This is a follow up to four 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. The Trump Administration’s Continued War Against Science, Research, Public Health, and the Rule of Law – Part 4 focused on specific actions taken by the Trump administration during the month of October. Charting that four month period revealed a relentless series of punitive, retaliatory and deeply disruptive administration actions against Trump’s political foes, effectuated by the contention that Trump was enacting an era of the imperial presidency, exercising virtually unconstrained powers.
In Part 5 of my series, covering the month of November 2025, I focus once again on government resources, data and datasets that been taken offline, censored or otherwise altered to block access. As these data are no longer updated, the value and relevance to researchers decreases rapidly. These data operationalize critical work performed by federal government agencies and in concert with academic institutions and research institutions. The scope of this censorship has wiped out taxpayer funded research across all subject matters, which until this administration, was openly posted on e-government sites for further exploration and enhancement by both the public and private sectors. To be clear, these data belong to all Americans. They are not privately produced but are the work product of thousands of experts throughout successive presidential administrations, absent political or partisan influence. But this administration has made it a key objective to systemically destroy critical data and research that have for decades been the bedrock of our nation’s leadership in the sciences, education, medicine, finance, climate and the environment, infectious disease, vaccines and public health. Tracking the disappearance of these data is critical to creating a roadmap for the eventual recovery and reinstitution of all this work and the training and employment of experts who will participate in rebuilding our research infrastructure moving forward. As an organized program of data destruction continues, additional updates will no doubt be forthcoming.
I anchor this article with facts via the Reuters Institute: How science journalists worldwide are fighting White House health misinformation. “All we can do is not get pulled into the political debates and try to be fair-minded, factual, credible and authoritative,” said STAT’s founder Rick Berke.
Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump warned pregnant women to stop taking Tylenol – a brand name for paracetamol – or risk giving their children autism. This guidance has no scientific basis and was given during a press conference where Trump spoke along with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who has repeatedly challenged scientific consensus in the past few years. Trump and RFK Jr have often spoken against science. The US President has called climate change ‘the greatest con’. RFK Jr claimed some people have a harder time quitting antidepressants than heroin; he also pressed FDA to review abortion pill mifepristone safety and suggested risks are understated, despite long-standing data proving the drug is safe and effective. Vaccines have been a common target, with Trump falsely correlating vaccines with autism and RFK Jr challenging the safety of both the COVID-19 vaccine and the DTP vaccine. With so many attacks on health and science, what are specialised reporters and editors doing to counter this barrage of disinformation from the most powerful man on Earth? Do these messages have an impact around the world? And what are the challenges posed to the journalists covering these beats? To answer these questions and more, I spoke with five editors of science and health publications in the United States, South Africa, Kenya and Peru.
CONTENTS
- Government Data is Broken – Deleting access to datasets, censoring data, cancelling clincal trials, grants and funding for scientific, medical research and humanitarian aid
- Agencies eliminate, undermine government regulations, guidance, laws protecting public health and the environment
1. Data, Information, Reports, Guidance Continue to Disappear from Federal Government Websites
Preface – to call out three items of note for researchers:
Confirmed Data Terminations and Removals – Known as Dearly Departed Datasets Last updated 12/1/2025. This page memorializes the federal datasets and variables, as well as select data tools, that have been terminated or removed in 2025. This list does not include routine changes and terminations of datasets, but rather strives to capture losses to federal data that are extra-ordinary. Submit a deleted or terminated dataset. Read more about what this all means in this Federation of American Scientists blogpost.
FAS – “Below you’ll find a roundup of the spookiest federal data losses across USDA, SAMHSA, EPA, FEMA, and OMB. This carousel is not for the faint of heart, but I also wrote some context –and it’s not all doom and gloom. Read more here in the Federation of American Scientists blog: https://lnkd.in/eF-yD9Qf – Visit the dataset graveyard at EssentialData.US. We’ve identified three types of data decedents. Examples are below, but visit the Dearly Departed Dataset Graveyard at EssentialData.US for a more complete tally and relevant links.
- Terminated datasets. These are data that used to be collected and published on a regular basis (for example, every year) and will no longer be collected. When an agency terminates a collection, historical data are usually still available on federal websites. This includes the well-publicized terminations of USDA’s Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement, and EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, as well as the less-publicized demise of SAMHSA’s Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN). Meanwhile, the Community Resilience Estimates Equity Supplement that identified neighborhoods most socially vulnerable to disasters has both been terminated and pulled from the Census Bureau’s website.
