This is a follow up to three previous articles on the Trump administration’s relentless attacks against science, medicine and public health, government sponsored data collection and reporting, climate science, and the censorship of government documents that extends into federally funded academic research and scholarship. On July 31, 2025 I published The Trump Administration’s Continued War Against Science, Research and Public Health and on August 31, 2025, The Trump Administration’s Continued War Against Science, Research and Public Health – Part 2. The second article focused on sweeping administration directives, executive orders, purges of federal government agency personnel and government sponsored data, significantly impacting the effective administration of our three branches of government. On September 30, 2025 I published The Trump Administration’s Continued War Against Science, Research and Public Health Part 3. This article opened the aperture further to bring more light on how the Trump administration ratcheted up attacks on government employees, agencies, programs and services, and steeply diminished the range and impact of critical services historically provided to the American public and our engagement in humanitarian programs around the world.
Part 4 of my series focuses on specific actions taken by the Trump administration during the month of October. Over the past four months there have been a relentless series of punitive, retaliatory and deeply disruptive administration actions against Trump’s political foes, effectuated by the contention that Trump is enacting an era of the imperial presidency, exercising virtually unconstrained powers. Our country continues to face daily attacks on our civil liberties, access to accurate, actionable and science based medical and health information, broadening censorship of government information, and the dismantling of our nonpartisan federal workforce. These attacks have bypassed laws and regulations that exist to ensure equality, justice, the rule of law and the safeguarding of civil liberties. America is experiencing dangerous cracks in the pillars of US democracy, shattering long agreed upon norms previously defined how the institutions and procedures of our three co-equal branches, the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, sustain the rule of law. In the month of October alone, our economy and employment, public health and safety, our legal system, our education system, food aid programs, public health and critical vaccine programs, have been under continuous attack by the Trump administration. There has also been unprecedented, and in some cases, illegal powers exercised in disregard of legal authority.

CONTENTS

1. Firings, Furloughs, Funding and Force
2. Elimination of federal agencies and specific divisions, data, websites and resources on public health, science, education, civil liberties, law and research, national security. Government sites increasingly push misinformation and junk science to the public. The Department of Justice no longer serves the people, it serves only the president and his agenda.
3. Loyalty to Trump agenda and polices drives Congress, agency leadership, policies, programs, communications and personnel actions – DOJ, DHS/ICE, HHS/CDC, Education, State Department
4. Administration takedown orders result in censorship of critical resources from government as well as non-profit organization websites
5. Public Health Group, Scientists Launch Replacement for Censored and Deleted CDC, MMRW Data
6. Groups seek to enact privacy laws as mass surveillance by the federal government erodes personal freedom
7. Volunteers step up to preserve and protect data, science, USAID and resources across disciplines censored by Trump Administration. USAID Teaching and Learning Materials will be available upcoming.
8. Democrats in Congress create Trump paper trail
9. DHS/ICE adds another illegal option – voluntary self-deportation of children

1. Firings, Furloughs, Funding and Force

Around 750,000 government workers remain furloughed for 31 days, in what is now the second longest government shutdown in our history, which was 34 days long. On October 31, 2025 the Federal News Network reported – Agencies are starting to tell the more than 700,000 federal employees who are furloughed during this now 31-day partial government shutdown that their time away will be extended another 30 days. The departments of Commerce, Justice and Homeland Security, as well as NASA and the General Services Administration, at the very least, have sent out emails to employees detailing the extension. This would mark the longest federal service furlough in history. Federal workers remain the target of threats and abuse from President Trump including the possibility they will receive no back pay or may even be fired during this shutdown. “Office of Management and Budget head Russell Vought [primary author of Project 2025] has said he’d like to terminate as many as 10,000 federal workers during the government shutdown. Reduction in force (RIF) notices have already gone out to about 4,000.” But AP reported that on October 28 a federal judge in San Francisco “indefinitely barred the Trump administration from firing federal employees during the government shutdown, saying that labor unions were likely to prevail on their claims that the cuts were arbitrary and politically motivated.” However, federal employees were indiscriminately fired during the initial phase of the shutdown, and there is little reason to believe this administration will not find an avenue to defy and circumvent new court orders. President Trump stated earlier in October that the federal government may deny back pay to some employees furloughed amid the shutdown. When asked earlier this month if government workers would receive back pay, Trump told reporters, “It depends who we’re talking about.” “There are some people that don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way,” Trump added.

In addition to the economic implications of the government shutdown, managed by the Republican government trifecta – control over the White House, the House and the Senate – there is the ongoing issue of the Trump administration’s open defiance of court orders. Trump defaults to directing ‘his DOJ’ to fast track decisions leveraging the Supreme Court emergency / shadow docket to circumvent district and appellate court decisions challenging his sweeping interpretation of Article II, Section One of the Constitution. [This article will not address the Unitary Executive Theory but will be discussed in an article to follow.] On October 29, 2025 the New York Times reported, Guard Troops Were Sent to Portland, Ore., Despite a Court-Ordered Halt. The brief deployment of troops hours after a judge forbid it marked the second time this week government lawyers had to come clean to courts considering President Trump’s designs on Portland. And again, Trump indefinitely barred from firing federal workers during shutdown, Axios, October 28, 2025. A federal judge extended her order barring the White House from firing federal workers in a ruling on Tuesday, per multiple reports. The White House has been thwarted so far in using the shutdown to extend its purge of the federal workforce. Judge Susan Illston with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California temporarily blocked the Trump administration from firing workers earlier this month — that ruling was set to expire Wednesday, October 29, 2025.

• Tuesday’s order, also called a preliminary injunction, extends that injunction “indefinitely.”
• Illston issued the order during a hearing in San Francisco, according to NBC News.

“Today’s ruling is another victory for federal workers and our ongoing efforts to protect their jobs from an administration hellbent on illegally firing them,” Lee Saunders, the president of AFSCME, a federal workers union, said in a statement. The lawsuit was filed by federal worker unions earlier at the end of September in anticipation of the layoffs. Despite this ruling with limited impact there are in fact few victories for federal workers as this administration already announced the firing, layoff and forced early retirement of around 300,00 members of the federal workforce.

