Um, Rebecca, what, why, what happened? W- why is it not closed? [laughs]

Well, so I think, you know, Dr. MacLeod and the academy, uh, recognized very early on, uh, that this threat was we were really, you know, working with the rest of the vision community, research community in particular, that we were the ones that were really gonna have to step in and protect, um, the independence of the NEI.

And so we very quickly mobilized to pull in together, you know, the Association of, of, of Prof- Prof- Professors of Ophthalmology, uh, the Alliance for Vision Research, um, you know, the American Academy of Optometry, you know, and just to make sure that we were all sort of rowing together.

And oh, I'm sorry, I forgot ARVO.

We had, um, ARVO as part of this effort as well.

And so we, you know, organized calls with their leaderships.

We got together quickly.

I mean, do you feel like, you know, we're gonna come back to, um, y- you know, where the state is now, but at the time that, you know, this was kind of defeated in, in, in conference and such, did you feel like there was any blowback or anything from, I don't know, like, executive branch or, you know, the factions within Congress that might have wanted to push this forward?