Update. "More Than $110 Million in #NIH Grants to #Harvard, Affiliated Hospitals Terminated Since Late February"
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/11/funding-canceled-nih-trump/

"All of the grants were terminated before the #Trump administration announced a $9 billion review of funding to Harvard and affiliated health care centers. At least four grants to Harvard-affiliated scholars — specifically those related to research on Covid-19 — have since been temporarily reinstated as the White House battles court challenges. The affected projects had more than $43 million in undisbursed funds at the time of cancellation…All of the canceled projects prominently featured themes of #gender and #sexualidentity, #Covid-19 and its #vaccine, or health disparities."

#Academia #Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter

Update. Phillip Levine lists the 77 US #universities that stand to lose the most from three kinds of funding cuts threatened by the #Trump admin: (1) capping indirect costs for #NIH grants at 15%, (2) cutting the #NSF budget by two-thirds, and (3) endowment taxes.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/these-77-colleges-have-the-most-to-lose-from-trumps-cuts
(#paywalled)

PS: Note that there are other kinds of cuts that Levine does not bring into this calculation, like withholding funds from targeted institutions because of their DEI or antisemitism policies.

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

Update. "US #NIH reverses conference travel ban for scientists"
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-nih-scientists-barred-attending-conferences-their-own-time-dime-2025-04-10/

"Researchers at the US National Institutes of Health had been told they cannot attend scientific conferences and meetings without official permission, even if they paid their own way and went during time off… After Reuters reported the travel restriction policy earlier on Thursday, an #HHS spokesperson said, 'Effective April 10, official travel may resume following established approval processes within each Institute and Center.'"

Neither the original travel restrictions nor the recent reversal have been put in writing.

Update. "White House ends funding for key US climate body"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/09/trump-national-climate-assessment-usgcrf

"The White House is ending funding for the body that produces the federal government’s pre-eminent climate report, which summarizes the impacts of rising global temperatures on the United States. Every four years, the US Global Change Research Program (#USGCRP) is required by Congress to release a new national climate assessment to ensure leaders understand the drivers of – and threats posed by – global warming. It is the most comprehensive, far-reaching and up-to-date analysis of the climate crisis, playing a key role in local and national decision making about agriculture, energy production, and land and water use…But now, #NASA has ended its contract with the consulting firm ICF International, which convened the USGCRP and coordinated the federal agencies that contribute to the quadrennial report."

Update. "NIH freezes all research grants to Columbia University"
https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-freezes-all-research-grants-columbia-university

"Weeks after President Donald Trump’s administration ordered the U.S. National Institutes of Health to pull $250 million in biomedical research grants to #ColumbiaUniversity, the agency is freezing all remaining grant money owed to the university until further notice…#NIH will not only block new funding for the university, but also stop paying investigators working on all existing NIH projects."

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

Update. "Estimated economic losses from federal health research cuts, by county"
https://www.axios.com/2025/04/09/nih-cuts-nationwide-impact-county-map

"Nearly half of all U.S. counties will experience economic losses of at least $250,000 as a result of the Trump administration's planned cuts to indirect funding by the National Institutes of Health [#NIH], per the Science & Community Impacts Mapping Project."

Update. A statement from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (@americanacad).
https://www.amacad.org/news/board-statement-values-april-2025

"Our founders were also the founders of our nation…Current developments, in their pace, scale, and hostility toward institutions dedicated to knowledge and the pursuit of truth, have little precedent in our modern history. We oppose reckless funding cuts and restrictions that imperil the research enterprise of our universities, hospitals, and laboratories…We condemn efforts to censor our scholarly and cultural institutions, to curtail freedom of the press, and to purge inquiry or ideas that challenge prevailing policies…The Academy will continue to…work to safeguard the conditions of freedom necessary for novel discoveries, creative expression, and truth-seeking in all its forms. We join a rising chorus of organizations and individuals determined to…prevent our nation from sliding toward autocracy."

Update. "Mississippi libraries ordered to delete academic research in response to state laws"
https://mississippitoday.org/2025/04/08/mississippi-libraries-ordered-to-delete-academic-research-in-response-to-state-laws/

"A state commission scrubbed academic research from a database used by #Mississippi #libraries and public #schools — a move made to comply with recent state laws changing what content can be offered in libraries. The Mississippi Library Commission ordered the deletion of two research collections that might violate state law…One of the now deleted research collections focused on “race relations” and the other on “gender studies.”

Update. "Marks Says He Was Forced Out of #FDA for Trying to Protect #Vaccine Safety #Data"
https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/fdageneral/114998

"Shortly before he was forced to resign, the nation's top vaccine regulator says he refused to grant #HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s team unrestricted access to a tightly held vaccine safety database, fearing that the information might be manipulated or even deleted."