- Removed variables. With some datasets, agencies have taken out specific data columns, generally to remove variables not aligned with Administration priorities. That includes Race/Ethnicity (OPM’s Fedscope data on the federal workforce) and Gender Identity (DOJ’s National Crime Victimization Survey, the Bureau of Prison’s Inmate Statistics, and many more datasets across agencies).
- Discontinued tools. Digital tools can help a broader audience of Americans make use of federal datasets. Departed tools include EPA’s Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping tool – known to friends as “EJ Screen” – which shined a light on communities overburdened by environmental harms, and also Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data (HIFLD) Open, a digital go-bag of ~300 critical infrastructure datasets from across federal agencies relied on by emergency managers around the country…”
Reminder – Tracking Government Information – We are tracking actions by the current administration that impact government information, such as: removed or modified documents and websites; language censorship; suspension or elimination of agencies, program, funding, or services; and collection of government data.
Also in the news and related to censorship, libraries and this administration 404 Media: “Last month, a company called the Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database announced a new version of a product called Class-Shelf Plus. The software, which is used by school libraries to keep track of which books are in their catalog, added several new features including “AI-driven automation and contextual risk analysis,” which includes an AI-powered “sensitive material marker” and a “traffic-light risk ratings” system. The company says that it believes this software will streamline the arduous task school libraries face when trying to comply with legislation that bans certain books and curricula: “Districts using Class-Shelf Plus v3 may reduce manual review workloads by more than 80%, empowering media specialists and administrators to devote more time to instructional priorities rather than compliance checks,” it said in a press release. In a white paper published by CLCD, it gave a “real-world example: the role of CLCD in overcoming a book ban.” The paper then describes something that does not sound like “overcoming” a book ban at all. CLCD’s software simply suggested other books “without the contested content.” Ajay Gupte, the president of CLCD, told 404 Media the software is simply being piloted at the moment, but that it “allows districts to make the majority of their classroom collections publicly visible—supporting transparency and access—while helping them identify a small subset of titles that might require review under state guidelines.” He added that “This process is designed to assist districts in meeting legislative requirements and protect teachers and librarians from accusations of bias or non-compliance […] It is purpose-built to help educators defend their collections with clear, data-driven evidence rather than subjective opinion.”
Librarians told 404 Media that AI library software like this is just the tip of the iceberg; they are being inundated with new pitches for AI library tech and catalogs are being flooded with AI slop books that they need to wade through. But more broadly, AI maximalism across society is supercharging the ideological war on libraries, schools, government workers, and academics. CLCD and Class Shelf Plus is a small but instructive example of something that librarians and educators have been telling me: The boosting of artificial intelligence by big technology firms, big financial firms, and government agencies is not separate from book bans, educational censorship efforts, and the war on education, libraries, and government workers being pushed by groups like the Heritage Foundation and any number of MAGA groups across the United States. This long-running war on knowledge and expertise has sown the ground for the narratives widely used by AI companies and the CEOs adopting it. Human labor, inquiry, creativity, and expertise is spurned in the name of “efficiency.” With AI, there is no need for human expertise because anything can be learned, approximated, or created in seconds. And with AI, there is less room for nuance in things like classifying or tagging books to comply with laws; an LLM or a machine algorithm can decide whether content is “sensitive.” …
When the Data Disappears, A Country Is Left in the Dark. Fulcrum, November 30, 2025. In the middle of the most chaotic news cycle in years, the most dangerous rollback of all has happened quietly: the systematic disappearance of federal data. Not data “updates,” not bureaucratic housekeeping — but the removal of tools that local officials and ordinary Americans rely on to understand pollution, disease, violence, discrimination, and climate change itself. The public’s ability to see reality is being eliminated. Experts call this “data degradation,” but the stakes go far beyond missing spreadsheets and webcams. When the government hides the information people need to protect themselves, it’s a clear sign of narrative control. Data that contradict the administration’s story disappear, and “truth” becomes whatever aligns with political interests rather than evidence. If these were random one-offs, you might chalk them up to sloppiness. But what’s disappearing are clusters around three themes: environmental risk, public health, and vulnerable communities, and facts that contradict favored political narratives. Pollution and Climate Risks Disappear – In early 2025, EPA quietly removed EJScreen, the nation’s key environmental justice tool. EJScreen revealed which communities — overwhelmingly Black, Latino, immigrant, and low-income — live with the heaviest toxic burdens. It guided lawsuits, lawmaking, and local organizing. Without it, communities can’t see cumulative risks or challenge industrial expansion. When the map disappears, environmental inequality becomes far easier for policymakers to ignore. Months later, NOAA fired the Climate.gov team, archived the site, and dismissed hundreds of scientists working on the next National Climate Assessment — the backbone of America’s climate-risk planning. Sea-level-rise tools, temperature datasets, and interactive maps vanished or reappeared empty. States, planners, insurers, utilities, and farmers depend on this infrastructure to model flooding, heat, drought, and economic risk. Climate denial today isn’t loud; it works by erasing the measurements that show what’s looming.
