5/14/25: Harvard Hit With Further $450 Million Freeze on Grants (Inside Higher Ed) Harvard updated its lawsuit on Tuesday, amending the complaint to include recent statements and actions by the Trump administration, including threats to its tax-exempt status and the letter from the task force sent that same day. University lawyers argued in the amended complaint that the defendants “lack any legal basis to prohibit Harvard from seeking future grand funding.” https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/05/14/harvard-hit-450-million-freeze-grants#
5/14/25: Trump administration cut $2.7 billion in NIH research funding through March, Senate committee minority report says (CNN) The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee’s minority staff report , released Tuesday and authored by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, says that in the first three months of this year, the Trump administration cut $2.7 billion in National Institutes of Health funding for research. That figure is much higher than some separate estimates that previously suggested targeted grant terminations have affected more than $1.8 billion in NIH funding. https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/13/health/trump-administration-nih-funding-sanders-report
5/14/25: Education Department Releases New Foreign Gifts Data (Inside Higher Ed) Foreign nations gave $290 million in gifts and donations to American institutions of higher education between last July and this February, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Education. Around 270 colleges reported a total of 529 transactions from 131 countries, which totaled about $290 million in foreign gifts over six months. Harvard, Stanford and Yale Universities as well as the University of California campuses in Berkeley and Los Angeles received the largest total foreign contributions, according to the department. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/05/14/education-department-releases-new-foreign-gifts-data
5/14/25: Is it OK for AI to write science papers? Nature survey shows researchers are split (Nature) How much is the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution altering the process of communicating science? With generative AI tools such as ChatGPT improving so rapidly, attitudes about using them to write research papers are also evolving. The number of papers with signs of AI use is rising rapidly (D. Kobak et al. Preprint at arXiv https://doi.org/pkhp; 2024 ), raising questions around plagiarism and other ethical concerns . To capture a sense of researchers’ thinking on this topic, Nature posed a variety of scenarios to some 5,000 academics around the world, to understand which uses of AI are considered ethically acceptable. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01463-8
5/14/25: RFK Jr. Plans to Defend Health Agency Cuts Before Congress (Bloomberg Law) Kennedy will testify on his agency’s 2026 budget request in front of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Wednesday. He plans to tell members that he’s made progress toward President Donald Trump’s goal to shrink federal spending through “significant” workforce reductions and contract savings worth over $13 billion, while promising “more to come,” according to prepared remarks seen by Bloomberg News. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/pharma-and-life-sciences/rfk-jr-plans-to-defend-health-agency-cuts-before-congress?context=search&index=2
See also: Trump Medical Research Cuts Put Top Appropriator in Tough Spot (Bloomberg Law) https://news.bloomberglaw.com/pharma-and-life-sciences/trump-medical-research-cuts-put-top-appropriator-in-tough-spot?context=search&index=5
5/13/25: NSF board member resigns, saying Trump’s policies have harmed the agency (Science) In an unprecedented move, a member of the governing body for the National Science Foundation (NSF) resigned today, saying the presidentially appointed advisory board has become a “ceremonial assemblage … without consequence” during the first months of President Donald Trump’s administration. Sociologist Alondra Nelson was appointed to the National Science Board (NSB) in the final months of former President Joe Biden’s administration, where she had served as acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy before returning to the Institute for Advanced Study in 2023. Her departure, which she announced this morning in an essay in Time, is believed to be the first time in the agency’s 75-year history that a member of the 24-person board resigned over a policy disagreement with an administration. https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-board-member-resigns-protest-trump-policies-agency
5/13/25: Trump officials take steps toward a radically different NSF (Science) The changes would result in a shrunken NSF that focuses on a handful of fields seen as economic drivers rather than supporting basic research across all disciplines. Its process of choosing what to fund would no longer rely heavily on scientists on leave from their universities , bringing with them fresh ideas on how to invest in cutting-edge science. And NSF would care less about finding the “missing millions,” NSF’s phrase for increasing the diversity of the country’s scientific workforce. https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-officials-take-steps-toward-radically-different-nsf
5/13/25: US researchers must stand up to protect freedoms, not just funding (Nature, Comment) Curtailment of freedoms and disregard for the rule of law in the United States is destroying the ability of science to serve the nation’s, and the world’s, interests. Researchers can take action. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01466-5
5/13/25: US brain drain: the scientists seeking jobs abroad amid Trump’s assault on research (Nature) Five US-based researchers tell Nature why they are exploring career opportunities overseas. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01489-y
5/12/25: Trump’s ‘fear factor’: Scientists go silent as funding cuts escalate (Science) “The lived experience of a scientist right now is terrifying,” said one prominent health researcher who asked not to be named out of concern their funding would be targeted. “We love getting our research in The New York Times and Science. You can imagine how much fear is involved if we are saying ‘no.’” https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-s-fear-factor-scientists-go-silent-funding-cuts-escalate
