Luddite, Lame Brain Trump's Attack On Science Is Growing Fiercer And Mo
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21 May 2025 19:37:06 UTC
Science & technology | Death by a thousand cuts
Trumps attack on science is growing fiercer and more indiscriminate
It started as a crackdown on DEI. Now all types of research are being
cancelled
illustration on an orange background featuring a massive black-and-white elephants foot poised directly above a small, fragile Erlenmeyer flask
May 21st 2025|Boston and Los Angeles
SCIENTISTS IN AMERICA are used to being the best. The country is home to the worlds foremost universities, hosts the lions share of scientific Nobel laureates and has long been among the top producers of influential research papers. Generous funding helps keep the system running. Counting both
taxpayer and industrial dollars, America spends more on research than any
other country. The federal government doles out around $120bn a year, $50bn
or so of which goes towards tens of thousands of grants and contracts for higher-education institutions, with the rest going to public research bodies.
Now, however, many of Americas top scientific minds are troubled. In the
space of a few months the Trump administration has upended well-established ways of funding and conducting research. Actions with the stated goal of cutting costs and stamping out diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are taking a toll on scientific endeavour. And such actions are broadening. On May 15th it emerged that the administration had cancelled
grants made to Harvard University for research on everything from Arctic geochemistry to quantum physics, following a similar action against Columbia. The consequences of these cuts for Americas scientific prowess could be profound.
Under the current system, researchers at universities apply to receive
federal funding from grant-making agencies, namely the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) as well as the Department of Defence (DoD) and the Department of Energy (DoE). Once a researchers proposal has been assessed by a panel of peers and approved by
the agency, the agreed money is paid out for a set amount of time.
Chart: The Economist
This setup is facing tremendous upheaval. Since Mr Trumps return to the White House, somewhere in the region of $8bn has been cancelled or withdrawn from scientists or their institutions, equivalent to nearly 16% of the yearly federal grant budget for higher education. A further $12.2bn was rescinded
but has since been reinstated by courts. The NIH and the NSF have cancelled more than 3,000 already-approved grants, according to Grant Watch, a termination-tracking website run by academics (see chart 1); an unknown
number have been scrapped by the DoE, the DoD and others. Most cancellations have hit research that Mr Trump and his team do not like, including work that appears associated with DEI and research on climate change, misinformation, covid-19 and vaccines. Other terminations have targeted work conducted at
elite universities.
Much more is under threat. The president hopes to slash the NIH budget by
38%, or almost $18bn; cut the NSF budget by $4.7bn, more than 50%; and scrap nearly half of NASAs Science Mission Directorate. All told, the proposed cuts to federal research agencies total nearly $40bn. Many have already gone under the knife. In March the Department for Health and Human Services (HHS), which includes the NIH, announced it would scrap 20,000 jobs, or 25% of its workforce. According to news reports, about 1,300 jobs, or more than 10%,
have been lost at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which carries out environmental and climate research. Staff cuts were reportedly also due to start at the NSF, but have been temporarily blocked by courts. To save more money, the NIH, the NSF, the DoE and the DoD have
launched restrictive caps on so-called indirect grant costs, which help fund facilities and administration at universities. (These limits have also been partly blocked by courts. )
The administration says it has a plan. Mr Trump entered office on a mission
to cut government waste, a problem from which the scientific establishment is not immune. On May 19th Michael Kratsios, his scientific adviser, stood up in front of the National Academies of Sciences and defended the administrations vision. It wants to improve science by making it better and more efficient,
he saidto get more bang for Americas research bucks. To do so, funding must better match the nations priorities, and researchers should be freed from groupthink; empowered to challenge each other more freely without fear of convention and dogma.
It would be hard, if not impossible, to improve the science funding system without some disruption. The problem, however, is that the administrations
cuts are broader and deeper than they first appear, and its methods more chaotic. Take the focus on DEI, which the administration bemoans as a
dangerous left-wing ideology. The agencies are targeting it because of an executive order banning them from supporting such work. But DEI is
notoriously ill-defined. Programmes that are being cancelled are not just inclusive education schemes, but also projects that focus on the health of at-risk groups.
Though it is mostly unclear why specific projects have been cancelled, Grant Watch keeps track of words that could have landed researchers in trouble. Latinx, for example, is a term for Hispanic people flagged as a telltale sign of DEI by Ted Cruz, a Republican senator. The NIH has cancelled a project on anal-cancer risk factors, the abstract of which uses the word Latinx. Another cancelled project concerns oral and throat cancer, for which gay men are at higher risk. Its abstract uses the phrase sexual minority. There are many
such examples.
Other cuts may do more damage. Some NIH-funded research on vaccines has been cancelled, as have $11bn-worth of special funds from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for pandemic-related research. In March Ralph Baric, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
who helped test the Moderna mRNA vaccine for covid-19, had several vaccine grants terminated. One project aimed to develop broad-spectrum vaccines for
the same family of viruses that SARS-CoV-2 comes from; scientists fear other strains might cross from animals to humans. Both the CDC and NIH justified
such cuts by saying that the covid-19 pandemic is over. But this is short- sighted, argues Dr Baric, given the number of worrying viruses. Were in for multiple pandemics in the future, he says. I guess well have to buy the drugs from the Chinese.
