This page is part of: Tracking the Authoritarianism & Bigotry in the Second Trump Administration.
Image: Thousands demonstrate for science and research funding in Washington DC on 7 March 2025.
Resources
Books
- Peter J. Hotez: The Deadly Rise of Anti-science: A Scientist’s Warning.
- Peter J. Hotez & Michael E. Mann: Science Under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces that Threaten Our World.
Resources on scientists in opposition to Trump
- Cross Cultural Solidarity: The Scientific Community in Opposition to Trump.
News: 2025
January 23. Max Kozlov: ‘Never seen anything like this’: Trump’s team halts NIH meetings and travel. In an unprecedented move, research-grant reviews have been suspended indefinitely at the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research.
February 3. Dan Garisto & Max Kozlov: NSF is scouring research grants for violations of Trump’s orders.
February 7. Humberto Basilio: ‘We are a target’: scientific society under pressure after Trump DEI crackdown. The American Society for Microbiology deleted terms such as equity from its website, sparking protests from members.
February 13. Amanda Heidt & Heidi Ledford:Vaccine sceptic RFK Jr is now a powerful force in US science.
February 14. Alexandra Witze: NASA embraced diversity. Trump’s DEI purge is hitting space scientists hard. Some researchers at NASA and outside it feel betrayed by the changes at the agency, which was known for promoting inclusion in science.
February 17. Stephanie Nolen: U.S. Terminates Funding for Polio, H.I.V., Malaria and Nutrition Programs Around the World: Here are some of the 5,800 contracts the Trump administration formally canceled this week in a wave of terse emails.
February 24. Heidi Ledford & Humberto Basilio: Postdocs and PhD students hit hard by Trump’s crackdown on science: As US federal grants remain frozen and budget cuts loom, anxiety and fear grip early-career researchers.
March 6. Max Kozlov & Smriti Mallapaty: NIH to terminate hundreds of active research grants.
March 18. Dan Diamond: RFK Jr. forces out Peter Marks, FDA’s top vaccine scientist.
March 27. Dan Garisto: How Trump is following Project 2025’s radical roadmap to defund science.
March 29. Stephanie Kirchgaessner: Top US vaccine official resigns over RFK Jr’s ‘misinformation and lies.’
March 31. Jessica Glenza: More than 1,900 scientists write letter in ‘SOS’ over Trump’s attacks on science.
April 1. Scott Neuman: Top scientists warn that Trump policies are causing a ‘climate of fear’ in research.
April 1. Wired Magazine: The CDC Has Been Gutted: Thousands of CDC employees who worked on things like preventing HIV and lead poisoning have been told they were subject to a reduction in force. Experts say people will die.
April 6. Carolyn Y. Johnson: NIH scientists have a cancer breakthrough. Layoffs are delaying it. A big step forward in cancer therapy has been slowed by layoffs and new restrictions at the National Institutes of Health, where it was developed.
April 8. Heidi J. Larson, David M. Bersoff: Science’s big problem is a loss of influence, not a loss of trust
April 10. Brian Barrett: The Trump Administration Is Turning Science Against Itself What do a “dire wolf,” coal, and a climate research project have in common? They’ve all been co-opted by an administration at war with science.
April 18. Mark Johnson: DOJ questions science journal about bias, triggering free-speech concerns.
May 6. Talk Points Memo: Conspiracy of Silence: How Trump is Covertly Strangling Billions in Disease Cure Research
May 8. Donald Moynihan & Pamela Herd: Institutionalizing politicized science
May 9. John Drake: The NSF Is Being Dismantled — With Broad Implications For The American Economy
May 12. Warren Cornwall: Trump’s ‘fear factor’: Scientists go silent as funding cuts escalate. Many worry about retribution. But for others, speaking out is worth the risk.
May 13. Alondra Nelson: Why I’m Resigning from Positions at the National Science Foundation and Library of Congress
May 16. Jeffrey Mervis: NSF’s grant cuts fall heaviest on scientists from underrepresented groups: Projects to broaden participation were cut disproportionately—and were often led by Black scientists, women, and those with disabilities.
May 16. Mark Olalde: Trump Asked EPA Employees to Snitch on Colleagues Working on DEI Initiatives. They Declined.
July 5. Ashifa Kassam: ‘The American system is being destroyed’: academics on leaving US for ‘scientific asylum’ in France. Almost 300 researchers have applied for positions at Aix-Marseille University after Trump unleashed his attack on academia.
July 21. Elisa Muyl & Anthony Lydgate: How Trump Killed Cancer Research: Attempting to eliminate funding for certain kinds of “woke” studies, the Trump administration erased hundreds of millions of dollars being used for cancer research.
July 21. Union of Concerned Scientists: Science and Democracy Under Siege: Documenting Six Months of the Trump Administration’s Destructive Actions.
July 29. Kim Bellware: Scientist on green card detained for a week without explanation: Tae Heung Kim, a Korean citizen studying in the United States, is being held in San Francisco after returning from his brother’s wedding overseas.
August 6. The Guardian: Trump administration freezes $584m in grants for ‘life-saving research’ at UCLA: School is first public university whose funding is targeted by White House over allegations of civil rights violations.
August 11. Carolyn Y. Johnson: Inside science labs trying to survive in the Trump era: Anastasia Khvorova’s lab at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School shows the unraveling of an 80-year partnership between the federal government and universities that made the U.S. a scientific superpower.
June 13. James Andrews: Warning Signs: Authoritarian Constraints on Scientific Inquiry in the Recent Past.
August 23. Katherine J. Wu: Scientists Are Caught in a Political Trap: Fighting back against the Trump administration means they start to look more like activists.
August 31. William J. Broad: Historians See Autocratic Playbook in Trump’s Attacks on Science: Authoritarians have long feared and suppressed science as a rival for social influence. Experts see President Trump as borrowing some of their tactics.
September 14. Jonathan Mahler: Trump Is Shutting Down the War On Cancer: America’s cancer research system, which has helped save millions of lives, is under threat in one of its most productive moments.