Report: The more than 15K ways Trump, Republicans have attacked or erased Black Americans. MassLive, November 30, 2025. See also report page, which includes a link to a tracker document. Since the second Trump administration took power in January, it’s engaged in a direct attack on Black Americans, and its impacts are piling up, according to a sprawling new report. The new Blackout Report by the nonprofit Onyx Impact details “15,723 distinct impact points—each one an instance in which Black opportunities, lives, or histories have been directly attacked” its authors asserted. “The harm is concrete and undeniable. Black businesses and entrepreneurs are being pushed out of jobs and contracts … [and] students are learning warped and incomplete history,” the report’s authors wrote. “Protections against discrimination are being slashed. Pathways to health, education, and opportunity are being blocked,” they continued. The report found that, among other things:
- 6,769 federal datasets at agencies ranging from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, to the U.S. Justice Department have been erased.
- More than 591 Black books were banned in 2025 across six states. The removed titles include works by Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and Ibram X. Kendi, according to Axios.
- More than $3.4 billion in federal grants were cut or frozen for programs that increased health, education and opportunity for the nation’s Black Americans.“The harm is concrete and undeniable. Black businesses and entrepreneurs are being pushed out of jobs and contracts … [and] students are learning warped and incomplete history,” the report’s authors wrote.“Protections against discrimination are being slashed. Pathways to health, education, and opportunity are being blocked,” they continued.
- 6,769 federal datasets at agencies ranging from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, to the U.S. Justice Department have been erased.
- More than 591 Black books were banned in 2025 across six states. The removed titles include works by Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and Ibram X. Kendi, according to Axios.
- More than $3.4 billion in federal grants were cut or frozen for programs that increased health, education and opportunity for the nation’s Black Americans…
Impact of AID being shuttered. Bloomberg, November 28, 2025 Trump’s decision to shutter the US Agency for International Development, which had led the global fight against infectious disease, has already resulted in more than 600,000 deaths, most of them children, according to modeling done by epidemiologist Brooke Nichols at Boston University [Note – Impact Metrics Dashboard – This dashboard visualizes the human impact of funding changes for aid and support organizations. Each metric represents real people affected by policy decisions. And it’s likely to get worse, according to a Bloomberg analysis of spending on global health, food aid, international disaster assistance, refugees and development.
Federal Data Are Disappearing, Washington Monthly, November 26, 2025. The erosion—and deliberate erasure—of government data by the Trump Administration threaten both public safety and the US economy, says former US chief data scientist Denice Ross. Monthly jobs numbers and the Census Bureau might be the first—and only—things that come to mind for many Americans when they think about federal data. But government data undergirds many of the everyday essentials Americans rely on, like weather forecasts and tornado warnings. Federal data keep track of crime and public safety, provide early warning of epidemics, and help farmers plan their crops. But all of that is under threat. To President Donald Trump, data are both a weapon and an enemy…Trump is suppressing, disappearing and even altering data to fit his agenda or to hide inconvenient truths about the impact of his actions. Earlier this fall, the U.S. Department of Agriculture ended its annual survey of hunger in America, just weeks before the recent government shutdown that paused food stamp benefits for millions of Americans. This summer, Trump fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after a weak jobs report he didn’t like. And as part of Trump’s campaign against “DEI,” government agencies have quietly altered at least 200 federal datasets to remove references to “gender” in favor of references to “sex,” according to an analysis by the Lancet. These active assaults on federal data have also been accompanied by neglect. Drastic cuts to the federal workforce, including by Elon Musk’s DOGE, have hollowed out capacity at many agencies to collect and maintain data, including data vital to US industries, agriculture and ordinary citizens..
