Today, representatives of the Reopen Fermilab petition and community met with Congressman Bill Foster (IL-11) for the second time, at his request, to discuss the response by lab leadership and the Department of Energy to community concerns about ongoing restrictions at Fermilab.

In the meeting, Congressman Foster reiterated his commitment to the Fermilab community and his shared concern about the negative impact that recent changes to access policies have had on both the science and the people.

During our conversation, Congressman Foster was specifically interested to discuss:

• the community's reception of recent official responses from Fermilab;
• how Fermilab's access policies compare to other particle physics labs around the world, including CERN and J-PARC, and how that harms U.S. competitiveness;
• the impact of lab-wide safety pauses and other effects of safety-related policies, including recently announced beam delays; and
• potential impacts of these issues on the implementation of the next P5 plan.

Congressman Foster is actively exploring avenues for change at different levels of the Department of Energy and with Fermilab leadership. As co-chair of the House National Labs Caucus and an ally of the Fermilab community, Congressman Foster tells us that he has been in contact with other congressional offices in his efforts to support the Fermilab community in resolving these issues.