Update. "#SciOp is part of Safeguarding Research & Culture (#SRC). The bits must flow: let us resurrect the ancient art of #Bittorrent to ensure that our cultural, intellectual and scientific heritage exists in multiple copies, in multiple places, and that no single entity or group of entities can make it all disappear."
https://sciop.net/

Update. "The White House Frames the Past by Erasing Parts of It"
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/05/technology/trump-history-websites.html

"Thousands of…govt web pages [have] been taken down or modified, including content about vaccines, hate crimes, low-income children, opioid addiction and veterans, before a court order temporarily blocked part of the sweeping erasure. A Justice Department database tracking criminal charges and convictions linked to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was removed. Segments of data sets are gone, some of the experts who produced them were dismissed, and many mentions of words like “Black,” “women” and “discrimination” have evaporated…“This is not a cost-cutting mechanism,” said Kenny Evans, who studies science and technology policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and runs the White House Scientists Archive at the school. 'This slide toward secrecy and lack of transparency is an erosion of democratic norms.'"

Update. "Massive, Unarchivable Datasets of Cancer, Covid, and Alzheimer's Research Could Be Lost Forever"
https://www.404media.co/nih-archives-repositories-marked-for-review-for-potential-modification
(#paywalled)

"Almost two dozen repositories of research and public #health #data supported by the #NIH are marked for “review” under the #Trump administration’s direction, and researchers and archivists say the data is at risk of being lost forever if the repositories go down. “The problem with archiving this data is that we can’t,” Lisa Chinn, Head of Research Data Services at the University of Chicago…Unlike other government datasets or web pages, downloading or otherwise archiving NIH data often requires a Data Use Agreement between a researcher institution and the agency, and those agreements are carefully administered through a disclosure risk review process."

Update. "US Weather Agency to Preserve Research Websites in Reversal"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-04/us-weather-agency-to-preserve-research-websites-in-reversal

"The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency [#NOAA] will preserve access to websites tied to its research division, after previously moving to cancel a cloud web services contract that supports many of its pages. Bloomberg News had reported earlier that the service contract for NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research — known as NOAA Research — had been set to terminate this week, jeopardizing access to most of the office’s public-facing websites. But in an emailed statement Friday, NOAA said that the sites will be preserved."

Update. "Leaked Memo Reveals Insane Ban on Words Agriculture Department Can Say"
https://newrepublic.com/post/193395/agriculture-department-ban-words-safe-drinking-water

"A leaked memo from the U.S. Department of #Agriculture’s Research Service division revealed Sunday that the agency has banned some key language from its vocabulary, including the words “climate” and “vulnerable,” as well as the phrase “safe drinking water.” Other baffling entries on the memo’s banned language list are “greenhouse gas emissions,” “methane emissions,” “sustainable construction,” “solar energy,” and “geothermal,” as well as “nuclear energy,” “diesel,” “affordable housing,” “prefabricated housing,” “runoff,” “microplastics,” “water pollution,” “soil pollution,” “groundwater pollution,” “sediment remediation,” “water collection,” “water treatment,” “rural water,” and “clean water,” among dozens of others."

Update. "Scientists sue #NIH, saying politics cut their research funding"
https://apnews.com/article/nih-funding-trump-dei-research-094ed2abe5ba529cdb74f7e0b429c4f3

"A group of scientists and health groups sued the NIH on Wednesday, arguing that an “ideological purge” of research funding is illegal and threatens medical cures…The suit was filed by the American Public Health Association [#APHA], unions representing scientists and some researchers who were stripped of grants."

A similar suit has been filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (#ACLU), the Center for Science in the Public Interest (#CSPI), and the Protect Democracy Project (#PDP).
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/aclu-sues-national-institutes-health-ideological-purge-research-projec-rcna199360

Update. #DOGE will review #NIH grant opportunities "to ensure the research that will be funded aligns with the priorities of President Donald Trump’s administration."
https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-officials-will-screen-nih-funding-opportunities
(#paywalled)

PS: Note that this is about content, politics, or ideology, not waste, fraud, or abuse.

"One NIH employee familiar with the matter worries that Trump officials reviewing the NOFOs [Notices of Funding Opportunities] “may not have the scientific background to understand why funding for research on certain topics is important.” Moreover, they added, “Having these decisions made by DOGE after months have been spent writing the NOFOs drafts and getting buy-in from [NIH’s institutes and centers] and offices is a huge waste of staff time and resources.”