CDC Quietly Turned Off Its Vaccine Search Tool. It’s Not Clear When It’s Coming Back. NOTUS, November 25, 2025. “I have heard that they are planning to ‘update it’ and shudder to think what that will mean,” Demetre Daskalakis, a former member of CDC leadership, told NOTUS. November 25, 2025. Over the summer, a government website that helped Americans find vaccines got a MAHA makeover. Then it stopped working altogether. The Trump administration removed language from Vaccines.gov that said “Vaccines can help you stay healthy” on June 24, according to a NOTUS analysis of previous versions of the site cached by web.archive.org. It also cut the site’s FAQ section explaining “The best way to protect yourself and your loved ones is to get the vaccines recommended for you” and — most critically — changed the search tool that allowed users to enter their ZIP code to find vaccination sites in their area.
Without US satellites, ‘we go dark’, tells climate monitor. PHYS.org, November 19, 2025. US budget cuts risk creating blind spots in Earth monitoring systems that would imperil weather forecasting and climate research for years to come, the deputy chair of a key UN-backed climate monitoring body warned in an AFP interview. Peter Thorne is the deputy chair of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), a little-known but crucial UN-backed program that tracks and evaluates data on the atmosphere, land and ocean “In the 30 years I’ve been in this game, we’ve always seen incremental improvements in our ability to diagnose the Earth system,” Thorne, who is also a professor at Ireland’s Maynooth University, told AFP. “This is possibly the first time we’re looking at an acute reversal in our capability to monitor Earth, just when we need it the most.” Humanity has more data than ever about the planet: from balloons tracking winds and bobbing sea floats gauging ocean heat, to satellites with sweeping views of glaciers, ice sheets and atmospheric pollution. But years of complacency and threats to funding from President Donald Trump’s current and proposed budget cuts in the United States are raising fears over the future of this global effort to understand Earth. This matters for climate change, but also for weather forecasts that inform farmers and provide early warnings for storms, floods, heat waves and drought, Thorne said. The issue was raised at COP30 in Brazil on Saturday by the technical body of the UN climate negotiations, which stressed the “vital importance” of monitoring and long-term data records.
State department to cut 38 universities from research program over DEI policies – The Guardian, November 19, 2025. Trump administration proposal would exclude elite schools that use diversity, equity and inclusion hiring practices. The memo, dated 17 November, recommends excluding institutions from the Diplomacy Lab – a program that pairs university researchers with state department policy offices – if they “openly engage in DEI hiring practices” or set DEI objectives for candidate pools. Elite institutions including Stanford University, Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, Duke University and the University of Southern California are among those marked for suspension, effective 1 January 2026. Other targeted schools include American University, George Washington University, Syracuse University and several University of California campuses.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the US Department of Labor, won’t publish an October employment report, and instead will incorporate those payroll figures into the November report set to be published after the Fed’s final meeting of the year. Bloomberg, November 18, 2025. The BLS couldn’t collect October household data, which informs key statistics like the unemployment rate, due to the record-long government shutdown, according to the administration. The November employment report will be published on Dec. 16, more than a week later than originally scheduled. Trump fired the head of the BLS after a negative jobs report this summer, and the agency’s independence has been subject to a higher level of scrutiny ever since. In the interim, US unemployment has been ticking upward, according to reports by non-governmental agencies. The president has repeatedly pushed for rate cuts from the central bank to accelerate the economy, but bond traders reacted to the BLS announcement by saying goodbye to any December reductions. (Also on Wednesday, Trump—having already threatened to fire the Fed Chair and attempted to fire a Fed governor—suggested he may turn his sights on one of his own.)
Personalized mRNA Vaccines Will Revolutionize Cancer Treatment—If Funding Cuts Don’t Doom Them. Scientific American, November 18, 2025. Vaccines based on mRNA can be tailored to target a cancer patient’s unique tumor mutations. But crumbling support for cancer and mRNA vaccine research has endangered this promising therapy.
