There are areas with groundwater that don’t have conservation districts. Each groundwater districts has different powers. In practice, most water districts permit wells and make decisions on spacing and location to meet the needs of the property owner. The one thing all groundwater districts have in common: They stop short of telling landowners they can’t pump water. In the seven decades since groundwater districts were created, a series of lawsuits have effectively strangled groundwater districts. Even as water levels decline from use and drought, districts still get regular requests for new wells. They won’t say no out of fear of litigation. The field technician coverage area is seen in Nathaniel Bibbs’ office at the High Plains Underground Water District. Bibbs is a permit assistant for the district. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] “You have a host of different decisions to make as it pertains to management of groundwater,” Coleman said. “That list has grown over the years.” The possibility of lawsuits makes groundwater districts hesitant to regulate usage or put limitations on new well permits. Groundwater districts have to defend themselves in lawsuits, and most lack the resources to do so. A well spacing guide is seen in Nathaniel Bibbs’ office. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] “The law works against us in that way,” Hardberger, with Texas Tech University, said. “It means one large tool in our toolbox, regulation, is limited.” The most recent example is a lawsuit between the Braggs Farm and the Edwards Aquifer Authority. The farm requested permits for two pecan orchards in Medina County, outside San Antonio. The authority granted only one and limited how much water could be used based on state law. It wasn’t an arbitrary decision. The authority said it followed the statute set by the Legislature to determine the permit. “That’s all they were guaranteed,” said Gregory Ellis, the first general manager of the authority, referring to the water available to the farm. The Braggs family filed a takings lawsuit against the authority. This kind of claim can be filed when any level of government—including groundwater districts—takes private property for public use without paying for the owner’s losses. Braggs won. It is the only successful water-related takings claim in Texas, and it made groundwater laws murkier. It cost the authority $4.5 million. “I think it should have been paid by the state Legislature,” Ellis said. “They’re the ones who designed that permitting system. But that didn’t happen.” An appeals court upheld the ruling in 2013, and the Texas Supreme Court denied petitions to consider appeals. However, the state’s supreme court has previously suggested the Legislature could enhance the powers of the groundwater districts and regulate groundwater like surface water, just as many other states have done. While the laws are complicated, Ellis said the fundamental rule of capture has benefits. It has saved Texas’ legal system from a flurry of lawsuits between well owners. “If they had said ‘Yes, you can sue your neighbor for damaging your well,’ where does it stop?” Ellis asked. “Everybody sues everybody.” Coleman, the High Plains district’s manager, said some people want groundwater districts to have more power, while others think they have too much. Well owners want restrictions for others, but not on them, he said. “You’re charged as a district with trying to apply things uniformly and fairly,” Coleman said. Can’t reverse the past Two tractors were dropping seeds around Walt Hagood’s farm as he turned on his irrigation system for the first time this year. He didn’t plan on using much water. It’s too precious. The cotton farm stretches across 2,350 acres on the outskirts of Wolfforth, a town 12 miles southwest of Lubbock. Hagood irrigates about 80 acres of land, and prays that rain takes care of the rest. Walt Hagood drives across his farm on May 12, in Wolfforth. Hagood utilizes “dry farming,” a technique that relies on natural rainfall. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] “We used to have a lot of irrigated land with adequate water to make a crop,” Hagood said. “We don’t have that anymore.” The High Plains is home to cotton and cattle, multi-billion-dollar agricultural industries. The success is in large part due to the Ogallala. Since its discovery, the aquifer has helped farms around the region spring up through irrigation, a way for farmers to water their crops instead of waiting for rain that may not come. But as water in the aquifer declines, there are growing concerns that there won’t be enough water to support agriculture in the future. At the peak of irrigation development, more than 8.5 million acres were irrigated in Texas. About 65% of that was in the High Plains. In the decades since the irrigation boom, High Plains farmers have resorted to methods that might save water and keep their livelihoods afloat. They’ve changed their irrigation systems so water is used more efficiently. They grow cover crops so their soil is more likely to soak up rainwater. Some use apps to see where water is needed so it’s not wasted. A furrow irrigation is seen at Walt Hagood’s cotton farm. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] Farmers who have not changed their irrigation systems might not have a choice in the near future. It can take a week to pump an inch of water in some areas from the aquifer because of how little water is left. As conditions change underground, they are forced to drill deeper for water. That causes additional problems. Calcium can build up, and the water is of poorer quality. And when the water is used to spray crops through a pivot irrigation system, it’s more of a humidifier as water quickly evaporates in the heat. According to the groundwater district’s most recent management plan, 2 million acres in the district use groundwater for irrigation. About 95% of water from the Ogallala is used for irrigated agriculture. The plan states that the irrigated farms “afford economic stability to the area and support a number of other industries.” The state water plan shows groundwater supply is expected to decline, and drought won’t be the only factor causing a shortage. Demand for municipal use outweighs irrigation use, reflecting the state’s future growth. In Region O, which is the South Plains, water for irrigation declines by 2070 while demand for municipal use rises because of population growth in the region. Coleman, with the High Plains groundwater district, often thinks about how the aquifer will hold up with future growth. There are some factors at play with water planning that are nearly impossible to predict and account for, Coleman said. Declining surface water could make groundwater a source for municipalities that didn’t depend on it before. Regions known for having big, open patches of land, like the High Plains, could be attractive to incoming businesses. People could move to the country and want to drill a well, with no understanding of water availability. The state will continue to grow, Coleman said, and all the incoming businesses and industries will undoubtedly need water. “We could say ‘Well, it’s no one’s fault. We didn’t know that factory would need 20,000 acre-feet of water a year,” Coleman said. “It’s not happening right now, but what’s around the corner?” Coleman said this puts agriculture in a tenuous position. The region is full of small towns that depend on agriculture and have supporting businesses, like cotton gins, equipment and feed stores, and pesticide and fertilizer sprayers. This puts pressure on the High Plains water district, along with the two regional water planning groups in the region, to keep agriculture alive. “Districts are not trying to reduce pumping down to a sustainable level,” said Mace with the Meadows Foundation. “And I don’t fault them for that, because doing that is economic devastation in a region with farmers.” Hagood, the cotton farmer, doesn’t think reforming groundwater rights is the way to solve it. What’s done is done, he said. “Our U.S. Constitution protects our private property rights, and that’s what this is all about,” Hagood said. “Any time we have a regulation and people are given more authority, it doesn’t work out right for everybody.” Rapid population growth, climate change, and aging water infrastructure all threaten the state’s water supply. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] What can be done The state water plan recommends irrigation conservation as a strategy. It’s also the least costly water management method. But that strategy is fraught. Farmers need to irrigate in times of drought, and telling them to stop can draw criticism. In Eastern New Mexico, the Ogallala Land and Water Conservancy, a nonprofit organization, has been retiring irrigation wells. Landowners keep their water rights, and the organization pays them to stop irrigating their farms. Landowners get paid every year as part of the voluntary agreement, and they can end it at any point. Ladona Clayton, executive director of the organization, said they have been criticized, with their efforts being called a “war” and “land grab.” They also get pushback on why the responsibility falls on farmers. She said it’s because of how much water is used for irrigation. They have to be aggressive in their approach, she said. The aquifer supplies water to the Cannon Air Force Base. “We don’t want them to stop agricultural production,” Clayton said. “But for me to say it will be the same level that irrigation can support would be untrue.” There is another possible lifeline that people in the High Plains are eyeing as a solution: the Dockum Aquifer. It’s a minor aquifer that underlies part of the Ogallala, so it would be accessible to farmers and ranchers in the region. The High Plains Water District also oversees this aquifer. If it seems too good to be true—that the most irrigated part of Texas would just so happen to have another abundant supply of water flowing underneath—it’s because there’s a catch. The Dockum is full of extremely salty brackish water. Some counties can use the water for irrigation and drinking water without treatment, but it’s unusable in others. According to the groundwater district, a test well in Lubbock County pulled up water that was as salty as seawater. Rubinstein, the former water development board chairman, said there are pockets of brackish groundwater in Texas that haven’t been tapped yet. It would be enough to meet the needs on the horizon, but it would also be very expensive to obtain and use. A landowner would have to go deeper to get it, then pump the water over a longer distance. “That costs money, and then you have to treat it on top of that,” Rubinstein said. “But, it is water.” Landowners have expressed interest in using desalination, a treatment method to lower dissolved salt levels. Desalination of produced and brackish water is one of the ideas that was being floated around at the Legislature this year, along with building a pipeline to move water across the state. Hagood, the farmer, is skeptical. He thinks whatever water they move could get used up before it makes it all the way to West Texas. There is always brackish groundwater. Another aquifer brings the chance of history repeating—if the Dockum aquifer is treated so its water is usable, will people drain it, too? Hagood said there would have to be limits. Disclosure: Edwards Aquifer Authority and Texas Tech University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here. This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune, a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a novel resin system for multicolor digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing that enables rapid fabrication of freestanding and non-assembly structures using dissolvable supports. The work, led by Zachariah A. Page and published in ACS Central Science, combines UV- and visible-light-responsive chemistries to produce materials with distinct solubility profiles, significantly streamlining post-processing. Current DLP workflows are often limited by the need for manually removed support structures, especially when fabricating components with overhangs or internal joints. These limitations constrain automation and increase production time and cost. To overcome this, the team designed wavelength-selective photopolymer resins that form either an insoluble thermoset or a readily dissolvable thermoplastic, depending on the light color used during printing. In practical terms, this allows supports to be printed in one material and rapidly dissolved using ethyl acetate, an environmentally friendly solvent, without affecting the primary structure. The supports dissolve in under 10 minutes at room temperature, eliminating the need for time-consuming sanding or cutting. Illustration comparing traditional DLP 3D printing with manual support removal (A) and the new multicolor DLP process with dissolvable supports (B). Image via University of Texas at Austin. The research was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office, the National Science Foundation, and the Robert A. Welch Foundation. The authors also acknowledge collaboration with MonoPrinter and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. High-resolution multimaterial printing The research showcases how multicolor DLP can serve as a precise multimaterial platform, achieving sub-100 μm feature resolution with layer heights as low as 50 μm. By tuning the photoinitiator and photoacid systems to respond selectively to ultraviolet (365 nm), violet (405 nm), or blue (460 nm) light, the team spatially controlled polymer network formation in a single vat. This enabled the production of complex, freestanding structures such as chainmail, hooks with unsupported overhangs, and fully enclosed joints, which traditionally require extensive post-processing or multi-step assembly. The supports, printed in a visible-light-cured thermoplastic, demonstrated sufficient mechanical integrity during the build, with tensile moduli around 160–200 MPa. Yet, upon immersion in ethyl acetate, they dissolved within 10 minutes, leaving the UV-cured thermoset structure intact. Surface profilometry confirmed that including a single interface layer of the dissolvable material between the support and the final object significantly improved surface finish, lowering roughness to under 5 μm without polishing. Computed tomography scans validated geometric fidelity, with dimensional deviations from CAD files as low as 126 μm, reinforcing the method’s capability for high-precision, solvent-cleared multimaterial printing. Comparison of dissolvable and traditional supports in DLP 3D printing. (A) Disk printed with soluble supports using violet light, with rapid dissolution in ethyl acetate. (B) Gravimetric analysis showing selective mass loss. (C) Mechanical properties of support and structural materials. (D) Manual support removal steps. (E) Surface roughness comparison across methods. (F) High-resolution test print demonstrating feature fidelity. Image via University of Texas at Austin. Towards scalable automation This work marks a significant step toward automated vat photopolymerization workflows. By removing manual support removal and achieving clean surface finishes with minimal roughness, the method could benefit applications in medical devices, robotics, and consumer products. The authors suggest that future work may involve refining resin formulations to enhance performance and print speed, possibly incorporating new reactive diluents and opaquing agents for improved resolution. Examples of printed freestanding and non-assembly structures, including a retainer, hook with overhangs, interlocked chains, and revolute joints, before and after dissolvable support removal. Image via University of Texas at Austin. Dissolvable materials as post-processing solutions Dissolvable supports have been a focal point in additive manufacturing, particularly for enhancing the efficiency of post-processing. In Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), materials like Stratasys’ SR-30 have been effectively removed using specialized cleaning agents such as Oryx Additive‘s SRC1, which dissolves supports at twice the speed of traditional solutions. For resin-based printing, systems like Xioneer‘s Vortex EZ employ heat and fluid agitation to streamline the removal of soluble supports . In metal additive manufacturing, innovations have led to the development of chemical processes that selectively dissolve support structures without compromising the integrity of the main part . These advancements underscore the industry’s commitment to reducing manual intervention and improving the overall efficiency of 3D printing workflows. Read the full article in ACS Publications. Subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry newsletter to keep up with the latest 3D printing news. You can also follow us onLinkedIn and subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry YouTube channel to access more exclusive content. At 3DPI, our mission is to deliver high-quality journalism, technical insight, and industry intelligence to professionals across the AM ecosystem.Help us shape the future of 3D printing industry news with our2025 reader survey. Featured image shows: Hook geometry printed using multicolor DLP with dissolvable supports. Image via University of Texas at Austin.