However this very big caveat applies to the government furlough and unlawful firing of federal employees – “Trump may be in a better position to reshape the federal government to be more partisan and loyal to him when it is shut down, argues Tom Spiggle, an employment lawyer and author of the forthcoming book “Federal Government Employee? You’re Fired!” “By shutting down agencies and delaying paychecks, the administration is effectively pressuring career employees to leave, especially those seen as less loyal or more independent,” he wrote in an email to reporters. “… This strategy risks turning nonpartisan government service into a test of political loyalty.”

Critical government data and services produced by various agencies have been curtailed during the government furlough and the House shutdown. One notable example is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ economic indicators and labor data feeds on which the Federal Reserve depends to set interest rates and to monitor changes in the labor market. Another example is the Social Security Administration which was targeted with nationwide firings and layoffs, yet is required to provide to tens of millions of seniors in America with telephone, online and in-person services vital to their economic security. This statement now appears on the SSA website – During the federal government shutdown, local offices will have REDUCED in-person services. We cannot assist with proof of benefit letters, replacement Medicare cards, or updates to earnings records. Read more about the limited in-person services: https://www.ssa.gov/agency/shutdown/.

And third example, SNAP, often called food stamps, the nation’s largest food aid program, helping 42 million low-income Americans put food on the table, is in limbo. The USDA has refused to release contingency funds, and Congress remains gridlocked. This action was taken regardless of the law in place to prevent such a lapse – via the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: SNAP’s Contingency Reserve Is Available for Regular SNAP Benefits, as USDA and OMB Have Ruled in Past.

The Trump Administration recently claimed that SNAP benefits are not available for November 2025 because SNAP’s “contingency funds are not legally available to cover regular benefits.”^[1] This stands in opposition to the law and prior practice, including by the Trump Administration itself. Also, the Administration could use its legal transfer authority — the same authority it already used to provide additional funds to WIC — to supplement the contingency reserves, which alone are not enough to fund families’ full benefits for November. The Administration must use all available options to fund November benefits for the 1 in 8 people in the U.S. who need SNAP to afford their grocery bill. The Administration must use all available options to fund November benefits for the 1 in 8 people in the U.S. who need SNAP to afford their grocery bill. The Administration’s assertion that it cannot use SNAP’s contingency reserves to cover regular SNAP benefits is contrary to:

• The plain language of the law;
• Prior Trump Administration practice ― including as recently as a few weeks ago in the Agriculture Department (USDA) Lapse of Funding Plan, which the agency has since removed from its website;^[2]
• The first Trump Administration’s understanding, as communicated repeatedly in multiple USDA documents and confirmed by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), that contingency funds could be used for SNAP benefits during the 2018-2019 shutdown. Previous administrations’ understanding that contingency funds could be used for SNAP benefits during a shutdown.

On November 1, 2025 these benefits will be curtailed, pending action by the courts. As of 3:20 pm ET October 31, 2025 Axios reported – The Trump administration must continue funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) during the government shutdown, a federal judge in Rhode Island ruled Thursday, according to multiple outlets. In addition, the following information just became available via LegalAF Michael Popok – In breaking news, a Boston Federal Judge found away to avoid a bad Supreme Court ruling, by instructing the Trump Administration to come up with a plan by Monday to use Congress’ $6 billion in congress contingency funds to avoid 40 million Americans from starving to death by cutting off their SNAP/food stamp payments, as she warns that she may issue an injunction if she doesn’t like their response – Judge Talwani, Massachusetts Order

As Trump ramps up his exercise of power over all three branches of government, with lagging effective impediment, there will be more dire consequences for increasingly more Americans. The information and resources in this article are subject to change as new and relevant actions occur. For now, this article serves as an overview of how America continues to experience relentless attacks on the state and federal level that diminish the scope, depth and breath of our democracy.

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2. Elimination of federal agencies and specific divisions, data, websites and resources

All It Took for Trump to Dismantle the Justice Dept. The New York Times, October 30, 2025. It’s true Mr. Trump started it all when, in his first presidency, he tried to bend this venerable law enforcement agency for his own personal and political gain. Mr. Trump frequently failed in that effort, but, as we learned after two years of reporting, all the while he was quietly succeeding in destabilizing the institution’s foundations — and weakening its resolve with his brand of bare-knuckle attacks. That imperiled the rule of law that has long assured all Americans impartial and fair justice. Later, the desperate desire of Attorney General Merrick Garland and President Joe Biden to avoid any appearance of partisanship led the department to put off looking into evidence of a potential crime and gave Mr. Trump an advantage that few appreciated at the time. Mr. Garland’s delays softened the ground and would eventually help Mr. Trump remake the Justice Department into his own cudgel. Mr. Trump has more recently gutted department teams that have long shielded Americans from domestic terrorism, corporate fraud and foreign manipulation of our elections. His administration has all but shuttered the department’s Public Integrity Section, an elite crime-fighting unit created after Watergate to investigate and prosecute corrupt public officials. Its force has been reduced from more than 30 prosecutors to two. Mr. Trump has at the same time anointed himself the country’s law enforcer in chief, eliciting shock as he has bulldozed the department’s longstanding independence from the White House. That boundary had historically ensured that criminal prosecutions were based on evidence, not partisan motives. Repeatedly this year Mr. Trump has redirected the department’s traditional power to enforce laws and prosecute criminal cases to hound his critics and political foes. Mr. Trump and his aides have ordered the department to launch investigations and lodge criminal charges over the objections of nonpartisan career lawyers who found the evidence of wrongdoing dubious or slim. The cumulative damage done to the once-respected Justice Department is so profound that it may not regain any semblance of its former self in our lifetimes, warn career law enforcement officials with whom we have spoken. It’s impossible to discount as hyperbole the alarm that these longtime civil servants are sounding from inside the house. Many federal prosecutors and F.B.I. agents who recently worked for the department or who still do are disconsolate at the dizzying speed with which they see their beloved institution breaking the founders’ promise that American citizens be punished according to the law, rather than a king’s whims.

