2/23/26: What Happened in Chicago When Science Became the Enemy (New York Times, Opinion) Thirteen months into the second Trump administration, science, medicine and public health have been hijacked by a cadre of grifters and ideologues and by the politicians in obvious thrall to both. Federal institutions have been all but dismantled. Researchers have been defunded en masse and the universities that support them deliberately destabilized. Discourse on crucial scientific questions and key public health challenges has been stifled. And, along the way, trust has been broken between scientists, the nation’s leaders — and the people that both are supposed to serve. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/opinion/doge-hiv-funding.html
2/20/26: Trump’s NSF pick is a stranger to its research community (Science) U.S. President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the National Science Foundation (NSF), financier Jim O’Neill, lacks an advanced science degree and any experience managing a large basic research enterprise. That makes him a cipher to most of the U.S. academic research community—and could lead to problems for an agency that traditionally relies heavily on that community to shape its scientific agenda and choose the best ideas to fund. https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-s-nsf-pick-stranger-its-research-community
2/20/26: NIH research grant funding rates plummeted in 2025 (Science) Funding rates for investigators seeking research grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) dropped sharply in 2025, according to recently released data. A policy adopted by President Donald Trump’s administration that requires NIH to fund multiyear grants up front in a single lump sum is likely making it harder for researchers early in their careers to win a grant, the agency recently acknowledged in a blog post . https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-research-grant-success-rates-plummeted-2025
2/20/26: With federal research funding uncertain, states debate new science initiatives (STAT) On paper, little appears to have changed for UMass Chan Medical School over the past year, despite the cascade of paused and terminated grants and swift, unpredictable policy shifts that followed President Trump’s return to office. The amount of bread-and-butter RO1 awards it received from the National Institutes of Health in the 2025 fiscal year dropped only 1.6% from 2024. https://www.statnews.com/2026/02/20/states-fill-nih-funding-gap-trump-cuts/
2/20/26: New energy department science advisory committee reflects Trump’s AI push (Science) Earlier this month, the Department of Energy announced the roster for the new panel that will help guide DOE’s $8.4 billion Office of Science, the United States’s single biggest funder of the physical sciences. The Office of Science Advisory Committee (SCAC) replaces the six separate committees that had advised the different research programs within the office but were quietly disbanded late last year by the administration of President Donald Trump. That move had alarmed many researchers funded by the agency, who worried they were losing their input into it. But scientists say they are somewhat reassured by the makeup of the new committee. https://www.science.org/content/article/new-energy-department-science-advisory-committee-reflects-trump-s-ai-push
