Update. "Judge permanently blocks #NIH’s plan to cap funding, setting up appeals battle"
https://www.highereddive.com/news/judge-permanently-blocks-nihs-plan-to-cap-funding-setting-up-appeals-batt/744647/

"Research #universities won an extended reprieve Friday when a federal judge permanently barred the National Institutes of Health from capping funding for indirect research costs at a 15% rate, a move that would cost institutions billions a year. US District Judge Angel Kelley ruled NIH had violated federal statute, was “arbitrary and capricious” in creating the cap, failed to follow rulemaking procedures when doing so and violated constitutional prohibitions on applying new rules retroactively."

The NIH will surely appeal.

#Academia #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #USLaw #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter

Judge permanently blocks NIH’s plan to cap funding, setting up appeals battle

Universities are waiting cautiously as the agency's unilateral plan to cut billions of research support dollars has already created widespread disruption.

Higher Ed Dive

Update. "Trump seeks to end climate research at premier U.S. climate agency. White House aims to end NOAA’s research office; NASA also targeted."
https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-seeks-end-climate-research-premier-u-s-climate-agency
(#paywalled)

"President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking to end nearly all of the #climate research conducted by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (#NOAA)…The administration is also preparing to ask for deep cuts to #NASA’s science programs."

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Update. "Massive cuts to #NASA science proposed in early White House budget plan"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025/04/11/nasa-science-budget-cuts-trump/

"NASA’s science budget could be cut nearly in half under an early version of President Donald Trump’s budget proposal to Congress, a move that would terminate billions of dollars’ worth of ongoing and future missions…'This is an extinction-level event for NASA science,' said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy for the Planetary Society…'It needlessly terminates functional, productive science missions and cancels new missions currently being built, wasting billions of taxpayer dollars in the process.'”

#DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Massive cuts to NASA science proposed in early White House budget plan

The preliminary version of President Donald Trump’s budget proposal to Congress, known as a “passback,” would cut the agency’s science budget funding nearly in half.

The Washington Post

Update. "#CDC's #STD Lab Shuttered by #Trump Layoffs"
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/stds/115065

"A critical laboratory for surveilling sexually transmitted diseases (#STDs) in the US has been lost in the Trump administration's mass layoffs…One of its most remarkable projects is a one-of-its-kind repository of 50,000 isolates of gonorrhea used to monitor antibiotic resistance, which is quickly becoming a global health concern. The lab has been doing this work for nearly 40 years -- but will now, at best, have a gap in data."

Also see the public statement by the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association (#ASTDA).
https://www.astda.org/statement-from-astda-on-cuts-to-the-cdcs-division-of-std-prevention/

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #OpenData #Takedowns #USPol #USPolitics

CDC's STD Lab Shuttered by Trump Layoffs

Implications of lab slashing 'makes me sick to my stomach,' former employee said

The Food and Drug Administration (#FDA) has already lost 19% of its staff, the Centers for Disease Control (#CDC) 18%, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (#CMS) 9%.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/features/115145

#DefendResearch #Medicine #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Can HHS Still Function? Health Data at Risk; Inside Docs' $421M Jury Award

This past week in healthcare investigations

Update. "The National Science Foundation (#NSF) has abolished its chief mechanism for getting the scientific community’s input on its programs."
https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-scraps-most-outside-advisory-panels
(#paywalled)

#DefendResearch #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Update. "Faculty Letter to #Yale University Administration"
https://sites.google.com/view/yalefacultyletter2025/home

"We stand together at a crossroads. American universities are facing extraordinary attacks that threaten the bedrock principles of a democratic society, including rights of free expression, association, and academic freedom. We write as one faculty, to ask you to stand with us now. We urge you to: …Resist and legally challenge any unlawful demands that threaten academic freedom and university self-governance…Protect science and other research at Yale from funding cutoffs… Defend the rights to free speech on campus…Work purposefully and proactively with other colleges and universities in collective defense."