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White House fires entire commission that reviews designs for federal buildings. NPR, October 29, 2025. The White House has fired six members of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, the independent federal agency that advises the president and Congress on design plans for monuments, memorials, coins and federal buildings. The seven member commission is made up of experts in architecture, art, urban and landscape design. Since its creation in 1910, the commission has reviewed plans for everything from Arlington National Cemetery to Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. As first reported by The Washington Post, the commissioners who were terminated are Bruce Redman Becker, Peter D. Cook, Lisa E. Delplace, William J. Lenihan, Justin Garrett Moore and vice chair Hazel Ruth Edwards. The chair position, now vacant, was held by Billie Tsien, one of the architects working on the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. Lenihan confirmed in an email to NPR the six were terminated “effective immediately.”…In an email to NPR, the White House said it is “preparing to appoint a new slate of members to the commission that are more aligned with President Trump’s America First Policies. The commission was expected to review Trump’s planned $300 million White House ballroom and his proposed triumphal arch, but Trump already tore down the East Wing last week without any review. This follows the July purge of the National Capital Planning Commission, where Trump installed allies including his staff secretary Will Scharf as chairman. Historical precedent: Truman built his White House balcony in 1947 over the commission’s objections, and Trump’s following that playbook to build his palace.

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ADL removes ‘Protect Civil Rights’ from website as it narrows its mission amid right-wing attacks. The Forward, October 29, 2025. The Anti-Defamation League has removed entirely from the “What We Do” page of its website a section called “Protect Civil Rights.” The removal eliminated a passage that read, “Our founders established ADL with the clear understanding that the fight against any one form of prejudice or hate cannot succeed without countering hate of all forms.” The change to the website, which has not been previously reported, was made amid other website edits following a flurry of right-wing criticism and an unprecedented attack on the organization earlier this month by FBI Director Kash Patel. On Oct. 1, just hours before Jews on the East Coast would start fasting on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, President Donald Trump’s handpicked top cop said the law enforcement agency was cutting ties with the ADL. The Jewish group was “functioning like a terrorist organization” because of how it tracks and reports extremism on the right, Patel told Fox News.Patel’s announcement came days after Elon Musk mischaracterized a section of the ADL website to accuse the group of anti-Christian hatred. His post on X triggered a pile-on of condemnation. The ADL removed the section from its website as part of a purge of more than 1,000 other entries making up its Glossary of Extremism and Hate. An ADL spokesperson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the passage committing the ADL to the protection of civil rights was removed as part of an “ongoing review” of its website and its contents.

ADL deletes ‘glossary of extremism’ amid backlash over Charlie Kirk entry. Jewish Chronicle. October 1, 2025. The organisation insisted that the inclusion of Kirk’s Turning Point USA did not mean it was considered to be an extremist group. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has deleted its “glossary of extremism” from its website after it faced backlash from the US right over entries regarding the late Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk. Kirk, a prominent conservative activist, was shot dead during a speaking event at Utah Valley University on September 10. An entry in the glossary regarding Turning Point USA (TPUSA), Kirk’s organisation, read: “Since the group’s founding, Kirk has moved further to the right and has promoted numerous conspiracy theories about election fraud and COVID-19 and has demonised the transgender community. “Kirk also promotes Christian nationalism: the idea that Christians should dominate the government and other areas of life in the US. “TPUSA continues to attract racists to the group. Numerous TPUSA representatives have made bigoted remarks about minority groups and the LGBTQ+ community. “White nationalists have attended TPUSA events, even though the group says it rejects white supremacist ideology.” However, since Kirk’s death, the entry, which appeared in a section on “extremism, hate or terrorism”, has come under scrutiny from high-profile right-wing figures, including Donald Trump Jr and X own Elon Musk.

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Behind the Dismantling of the C.D.C.: Reform or ‘Humiliation’? The New York Times, October 27, 2025 The agency has lost a third of its work force this year. The Trump administration maintains that the losses are necessary, but critics say that there is no real plan, only animosity…For years, the C.D.C. has borne the brunt of anger about Covid-19 policies, including lockdowns, school closings, and mandates for masks and vaccines. “What they want to do is humiliate the C.D.C. in the same way that they felt humiliated by it during Covid, because of those affronts to autonomy,” Dr. Shah said. Public health initiatives are generally enacted at the state level. Administration officials have not queried state health officials as to what they would like to see happen at the C.D.C., said Dr. Scott Harris, the state health officer at the Alabama Department of Public Health. Some state officials are now worried about cuts to not only the agency’s funding but its experts, both of which they rely on heavily.

Trump’s CDC firings endanger lives and the economy. The Contrarian. October 16, 2025. In recent days, while much of the country’s attention was focused on events in the Middle East, something big happened in Atlanta, where I live. Something that endangers the health of people across the United States and around the world. That’s no exaggeration. In its latest act of nonsensical mayhem for federal agencies, the Trump administration fired a massive number of people at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday night. They included people who lead the fight to protect humanity from some of the most dangerous diseases. Reports estimate that about 1,300 people were let go. Then, in an act that has also become routine, the administration began to rescind some of those layoffs, saying folks were let go in error. It was yet another example of the super-organized, carefully planned governmental restructuring that the American people have gotten used to amid what I call the “Trump-storm.”

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Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro on Saturday slammed President Trump’s effort to receive a $230 million payment from the Department of Justice (DOJ) as compensation for the various federal probes into his conduct. The Hill, October 25, 2025. “I think that it’s rife with conflicts of interest,” Shapiro told NewsNation’s Batya Ungar-Sargon. “I cannot see a world in which that does not end with either a massive number of lawsuits or even an impeachment in the House. That is just a bad strategy,” he added. Trump has alleged that past DOJ investigations into his conduct were “politically motivated” and damaged his reputation.  Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s personal attorney, would be one of the people responsible for signing off on the settlement, which the president has said he would donate to charity. “To pretend that it’s not a conflict of interest, for the president to ask the DOJ that he appointed to maybe sign him a check for $230 million, even if it’s going to go to charity, that obviously raises significant conflicts of interest that I think would be impossible to get around in sort of any legal context,” Shapiro said.

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3. Loyalty to Trump agenda and polices drives Congress, agency leadership, policies, programs, communications and personnel actions – DOJ, DHS/ICE, HHS/CDC, Education, State Department

How Trump Is Using the Justice Department to Target His Enemies. The New York Times, October 17, 2025. Trump’s Justice Department, stacked with his former personal attorneys, has purged career prosecutors and opened criminal investigations into his political adversaries—including James Comey, Letitia James, Adam Schiff, John Bolton, John Brennan, Fani Willis, and more. Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s former lawyer installed as U.S. Attorney for Virginia, indicted Comey within weeks of taking office, as other loyalists were assigned to pursue similar cases. By turning the DOJ into a weapon against his critics, Trump has erased the boundary between justice and politics—a hallmark of authoritarian rule.

