Office Hours with Lomez

The Epstein story is officially undead.

Here is my speech from last week’s Natal Conference in Austin. Thank you to all of the organizers and to everyone at @natalismorg. Despite the focus of my speech, I have a great deal of respect for everyone involved and I’m grateful for their efforts. Office Hours with Lomez is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Fights over the NEA and NEH, and public funding for arts and culture more generally, are nothing new. Since their inception in 1965 and the passage of The National Foundation for the Arts and Humanities Act, the American people and their representatives have been in a constant tug-of-war over how to appropriately balance the importance of cultivating a national culture against the problem of how that culture is defined and by whom.

I’ve been absent the last few weeks, first in Washington DC to celebrate the inauguration of Donald John Trump at our Passage Press Coronation Ball, and then bed-ridden after the Deep State hit me with the Havana gun.

The dust is beginning to settle on the Great Christmas H1B Debate of 2024. It’s been quite a ride. Much has been revealed. The coda to this episode won’t come for months, maybe a year, or even more, once the policy is actually decided, and even then D.C. will do its thing to obstruct and push back and there will be another round of horse trading before anything gets implemented.