The National Science Foundation (NSF), one of the world’s leading funders of basic research, will “stop awarding all funding actions,” including awarding new grants and disbursing funds for existing grants, according to Nature.
Staff at NSF were told of the policy change in a 30 April email. The email did not give a reason for the funding freeze and did not say whether or when the agency would resume awarding funding.
The EPA plans to cancel 781 grants, almost all focused on environmental justice, according to a court document filed last week.
In Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council v. Department of Agriculture, a coalition of nonprofits is challenging the Trump administration’s freezing of funding from the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. In the recent court document, Daniel Coogan, an administrator in the Office of Mission Support for the EPA, stated that the agency completed a grant-by-grant review of its awards to ensure that grants aligned with administration priorities. Those that were not aligned were targeted for termination.
On 21 April, the Environmental Protection Agency notified hundreds of employees working on diversity, equity, and inclusion and environmental justice issues that they would be fired or reassigned to other positions.
The National Science Foundation has cancelled hundreds of grants to researchers working on projects related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as misinformation and disinformation.
The Trump administration has canceled funding used to coordinate the National Climate Assessment, a major, congressionally mandated U.S. climate change report produced through the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP).
The National Climate Assessment is published approximately every four years and is the United States’ broadest assessment of current climate change impacts and climate science.
The Trump administration has announced plans to dismantle a program responsible for funding billions of dollars’ worth of projects meant to help communities prepare for disasters such as flooding, hurricanes, and wildfires, according to reporting from Grist.
The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), which works to protect U.S. miners from injury, illness, and death on the job, is among the latest federal agencies targeted for cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
After an onslaught of funding cuts, firings, and cancelled programs as a result of Trump administration actions, scientists in the United States are feeling targeted. That’s according to the results of a poll of 1,200 U.S. scientists, published by Nature.
Various U.S. federal agencies sent a 36-point survey to researchers abroad who receive U.S. funding, asking questions related to the Trump administration’s priorities. The questions cover topics such as “eradicating anti-Christian bias” and defending against “gender ideology,” and asked researchers to disclose ties to “entities associated with communist, socialist or totalitarian parties.”
The Trump administration’s intentions toward addressing climate change are clear: Federal agencies purged mentions of the climate crisis from their websites and slashed funding for mitigation tools such as the Future Risk Index. Now, those intentions are extending to health research: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has begun to cancel funding for investigations into the health effects of climate change, and will not financially support new research on the subject, according to ProPublica and Nature.