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Trump Gutted the Institute of Education Sciences. Its Renewal Is in Doubt. Inside Higher Education, October 21, 2025. The Education Department recently requested ideas on how to “modernize” the data collection and education research funding agency, and it sought to hire for a few positions…In the eight months since the Department of Government Efficiency and the Education Department announced the slashing of more than $1 billion in multiyear contracts administered by IES, there have been mass layoffs followed by some new job postings; litigation over canceled studies and contracts, followed by reports of some restorations; a request for public comments about how to “modernize” IES, despite the administration’s continued push to shutter the department housing it; and Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s temporary appointment of a special adviser to “re-envision” IES, who must now finish her work amid a government shutdown.

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No Education Department? No Problem, Trump’s Education Secretary Says. The New York Times, October 21, 2025. The shutdown means there is, essentially, no Education Department. The latest round of layoffs would leave few workers to enforce special education and civil rights laws. So far this month, the Education Department has stopped most of its work during the government shutdown, and the Trump administration has laid off more than 460 employees, cutting deeper into an agency that had already laid off half of its work force in March. The new layoffs, if they survive a legal challenge, would functionally wipe out the offices that handle two of the agency’s core functions: dispersing federal money to states and school districts, and enforcing federal special education and civil rights laws. In March, the layoffs eliminated the agency’s research arm dedicated to tracking U.S. student achievement, which for many students is at three-decade lows. Mr. Trump’s education secretary, Linda McMahon, has argued that the latest developments only prove that the Education Department is unnecessary and should be shut down.

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Trump administration puts 1,400 nuclear staffers on furlough. The Hill, October 20, 2025. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) furloughed more than three-quarters of its staff Monday as the government nears its fourth week of a shutdown. A Department of Energy spokesperson told The Hill that 1,400 NNSA employees will be furloughed by the end of Monday, leaving fewer than 400 working at the agency, which is in charge of overseeing the nation’s nuclear stockpile. “Due to the Democrat shutdown, approximately 1,400 NNSA federal employees will be furloughed as of today, October 20th and nearly 400 NNSA federal employees will continue to work to support the protection of property and the safety of human life,” the spokesperson said in a statement. The spokesperson said NNSA’s Office of Secure Transportation will be funded for another week, through Oct. 27. Energy Department spokesperson Ben Dietderich told CNN that this is the first time in NNSA’s 25-year history that it has furloughed employees during the shutdown. “We are left with no choice this time. We’ve extended funding as long as we could,” Dietderich said.

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All but two of the nine universities that were presented by the Trump administration with a “compact” to be prioritized for federal grants in exchange for admissions, programming and staffing concessions declined to endorse the plan; the University of Texas and Vanderbilt University did not reject the proposal outright but appeared to approach it with some hesitation…The New York Times, October 20, 2025. The University of Virginia struck a deal with the White House: The government agreed to halt investigations of the school, and the school agreed to follow the administration’s guidance on admissions.

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US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces. BBC, October 22, 2025. The US State Department has removed an online portal for reporting alleged human rights violations by foreign military units supplied with American weapons. The Human Rights Reporting Gateway (HRG) acted as a formal “tip line” to the US government. It was the only publicly accessible channel of its kind for organisations or individuals to inform it directly of potentially serious abuses by US-armed foreign forces. Its deletion has been condemned by human rights campaigners and by a senior congressional aide who drafted the law requiring it. The State Department insisted it was still abiding by the law.

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Close Friend of JD Vance Skirts Normal Channels to Take Over NIH Environmental Health Institute. Inside Climate News, October 21, 2025. Despite a federal hiring freeze, the Trump administration just appointed a scientist who calls Vance one of his “closest friends” to head the nation’s key Employees at the National Institutes of Health learned in an email on Friday, in the midst of a hiring freeze, that their prestigious environmental health sciences research center has a new director. There was no job announcement, no search committee to identify top candidates, no interviews or reference checks. The position to lead the nation’s premier environmental health research institute wasn’t even open. Yet Jay Bhattacharya, a political appointee who oversees the 27 institutes and centers under NIH, named Kyle Walsh, an associate professor in neurosurgery at Duke University, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).

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4. Administration takedown orders result in censorship of critical resources from government as well as non-profit organization websites

CDC

Behind the Dismantling of the C.D.C.: Reform or ‘Humiliation’? The New York Times, October 27, 2025 The agency has lost a third of its work force this year. The Trump administration maintains that the losses are necessary, but critics say that there is no real plan, only animosity…For years, the C.D.C. has borne the brunt of anger about Covid-19 policies, including lockdowns, school closings, and mandates for masks and vaccines. “What they want to do is humiliate the C.D.C. in the same way that they felt humiliated by it during Covid, because of those affronts to autonomy,” Dr. Shah said. Public health initiatives are generally enacted at the state level. Administration officials have not queried state health officials as to what they would like to see happen at the C.D.C., said Dr. Scott Harris, the state health officer at the Alabama Department of Public Health. Some state officials are now worried about cuts to not only the agency’s funding but its experts, both of which they rely on heavily.

Trump’s CDC firings endanger lives and the economy. The Contrarian. October 16, 2025. In recent days, while much of the country’s attention was focused on events in the Middle East, something big happened in Atlanta, where I live. Something that endangers the health of people across the United States and around the world. That’s no exaggeration. In its latest act of nonsensical mayhem for federal agencies, the Trump administration fired a massive number of people at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday night. They included people who lead the fight to protect humanity from some of the most dangerous diseases. Reports estimate that about 1,300 people were let go. Then, in an act that has also become routine, the administration began to rescind some of those layoffs, saying folks were let go in error. It was yet another example of the super-organized, carefully planned governmental restructuring that the American people have gotten used to amid what I call the “Trump-storm.”