The Obalende bus terminus is one of Lagos’s most important transport nodes and a ‘graveyard’ for old danfos, which in Yoruba means ‘hurry’. These yellow‑painted minibuses form the backbone of Lagos’s informal transport system and are mostly second‑hand imports from the global north. Located in the heart of Lagos Island, Obalende is one of the first areas to be developed east of the lagoon that splits Lagos into two main halves: the Island and the Mainland. It receives a large portion of urban commuters daily, especially those entering Lagos Island for work. Obalende plays a critical role in the cycle of material reuse across the city. The life of a danfo does not end at retirement; it continues through a vast network of informal markets and recyclers that sustain entire communities. Their metal parts are either repurposed to fix other buses or sold as scrap at markets such as Owode Onirin. Located about 25km away on the Lagos Mainland, Owode Onirin, which means ‘money iron market’ in Yoruba, is a major hub for recycled metals. Waste collectors scour the city’s demolition sites for brass and mild steel; they find copper, bronze and aluminium in discarded vehicles. These materials are then processed and sold to companies such as African Foundries and Nigerian Foundries, as well as to local smiths who transform them into building parts, moulds and decorative objects. Sorters, welders and artisans form the backbone of this circular micro‑economy. Their labour breathes new life into discarded matter.  Lagos has a State Waste Management Authority, but it is fraught with politicking and inefficient in managing the city’s complex waste cycle. In the absence of intelligent state strategies, it falls on people to engineer solutions. They add armatures, build networks and modulate the static thresholds and borders imposed by the state. Today, these techniques and intelligences, born out of scarcity, are collectively labelled ‘informality’, a term that flattens their ingenuity.  Across the streets of Obalende and around its central roundabout, kiosks and pop‑up shops dominate the landscape. Most are constructed from materials such as timber reclaimed from collapsed buildings or fallen fascias, along with salvaged tarpaulins. Stones and concrete blocks found at demolition sites are moulded into anchors using discarded plastic paint buckets, serving as bases for umbrellas offering relief from the scorching Lagos sun. To anticipate flash flooding, many structures are raised slightly above ground on short stilts. Space, which is in short supply, is creatively repurposed to serve different functions at various times of the day; a single location might host breakfast vendors in the morning, fruit sellers in the afternoon and medicine hawkers at night. Due to its proximity to the city centre, Obalende experiences constant population shifts. Most entering the city at this node have no means of livelihood and often become salvagers. Under the curling ends of the Third Mainland Bridge, for example, a community of migrants gathers, surviving by scavenging motor parts, sometimes from old danfos, zinc roofing sheets and other materials of meagre value. Discarded mattresses, bedding and mosquito nets are repurposed as shelter beneath the noisy overpass, which becomes both workplace and home. In the absence of supportive state frameworks, communities like those in Obalende create micro‑responses to urban precarity. Their fluid, multifunctional spaces are adaptive and resilient architectures resulting from necessity, survival and material intelligence.  ‘Informality as a way of life is inherently circular in its use of space and materials’ In Lagos, the most populous city in Nigeria and one of the most populated in Africa, two thirds of the population live on less than US$1 a day, according to Amnesty International. This speaks not only to income levels but to multidimensional poverty. Unlike global cities such as Mumbai, Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro, where poorer demographics are largely confined to specific neighbourhoods at the margins, informality in Lagos is not peripheral but integral to how the city functions, defying the rigid thresholds and boundaries of formal urban planning.  Across Lagos, self‑sustaining circular economies flourish. Orile, a metal market located on the mainland, is one of the sites where discarded metals from sites in Lagos can be sold as part of a recycling system. Further out in the suburbs of Lagos, also on the mainland, is the Katangua Market, which is the biggest second‑hand clothes market in the city. In Nigeria’s largest hardware technology hub, Computer Village, just south of Lagos in Ikeja, used electrical and electronic equipment (UEEE) is sold for parts. A TRT World report notes that about 18,300 tonnes of UEEE arrive in Nigeria annually – although the number varies in other studies to as much as 54,000 tonnes smuggled in – with the majority coming from Europe, closely followed by the US and China.  Computer Village evolved into a dense network of shops, stalls and kiosks between 1998 and 2000, just before Nigeria adopted early digital cellular network technology. The market sits just minutes from the local airport and the Ikeja High Court, but its edges are fluid, spilling out from the Ikeja Underbridge. Over time, formal plots have dissolved into an evolving mesh of trade; the streets are lined with kiosks and carts, built from repurposed plywood, corrugated metal and tarpaulin, that come and go. Space is not owned but claimed, temporarily held, sublet and reshuffled.  Today, Computer Village generates an estimated US$2 billion in annual revenue. Yet most of the shops lack permanence and are constantly at risk of demolition or displacement. In March this year, over 500 shops were demolished overnight at Owode Onirin; in 2023, shopping complexes at Computer Village were torn down in a similar way. The state has continuously announced plans to relocate Computer Village to Katangua Market, with demolition of parts of Katangua Market itself making way for the move in 2020. Urban development patterns in Lagos prioritise formal sectors while ignoring self‑organised makers and traders. This contributes to spatial exclusion, where such communities are often under threat of eviction and relocation.  Discarded devices eventually make their way to landfills. Olusosun, in the very heart of Lagos, is one of Africa’s largest landfills. Over 10,000 tonnes of waste are delivered daily, and more than 5,000 scavengers live and work here, sifting through an artificial mountain of refuse in search of value: aluminium, copper, plastic, cloth. The waste stream, enlarged by the influx of used hardware and fast fashion from the global north, creates both livelihood and hazard. Recent studies have shown that most of the residents in and around the site are exposed to harmful air conditions that affect their lungs. Additionally, the water conditions around the site show infiltration of toxic substances. Scavengers have lost their lives in the process of harvesting metals from discarded electronics.  More than a landfill, Olusosun is a stage for the politics of waste in the global south. Poor regulation enables the flow of unserviceable imports; widespread poverty creates demand for cheap, second‑hand goods. The result is a fragile, and at times dangerous, ecosystem where the absence of the state makes room for informal innovation, such as space reuse and temporary architecture, material upcycling and recycling. In Olusosun, metals are often extracted, crushed and smelted through dangerous processes like open burning. Copper and gold harvested from the ashes then make their way back into products and institutions, such as the insets of bronze or aluminium in a piece of furniture that might eventually travel back to the global north. In its usual fashion, the government has promised to decommission the Olusosun site, but little has been seen in terms of an effective plan to repurpose the site under the state’s so‑called ‘advanced waste treatment initiative’. Informality as a way of life is inherently circular in its use of space and materials. It embodies adaptability, resilience and an intuitive response to economic and environmental conditions. The self‑built infrastructures in Lagos reveal the creativity and resilience of communities navigating the challenges of urban life. Now is the time for designers, policymakers and community leaders to work together and rethink urban development in a way that is more sustainable and responsive to the needs of the people who make cities thrive. The question is not whether informal economies will continue to exist, but how they can be designed into wider city planning – making them part of the solution, not the problem. Featured in the May 2025 issue: Circularity Lead image: Olympia De Maismont / AFP / Getty 2025-05-30 Reuben J Brown Share