#Academia #AcademicFreedom #DefendResearch #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter

Yale Faculty Letter

April 2025 Dear President McInnis, Provost Strobel, and Members of the Yale Board of Trustees: We stand together at a crossroads. American universities are facing extraordinary attacks that threaten the bedrock principles of a democratic society, including rights of free expression, association,

Update. "The #Trump administration’s cuts have slowed operations in #Antarctica to a crawl. Scientists warn that #climate research conducted there is vitally urgent. Despite this, the #NSF is preparing for an operational retreat from Antarctica."
https://explorersweb.com/new-funding-cuts-forcing-u-s-researchers-out-of-antarctica/

PS: This one is more personal for me. In 1996 I visited Palmer Station, an NSF-funded base for polar biology on Anvers Island off the Antarctic Peninsula, and had a wonderful talk and tour with its director, Polly Penhale.

#DefendResearch #Funding #USPol #USPolitics

New Funding Cuts Forcing US Researchers Out of Antarctica

The NSF is beginning an operational retreat from Antarctica. Both the aging U.S. facilities and the research itself are imperiled.

Explorersweb

Update. "Faculty From 14 Universities Join Forces to Call on Administrative Bodies to Stand Up to Attacks on Higher Education"
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hFz55-UB17Q4dQpC-Zz6YNBaYWfQF87ilfiK5avWXEQ/edit?tab=t.0

"Faculty from fourteen universities across the United States signed and released letters calling for their respective university’s administrative bodies to stand up to the Trump administration’s attacks on academic freedom, freedom of inquiry, and other democratic principles. Nearly 5,100 faculty have collectively signed these letters on what the American Association of University Professors has called a Day of Action for Higher Ed. This is a collaborative effort independently organized by passionate faculty across four universities… Following the extraordinary sign of leadership from Harvard University on April 14, 2025, these faculty are speaking out to encourage their own institutions to stand up and fight back collectively against the illegal and unprecedented actions of the federal government."

#Academia #Censorship #DefendResearch #Trump #Universities #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter

Press Release - A Day of Action for HigherEd

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Faculty From 14 Universities Join Forces to Call on Administrative Bodies to Stand Up to Attacks on Higher Education Nearly 5,100 Faculty From 14 Universities Call on University Administrations to Stand Up to Attacks on Democratic Principles Cambridge, MA - April 17th, 2...

Google Docs

Update. Bad news from the #NEH for #KnowledgeCommons (and the rest of us).
https://about.hcommons.org/2025/04/17/on-the-neh-and-our-path-forward/

"On April 2, 2025, we received notification that our NEH Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge Grant, awarded in 2020, was terminated effective immediately…On April 10, 2025, we received further…notification that our contract to provide the NEH’s Designated Public-Access #Repository was also being terminated…This loss is devastating…both for the financial impact it represents…but also for the unceremonious end to a goal we’d set for ourselves years ago…Not to mention the bigger picture here: that designated public-access repository is no longer needed, because it is assumed that the NEH will no longer be funding research, and thus there will be no results of research to make publicly accessible."

PS: All the agencies covered by the #OSTP #NelsonMemo must designate #OpenAccess repositories for their OA content. NEH was the only agency to designate a repo not hosted by the govt. All the other agency repos will be hosted by the govt, where they will be subject to political censorship or takedowns.

#Censorship #DefendResearch #GreenOA #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Update. "Trump’s War on Measurement Means Losing Data on Drug Use, Maternal Mortality, Climate Change and More"
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-doge-data-collection-hhs-epa-cdc-maternal-mortality

"The data collection efforts that have been shut down or are at risk of being curtailed are staggering in their breadth. In some cases, datasets from past years now sit orphaned, their caretakers banished and their future uncertain; in others, past data has vanished for the time being, and it’s unclear if and when it will reappear. Here are just a few examples."

PS: What follows is one of the best lists of deleted or endangered datasets so far published.