CDC tormented: HR workers summoned from furlough to lay off themselves, others. Traumatized CDC has lost 33% of its workforce this year, union says. Ars Technica, October 15, 2025. “The dust is still settling at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after a mass layoff on Friday, which former employees at the beleaguered agency are describing as a massacre. In separate press briefings on Tuesday, a network of terminated CDC staff that goes by the name the National Public Health Coalition, and the union representing employees at the agency discussed what the wide-scale cuts mean for the American people, as well as the trauma, despair, and damage they have wreaked on the workers of the once-premier public health agency. In a normal federal layoff—called a reduction in force, or RIF—the agency would be given a full outline of the roles and branches or divisions affected, as well as some explanation for the cuts, such as alleged fraud, abuse, or redundancy. However, the Trump administration has provided no such information or explanation, leaving current and former employees to essentially crowdsource what has been lost and only guess at the possible reasons. The union representing CDC workers, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 2883, has been assessing the cuts since termination emails began arriving in employee inboxes late Friday. The union estimates that the Trump administration sent termination notices to 1,300 CDC employees on Friday, in what they called an illegal “politically-motivated stunt.” Of those 1,300 terminations, around 700 were rescinded, beginning on Saturday. The Trump administration said the 700 rescinded terminations were sent due to a “coding error.” But CDC workers didn’t buy that explanation, saying all the terminations were intentional, and some were only reversed after backlash erupted when people realized what the administration was trying to cut—for example, terminating the experts responding to domestic measles outbreaks and those responding to an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who received RIF notices that were later rescinded. Still, with the rescissions, some 600 terminations appear to remain…The CDC’s library staff are all gone.

In all, the union estimated that the CDC has lost 33 percent of its workforce since the start of the Trump administration. In January, there were roughly 13,000 CDC workers total. Since then, about 3,000 have been fully separated from the agency, including 600 laid off in a RIF on April 1, and 2,400 who were either fired or forced out amid pressure campaigns. An additional 1,300 have been laid off but are not yet fully separated from the agency; they remain on paid administrative leave but are unable to do their work. In the RIF Friday, laid-off employees said they were given notices that list their termination effective date as December 8, leaving a 60-day period in which they would be on administrative leave. The RIF was carried out amid an ongoing government shutdown over a health care funding dispute, and the Trump administration has claimed that the RIF is a consequence of the shutdown. But the union, along with federal employment lawyers and even some senior government officials, say a RIF during a shutdown is illegal; a temporary lapse in government funding is not a legitimate reason for a RIF under federal regulations, and it runs afoul of a federal law that prohibits the government from incurring new costs during a shutdown, such as by promising severance packages.

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DHS

U.S. dietary guidelines could soon undergo another overhaul under the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative, and the proposal has already drawn criticism. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is set to unveil new guidance encouraging the consumption of more foods previously considered unhealthy, including those high in saturated fats. Kennedy has argued Americans need more saturated fats, not less, saying foods like butter, cheese, milk and red meat have been unfairly demonized for decades. The updated guidance could be released as soon as this month. The administration will not alter its recommendations for trans fats.

RFK Jr. plans to issue new dietary guidelines urging Americans to consume more saturated fats from dairy and meat, reversing decades of public health recommendations. Nutrition scientists warn the move contradicts extensive evidence linking high saturated fat intake to heart disease and elevated cholesterol. Kennedy’s move rejects decades of science in favor of ideology. By pushing a diet that heightens heart disease risk, he’s politicizing public health and turning evidence-based nutrition into another front in America’s culture wars—endangering millions under the guise of “freedom.” Kennedy’s move rejects decades of science in favor of ideology.

Wave of Anti-Science Bills Pushed by Kennedy Allies Hits Statehouses. Associated Press, October 21, 2025. More than 420 anti-science bills attacking longstanding public health protections — vaccines, milk safety, and fluoride — have been introduced in statehouses across the U.S. this year, part of an organized, politically savvy campaign to enshrine a conspiracy theory-driven agenda into law. An Associated Press investigation found that the wave of legislation has cropped up in most states, pushed by people with close ties to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The effort would strip away protections that have been built over a century and are integral to American lives and society. Around 30 bills have been enacted or adopted in 12 states. Trump administration officials are directing activists to push anti-science legislation in the states — where public health authority rests — with the ultimate goal of changing laws and minds nationally. The effort normalizes ideas fueled by the anti-vaccine movement that Kennedy has helped lead for years. His Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda masks anti-science ideas while promoting goals such as making food more natural or reducing chemicals. Meanwhile, vaccination rates continue to fall, allowing the infectious diseases measles and whooping cough to make comebacks as Kennedy has sought to broadly remake federal policies on public health matters including fluoride and vaccines.

Government Shutdown Leaves Scientists in Limbo. Scientific American, October 16, 2025. Hundreds of people at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have received layoff notices, and work at many federal laboratories has been suspended. The shutdown of the US government, about to enter its third week, is starting to take a toll on US science. Since the shutdown began, the administration of US President Donald Trump has cancelled funding for clean-energy research projects and laid off public-health workers. The activities of some federally funded museums and laboratories have been suspended, along with the processing of grant applications by agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF). Funding to run the US government expired on 1 October after members of the US Congress failed to pass a spending bill. Negotiations to end the impasse have made little progress. Lawmakers from the opposition Democratic party say that they will only pass the spending bill if it extends popular health-care subsidies, a condition that Republicans do not want to negotiate. “The longer this goes on, the deeper the cuts are going to be,” Vice President JD Vance said Sunday. Staff reductions – The Trump administration said in a court filing Friday that it will lay off 4,100- 4,200 federal employees, an action officially termed a reduction in force (RIF). The Trump administration invoked the absence of a spending bill as justification for the layoffs, which are an unprecedented measure during a shutdown. Unions representing federal workers have filed suit over the layoffs. Starting Friday night, some 1,300 staff members of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) received RIF notices, although the notices for 700 were quickly rescinded, according to Local 2883 of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing CDC employees. The layoffs would “undermine the nation’s ability to respond to public health emergencies,” a CDC staff member affected by the layoff said Tuesday at a news conference organized by Local 2883. Word of layoffs at the CDC’s influential National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) sparked particular concern among epidemiologists. The programme has been collecting US health data since the early 1960s, and has helped researchers to understand critical public-health issues such as the health effects of lead in petrol…

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5. Public Health Group, Scientists Launch Replacement for Censored and Deleted CDC MMRW Data

