7/23/25: Federal Grant Cuts Don’t Spare Red States, New Report Shows (Inside Higher Ed) The Center for American Progress says the Trump administration has targeted for termination more than 4,000 grants across over 600 institutions. Adjusting for statewide enrollment, South Dakota is hit harder than Massachusetts. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/research/2025/07/23/feds-axed-grants-across-red-blue-states-report-finds
See also: Trump’s Attack On Research Funding Hurt Your State University, Too (Forbes) https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawhitford/2025/07/23/trumps-attack-on-research-funding-hurt-your-state-university-too/
7/23/25: State Department launches new investigation into Harvard (Politico) The State Department will investigate Harvard University’s eligibility to sponsor international students and researchers, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday, the latest attempt by the Trump administration to pressure the Ivy League university. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/23/harvard-international-students-investigation-rubio-00469691
7/23/25: U.S. probes foreign links to agriculture research to protect food supply (NPR) The Agriculture Department is applying more scrutiny to research done by its employees alongside noncitizens.
The directives, laid out in a memo which went out to USDA employees and research institutions earlier this month, are part of a broader effort to increase security measures around the U.S. food supply — especially when it comes to foreign adversaries like North Korea, China, Russia and Iran. https://www.npr.org/2025/07/23/g-s1-78759/usda-foreign-trump-cuts
7/22/25: NIH to Limit AI Use, Cap P.I. Grant Applications at 6 per Year (Inside Higher Ed) The National Institutes of Health says its new policy comes after the agency “recently observed instances of Principal Investigators submitting large numbers of applications.” https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/research/2025/07/22/nih-limit-ai-use-cap-grant-applications-6-year
7/22/25: NIH Budget Cuts Are a Setback for American Science: Editorial (Bloomberg Law, Opinion) White House budgets, generally speaking, aren’t serious governing documents. Even so, they’re a declaration of national priorities — and by that measure, the latest blueprint is deeply troubling. What sort of administration aspires to shrink its budget for scientific discovery by 40%? https://news.bloomberglaw.com/pharma-and-life-sciences/nih-budget-cuts-are-a-setback-for-american-science-editorial?context=search&index=26
7/22/25: In ‘blow to the environment,’ EPA begins to dismantle its research office (Science) In a sweeping reduction of the U.S. government’s research capabilities, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced last week it will begin to dissolve its Office of Research and Development (ORD) and lay off staff. The toll is expected to include hundreds of scientists and their research on environmental hazards. https://www.science.org/content/article/blow-environment-epa-begins-dismantle-its-research-office
7/22/25: Employees’ protests against Trump science policies spread to NSF (Science) The three-page NSF petition states that “our oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution … compels us to call attention to actions that jeopardize NSF’s mission, independence, and laws that protect the federal workforce from politicization and abuse.” It was sent to Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the science committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, who has repeatedly accused Trump of waging an assault on science. https://www.science.org/content/article/employees-protests-against-trump-science-policies-spread-nsf
See also: NASA staff speak out against Trump cuts (Nature) https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02322-2
7/22/25: Do academics publish less after getting tenured? Depends on your field (Nature) Academics’ research-publication patterns shift fundamentally after they attain tenure, a coveted status that provides job security in the United States, according to an analysis 1 of more than 12,000 researchers across 15 disciplines. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02320-4