#Censorship #DefendResearch #OpenData #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Trump’s War on Measurement Means Losing Data on Drug Use, Maternal Mortality, Climate Change and More

By slashing teams that gather critical data, the administration has left the federal government with no way of understanding if policies are working — and created a black hole of information whose consequences could ripple out for decades.

ProPublica

Update. "Trump team freezes new NSF awards — and could soon axe hundreds of grants"
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01263-0

"All new research grants have been frozen at the US National Science Foundation (#NSF) — an action apparently ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency (#DOGE)… Documents seen by Nature show that two members of DOGE…have been given access to grant management systems and used that access to prevent grants from receiving funding that were already approved but awaiting finalization. 'That, of course, raises the hairs on the back of our neck in a worrisome way,' an NSF programme officer says."

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Exclusive: Trump team freezes new NSF awards — and could soon axe hundreds of grants

The National Science Foundation is the latest US agency to be disrupted by Elon Musk’s DOGE.

Update. "U.S. climate data websites go dark"
https://www.science.org/content/article/us-climate-data-websites-go-dark

"U.S. scientists, state policymakers, farmers, and others who depend on up-to-date #climate data on Thursday confronted an information blackout from federal regional climate centers across much of the country. “Unfortunately, all data and services offered under the base contract, including this website, will be unavailable unless and until funding is resumed,” a statement on the Southern Regional Climate Center’s website read…The disruption appears to be a temporary paperwork bottleneck within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (#NOAA), rather than a policy decision by agency leadership, officials at several of the centers say. The centers are managed by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. But they are housed chiefly at #universities operating under 5-year agreements. The contracts for payment are approved each year. The last annual cycle ended on 16 April."

#Climate #DefendResearch #Funding #OpenData #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Update. "Trump’s #DOJ Sends Intimidating Letters to Medical #Journals for Supposedly Being ‘Partisan’ "
https://gizmodo.com/trumps-doj-sends-intimidating-letters-to-medical-journals-for-supposedly-being-partisan-2000591550

"The U.S. Department of Justice has sent letters to medical journals for supposedly being “partisan,” heavily suggesting that they’re spreading misinformation and are influenced by “funders” rather than medical science. Gizmodo has confirmed that the journal CHEST, a peer-reviewed publication on pulmonary care published by the American College of Chest Physicians, received a letter this week. And MedPage Today reports that at least two other journals have received similar intimidating letters."

PS: The letter to Harvard shows that the Trump admin wants to control what universities teach. These letters show that it also wants to control what scholarly journals publish.

#AcademicFreedom #Censorship #DefendResearch #Medicine #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Trump's DOJ Sends Intimidating Letters to Medical Journals for Supposedly Being 'Partisan'

Trump's goons will eventually come for everyone.

Gizmodo

Update. "#NIH freezes funds to #Harvard and four other universities, but can’t tell them."
https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-freezes-funds-harvard-and-four-other-universities-can-t-tell-them
(#paywalled)

"After freezing all grants to #Columbia University last week, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now stopping grant and contract payments to Harvard University and four other universities [#Brown, #Northwestern, #Cornell, #WeillCornell Medical School]…The move will both block new funding and halt payments to investigators currently working on NIH projects…The Department of Health and Human Services (#HHS)…instructed NIH staff not to provide any communication to these institutions or to Columbia about whether the funds are frozen or why, according to the email."

#Academia #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter

Update. "Over 150 US university presidents sign letter decrying #Trump administration"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/21/us-university-presidents-trump-administration

"More than 150 presidents of US colleges and universities have signed a statement denouncing the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” with higher education – the strongest sign yet that US educational institutions are forming a unified front against the government’s extraordinary attack on their independence. The statement, published early on Tuesday by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, comes weeks into the administration’s mounting campaign against higher education, and hours after Harvard University became the first school to sue the government over threats to its funding."

The letter itself:
https://www.aacu.org/newsroom/a-call-for-constructive-engagement

EDIT. As of April 24, 2025, the tally of signatures is up to 425.