NEJM and public health group are launching rival to CDC’s MMWR publication. Stat News, October 21, 2025. After 73 years, many public health experts are losing trust in the ‘voice of the CDC,’ In the latest bid to plug gaps in the federal government’s public health infrastructure, two institutions are coming together to create an alternative to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaunted Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report — often called “the voice of the CDC.” The New England Journal of Medicine and the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy will begin publishing “public health alerts” in the coming month, CIDRAP Director Michael Osterholm announced at the IDWeek conference on Sunday. The alerts “will basically serve to be a way to convey the information that once was shared in the MMWR with all of us in a very timely way,” he said at the opening plenary of the conference of infectious disease specialists, according to a recording shared with STAT. “We encourage all of you to begin thinking about submissions of outbreaks or data you think should be evaluated. So, I hope you’ll help participate in that.” A spokesperson for NEJM said the alerts would be published in a new section of its NEJM Evidence journal as needed — as opposed to being published on a weekly basis — and be made available for free. “In the coming weeks, we will be sharing more information on a new, rapid digital alert to disseminate essential data on disease outbreaks and other issues of public health importance,” created in partnership with CIDRAP, she added. The MMWR has been published weekly since 1952 and has become part of the bedrock of public health; historically it’s been where details of new outbreaks and emerging diseases are first reported. But many public health practitioners’ trust in the publication has been shaken. In the earliest days of the Trump administration, new articles could not be published because of a communications pause, making it the first time in the journal’s history that it missed publishing a new edition. Weekly editions have been paused again during the government shutdown, and earlier this month, much of the team behind the journal was laid off before being reinstated hours later.

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The CDC Diaspora Fights Back. The Bulwark, October 22, 2025. How America’s scientific army is trying to stand up for public health—and stand up for itself. Jonathan Cohn. The scientists gathering inside a cavernous convention hall here this week weren’t chanting or carrying protest signs or wearing frog costumes. But over the course of four days, they engaged in what felt like their own brand of political resistance. They were there for IDWeek, the annual gathering of professional societies that work on infectious diseases. And in many ways the meeting was like any other medical conference. Participants attended mostly narrow, technical lectures on topics like tuberculosis, HIV, and tropical diseases—one session had the title of “Big Beasts of Clinical Mycology”—with occasional breaks for networking at receptions and strolling among the vendors in the exhibit hall. But the meeting at the Georgia World Congress Center, which goes four stories down into the side of the hill, so that riding the escalators down was a bit like entering a concrete bunker. And that felt fitting, given the circumstances. This was the first IDWeek gathering of Donald Trump’s second presidency, meaning it was the first since Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary—launched his assault on federal public health institutions. That includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose Atlanta headquarters are just a few miles away and where there are still bullet dimples in the walls from the August assault by a gunman angry about COVID-19 vaccines. The difference was impossible to miss, attendees told me, and it started with who was there—or, more accurately, who was not. CDC staff traditionally attend IDWeek in large numbers, to present and to learn—and to make connections for future collaborations, including in a potential crisis. A year ago, when the Atlanta location for this year’s meeting was announced, everybody assumed CDC attendance would be higher than usual because it would be almost literally down the street. But no CDC staff were present in their official capacity this week. The immediate reason was the federal shutdown, which includes government-wide rules forbidding conduct of most normal business. But several former officials who were at the meeting told me the agency’s new political leaders had made clear long before the shutdown that they would be dramatically limiting attendance and presentations.

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6. Groups seek to enact privacy laws as mass surveillance by the federal government erodes personal freedom

DOGE’s Plundering of Data Hastens Calls to Tighten Government Privacy Laws. Tech Policy Press, October 21, 2025. “For about a decade, lawmakers in Washington have sought to pass a comprehensive privacy law to prevent commercial platforms from misusing Americans’ data online. Now some in Congress and at the state level are increasingly raising alarm that the federal government is violating Americans’ privacy and calling for laws to prevent such abuse. Fears about Americans’ data being mishandled have ballooned in the wake of the push by the Elon Musk-formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to force federal agencies to hand over sensitive data on United States citizens and residents, including social security numbers and the personal records of millions of federal employees and retirees. The current law that governs the federal government’s collection and handling of personal data, The Privacy Act of 1974, was enacted in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal partly to address fears of mass government surveillance. But that law needs to be tightened to prevent the types of abuses currently being perpetrated by DOGE, said Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA), who earlier this year launched an effort to bring those protections into the modern day. “One resounding theme from” the feedback she has received in her call for public comment “is the need for Congress to fundamentally redesign the Privacy Act, rather than simply performing a surgical, amendatory process,” Trahan said in an email. “I heard repeatedly that Congress must invest in its own capacity to oversee the privacy activities of the executive branch,” she said. “Congress needs to increase the criminal penalties for violations, expand the range of causes of action, and narrow the statutory exceptions to the Privacy Act that this Administration has exploited.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment on DOGE’s data practices. A congressional aide familiar with the effort, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the deliberations, said that Congress could tighten oversight requirements asking federal agencies to more routinely report on the kinds of data they are collecting, how they’re safeguarding that information, and who has access to the data, as opposed to the periodic reports that agencies now provide Congress. The effort to change the Privacy Act would have to be led by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, which has jurisdiction over the law. Trahan plans to release a report outlining her findings and recommendations that could become the basis for building bipartisan support, the aide said. Trahan isn’t the only one concerned about the federal government potentially violating Americans’ privacy.

Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, late last month released findings of an investigation by his staff looking into how DOGE “jeopardizes” Americans’ data. The report found numerous instances of federal agencies being asked to turn in data seemingly in violation of current law. “Through a series of whistleblower disclosures, staff learned that individuals associated with DOGE have effectively ordered agencies to assist with the creation of databases that can be manipulated with little to no oversight, and which contain highly sensitive personally identifiable information on every American,” the report said.

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Trump’s CDC firings endanger lives and the economy. The Contrarian,  October 16, 2025. Josh Levs wrote on the costly chaos of firings and rehirings at the agency fighting the world’s deadliest diseases. “This mess at the CDC is a powerful example of what’s happening to our government.”

Federal Firings: Rushab Sanghvi talks Trump’s retaliation against government workers. The Contrarian, October 14, 2025. Rushab Sanghvi of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) broke down Russ Vought’s reduction-in-force assault on the civil service, with notices to approximately 4,200 federal employees on Friday and more to come. “This is a political game and that’s not permitted.”