Even for scientists who have not been affected by cuts, other changes have
made conducting research more challenging. For example, the NIH and NSF have both delayed funding new grants. Jeremy Berg, a biophysicist at the
University of Pittsburgh who is tracking the delay in grant approvals, wrote
in his May report that the NIH has released about $2.9bn less funding since
the start of the year, relative to 2023 and 2024. According to media reports, the NSF has stopped approving grants entirely until further notice.
At the NIH itself, the largest biomedical research centre in the country, lab supplies have become more difficult to procure. Department credit cards have been cut back and the administrative staff who would normally place orders
and pay invoices have been fired. Scientists report shortages of reagents,
lab animals and basic equipment like gloves. All these factors are destabilising for researcherslabs need a steady, predictable flow of cash and other resources to continue functioning.
Chart: The Economist
If next years cuts to federal agencies are approved, more pain could be
coming (see chart 2). The NSFs budget cuts, for instance, will hit climate
and clean energy research. And, according to leaked documents, the research
arm of NOAA would most probably cease to exist entirely. That would almost certainly mean defunding the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at
Princeton University, one of the best labs in the world for modelling the atmosphere, says Adam Sobel, a professor at Columbia Universitys Lamont- Doherty Earth Observatory. NASAs Earth-observation satellites would likewise take a beating, potentially damaging the agencys ability to keep track of wildfires, sea-level rises, surface-temperature trends and the health of
Earths poles. Those effects would be felt by ordinary people both in America and abroad.
And as Mr Trump increasingly wields grant terminations as bludgeons against institutions he dislikes, even projects that his own administration might otherwise have found worthy of support are being cancelled. Take his feud
with Columbia. His administration has accused the institution of inaction against antisemitism on campus after Hamass attack on October 7th 2023 and Israels subsequent war in Gaza. On March 10th the NIH announced on X that it had terminated more than 400 grants to Columbia on orders from the administration, as a bargaining chip to get the university to take action.
Some $400m of funding has been withheld, despite Columbia having laid out how it is acting to deal with the administrations concerns. Those grants include fundamental research on Alzheimers disease, schizophrenia and HIVtopics that
a spokesperson confirmed to The Economist represent priority areas for the
NIH.
Columbia is not alone. The administration is withholding $2.7bn from Harvard University, which has responded with a lawsuit. Within hours of Harvard refusing the administrations demands, scientists at some of the universitys world-leading labs received stop-work orders. The administration has since
said that Harvard will be awarded no more federal grants. Letters from the
NIH, the NSF, the DoD and the DoE sent to Harvard around May 12th seem to cancel existing grants as well.
While it is too soon to say exactly how many grants are involved, 188 newly terminated NSF grants from Harvard appeared in the Grant Watch database on
May 15th, touching all scientific disciplines. A leaked internal
communication from Harvard Medical School, the highest-ranked in the country, says that nearly all its federal grants have been cancelled. Cornell
University says it too has received 75 stop-work orders for DoD-sponsored research on new materials, superconductors, robotics and satellites. The administration has also frozen over $1.7bn destined for Brown, Northwestern
and Princeton universities and the University of Pennsylvania.
As these efforts intensify, scientists are hoping that Congress and the
courts will step in to limit the damage. Swingeing as the budget plan is, the administrations proposals are routinely modified by Congress. During Mr
Trumps first term, similar proposals to squeeze scientific agencies were dismissed by Congress and he might meet opposition again.
Susan Collins, the Republican chairwoman of the Senate appropriations committee, which is responsible for modifying the presidents budget, has expressed concern that Mr Trumps cuts will hurt Americas competitiveness in biotech and yield ground to China. Katie Britt, a Trump loyalist and senator for Alabama, has spoken to Robert F. Kennedy junior, the health secretary, about the the need for research to continue. (The University of Alabama at Birmingham is among the top recipients of NIH money. ) When on May 14th Mr Kennedy appeared before lawmakers to defend the restructuring of the HHS,
Bill Cassidy, the Republican chairman of the Senate health committee, asked
him to reassure Americans that the reforms will make their lives easier, not harder.
Courts will have their say as well. On May 5th 13 universities sued the administration over the NSFs new indirect-cost cap, and the American Association of University Professors has likewise sued Mr Trump over his treatment of Harvard and Columbia. Harvards suit is ongoing. Dr Baric is one researcher who has had his grant terminations reversed in this manner. His state of North Carolina, alongside 22 other states and the District of Columbia, sued the HHS over the revoked CDC funding for vaccine research. On May 16th the court ruled that the federal government had overstepped and not followed due process, and ordered the HHS to reinstate the funding.
Reversing more cuts will take time, however. And the uncertainty and chaos in the short term could have lasting effects. A country where approved grants
can be terminated before work is finished and appealing against decisions is difficult becomes a less attractive place to do science. Some researchers may consider moving abroad. American science has long seen itself as the worlds best; today it faces its gravest moment ever.
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