EDIT. As of August 1, 2025, the tally of signatures is up to 660.

#AACU #Academia #DefendResearch #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter

Over 150 US university presidents sign letter decrying Trump administration

Statement signed by Harvard, Princeton and Brown leaders denounces White House’s ‘undue government intrusion’

The Guardian

Update. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (#NOAA) maintains a public list of datasets and databases it's terminating.
https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/about/documents-reports/notice-of-changes

Transparency about pulling the plug on transparency.

#Climate #DefendResearch #OpenData #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Notice of Changes

Notices of changes are formal public announcements of planned services changes to applications and other products.

National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service

Update. "How #Trump is following #Project2025’s radical roadmap to defund science."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00780-2

"Indiscriminate firings. Terminated grants. Cancelled programmes. The barrage of actions by US President Donald Trump has shocked the country’s research community over the past two months. Yet, much of it was planned out years in advance and laid out publicly…The Wall Street Journal found that more than half of Trump’s executive orders (EOs) align with Project 2025 recommendations. And most of its 40 listed authors are now key figures on Trump’s team…Here, Nature examines science-related policies from Project 2025 that have already come to pass, and which ones might be on the horizon."

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

How Trump is following Project 2025’s radical roadmap to defund science

Much of the Trump administration’s agenda for research is laid out in the 900-plus-page blueprint. Nature read it so you don’t have to.

Update. "National Science Foundation Terminates Hundreds of Active Research Awards"
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/science/trump-national-science-foundation-grants.html

"In January, the #Trump administration attempted to freeze grant payments for existing awards at the #NSF. A temporary restraining order lifted the freeze. The order also said that the agency could not terminate active awards to comply with President Trump’s executive orders…In a statement on Friday, the NSF said that its grant cancellations were not in violation of the temporary restraining order. When asked by The Times to provide clarification on the legality of the grant cancellations, the agency declined to comment…On Friday, the NSF went further, canceling grants supporting ongoing research."

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #USPol #USPolitics

National Science Foundation Terminates Hundreds of Active Research Awards

The agency targeted grants focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as research on misinformation.

The New York Times

Update. "The federal Department of Education [#ED] maintains an open access database of more than 2 million documents [Education Resources Information Center, #ERIC] dating back to the 1960s. It will cease operating Wednesday due to #DOGE cuts."
https://www.governing.com/policy/major-education-resource-set-to-shut-down-this-week

PS: I use many sources in my attempt to stay on top of what's happening with #OpenAccess, #OpenScience, #OpenEducation, and so on. ERIC has been one of the stalwarts.

#DefendResearch #Education #Funding #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Major Education Resource Set to Shut Down This Week

The federal Department of Education maintains an open access database of more than 2 million documents dating back to the 1960s. It will cease operating Wednesday due to DOGE cuts.

Governing

Update. The #OpenAccess Biodiversity Heritage Library (#BHL) needs a new home. The #Smithsonian will stop hosting it next January.
https://blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2025/04/new-future-for-bhl.html

#Biodiversity #DefendResearch #ILoveBHL #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

A New Future for the Biodiversity Heritage Library

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. A global consortium of over 660 contributors, BHL has made more …

Biodiversity Heritage Library

Update. "Funding cut for landmark study of women's health."
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/23/nx-s1-5372892/womens-health-initiative-research-funding-gets-cut

"The #Trump administration is shutting down most of a landmark federal project studying women's health, stunning researchers around the country…The study, begun in the 1990s, has produced a series of groundbreaking results and was continuing to gather valuable data about women's health…Neither the #NIH, which funds the study, nor #HHS, which oversees the NIH, responded to NPR's questions about the matter…One big question is what will happen to the huge repository of #data…which represents a treasure trove that could be mined to make yet more important discoveries."

#DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #OpenData #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Update. The long-running and wide-ranging study of women's health that #NIH cut two days was back on track the next day.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/health/womens-health-initiative-cuts.html

PS: This is another sign that some protests work. It's also an example of thoughtless pillaging, as opposed to a careful attempt to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse.

#DefendResearch #Medicine #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Federal Officials Promise to Restore Funding to Women’s Health Initiative

The decades-long research effort has contributed to thousands of research papers, altering medical care for women around the world.

The New York Times

Update. "Groups Decry Loss of Funding for 'Critically Important' GI Disease Network."
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/features/115251

"Physicians and patient advocates are sounding the alarm after the #NIH abruptly withdrew a grant renewal application for the Consortium of Eosinophilic Gastrointestinal Disease Researchers (#CEGIR), the only clinical care network for eosinophilic gastroenteritis patients in the U.S."

The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (#AAAAI) says that NIH defunded the project, not on the merits, but because it uses "foreign components".
https://www.aaaai.org/about/news/news/2025/grant

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Groups Decry Loss of Funding for 'Critically Important' GI Disease Network

Sudden grant application dismissals will 'directly harm patients,' AAAAI says

Update. At least five medical journals have now confirmed that the #Trump Justice Dept sent them letters asking what steps they take to deal with "misinformation" and "competing viewpoints".
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/features/115256

The three willing to be named are:

1. 𝘊𝘏𝘌𝘚𝘛, from the American College of Chest Physicians
2. 𝘖𝘣𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘴 & 𝘎𝘺𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺, from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
3. 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘌𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘦, from the Massachusetts Medical Society.

#DefendResearch #Medicine #USPol #USPolitics

NEJM Gets Letter From DOJ

It's the fourth journal to confirm receiving a letter asking about alleged bias

Update from Gary Price (@infodocket). "Accessing Archived Material From #ERIC (Education Resource Information Center) via the #InternetArchive."
https://www.infodocket.com/2025/04/23/accessing-archived-material-from-eric-via-the-internet-archive/

"Here are a couple ways to access archived material from ERIC on the open web. We will do our best to keep this post updated if/when new open web sources become available to access ERIC material."

#DefendResearch #Education #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Accessing Archived Material From ERIC (Education Resource Information Center) via the Internet Archive

Here are a couple ways to access archived material from ERIC on the open web. We will do our best to keep this post updated if/when new open web sources become available to access ERIC material. At this hour (9pm EDT, April 23) the ERIC.ed.gov site/database remains accessible (and searchable). We do not know if […]

Library Journal infoDOCKET

Update from Lisa Schiff (@lschiff), "Protecting your work – and your values – in US higher education."
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/protecting-your-work-and-your-values-us-higher-education

"With US higher education under attack from the federal government, what can scholars do to ensure their research is preserved and to stand up for academic freedom? Lisa Schiff, a co-author of the Declaration to Defend Research."

#Academia #Censorship #DefendResearch #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter

Protecting your work – and your values – in US higher education

With US higher education under attack from the federal government, what can scholars do to ensure their research is preserved and to stand up for academic freedom? Lisa Schiff, a co-author of the Declaration to Defend Research Against US Government Censorship, explains

THE Campus Learn, Share, Connect

Update. "Impacts of Restrictions on Federal Grant Funding in Physics and Astronomy Graduate Programs."
https://ww2.aip.org/statistics/impacts-of-restrictions-on-federal-grant-funding-in-physics-and-astronomy-graduate-programs

"37% of the responding department chairs [in #physics and #astronomy] said they expect to enroll fewer first-year graduate students in the fall of 2025 than they did the previous year…The number of first-year graduate students in physics and astronomy is anticipated to decline by about 13%. This is a projected decline of about 600 first-year graduate students."