It doesn’t have to be this way: Neera Tanden on the harms caused by the lasting shutdown. The Contrarian October 15, 2025. Over two weeks into the government shutdown, Neera Tanden reminded us of its stakes: health care for millions of Americans, which Republicans are still refusing to address. “The way we fight autocracy is demonstrating to the country that we are the majority.”

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7. Volunteers step up to preserve and protect data, science, USAID and resources across disciplines censored by Trump Administration. USAID Teaching and Learning Materials will be available upcoming.

All is not lost: USAID’s education data has been preserved – Thukral, H., Gove, A., Ardington, C. & Meyer, E. 2025. All is not lost: USAID’s education data has been preserved. What Works Hub for Global Education. Blog. 2025/024. https://doi.org/10.35489/BSG-WhatWorksHubforGlobalEducation-BL_2025/024 – See all Evidence & resources

When USAID terminated its education programmes in early 2025, it also removed public access to a rich collection of data on global learning outcomes – putting at risk two decades of work and hundreds of datasets. These datasets, critical to researchers, implementers and most importantly, decision-makers in each country, were nearly lost. In June 2025, a data sharing agreement between USAID and the University of Michigan’s Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), allowed these data to be publicly available through the DataLumos platform. 2,500 files from 109 education projects across 43 countries and 20 years were saved These datasets and their associated files, including instruments, reports and codebooks, were publicly available on USAID’s Data Development Library (DDL) website until early March 2025 when the site went dark. Our endeavour benefited from insider knowledge of USAID’s processes and contracts, initiative from data champions within USAID (at the time) and the research data community, and the continued demand for answers across the sector. The key ingredient to saving the data? Persistence. From navigating internal processes at USAID (and State Department) at a time when reductions in force and changes in leadership were unpredictable, to finding a trusted, vetted home for federal data – persistence was key. Getting a data sharing agreement in place in July 2025 between USAID and the University of Michigan’s Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) was just the first step to make the data publicly available again. With the agreement in place, copies of USAID education data were securely transferred to ICPSR. Next, we needed to sort the files and upload them into ICPSR’s platform for at-risk government data, DataLumos. The DDL files had been organised by contract or task order (or more often referred to as ‘projects’), but as we grappled with how best to organise these resources for future users, we realised this framework may be less relevant going forward. We also knew that organising data files by a project timeline – such as baseline, midline and endline – or by components of an activity – such as data from a parent engagement activity conducted by one implementing organisation separately from the classroom interventions conducted by another organisation – may require additional information that many external users may not readily have access to.

So, we grouped and reorganised the files by country and within country, by projects. Projects contain all data files relevant to that USAID award. We used projects as the organising structure because this format is predictable. Within projects, we allowed variability in file structures, as many file names and formats differed depending on the submitting organisation’s conventions. A combination of automated and human checking was required to identify data files, codebooks, instruments, and reports. Once files were sorted, we partnered with the team at Research Data Access and Preservation (RDAP) and ICPSR, to host a hackathon in early August. Invitations were circulated via listservs and social media, inviting the public to join a 90-minute session to help tag datasets and craft summary language for each dataset and country-level collection. Over 110 volunteers helped review data files, match them to project descriptions, and prepare folders to upload into the DataLumos platform. For each country, the volunteers helped develop a file that describes the project, characteristics of the sample, languages, and assessments (whether the dataset includes an early grade reading or math assessment (EGRA or EGMA), surveys or other instruments). Finally, the DataFirst and ICPSR teams continue to work tirelessly to make all of the USAID education data collection available on the DataLumos platform. As of October 3, 2025, all the data shared by USAID directly with ICPSR has been uploaded to the platform.

How do I access the data? There are currently two ways to get to the data:

1. Go to the DataLumos platform and create a free account. Browse by Government Agency and select ‘United States Agency for International Development.’ Within the country folders, we have added an Excel file with metadata such as languages, assessment tools, sampling information and more.
2. Access the data via the map below. The country links will take you to the DataLumos platform, where you will still need to create a (free) account to access the files.

What next? We ask you to add to the USAID education data collection – We know there are more datasets out there! If you know of data that is missing from the DataLumos repository, you can contribute data yourself. What allows all organisations and individuals who collected education data with USAID funds to now share data with ICPSR?

1. At the time of the Data Sharing Agreement execution in July, USAID legal staff confirmed that there is language embedded in every agreement that allows the implementing partner who collected the data to share it for public use. This falls under intangible property, under 2 CFR 200.315.
2. USAID’s data sharing agreement with ICPSR states the following: sublicense shall provide any and all rights to Recipient to archive and make available to others the Data, including, but not limited to, the rights to use, disclose, reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies to the public, and perform publicly and display publicly, in any manner and for any purpose whatsoever, and to have or permit others to do so, in accordance the terms of this Agreement. Recipient agrees that all Data will be archived and provided to third parties with a license that requires attribution to USAID, as provided in the meta data.

What does this all mean for you? It means that if you have USAID-funded education data, and it’s not already in the DataLumos platform, you can share it because a) 2 CFR 200.315 allows you to do so under your sublicense (the federal agency also retains its own licensing rights) and b) the data sharing agreement sublicenses all USAID data to ICPSR with all rights, with attribution to USAID.

Not sure what to do with your in-process datasets? We are seeking funding for a pool of consultants to strip datasets of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and create a standardised Public Use File (PUF) version for (as the name indicates) public use. If you already have a PUF but had not uploaded to the DDL, you can upload the PUF (along with codebooks, reports and instruments) to the DataLumos site. You can also reach out to us if you have questions before you upload or if you would prefer to transfer the files to us to process and upload. We are happy to have a call to share additional lessons. Contact us at [email protected]. Please use and encourage others to use the USAID education data collection Help us get the word out. There are 1,000 dissertations worth of evidence in these datasets, and we want the world to see what can be done when we share evidence. We can’t wait to see what this community will do with these datasets.