What if there were a battery that could release energy while trapping carbon dioxide? This isn’t science fiction; it’s the promise of lithium-carbon dioxide (Li-CO₂) batteries, which are currently a hot research topic. Li-CO₂ batteries could be a two-in-one solution to the current problems of storing renewable energy and taking carbon emissions out of the air. They absorb carbon dioxide and convert it into a white powder called lithium carbonate while discharging energy. These batteries could have profound implications for cutting emissions from vehicles and industry—and might even enable long-duration missions on Mars, where the atmosphere is 95% CO₂. To make these batteries commercially viable, researchers have mainly been wrestling with problems related to recharging them. Now, our team at the University of Surrey has come up with a promising way forward. So how close are these “CO₂-breathing” batteries to becoming a practical reality? Like many great scientific breakthroughs, Li-CO₂ batteries were a happy accident. Slightly over a decade ago, a U.S.-French team of researchers were trying to address problems with lithium air batteries, another frontier energy-storage technology. Whereas today’s lithium-ion batteries generate power by moving and storing lithium ions within electrodes, lithium air batteries work by creating a chemical reaction between lithium and oxygen. The problem has been the “air” part, since even the tiny (0.04%) volume of CO₂ that’s found in air is enough to disrupt this careful chemistry, producing unwanted lithium carbonate (Li₂CO₃). As many battery scientists will tell you, the presence of Li₂CO₃ can also be a real pain in regular lithium-ion batteries, causing unhelpful side reactions and electrical resistance. Nonetheless the scientists noticed something interesting about this CO₂ contamination: It improved the battery’s amount of charge. From this point on, work began on intentionally adding CO₂ gas to batteries to take advantage of this, and the lithium-CO₂ battery was born. How it works Their great potential relates to the chemical reaction at the positive side of the battery, where small holes are cut in the casing to allow CO₂ gas in. There it dissolves in the liquid electrolyte (which allows the charge to move between the two electrodes) and reacts with lithium that has already been dissolved there. During this reaction, it’s believed that four electrons are exchanged between lithium ions and carbon dioxide. This electron transfer determines the theoretical charge that can be stored in the battery. In a normal lithium-ion battery, the positive electrode exchanges just one electron per reaction. (In lithium air batteries, it’s two to four electrons.) The greater exchange of electrons in the lithium-carbon dioxide battery, combined with the high voltage of the reaction, explains their potential to greatly outperform today’s lithium-ion batteries. However, the technology has a few issues. The batteries don’t last very long. Commercial lithium-ion packs routinely survive 1,000 to 10,000 charging cycles; most LiCO₂ prototypes fade after fewer than 100. They’re also difficult to recharge. This requires breaking down the lithium carbonate to release lithium and CO₂, which can be energy intensive. This energy requirement is a little like a hill that must be cycled up before the reaction can coast, and is known as overpotential. You can reduce this requirement by printing the right catalyst material on the porous positive electrode. Yet these catalysts are typically expensive and rare noble metals, such as ruthenium and platinum, making for a significant barrier to commercial viability. Our team has found an alternative catalyst, caesium phosphomolybdate, which is far cheaper and easy to manufacture at room temperature. This material made the batteries stable for 107 cycles, while also storing 2.5 times as much charge as a lithium ion. And we significantly reduced the energy cost involved in breaking down lithium carbonate, for an overpotential of 0.67 volts, which is only about double what would be necessary in a commercial product. Our research team is now working to further reduce the cost of this technology by developing a catalyst that replaces caesium, since it’s the phosphomolybdate that is key. This could make the system more economically viable and scalable for widespread deployment. We also plan to study how the battery charges and discharges in real time. This will provide a clearer understanding of the internal mechanisms at work, helping to optimize performance and durability. A major focus of upcoming tests will be to evaluate how the battery performs under different CO₂ pressures. So far, the system has only been tested under idealized conditions (1 bar). If it can work at 0.1 bar of pressure, it will be feasible for car exhausts and gas boiler flues, meaning you could capture CO₂ while you drive or heat your home. Demonstrating that this works will be an important confirmation of commercial viability, albeit we would expect the battery’s charge capacity to reduce at this pressure. By our rough calculations, 1kg of catalyst could absorb around 18.5kg of CO₂. Since a car driving 100 miles emits around 18kg to 20kg of CO₂, that means such a battery could potentially offset a day’s drive. If the batteries work at 0.006 bar, the pressure on the Martian atmosphere, they could power anything from an exploration rover to a colony. At 0.0004 bar, Earth’s ambient air pressure, they could capture CO₂ from our atmosphere and store power anywhere. In all cases, the key question will be how it affects the battery’s charge capacity. Meanwhile, to improve the battery’s number of recharge cycles, we need to address the fact that the electrolyte dries out. We’re currently investigating solutions, which probably involve developing casings that only CO₂ can move into. As for reducing the energy required for the catalyst to work, it’s likely to require optimizing the battery’s geometry to maximize the reaction rate—and to introduce a flow of CO₂, comparable to how fuel cells work (typically by feeding in hydrogen and oxygen). If this continued work can push the battery’s cycle life above 1,000 cycles, cut overpotential below 0.3 V, and replace scarce elements entirely, commercial Li-CO₂ packs could become reality. Our experiments will determine just how versatile and far-reaching the battery’s applications might be, from carbon capture on Earth to powering missions on Mars. Daniel Commandeur is a Surrey Future Fellow at the School of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering at the University of Surrey. Mahsa Masoudi is a PhD researcher of chemical engineering at the University of Surrey. Siddharth Gadkari is a lecturer in chemical process engineering at the University of Surrey. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Click to enlarge Housing build-ups in Dhaka. Image: Jeremy Smith 1 of 11 Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image: Jeremy Smith 2 of 11 Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image: Jeremy Smith 3 of 11 Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image: Jeremy Smith 4 of 11 Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image: Jeremy Smith 5 of 11 Old Dhaka and 45,000 people per square kilometre. Image: Jeremy Smith 6 of 11 Buses collage life on the roads. Image: Jeremy Smith 7 of 11 Lattice-work roofing of the informal settlements, viewed from Salauddin Ahmed’s Atelier Robin Architects studio. Image: Jeremy Smith 8 of 11 The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life. Image: Jeremy Smith 9 of 11 The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life. Image: Jeremy Smith 10 of 11 The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life. Image: Jeremy Smith 11 of 11 Architects Jeremy Smith and Murali Bhaskar go looking for water and hard-to-find buildings in what is already one of the world’s most populous mega-cities, Dhaka. Architecture here is rarely properly lost. Even now, as we navigate a way to higher-density living, we tend not to misplace buildings. There’s still the space to eye-spy our most wayward elevations. At worst, we might GPS a tricky driveway or pull out an Andrew Barrie map to pinpoint some retiring architecture. But what happens if you really diamond-up the density. At our country-wide 19-people-per-square-kilometre or even downtown Auckland’s sky-high 2500, you can see what’s coming and cities mostly plan out as planned. Teleport forward though to 45,000-people-per-square-kilometre and cities accelerate lives of their own. Here, anything and everything can be lost in the crowd, even buildings. So, on a 2024 invitation from the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscape and Settlements to share some Unfinished & Far Far Away adventures in “the toughest city in the world”,1 I pack some extra compassing in architect buddy Murali Bhaskar and go architectural orienteering in Dhaka. It’s hot hot; architecture can wait. We start by looking for water. This, after all, is the land of rivers. Following on from Aotearoa in 2017 being the first to give a specific river, Te Awa Tupua, legal rights, Bangladesh in 2019 became the first country to grant all of its some 700 rivers the same legal status that humans have.2 But the count varies. Protections readily miss smaller tributaries and, with all that water pouring out of the Himalayas and delta-ing into the Bay of Bengal, the land is accretional. The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life. Image:  Jeremy Smith From the million or so starters in a newly independent 1971 Dhaka, today, it is the fourth-most-populated city in the world with somewhere near 25 million people. Whether for disaster relief, economics or just the bright lights, urbanisation draws more than 400,000 new residents annually to the city. Throw in some family time and, with Tokyo and Shanghai shrinking, Dhaka’s population is predicted to be an eyewatering 35 million by 2050 (and outnumbered only by Delhi and, in some books, Mumbai). When every possible place looks inhabited, it’s not just water that can quickly go to ground. Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, who heads the Bengal Institute, has some learned thinkers in tow in trying to keep pace architecturally. Throw in societal and climatic concerns, and questions about how contextualisation might operate at such speed and the inquiry takes global precedence. Kenneth Frampton, Rounaq Jahan, Suha Özkan, Shamsul Wares and, formerly, BV Doshi, sit on the advisory panel and have drawn other such worldly thinkers as Juhani Pallasmaa, David Leatherbarrow and, even, Peter Stutchbury from down our way to come experience an urban existence “symptomatic of the gravest environmental challenges”.3 It’s serious stuff. Ashraf researches “hydraulic flow in which horizontal and vertical movements of water may direct architectural and landscape formations”.4 This ‘form follows water’ mantra isn’t just free planning Le Corbusier’s ‘form follows function’ with some Charles Correa’s ‘form follows climate’ to connect to life outside, it’s a watery warning to the navigations quickly necessitating within our collective future. Ashraf’s timely prompt that “Embankment is a barrier. How can we deconstruct it”5 can be seen in the way we increasingly plan the separation of wet and dry in our cities. Main streets like Queen Street and Cambridge Terrace already run down streams and our remaining water edges risk becoming increasingly marginalised by infrastructure rising with the water. But the steering is different at density and Dhaka’s rapid growth has meant letting go of the controls with which we still understand cities to flow. As Ashraf puts it, “Dhaka builds furiously”. While we dutifully plan buildings as if crawling a length or two at the aquatic centre, architecture in Dhaka must high-dive into a torrent. Its buildings must learn to surface and really start kicking. Anything trying to hold ground risks being swept away. Dhaka has become a river. As if to university-entrance the swimming lesson to densification, we’ve arrived only a few months after an Indian helicopter plucked Bangladesh’s president from a student-led flood of unrest amongst civil rights and corruption demonstrations. We might think of universities as offering time for trying things on but, sink or swim, the students here now run the country. With the parliament dissolved, there’s no chance of us seeing inside Louis Kahn’s 1982 National Assembly Building, which, like many of Dhaka’s institutional buildings, took on something of a freshening in the coup. Remembering our government’s pre-departure, bold-italic travel advisory, we head out to practise avoiding street demonstrations and are rewarded with a fenced-off view of Kahn’s epic, which brought global architectural discourse to post-independent Bangladesh. No such authoritative access issues back at the university, where, amongst the student political murals, we visit Muzharul Islam’s 1953–1956 Fine Arts Institute. Islam introduced modernism to the then East Pakistan6 and, in testament, the school still functions as a school, with its external verandah circulation and louvred ventilating classrooms. The rallying extends to getting around with cars sporting dodgem bumpers. Travelling 10 kilometres takes an hour, a million beeps and some financial socialising out the windows. Public transport may be working hard to keep pace with the kinetic city but it starts at the back of the grid, as the panelwork to the buses visibly collage. Getting to where we want to go takes some effort. An above-ground subway system has been started but not finished and the folk enticingly riding on top of trains typically aren’t off looking for architecture. There’s the three-wheeled rickshaw option, of course: formerly pedalled but, in recent months, souped-up with the allowance of car batteries to the back axle. Even so, manoeuvring further than nearby takes more than any rider is up for. So, as we head out for lunch with architect Marina Tabassum and then beep beep beep out further to her extraordinary Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque in Dhaka’s northern expansion, we learn that having everything close helps. Neighbourhoods remain important in megacities. Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image:  Jeremy Smith The mosque deserves the full medley and gently uplifts as all great architecture does, be it for the community or off-the-street visitors like us. Marina Tabassum Architects is, of course, internationally renowned for its architectural stand against globalised buildings that are out of place and context, notably winning an Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2016 and being selected to undertake the 2025 Serpentine Pavilion in London. With the site at 13 degrees to the axis of qibla in Mecca, Tabassum sits the mosque on a five-step plinth with a squared, ventilating brick jali and a circular ceilinged prayer space rotated off centre. In a lesson to building only what you need, the spaces between remain unroofed and the perimeter daylight illumination provides a diminished and equalling light to the prayer space. It needs no explanation: look up and there are constellations in the sky; look outwards and find community; look to the mihrab notching the outside wall and orientate to Mecca. Tabassum’s dive is splashless, for the mosque has self-navigated being enveloped by the city. The entry pond may have gone and the mihrab now reveals buildings rather than fields but the light still shines the way. Four hundred people take prayer several times a day within the inner circle, and the weekend Friday crowd spreads outwards to the borders and plinth. We are two days in at this point and our not-getting-lost-practice is going well. We meet architect Salauddin Ahmed whose Atelier Robin Architects studio and gallery in a former tannery building is so hidden away that it feels both lost and right at home. It’s surrounded by the latticing roofs of informal settlements and, remarkably, feels quiet and yet, genuinely, part of the city. No mean feat in a city, “living”, as Ahmed puts it, “as if this is the last day on earth”. Noise is life in Dhaka; Ahmed’s windows are open and the river is flowing. We talk the same language of architecture understanding existing context and needing to accommodate change in shorter and shorter time frames. Where I say “participate”, Ahmed terms “navigate” and without any sense of overseeing for there is just so much life in Dhaka. We mean the same thing and get there from very different landscapes. The next morning, we go where transport can’t. Old Dhaka’s alleyways require some extra eyes, so Ahmed calls in his friend, photographer Khademul Insan, who has lived this labyrinth. This is the densest part of Dhaka and there’s a lot in the air. “Wear this,” says Ahmed, passing a mask. “Otherwise, you’ll cough for four weeks.” It is deep. There’s so much WiFi that it strands like some kind of underworld sun-shading. Our service provider isn’t expecting this kind of roaming and we have no connection. If our collective Kiwi wayfinding skills might have fluked a way in, we certainly need leading out. As the lanes narrow, the industry broadens into some kind of Mad Max circular economy where everything of anything has value and the fires that keep these people afloat run continuously. Mercifully, it’s not raining or there’d be a different type of river afoot. Fifteen kilometres and all day later, we’ve walked to search for culturally significant mosques, houses, courtyards and schools. Some we locate; others, there’s just no finding. Maybe they are there, maybe they aren’t. Occasionally, there are scripts cautioning against graffiti or carving a name into the stonework at the risk of imprisonment, but there are few clues to any architectural history. In the pinch, buildings jostle to just about every possible place a building might go: on top, under, in front, behind. They infill courtyards, hang over laneways, squeeze into gaps, even penalising what’s left of a football field. Every seat is taken, literally. Whenever we find public space off the street, there are couples dating. There’s a lot of romance in 25 million. Eventually, we exit and finally see a river. I remember the swimming lessons are strictly metaphoric and look but don’t touch. You don’t need to get wet to learn how to swim. As Ahmed guides, and he speaks with Ashraf, Tabassum, Insan and experience to what we must remember in densifying our own cities. “I belong to one of the last generations that truly understand what it means to have neighbours.”7 Context counts no matter the size. Our rivers are not yet streams. REFERENCES 1 Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, ‘Note from the Director General: Land, Water and Settlements’. bengal.institute/about Accessed 29.12.2024. 2 Ashley Westerman, 2019, “Should rivers have same legal rights as humans? A growing number of voices say yes”, National Public Radio. npr.org/2019/08/03/740604142 3 August 2019. 3 Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, ‘Note from the Director General: Land, Water and Settlements’. bengal.institute/about Accessed 29.12.2024. 4 Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, ‘Wet Narratives: Architecture Must Recognise that the Future is Fluid’ in The Mother Tongue of Architecture: Selected writings of Kazi Khaleed Ashraf. ORO Editions and Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscape and Settlements, China: p. 251. 5 Ibid. 6 Adnan Morshed, 2017, ‘Modernism as Postnationalist Politics: Muzharul Islam’s Faculty ofFine Arts (1953–1956)’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2017. 7 Salauddin Ahmed, 2024, “Design must not be a superimposed idea, but a logical one”, The Daily Star, Dhaka, 25 December 2024.

