6/9/25: Notice of Rescission of Civil Rights Term and Condition of Award (NOT-OD-25-124) Effectively immediately, NIH rescinds Guide Notice “Notice of Civil Rights Term and Condition of Award” (NOT-OD-25-090 ). NIH is awaiting further Federal-wide guidance and will provide a future update to the extramural community. The previous guidance is no longer in effect. https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-124.html
6/9/25: Trump’s ‘gold standard’ order is a blueprint for politicizing science (STAT, Opinion) On May 23, the Trump administration issued an executive order titled “Restoring Gold Standard Science.” Using agreeable rhetoric, the order says that it aims to safeguard scientific rigor, prevent misconduct, and restore public trust in government science. But beneath this golden gloss lies a return to strategies that threaten to weaken federal science, dismiss scientific findings, and open the door to political manipulation of evidence-based policy. https://www.statnews.com/2025/06/09/gold-standard-science-trump-executive-order-politicization-transparency/
6/9/25: NIH staff and biomedical community sound alarm about agency politicization, funding slowdown (Science) In an unusual act of public protest, more than 340 scientists and staff at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) today released a statement charging NIH officials and their superiors with politicizing science. The employees implore their new director to reverse cuts and freezes to external grants touching on topics such as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) that President Donald Trump has targeted with executive orders. https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-staff-and-biomedical-community-sound-alarm-about-agency-politicization-funding
6/9/25: How China is vying to attract the world’s top scientific talent (Nature) Some US researchers with ties to China might have been debating whether to return there. “The Trump administration has made that decision much, much easier than ever before,” says Wang. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01750-4
6/9/25: Want to enhance lab safety? Try a little role playing first (Nature) It’s a dangerous situation that anyone working in a research lab might face, yet few researchers are trained to catch the warning signs and respond appropriately. With this in mind, Ben Reynolds, a lab coordinator at CSU’s chemistry department and one of the instructors, decided about ten years ago to take the standard laboratory safety training — based on online presentations or reading a safety manual — to a new level. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01775-9
6/9/25: How HBCUs are thinking about Trump 2.0 (VOX) Tuskegee University’s president explains how he’s approaching this Trump administration. https://www.vox.com/today-explained-podcast/415749/hbcus-tuskegee-university-trump-education
6/8/25: Harvard’s Battle Is Familiar to a University the Right Forced Into Exile (New York Times) As the Trump administration escalates its pressure campaign, more people in American higher education — and in Vienna — believe the U.S. government is borrowing from a playbook refined in recent years by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who used state power to menace a university he disdained, upend academic independence and strengthen his ideological grip on Hungary. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/us/trump-harvard-hungary-orban-george-soros.html
See also: Harvard’s China Ties Become New Front in Battle With Trump (Wall Street Journal) https://www.wsj.com/world/china/harvards-china-ties-become-new-front-in-battle-with-trump-6eb24947?mod=education_news_article_pos1
6/6/25: NIH details how Trump budget would cut support for grants, training, and research centers (STAT) President Trump’s 2026 budget proposes slashing the National Institutes of Health’s central function, supporting research by awarding grants to universities, academic medical centers, and other institutions, by 43% compared to 2025 levels. https://www.statnews.com/2025/06/06/nih-cuts-newly-released-documents-detail-impact-on-grants-training-research-labs/
6/6/25: We set out to quantify U.S. academic contributions to medicines. The results stunned even us (STAT, Opinion) Over the past few decades, the foundational science that informs the basic understanding of the human body’s ailments or the applied research to develop treatments has nearly always begun in an American research university. While pharmaceutical companies, like Merck and Bayer, have become household names, rarely is there an understanding of the academic roots of a new drug or therapy: foundations that in most cases date back years or decades. https://www.statnews.com/2025/06/06/us-universities-fda-approved-drugs-research-patents-orange-book/
6/6/25: Exclusive: U.S. college is first to decline federal science grants because of new DEI language (Science) The faculty at Williams College, an elite liberal arts school in Massachusetts, win only a handful of research grants each year from U.S. science agencies. Last week, Williams decided it is willing to run the risk of getting even fewer. School officials told the faculty Williams won’t accept new grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) or the National Institutes of Health (NIH) until the agencies clarify new language requiring grantee institutions to certify they aren’t doing anything to “promote or advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) … in violation of federal antidiscrimination laws.” https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-college-first-decline-federal-science-grants-because-new-dei-language