State Department erases 15 pages of nuclear history — with no warning. Key historical records about the incident during the Reagan administration, known as the Able Archer 83 War Scare, were removed without explanation. November 13, 2025. The State Department has published more than 450 volumes, which include thousands of primary source records detailing the crafting of U.S. foreign policy dating back to the Lincoln administration. The thick, bound ruby buckram volumes are a staple on the bookshelves of many college history departments, where they remain an invaluable tool for students, scholars and authors. But in the internet era, FRUS has become a predominantly digital publication, hosted on the State Department’s website. And it is easier to delete digital records than to destroy books. This January, the State Department did just that when it republished on its website a volume about the Reagan administration — without 15 pages on the risk of inadvertent nuclear war sparked by a 1983 NATO exercise.
USDA searched for terms like ‘diversity,’ ‘climate modeling’ to target grants for cancellation. Reuters, November 13, 2025. The U.S. Department of Agriculture directed its staff to identify grants for possible termination in the early months of the second Trump administration by searching for more than two dozen specific words and phrases related to diversity and climate change, according to documents seen by Reuters. The effort was undertaken as part of a broad campaign across federal agencies to comply with President Donald Trump’s directives to end diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and climate regulation in the federal government. Trump has called DEI “racist” and “illegal” and pressured private entities like universities to also end diversity practices. He has called climate change a “con job.”
Texas A&M Tightens Rules on Talking About Race and Gender in Classes The New York Times gift link. November 11, 2025. The University’s Regents want to get their unruly faculty in line with the current American presidential administration’s broader pressure on public higher education to conform with its political beliefs and priorities. Do the increasing restrictions on expression and inquiry in higher education themselves merit a course of study? How soon will we get to the inevitable case of a professor getting fired for teaching a course about censorship? (previously) [more inside]
Trump slashed spending on clinical trials. Washington Post, November 11, 2025. The toll is starting to become clear. Grants for 383 clinical trials were terminated and the funding disruptions affected more than 74,000 trial participants, according to new research.
The Shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. Has Already Killed Hundreds of Thousands. The New Yorker, November 5, 2025. The short documentary “Rovina’s Choice” tells the story of what goes when aid goes. Film by Thomas Jennings and Annie Wong Text by Atul Gawande.
2. Agencies eliminate employees, terminate government regulations, guidance, laws protecting public health and the environment
The challenge of moving special education out of the Education Department. Politico, November 29, 2025. Some Republican lawmakers also want to ensure the federal government meets its legal obligations to students with disabilities as President Donald Trump seeks to shutter the agency. Advocates for children with disabilities — and even some Republican lawmakers — are warning that the federal government needs to preserve its special education programs as the Trump administration moves to dismantle the Education Department. The department oversees roughly $15 billion annually on programs that support students with disabilities and ensures states are providing them education, as well as investigating complaints that these children are facing discrimination. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has already launched plans to transfer her department’s elementary, technical and international programs to other agencies. So far, she hasn’t moved to offload the special education programs, which are required by a 50-year-old federal law. But officials have declined to rule out transferring them in the future. That worries advocates who say the move could undermine the federal government’s ability to guarantee children with disabilities get the education they are legally entitled to receive.
OPM says cuts to federal workforce surpassed 2025 goals. Federal News Network, November 25, 2025. The amount of separations is beyond Kupor’s previously shared target of reducing the federal workforce by 300,000 this year.The volume of separations is beyond Kupor’s previously shared targets for workforce reduction. In August, Kupor told WTOP News that he expected the government to shed 300,000 employees by the end of 2025 — down to a total of 2.1 million employees. Kupor’s post didn’t include specific targets for reduction or hiring in 2026. Along with sharing the workforce levels, Kupor’s blog post provided further implementation details of President Donald Trump’s executive order from Oct. 15, which outlined new federal hiring expectations. The goals he outlined reflect the current Trump administration’s emphasis on “maximum efficiency” and adherence to administration priorities within the federal workforce.As a reminder – the mass firing and forced retirement of federal employees was spearheaded by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) “Its stated objective was to modernize information technology, maximize productivity, and cut excess regulations and spending within the federal government. It was first suggested to Donald Trump by Elon Musk in 2024, and was officially established by an executive order on January 20, 2025. Members of DOGE filled influential roles at federal agencies that granted them enough control of information systems to terminate contracts from agencies targeted by Trump’s executive orders …DOGE has facilitated mass layoffs [firings, terminations, forced early retirements] and the dismantling of agencies and government funded organizations. It also assisted with immigration crackdowns and copied sensitive data from government databases…”
DOGE “cut muscle, not fat”; 26K experts rehired after brutal cuts. Government brain drain will haunt US after DOGE abruptly terminated. Ars Technica. November 24, 2025….As a result, agencies are now scrambling to assess the damage and rehire lost talent. However, her report documented that agencies aligned with Trump’s policies appear to have an easier time getting new hires approved, despite Kupor telling Reuters that the government-wide hiring freeze is “over.” As of mid-November 2025, “of the over 73,000 posted jobs, a candidate was selected for only about 14,400 of them,” Kamarck reported, noting that it was impossible to confirm how many selected candidates have officially started working. “Agencies are having to do a lot of reassessments in terms of what happened,” Kamarck told Ars, concluding that DOGE “was basically a disaster.”
