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8/25/25: Supreme Court Ruling Has ‘Bleak Implications’ for Researchers (Inside Higher Ed) The high court said the National Institutes of Health doesn’t have to restore grants it terminated, for now, which could affect similar lawsuits against other federal agencies. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/science-research-policy/2025/08/25/scotus-ruling-has-bleak-implications-researchers
8/25/25: Trump Seeks Lasting Deregulation by Disavowing Agency Authority (Bloomberg Law) The Trump administration is attacking its own agencies’ regulatory power on at least two fronts by invoking an argument companies raise in anti-government lawsuits….The administration’s use of the doctrine—which bars agencies from acting on issues of vast economic and political significance without clear congressional authorization—has the potential to eliminate regulations in a way that President Donald Trump’s successors can’t undo. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/pharma-and-life-sciences/trump-seeks-lasting-deregulation-by-disavowing-agency-authority?context=search&index=1
8/25/25: Harvard’s research is shrinking amid the Trump administration’s freeze (Washington Post) The weaponization of federal funding, cast as a necessary step to end discrimination and antisemitism, is threatening lifesaving research and forcing agonizing choices. It’s an inflection point for Harvard, for higher education — and, many argue, for the country — as the generations-long partnership between the federal government and research universities totters under the Trump administration. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/08/25/research-grant-cuts-harvard-trump/
8/25/25: Columbia Got Most of Its Research Funding Back. The Damage Goes Deeper. (New York Times) When Columbia University struck a deal with the Trump administration last month, the agreement came with the promise that the financial lifeblood of scientific research would start to flow again. But that was only part of the story….And looming over the deal, researchers said, is a bleak national outlook for federal science funding, making some scientists feel as if they dodged a bullet only to face the possibility of a firing squad. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/nyregion/columbia-trump-federal-money-returned.html
8/23/25: Scientists Are Caught in a Political Trap (The Atlantic) Practicing science in the United States has become more politically fraught in the past seven months than it has ever been in this country’s history. As the Trump administration has fired vaccine advisers, terminated research grants in droves, denied the existence of gender, and accused federal scientists of corruption while publicly denigrating their work, the nation’s leaders have shown that they believe American science should be done only on their terms . https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2025/08/scientists-politicalization/683992/
See also: At Harvard, Trump administration cuts hit young scientists hard (Washington Post) https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/08/24/harvard-grad-students-research-cuts/
8/22/25: NIH Publishes Plan to Drive Gold Standard Science (NIH Statement) https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/nih-director/statements/nih-publishes-plan-drive-gold-standard-science See Implementation Plan: https://www.nih.gov/sites/default/files/2025-08/2025-gss.pdf
8/22/25: DOJ Deems Definition of Hispanic-Serving Institutions Unconstitutional (Inside Higher Ed) The Department of Justice said it won’t defend against a legal challenge to the law defining HSIs as having at least 25 percent Hispanic undergraduates. The program’s future is in jeopardy. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/institutions/minority-serving-institutions/2025/08/22/doj-deems-definition-hsis#
8/22/25: Supreme Court says Trump can end DEI research at NIH (Politico) NIH research grants that promote diversity, equity and inclusion and what the Trump administration calls “gender ideology extremism” can now be terminated, following a Supreme Court decision, POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein reports. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-pulse/2025/08/22/supreme-court-says-trump-can-end-dei-research-at-nih-00518578
See also: Scientists Strip ‘Diversity’ Language From Research to Keep Federal Grants (Wall Street Journal) https://www.wsj.com/health/scientists-are-removing-dei-language-to-keep-federal-grants-d092833b?st=5JvWKH&reflink=article_copyURL_share