Botox injections used to be a secret for (largely) women in their 40s and 50s. But growing numbers of (largely) women in their 20s and 30s are turning to “baby Botox,” or smaller doses that are intended to prevent aging rather than combat it.Baby Botox is just one intervention that doctors say younger people now frequently seek, and some view the trend with concern. Dr. Michelle Hure, a physician specializing in dermatology and dermatopathology, says younger patients aren’t considering the cost of procedures that require lifetime maintenance, and are expressing dissatisfaction with their looks to a degree that borders on the absurd.Hure traces the demand for “baby Botox” and other procedures to the start of the pandemic.“Everyone was basically chronically online,” she told Vox. “They were on Zoom, they were looking at themselves, and there was the rise of of TikTok and the filters and people were really seeing these perceived flaws that either aren’t there or are so minimal and just normal anatomy. And they have really made it front and center where it affects them. It affects their daily life and I really feel that it has become more of a pathological thing.”Hure spoke to Today, Explained co-host Noel King about the rise of “baby Botox” and her concerns with the cosmetic dermatology industry. An excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You told us about a patient that you saw yesterday, and you said you probably wouldn’t keep her on because her mentality really worried you. Would you tell me about that young woman?I had this patient who was mid-20s, and really a beautiful girl. I [didn’t] see a lot of signs of aging on her face, but she was coming in for Botox. There wasn’t a lot for me to treat. And at the end of the session she was asking me, “So what do you think about my nasolabial folds?”Basically, it’s the fold that goes from the corner of your nose down to the corner of your mouth. It’s the barrier between the upper lip and your cheek, and when you smile it kind of folds. Of course, the more you age, the more of the line will be left behind when you’re not smiling. And she was pointing to her cheek as if there was something there, but there was nothing there. And so I had to tell her, “Well, I don’t see that, you’re perfect.” It’s a phantom nasolabial fold. It didn’t exist.That sort of mentality where someone is perceiving a flaw that is absolutely not there — providers need to say no. Unfortunately, they’re incentivized not to. Especially if you have a cosmetic office, if you’re a med spa, if you have a cosmetic derm or plastic surgery office, of course you’re incentivized to do what the patient wants. Well, I’m not going to do that. That’s not what I do.That means you may get paid for seeing her in that visit, but you’re not getting paid for putting filler in her face. I think what I hear you saying is other doctors would have done that.Absolutely. One hundred percent. I know this for a fact because many times those patients will come to my office to get that filler dissolved because they don’t like it. In the larger practices or practices that are private equity-owned, which is a huge problem in medicine, you are absolutely meant to sell as many products, as many procedures as possible. Oftentimes I was told to sell as much filler as possible, because every syringe is several hundred dollars. And then if they’re there, talk them into a laser. Talk them into this, talk them into that. Then you become a salesman. For my skin check patients, I’m looking for skin cancer. I’m counseling them on how to take care of their skin. I was told, “Don’t talk to them about using sunscreen, because we want them to get skin cancer and come back.”I was pulled out of the room by my boss and reprimanded for explaining why it’s so important to use sunscreen. And so this is why I couldn’t do it anymore. I had to start my own office and be on my own. I can’t do that. That goes against everything that I believe in, in my oath. Because there is potential harm on many different levels for cosmetic procedures.What are the risks to giving someone a cosmetic procedure that they don’t really need?This is a medical procedure. There is always risk for any type of intervention, right? What gets me is, like, Nordstrom is talking about having injections in their stores. This is ridiculous! This is a medical procedure. You can get infection, you can get vascular occlusion that can lead to death of the tissue overlying where you inject. It can lead to blindness. This is a big deal. It’s fairly safe if you know what you’re doing. But not everyone knows what they’re doing and knows how to handle the complications that can come about. Honestly, I feel like the psychological aspect of it is a big problem. At some point you become dependent, almost, on these procedures to either feel happy or feel good about yourself. And at what point is it not going to be enough? One of my colleagues actually coined this term. It’s called perception drift. At some point, you will do these little, little, incremental tweaks until you look like a different person. And you might look very abnormal. So even if someone comes to me for something that is legitimate, it’s still: Once you start, it’s going to be hard for you to stop. If you’re barely able to scrimp together enough to pay for that one thing, and you have it done, great. What about all the rest of your life that you’re going to want to do something? Are you going to be able to manage it?I wonder how all of this makes you think about your profession. Most people get into medicine, it has always been my assumption, to be helpful. And you’ve laid out a world in which procedures are being done that are not only not helpful, they could be dangerous. And you don’t seem to like it very much.This is why it is a smaller and smaller percentage of what I do in my office. I love cosmetics to an extent, right? I love to make people love how they look. But when you start using cosmetics as a tool to make them feel better about themselves in a major way, it’s a slippery slope. It should be more of a targeted thing, not making you look like an entirely different person because society has told you you can’t age. It’s really disturbing to me.See More:

DOGE in court Trump admin tells Supreme Court: DOGE needs to do its work in secret DOJ complains of "sweeping, intrusive discovery" after DOGE refused FOIA requests. Jon Brodkin – May 21, 2025 5:08 pm | 88 A protest over DOGE's reductions to the federal workforce outside the Jacob K. Javits Federal Office Building on March 19, 2025 in New York City. Credit: Getty Images | Michael M. Santiago A protest over DOGE's reductions to the federal workforce outside the Jacob K. Javits Federal Office Building on March 19, 2025 in New York City. Credit: Getty Images | Michael M. Santiago Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more The Department of Justice today asked the Supreme Court to block a ruling that requires DOGE to provide information about its government cost-cutting operations as part of court-ordered discovery. President Trump's Justice Department sought an immediate halt to orders issued by US District Court for the District of Columbia. US Solicitor General John Sauer argued that the Department of Government Efficiency is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as a presidential advisory body and not an official "agency." The district court "ordered USDS [US Doge Service] to submit to sweeping, intrusive discovery just to determine if USDS is subject to FOIA in the first place," Sauer wrote. "That order turns FOIA on its head, effectively giving respondent a win on the merits of its FOIA suit under the guise of figuring out whether FOIA even applies. And that order clearly violates the separation of powers, subjecting a presidential advisory body to intrusive discovery and threatening the confidentiality and candor of its advice, putatively to address a legal question that never should have necessitated discovery in this case at all." The nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed FOIA requests seeking information about DOGE and sued after DOGE officials refused to provide the requested records. US District Judge Christopher Cooper has so far sided with CREW. Cooper decided in March that "USDS is likely covered by FOIA and that the public would be irreparably harmed by an indefinite delay in unearthing the records CREW seeks," ordering DOGE "to process CREW's request on an expedited timetable." Judge: DOGE is not just an advisor DOGE then asked the district court for a summary judgment in its favor, and CREW responded by filing a motion for expedited discovery "seeking information relevant to whether USDS wields substantial authority independent of the President and is therefore subject to FOIA." In an April 15 order, Cooper ruled that CREW is entitled to limited discovery into the question of whether DOGE is wielding authority sufficient to bring it within the purview of FOIA. Cooper hasn't yet ruled on the motion for summary judgment. "The structure of USDS and the scope of its authority are critical to determining whether the agency is 'wield[ing] substantial authority independently of the President,'" the judge wrote. "And the answers to those questions are unclear from the record." Trump's executive orders appear to support CREW's argument by suggesting "that USDS is exercising substantial independent authority," Cooper wrote. "As the Court already noted, the executive order establishing USDS 'to implement the President's DOGE Agenda' appears