“DOGE is not dead,” though, Kamarck said, noting that “the cutting effort is definitely” continuing under the Office of Management and Budget, which “has a lot more power than DOGE ever had.”
Science Jobs are Disappearing. WARN data in the DMV show thousands of jobs lost in 2025. We have covered a lot about the firings of federal employees, including many scientists, across the federal government. November 4, 2025. Those losses matter, and they matter profoundly. This piece is not meant to minimize them. It is about the other half of the story that rarely makes national headlines, the losses of thousands of people who do science around the government. Contractors and consultants. Nonprofits and other NGOs. University labs and research programs. Private firms that handle testing, analytics, and evaluation for agencies and communities. In a new analysis by SciLight, our fresh read of employee layoff data, covering Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia, shows organizations providing scientific services outside the government are being hit hard as well. The through-line is, unfortunately, grim. Wherever you look, scientific capacity is being lost. The current government shutdown only sharpens the point. When Washington stalls, the science ecosystem far beyond federal payrolls takes the shock. Option years for research contracts pause. Awards slip. Bridge funding evaporates. Private partners freeze hiring while they wait for clarity….That pain is real, and it radiates into the contractors, universities, and nongovernment organizations built to work alongside them. But what does this mean for the rest of the nation?
All government shutdowns disrupt science − in 2025, the consequences extend far beyond a lapse in funding. The Conversation, November 3, 2025. U.S. science always suffers during government shutdowns. Funding lapses send government scientists home without pay. Federal agencies suspend new grant opportunities, place expert review panels on hold, and stop collecting and analyzing critical public datasets that tell us about the economy, the environment and public health. In 2025, the stakes are higher than in past shutdowns. This shutdown arrives at a time of massive upheaval to American science and innovation driven by President Donald Trump’s ongoing attempts to extend executive power and assert political control of scientific institutions.
Trump administration announces dismantling of parts of Education Dept. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March seeking to close the department, but only Congress has the power to do that. Washington Post, November 18, 2025. The Education Department plans to announce Tuesday that it will move parts of the agency to other federal departments, a unilateral effort aimed at dismantling an agency created by Congress to ensure equal access to educational opportunity but long derided by conservatives as ineffective. Educator Secretary McMahon has acknowledged that only Congress can eliminate the department, but she has vowed to work to dismantle it from within. She has said the agency’s functions can easily be carried out elsewhere in the government, perhaps more effectively. This fall, she took a first step and moved career and technical education programs, including adult education and family literacy initiatives, to the Labor Department.
