Trump Administration’s Continued War Against Science, Research, Public Health and the Rule of Law – Part 10

Topical highlights on hundreds of anti-government actions conducted by this administration are the cornerstone of this series. The greater goal is to identify the consequences to many facets of the health and welfare of our nation – terms broadly used to encompass our nation’s democracy.

Using the anchor articles that follow, the focus of this part of the series is to identify escalating attacks against science and research achieved by cancelling funding, undermining the validity of public health practices, ending life saving foreign aid, and diverting funding allocated by Congress for a range of programs to the presidents personal projects to the detriment of America’s safety and security. A capstone for the prevailing sentiment of Americans as we move into 15 months of this administration is a recent poll that is headlined: “As the U.S. prepares for an extravagant celebration of its founding principles, fewer Americans see their country as exceptional…. Only about one-quarter of Americans say the U.S. stands above all other countries in the world…”

Steven E. Kahn, Cheryl A.M. Anderson, John B. Buse, Elizabeth Selvin; Misguided Brushes of a Pen Continue to Dismantle and Destroy Biomedical Research in the United States: We Can No Longer Afford Complacency and Fear. We Must All Act Now! Diabetes Care 20 May 2026; 49 (6): 901–905. https://doi.org/10.2337/dci26-0068 – Just a year ago, in these very pages, we highlighted the many threats the current U.S. administration posed to the health of our nation. Since then, there have been actions by the administration that have caused grave health consequences, and their current approach will continue to do so. The numerous measles outbreaks and associated avoidable deaths have resulted in part from hyping disproven theories of harm rather than publicizing the effectiveness of the measles vaccine. Plugging the concept that diabetes is curable by “changing the food source” simply ignores the large body of work that has demonstrated that it is not merely a disease of poor nutrition and the immense challenges of reinventing the food industry. Peddling conspiracy theories represents failures by officials of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), whose primary goal is to protect our health. These two examples represent just two of the broken promises made by the current HHS leadership during their confirmation hearings. And, despite promising oversight, representatives on Capitol Hill have shirked their responsibility and have allowed the country to continue along misguided paths that even they recognized as irresponsible.

Knowledgeable sources within and outside NSF have told Science about comparable cuts in many other units, including 60% for each of the three core research programs within the geosciences directorate. The agency’s biology directorate has been cut by $200 million from its FY 2025 level of roughly $800 million. And some directorates have been hit even harder. NSF is “dissolving” its smallest directorate, which funds social, behavioral, and economic sciences and has made only a handful of awards this fiscal year. The coming months could bring other cuts: For 2 years running, President Donald Trump has proposed slashing NSF’s $1 billion education directorate by nearly three-quarters.”

AP: As the U.S. prepares for an extravagant celebration of its founding principles, fewer Americans see their country as exceptional, a new poll finds. The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research highlights many Americans’ feeling of unease over the future of its representative government — particularly among young people. It presents a jarring contrast as communities around the country commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary. Only about one-quarter of Americans say the U.S. stands above all other countries in the world, the new poll found, while 44% say it’s one of the greatest countries in the world, along with some others. About 3 in 10 say there are better countries than the U.S., an increase from 19% in an AP-NORC poll conducted in June 2016. Americans remain divided about whether diversity is an essential feature of the U.S.’s identity, and agreement about other aspects of the country’s underlying character appears to be eroding, the survey found. Americans are less likely to see a democratically elected government as “extremely” or “very” important to the United States’ identity as a nation than they were just a few years ago. About two-thirds of U.S. adults now say a democratically elected government is highly important to the U.S.’s identity as a nation, down from 80% in 2021…”

CONTENTS

 

  1. DEI
  2. Dismantling and Destroying Biomedical Research in America
  3. Foreign AID
  4. Elections
  5. Continued Attacks on Federal Government Employees and Agency Missions – Loyalty to Trump Required
  6. Science, Biomedical Research, Healthcare
  7. Defense
  8. Energy and the Environment
  9. National Park Service Funds Redirected To Commercial Enterprises
  10. Food, Nutrition and Public Health
  11. US at War – Elon Musk’s AI
  12. Federal Employees
  13. E-Government, Privacy and Surveillance