to give USDS the authority to carry out that agenda, 'not just to advise the President in doing so.'" Not satisfied with the outcome, the Trump administration tried to get Cooper's ruling overturned in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The appeals court ruled against DOGE last week. The appeals court temporarily stayed the district court order in April, but dissolved the stay on May 14 and denied the government's petition. "The government contends that the district court's order permitting narrow discovery impermissibly intrudes upon the President's constitutional prerogatives," the appeals court said. But "the discovery here is modest in scope and does not target the President or any close adviser personally. The government retains every conventional tool to raise privilege objections on the limited question-by-question basis foreseen here on a narrow and discrete ground." US argues for secrecy A three-judge panel at the appeals court was unswayed by the government's claim that this process is too burdensome. "Although the government protests that any such assertion of privilege would be burdensome, the only identified burdens are limited both by time and reach, covering as they do records within USDS's control generated since January 20," the ruling said. "It does not provide any specific details as to why accessing its own records or submitting to two depositions would pose an unbearable burden." Yesterday, the District Court set a discovery schedule requiring the government to produce all responsive documents within 14 days and complete depositions within 24 days. In its petition to the Supreme Court today, the Trump administration argued that DOGE's recommendations to the president should be kept secret: The district court's requirement that USDS turn over the substance of its recommendations—even when the recommendations were "purely advisory"—epitomizes the order's overbreadth and intrusiveness. The court's order compels USDS to identify every "federal agency contract, grant, lease or similar instrument that any DOGE employee or DOGE Team member recommended that federal agencies cancel or rescind," and every "federal agency employee or position that any DOGE employee or DOGE team member recommended" for termination or placement on administrative leave. Further, USDS must state "whether [each] recommendation was followed." It is difficult to imagine a more grievous intrusion and burden on a presidential advisory body. Providing recommendations is the core of what USDS does. Because USDS coordinates with agencies across the Executive Branch on an ongoing basis, that request requires USDS to review multitudes of discussions that USDS has had every day since the start of this Administration. And such information likely falls within the deliberative-process privilege almost by definition, as internal executive-branch recommendations are inherently "pre-decisional" and "deliberative." Lawsuit: “No meaningful transparency” into DOGE The US further said the discovery "is unnecessary to answer the legal question whether USDS qualifies as an 'agency' that is subject to FOIA," and is merely "a fishing expedition into USDS's advisory activities under the guise of determining whether USDS engages in non-advisory activities—an approach to discovery that would be improper in any circumstance." CREW, like others that have sued the government over DOGE's operations, says the entity exercises significant power without proper oversight and transparency. DOGE "has worked in the shadows—a cadre of largely unidentified actors, whose status as government employees is unclear, controlling major government functions with no oversight," CREW's lawsuit said. "USDS has provided no meaningful transparency into its operations or assurances that it is maintaining proper records of its unprecedented and legally dubious work." The Trump administration is fighting numerous DOGE-related lawsuits at multiple levels of the court system. Earlier this month, the administration asked the Supreme Court to restore DOGE's access to Social Security Administration records after losing on the issue in both a district court and appeals court. That request to the Supreme Court is pending. There was also a dispute over discovery when 14 states sued the federal government over Trump "delegat[ing] virtually unchecked authority to Mr. Musk without proper legal authorization from Congress and without meaningful supervision of his activities." A federal judge ruled that the states could serve written discovery requests on Musk and DOGE, but the DC Circuit appeals court blocked the discovery order. In that case, appeals court judges said the lower-court judge should have ruled on a motion to dismiss before allowing discovery. Jon Brodkin Senior IT Reporter Jon Brodkin Senior IT Reporter Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry. 88 Comments

DOGE in court Trump admin tells Supreme Court: DOGE needs to do its work in secret DOJ complains of "sweeping, intrusive discovery" after DOGE refused FOIA requests. Jon Brodkin – May 21, 2025 5:08 pm | 73 A protest over DOGE's reductions to the federal workforce outside the Jacob K. Javits Federal Office Building on March 19, 2025 in New York City. Credit: Getty Images | Michael M. Santiago A protest over DOGE's reductions to the federal workforce outside the Jacob K. Javits Federal Office Building on March 19, 2025 in New York City. Credit: Getty Images | Michael M. Santiago Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more The Department of Justice today asked the Supreme Court to block a ruling that requires DOGE to provide information about its government cost-cutting operations as part of court-ordered discovery. President Trump's Justice Department sought an immediate halt to orders issued by US District Court for the District of Columbia. US Solicitor General John Sauer argued that the Department of Government Efficiency is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as a presidential advisory body and not an official "agency." The district court "ordered USDS [US Doge Service] to submit to sweeping, intrusive discovery just to determine if USDS is subject to FOIA in the first place," Sauer wrote. "That order turns FOIA on its head, effectively giving respondent a win on the merits of its FOIA suit under the guise of figuring out whether FOIA even applies. And that order clearly violates the separation of powers, subjecting a presidential advisory body to intrusive discovery and threatening the confidentiality and candor of its advice, putatively to address a legal question that never should have necessitated discovery in this case at all." The nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed FOIA requests seeking information about DOGE and sued after DOGE officials refused to provide the requested records. US District Judge Christopher Cooper has so far sided with CREW. Cooper decided in March that "USDS is likely covered by FOIA and that the public would be irreparably harmed by an indefinite delay in unearthing the records CREW seeks," ordering DOGE "to process CREW's request on an expedited timetable." Judge: DOGE is not just an advisor DOGE then asked the district court for a summary judgment in its favor, and CREW responded by filing a motion for expedited discovery "seeking information relevant to whether USDS wields substantial authority independent of the President and is therefore subject to FOIA." In an April 15 order, Cooper ruled that CREW is entitled to limited discovery into the question of whether DOGE is wielding authority sufficient to bring it within the purview of FOIA. Cooper hasn't yet ruled on the motion for summary judgment. "The structure of USDS and the scope of its authority are critical to determining whether the agency is 'wield[ing] substantial authority independently of the President,'" the judge wrote. "And the answers to those questions are unclear from the record." Trump's executive orders appear to support CREW's argument by suggesting "that USDS is exercising substantial independent authority," Cooper wrote. "As the Court already noted, the executive order establishing USDS 'to implement the President's DOGE Agenda' appears to give USDS the authority to carry out that agenda, 'not just to advise the President in doing so.'" Not satisfied with the outcome, the Trump administration tried to get Cooper's ruling overturned in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The appeals court ruled against DOGE last week. The appeals court temporarily stayed the district court order in April, but dissolved the stay on May 14 and denied the government's petition. "The government contends that the district court's order permitting narrow discovery impermissibly intrudes upon the President's constitutional prerogatives," the appeals court said. But "the discovery here is modest in scope and does not target the President or any close adviser personally. The government retains every conventional tool to raise privilege objections on the limited question-by-question basis foreseen here on a narrow and discrete ground." US argues for secrecy A three-judge panel at the appeals court was unswayed by the government's claim that this process is too burdensome. "Although the government protests that any such assertion of privilege would be burdensome, the only identified burdens are limited both by time and reach, covering as they do records within USDS's control generated since January 20," the ruling said. "It does not provide any specific details as to why accessing its