EPA to scrap lifesaving soot pollution limit. E&E News by Politico, November 25, 2025.The move could offer an early test of the Trump administration’s aggressive deregulatory agenda. Air pollution obscures the view of a person crossing a street Dec. 4, 2024, in Los Angeles. The Trump administration has crossed a key threshold in its campaign to toss a stricter air pollution standard for soot, in a move that threatens to erase one of the Biden administration’s core public health accomplishments. In a motion filed Monday evening, EPA attorneys asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to vacate the standard, which is predicted to save thousands of lives by tightening the exposure limit to a pollutant tied to a higher risk of strokes, lung cancer and other cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. The case could provide a landmark test of the agency’s ability under President Donald Trump to successfully pull off an industry-friendly agenda of regulatory rollbacks. In the newly filed motion, EPA echoed the arguments of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business advocates in faulting the Biden administration for allegedly taking a “regulatory shortcut” by adopting the stricter annual standard for the fine particles often dubbed soot without first conducting the “thorough review” required by the Clean Air Act. “EPA now confesses error,” the attorneys wrote, adding that the agency also should have put greater weight on the “extraordinary” compliance costs associated with the new limit. They urged a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit to rule before Feb. 7, when EPA is statutorily required to issue a first round of decisions on what parts of the country are flunking the stricter standard of 9 micrograms per cubic meter of air. Whether the panel will take that route, however, is very much an open question. “I think they’re going to reject it flat out,” Pat Parenteau, professor emeritus at Vermont Law and Graduate School, said in an interview. Parenteau noted that a 2001 Supreme Court ruling bars EPA from considering the potential compliance pricetag when setting what are formally known as National Ambient Air Quality Standards for soot and other common pollutants. The Trump administration’s current stance, he added, would also preclude regulators from revisiting those standards outside of a Clean Air Act review cycle even if a “health emergency” were to arise. The judicial panel, made up of a Biden appointee as well as members named by former President Barack Obama and former President Ronald Reagan, seemed inclined to uphold the 9-micrograms rule during oral arguments held last December on legal challenges brought by Kentucky and almost two dozen other Republican-leaning states.
The Trump administration is seeking to abandon a rule that sets tough standards for deadly soot pollution, arguing that the Biden administration did not have authority to set the tighter standard on pollution from tailpipes, smokestacks and other industrial sources. AP, November 25, 2025. The action follows moves by the administration last week to weaken federal rules protecting millions of acres of wetlands and streams and roll back protections for imperiled species and the places they live. In a separate action, the Interior Department proposed new oil drilling off the California and Florida coasts for the first time in decades, advancing a project that critics say could harm coastal communities and ecosystems. The Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule last year that imposed strict standards for soot pollution, saying that reducing fine particle matter from motor vehicles and industrial sources could prevent thousands of premature deaths a year.
EPA just approved new ‘forever chemical’ pesticides for use on food, Washington Post, November 22, 2025. Critics warn the EPA’s approvals of new PFAS pesticides could expose more Americans to “forever chemicals” through their food.
Northwestern to pay $75 million in deal with Trump administration to restore federal funding. AP November 29, 2025. Northwestern University has agreed to pay $75 million to the U.S. government in a deal with the Trump administration to end a series of investigations and restore hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research funding. President Donald Trump’s administration had cut off $790 million in grants in a standoff that contributed to university layoffs and the resignation in September of Northwestern president Michael Schill. The administration argued the school had not done enough to fight antisemitism. Under the agreement announced Friday night, Northwestern will make the payment to the U.S. Treasury over the next three years. Among other commitments it also requires the university to revoke the so-called Deering Meadow agreement, which it signed in April 2024 in exchange for pro-Palestinian protesters ending their tent encampment on campus. During negotiations, interim university president Henry Bienen said Northwestern refused to cede control over hiring, admissions, or its curriculum. “I would not have signed this agreement without provisions ensuring that is the case,” he said. The agreement also calls for Northwestern to continue compliance with federal anti-discrimination laws, develop training materials to “socialize international students” with the norms of a campus dedicated to open debate, and uphold a commitment to Title IX by “providing safe and fair opportunities for women, including single-sex housing for any woman, defined on the basis of sex, who requests such accommodations and all-female sports, locker rooms, and showering facilities.”
State department to cut 38 universities from research program over DEI policies – The Guardian, November 19, 2025. Trump administration proposal would exclude elite schools that use diversity, equity and inclusion hiring practices. The state department is proposing to suspend 38 universities including Harvard and Yale from a federal research partnership program because they engage in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) hiring practices, according to an internal memo and spreadsheet obtained by the Guardian. The memo, dated 17 November, recommends excluding institutions from the Diplomacy Lab – a program that pairs university researchers with state department policy offices – if they “openly engage in DEI hiring practices” or set DEI objectives for candidate pools. Elite institutions including Stanford University, Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, Duke University and the University of Southern California are among those marked for suspension, effective 1 January 2026. Other targeted schools include American University, George Washington University, Syracuse University and several University of California campuses.