#DefendResearch #Funding #ERC #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Impacts of Restrictions on Federal Grant Funding in Physics and Astronomy Graduate Programs

AIP

Update. People receiving an #NIH grant must now promise not to participate in #DEI programs or any boycott of #Israel or companies doing business in Israel. NIH calls this a "civil rights" condition on the grant.
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-090.html

#CivilRights #DefendResearch #Medicine #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

NOT-OD-25-090: Notice of Civil Rights Term and Condition of Award

NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts: Notice of Civil Rights Term and Condition of Award NOT-OD-25-090. NIH

Update. Noam Ross and Scott Delaney maintain a crowdsourced database of #NIH grant terminations. Extremely helpful.
https://airtable.com/appjhyo9NTvJLocRy/shrNto1NNp9eJlgpA?Ffj6Q=allRecords

Meagan Parrish has put together a useful overview of what it contains.
https://www.pharmavoice.com/news/nih-hhs-cuts-trump-columbia-yale/746315/

Ross and Delaney also maintain a database of #NSF grant terminations. Right now it lists 501.
https://airtable.com/appGKlSVeXniQZkFC/shrFxbl1YTqb3AyOO

#DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Airtable | Everyone's app platform

Airtable is a low-code platform for building collaborative apps. Customize your workflow, collaborate, and achieve ambitious outcomes. Get started for free.

Airtable

Update. "Scientist Who Helped Prove Humans Changed the Climate Watches Evidence Being Erased"
https://www.sfpublicpress.org/scientist-who-helped-prove-humans-changed-the-climate-watches-evidence-being-erased/

"Ben Santer never imagined that 12 words could change the trajectory of his life and humanity’s understanding of what it was doing to the planet: 'The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.' He wrote that sentence as the lead author of a pivotal chapter in the 1995 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [#IPCC]…Now the #data sources that made that discovery possible are under threat… 'There’s real concern that the data may go away, that the satellites, measurements that have been collected for 40 plus years, may not continue.'"

#Censorship #Climate #DefendResearch #OpenData #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Evidence That Humans Changed the Climate is Being Erased

Livermore Lab’s Ben Santer spent decades tracing humanity’s imprint on the atmosphere. Now, the data behind his work is under attack.

San Francisco Public Press
Peter Suber on science in danger: “Host your open and uncensored research in more than one place and preferably more than one country.” | ZBW MediaTalk

ZBW MediaTalk

Update. "US dismisses all authors of National Climate Assessment."
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/trump-administration-dismisses-all-authors-key-climate-report-email-says-2025-04-28/

"President Donald Trump's administration has dismissed all contributors to the U.S. government's signature study that informs federal and local governments on how to prepare for climate change impacts…The dismissal of nearly 400 contributors to the sixth National Climate Assessment, which is mandated by Congress, leaves the future of the report in doubt."

#Climate #DefendResearch #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Update. "#NIH Grant Cuts Aren't Saving Money. They're Wasting It."
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-04-17/nih-grant-cuts-are-turning-out-to-be-a-waste-of-money?embedded-checkout=true

"The Trump administration’s waves of massive cuts to funding at the NIH are framed as a recasting of research priorities and a way to save taxpayer money. Another way to frame it is an exercise in massive waste. In terminating nearly 750 NIH grants over the past two months, the government dumped years of investment down the drain…Funding was pulled just as some of these projects were getting off the ground, while others were rounding into their last year of funding — a point where enough data would finally be collected to offer concrete results. Our analysis found that nearly 40% of the canceled R01 grants supported research that had yet to produce findings, meaning all of the agency’s prior investments won’t benefit the public."

#DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Update. "‘The Classified Catalog’ launches to track secrecy news"
https://freedom.press/the-classifieds/the-classified-catalog-launches-to-track-secrecy-news/

"The [Trump] administration is eroding the information environment in ways this country has never seen. More secrets are being kept, more data is being deleted, and more government employees are being censored. This excessive secrecy prevents the public from meaningfully participating in self-government on domestic policies from climate and health issues to foreign affairs. To combat this, Freedom of the Press Foundation (#FPF) began tracking reports of government secrecy in January 2025."