own records or submitting to two depositions would pose an unbearable burden." Yesterday, the District Court set a discovery schedule requiring the government to produce all responsive documents within 14 days and complete depositions within 24 days. In its petition to the Supreme Court today, the Trump administration argued that DOGE's recommendations to the president should be kept secret: The district court's requirement that USDS turn over the substance of its recommendations—even when the recommendations were "purely advisory"—epitomizes the order's overbreadth and intrusiveness. The court's order compels USDS to identify every "federal agency contract, grant, lease or similar instrument that any DOGE employee or DOGE Team member recommended that federal agencies cancel or rescind," and every "federal agency employee or position that any DOGE employee or DOGE team member recommended" for termination or placement on administrative leave. Further, USDS must state "whether [each] recommendation was followed." It is difficult to imagine a more grievous intrusion and burden on a presidential advisory body. Providing recommendations is the core of what USDS does. Because USDS coordinates with agencies across the Executive Branch on an ongoing basis, that request requires USDS to review multitudes of discussions that USDS has had every day since the start of this Administration. And such information likely falls within the deliberative-process privilege almost by definition, as internal executive-branch recommendations are inherently "pre-decisional" and "deliberative." Lawsuit: “No meaningful transparency” into DOGE The US further said the discovery "is unnecessary to answer the legal question whether USDS qualifies as an 'agency' that is subject to FOIA," and is merely "a fishing expedition into USDS's advisory activities under the guise of determining whether USDS engages in non-advisory activities—an approach to discovery that would be improper in any circumstance." CREW, like others that have sued the government over DOGE's operations, says the entity exercises significant power without proper oversight and transparency. DOGE "has worked in the shadows—a cadre of largely unidentified actors, whose status as government employees is unclear, controlling major government functions with no oversight," CREW's lawsuit said. "USDS has provided no meaningful transparency into its operations or assurances that it is maintaining proper records of its unprecedented and legally dubious work." The Trump administration is fighting numerous DOGE-related lawsuits at multiple levels of the court system. Earlier this month, the administration asked the Supreme Court to restore DOGE's access to Social Security Administration records after losing on the issue in both a district court and appeals court. That request to the Supreme Court is pending. There was also a dispute over discovery when 14 states sued the federal government over Trump "delegat[ing] virtually unchecked authority to Mr. Musk without proper legal authorization from Congress and without meaningful supervision of his activities." A federal judge ruled that the states could serve written discovery requests on Musk and DOGE, but the DC Circuit appeals court blocked the discovery order. In that case, appeals court judges said the lower-court judge should have ruled on a motion to dismiss before allowing discovery. Jon Brodkin Senior IT Reporter Jon Brodkin Senior IT Reporter Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry. 73 Comments

Bold recycling claims deliberately distract from the disastrous ecological effects of plastic in buildings The building industry consumes nearly a fifth of all plastic produced globally. Plastic enters buildings not only as elements – window frames, fences, gutters and cable sheathing – but also in the form of petrochemical‑based polymers that permeate building products less visibly: dissolved in solvents, mixed into concrete and asphalt, impregnated into wood products, and affixed, laminated or otherwise agglomerated with other materials. These applications preclude their separation from other waste for recycling – a major reason why only a tiny proportion of the estimated 77 million metric tonnes of plastic waste from demolition or renovation is recycled. The rest is incinerated, landfilled or mismanaged.  This does not prevent building product manufacturers from routinely promoting plastic products as recyclable. VinylPlus, the recycling wing of the European Council of Vinyl Manufacturers, claims that nearly 27 per cent of vinyl products were mechanically recycled in 2021. But nearly two thirds of this was sourced from factory waste, before the vinyl even became flooring or roofing.  Recycling claims serve an important ideological function: to deflect corporate accountability for plastic’s deleterious effects, and to delay and derail efforts to restrict plastic production. Promoting these claims serves as a passcode to a ‘green’ building material industry expected to reach a value of over US$1 trillion by 2032. The infiltration of plastic in buildings runs deep. Some of the largest producers of construction chemicals and synthetic building products include the world’s largest private and state‑owned fossil fuel companies, such as Shell, ExxonMobil, Sinopec and Saudi Basic Industries (SABIC). The chemical and plastics industries are intertwined with the fossil fuel industry via extensive infrastructural, institutional and ideological ties, ranging from their shared and interdependent supply chains, to common political interests and secure global transport routes. These companies provide thousands of polymer‑based building products ranging from ready‑to‑install components (rigid insulation boards, waterproofing membranes, etc), to myriad adhesives, coatings, binders, sealants, admixtures and insulating foams – or provide their constitutive chemicals. ‘Architects must look up from their carbon calculators to question manufacturers’ claims of circularity’     The modern building product industry arose in tandem with the fossil fuel, chemical and plastics industries in the postwar era in the US and Europe. The massive productive capacity that had supplied the war effort was transformed to meet the needs and long‑repressed desires of a populace eager to partake in the fruits of peace, modernity and affluence, resulting in a flood of new plastic consumer goods. Among the new uses for plastic emerged an ever‑widening array of building products from flooring to cladding and furniture. By the late 1960s, however, plastic’s durability began to represent an existential threat to plastics and petrochemical companies as demand for plastic consumer goods began to wane. Industry’s solution? Disposability – not in response to consumers’ demand for convenience, but to the saturation of the market of plastic consumer goods that lasted too long. Disposability transformed a crisis of declining profit into a wellspring of unending demand and plastic waste. Eventually, producers became increasingly unable to credibly deny the problem of discarded plastic accumulating in great heaping piles and circling ocean gyres. What they could do was flood the mediascape with solutions that worked for them: redirecting focus from the obvious step of curtailing production, to downstream, consumer‑focused measures, such as increased recycling and the adoption of biogenic and recycled plastic feedstocks. Though plastic building products are less disposable than single‑use plastics, claims of ‘circularity’ similarly serve to sanction plastic use while ensuring that end‑of‑life costs stay off company ledgers.  Facing the prospect of declining demand for fuel due to electrification and the adoption of electric vehicles in much of the world, petrochemical industries have doubled down on expanding plastic fabrication as an economic lifeline. The immensely powerful nexus of fossil fuel, petrochemical and plastic industries have poured billions of dollars into new refineries and plastic production facilities. With nearly a fifth of plastic demand coming from the construction industry, these cartels have much at stake in maintaining their business. Accordingly, use of plastic in building is widely promoted by their well‑funded trade lobbies, including the American Chemical Council, Plastics Europe and the British Plastics Federation. These trade lobbyists work fervently to influence legislation to ensure the cost and responsibility of recycling is displaced onto consumers and municipalities, ‘externalising’ the cost of remediating what will be a legacy of toxic pollution left for future generations.  As a result, architects remain pressurised and incentivised to specify plastic products due to their low cost, superior performance, availability and lack of alternatives. Architects must look up from their carbon calculators, not only to question manufacturers’ claims of circularity, but also the limits of circularity within an economy predicated both on compulsory growth and – for some time to come – on fossil fuels. Lead image: Plastic is used in numerous applications in the built environment, from cladding and fences to adhesives and insulation foams. Manufacturers claim their plastic products are widely recycled as a tactic to obscure their origin in the petrochemical industry and their contribution to the climate emergency that causes extreme weather events such as wild fires. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times / Getty) 2025-05-21 Reuben J Brown Share AR May 2025CircularityBuy Now