Help us improve the USAID education data collection – Let’s take advantage of this moment to set ourselves up for the future. We know that the collection has significant gaps – at times you’ll find a dataset but not the instruments or item quality information; you may find a short discussion of the sample but the sampling procedures aren’t documented thoroughly. We are hoping that cleaner, harmonised, streamlined versions of datasets will emerge from the community. As you find yourself curating a collection of datasets, please share them back with DataLumos for the future us to build on. We have certainly learned the value of redundancy (having data saved and publicly available in multiple places), and we’re looking at the models used by the health sector to standardise processes for posting and embedding the requirements for public use data. Help us improve what we can in this collection by adding what you may have and let’s together create better data management and storage processes in the future. When you know better, you do better (thanks, Maya Angelou, we know you were thinking about data when you said that).
Oh, and we’re still working on saving USAID Teaching and Learning Materials. The Early Learning Resource Network (ELRN) will be uploading openly licensed books created with USAID funding to make these available for printing and reuse. We will share more about how and why we make these resources openly available. Reach out to the ELRN team if you want to share your resources with a global audience: [email protected].

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8. Democrats in Congress create Trump paper trail

Dems Creating a Paper Trail of Trump’s Illegal Actions. The Bulwark, October 10, 2025. It’s understandable if you’re skeptical that caucus letters and public statements can truly accomplish anything substantive. (This is a sentiment I’ve often heard from our Bulwark readers.) But Democrats and advocates said the goal is not just to publicize concerns and complaints. It’s to establish a form of official pushback that can serve as a foundation for oversight authority. The Trump administration has fought back hard when Democrats used oversight authority to show up at detention centers unannounced, with agents responding with violence in some cases. But these actions have put a spotlight on the administration’s efforts to ram through deportations—and, arguably, helped move public opinion. What’s more, the letters and statements help create a record of Trump administration abuses that will matter should Democrats win back the House in the 2026 midterms. Rep. Robert Garcia, a CHC member, is the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, in line to become chairman with the power to launch investigations into the administration. “We’re laying the groundwork for a Democratic congressional takeover,” a congressional aide told me. “Of course you get tired of writing letters politely urging people that won’t read this shit. But if we get back in power, even in the House, and we don’t have these letters, we don’t have the material to start investigations, so we’re starting a paper trail.”

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9. DHS/ICE adds another illegal option – voluntary self-deportation of children

THE CONGRESSIONAL HISPANIC CAUCUS (CHC) expressed grave concern Friday over reports that the Trump administration offered $2,500 payments to unaccompanied migrant kids in exchange for agreeing to self-deport voluntarily. The Bulwark, October 10, 2025. In a draft letter obtained by The Bulwark, scheduled to be sent after caucus members’ signatures were added, the CHC called the program illegal and framed it as downright predatory. I’m told the letter was nearing two dozen signers as of Friday morning. “Recently-filed litigation shows that the agency simultaneously issued an internal directive instructing immigration agencies to transfer unaccompanied migrant children immediately into indefinite, adult immigration detention upon turning age 18,” the CHC letter, addressed to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, states. “This directive not only violates a standing court order, but adds to the coercive nature of this financial offer of $2,500.” The letter comes a week after NBC News reported on a memo from the Kennedy-led Health and Human Services department calling on migrant children 14 years and older to leave the country in exchange for $2,500. The memo, which was sent to legal-service providers who represent the young teens, stated that the Department of Homeland Security had already identified unaccompanied children in custody who would self-deport. The news quickly ricocheted among already-panicked immigrant communities. Social media posts referred to it as “Operation Freaky Friday,” a nod to the movie in which a kid is treated like an adult. DHS sought to downplay the fears, saying in a tweet last Friday that it was “a strictly voluntary option” for trafficked children “to return home to their families.” But that did not assuage critics, and the Freaky Friday moniker picked up steam, including in the media.

The CHC letter is just the latest expression of concern about the Freaky Friday reports. Several other groups, including AfghanEvac, the Chamberlain Network, and Refugee Council USA, have also issued statements or published open letters. They, like the CHC, expressed a mix of disgust and shock at the effort, which they say targets vulnerable children and could involve coercing kids as young as 10.

“We are concerned by messaging from the Department of Homeland Security that suggests children who were trafficked against their will into the US by cartels will be part of an incentive program aimed at getting children to waive their legal rights under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act,” Shaina Aber, executive director of the Acacia Center for Justice, a human rights nonprofit that fights for the legal defense of immigrants, said in a statement. “DHS’s message is confusing and seems to fly in the face of established laws and protocols that Congress passed to protect children from cyclical trafficking risks, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2008.”

Aber said kids who have survived severe forms of human trafficking should have their rights protected, be given a child advocate who looks out for their best interests, and receive assistance from trauma-informed legal services personnel.

But advocating for the rights of immigrant children is a tall order in the second Trump administration. And there is little to no indication that the Trump administration will back off the new program. There were anecdotal reports this week of ICE offering minors in school detention “money to return to their home country.”

The CHC, like congressional Democrats writ large, has limited ability to push back against this. Making a stink publicly is one of the few tools at the caucus’s disposal. In its letter, the CHC members said that the use of taxpayer dollars to incentivize self-deportation by unaccompanied children represents a “profound abuse of power.” The letter also called the effort a violation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which ensures that unaccompanied minors are treated humanely and that any decision to return them to their home country is truly voluntary and informed

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Trump slashed funding for universities that helped create these vital drugs. Washington Post, October 10, 2025. For most people, medicines are a bottle of pills on a shelf — made by drug companies, stocked by pharmacies, prescribed by doctors. But drugs that people take for serious illnesses — to prevent HIV, shrink tumors and treat seizures — have years-long backstories that often trace to basic science experiments in university laboratories. That foundation is now under threat. The Trump administration has abruptly frozen billions in research grants to universities it accuses of antisemitism or bias unrelated to the research. Some research is being terminated midstream and further funding cuts loom, jeopardizing the development of new medications that could prove equally lifesaving or life-changing. Pharmaceutical companies are essential to developing new drugs, but the early chapters of many medicines’ origin stories are based in academia, backed by federal funding. A key reason is the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, which allows research institutions to patent inventions made with federal funding, creating an incentive to turn basic research into drugs. The story of how any given drug came to be is often a complex and serendipitous tale, pushed forward by a team effort that spans academia and companies over decades. The federal government is now targeting the roots of the system that has helped fill the world’s medicine cabinet with innovative drugs, although some of its efforts have come under court challenge. The Washington Post examined the history of six important drugs invented over the past few decades. In each case, crucial steps in the development of the medication came from taxpayer-funded research at universities now at risk of losing federal support.