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Journalism #Monitoring #Secrecy #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

‘The Classified Catalog’ launches to track secrecy news

New database will mark Trump’s 100th day in office

Freedom of the Press

Update. "Will US science survive Trump 2.0?"
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01295-6

"In just the first three months of his second term, US President Donald Trump has destabilized eight decades of government support for science. His administration has fired thousands of government scientists, bringing large swathes of the country’s research to a standstill and halting many clinical trials. It has threatened to slash billions in funding from US research universities and has terminated more than 1,000 grants in areas such as climate change, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and HIV prevention. This looks likely to be just the beginning."

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Will US science survive Trump 2.0?

President Donald Trump and his administration have gutted science agencies, terminated research programmes and cancelled billions of dollars in grants to universities. What are the long-term impacts for the United States and the world?

Update. Usha Lee McFarling has put together a very useful timeline of #Trump's major actions on science and health in his first 100 days.
https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/24/trump-100-days-timeline-science-health-nih-cdc-fda-hhs/

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Medicine #Takedowns #USPol #USPolitics

Day by day, how Trump is roiling science and health

STAT is tracking, day by day, what's happened in the words of science and health during the first months of the Trump administration.

STAT

Update. One of many good points by Alice Meadows and Suze Kundu:
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/04/30/trump-v-research-how-we-could-turn-the-threats-into-opportunities/

When #Trump cuts budgets and staffing at science agencies, and terminates research grants, #journalists should write about the effects on people (less cancer research, more cancer), not just the effects on universities (less funding, more belt-tightening).

#DefendResearch #Journalism #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Trump v. Research: How We Could Turn the Threats into Opportunities - The Scholarly Kitchen

Alice Meadows and guest chef Suze Kundu look at how, by acting collectively across all stakeholder groups, we could turn the Trump administration's threats against research into opportunities

The Scholarly Kitchen

Update. "Accelerating Access to Research Results: New Implementation Date for the 2024 #NIH Public Access Policy"
https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/who-we-are/nih-director/statements/accelerating-access-research-results-new-implementation-date-2024-nih-public-access-policy

"I am excited to announce that one of my first actions as NIH Director is pushing the accelerator on policies to make NIH research findings freely and quickly available to the public. The 2024 Public Access Policy, originally slated to go into effect on December 31, 2025, will now be effective as of July 1, 2025."

PS: This announcement is from the Trump-appointed NIH director, #JayBhattacharya. It's another sign that Trump has not revoked or weakened the #OSTP #NelsonMemo, despite other attacks on research, including #takedowns of #OpenAccess texts and data. At the NIH, the largest funding agency, implementation of the Nelson memo is even speeding up.

EDIT. Another NIH reaffirmation of its NelsonMemo OA policy. From Lyric Jorgenson, NIH Ass Director for Science Policy, April 30, 2025: "We revised our Public Access Policy to eliminate the embargo period so that researchers, students, and members of the public have rapid access to these findings. NIH leadership believes strongly that transparency in all we do is critical and that we should not waste a moment in fulfilling our promise to the public."
https://osp.od.nih.gov/transforming-transparency-through-policy/

#DefendResearch #Medicine #USPol #USPolitics

Accelerating Access to Research Results: New Implementation Date for the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy

Speeding access to research results will support NIH's goal of maximum transparency.

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Update. #RFKJr has ordered the #NIH to stop studying #ebola and half a dozen other fatal infectious diseases.
https://www.wired.com/story/hhs-niaid-irf-ebola-disease-research-stop/

#DefendResearch #Medicine #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

RFK Jr.’s HHS Orders Lab Studying Deadly Infectious Diseases to Stop Research

NIAID’s Integrated Research Facility is one of the few federal facilities charged with studying Ebola. Tuesday afternoon, all of its work was put on indefinite pause by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s department.

WIRED
@petersuber
One way to make sure there are jobs for every living American is to kill off as many Americans as possible. The Purge. I'm sure it's their plan.