Education, DEI, Censorship, Discrimination

Yale Seeks Trump Administration Deal as It Faces Sprawling Investigation. The New York Times, June 27, 2026. The university hired a high-powered law firm to try to reach an agreement with the Justice Department over claims its admissions practices hurt white and Asian applicants. The Trump administration is conducting a far-reaching investigation into whether Yale University’s admissions practices violate anti-discrimination laws, prompting one of the country’s most elite schools to pursue settlement talks with the government, according to three people briefed on the matter. The Justice Department last month accused Yale’s medical school of giving illegal preferential treatment to Black and Hispanic applicants. But the department’s review is reaching beyond the medical school, the people said, encompassing undergraduate and law school admissions as well. The expansive inquiry demonstrates the aggressive approach the Trump administration is taking to enforce its interpretation of the Supreme Court ruling that effectively banned race-conscious admissions three years ago. It shows the administration’s intensifying focus on admissions and represents a new front against Yale, which has largely been spared in the White House’s effort to punish elite colleges and reshape academia. Yale’s quick moves to try to reach an agreement with the government suggest it does not want a high-profile, drawn-out fight similar to the one involving Harvard University. The status of a potential agreement was unclear on Friday, but Yale recently offered a proposal to the government, according to the three people briefed on the matter. The people, who have ties to the Trump administration or to Yale, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks. On Friday, Yale referred to a statement it issued last month that said its medical school was “confident in the rigorous admissions process” and admitted students showed “exceptional academic achievement and personal commitment.” The Justice Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Disability Groups Fear RFK Jr.’s New Special Education Role. The New York Times, June 20, 2026. The Trump administration’s decision this week to put Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in charge of special education programs has sparked a sharp backlash from advocates for students with disabilities, who say the move will hurt children and that his views on autism make him unfit for the job. Mr. Kennedy said earlier this year that children with autism would never hold a job, play baseball or go on a date. He quickly walked back the remarks, saying he was only speaking about the most severe cases — only to insist the next day that special education should be moved into his department. “They’re health-related programs rather than particularly educated programs,” Mr. Kennedy said. Advocates for students with disabilities said that Mr. Kennedy’s comments show how the change puts disabled students at risk of being viewed as medical conditions to be treated instead of as boys and girls to be educated. “It shows a fundamental lack of understanding of who kids with disabilities are, how they can be successful in school and how their futures can be very bright,” said Katy Neas, chief executive officer of The Arc, a national support group for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The move is part of an extraordinary effort from the Trump administration to dismantle the Education Department, which supporters have said would improve government efficiency, lead to better results for students and satisfy a decades-long promise from Republicans to shutter the agency.

Secret Vetting and Blocked Promotions: Inside Hegseth’s War on Diversity. The New York Times, June 19, 2026. A Black admiral fixed one of the Navy’s worst messes. A Black admiral fixed one of the Navy’s worst messes. Mr. Hegseth blocked his promotion anyway. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has blocked the promotions of at least 40 senior officers to general and admiral ranks this year. About half of those are women or members of minority groups.

Trump administration removed dozens of national park exhibits that ‘disparage’ US. Reuters, June 17, 2026. Trump’s executive order ​took aim at what he ⁠called a “revisionist movement” that portrayed the United States as “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive or otherwise irredeemably flawed,” and directed changes be made to parks nationwide. At least 51 exhibits from 37 sites were subsequently removed or ​discarded in keeping with Trump’s directive. One of these was an exhibit at the former U.S. ​presidential mansion in ⁠Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park describing the ownership of enslaved people by George Washington, the first U.S. president.

The White House is proposing to make billions in federal grants pass a political test before agencies can award them, requiring Trump appointees to certify that the money “demonstrably advance[s]” the president’s priorities. The New York Times, June 2, 2026. The rule would restrict grants for projects tied to DEI, voter registration, or “anti-American values,” while giving the administration broad power to terminate awards it later decides aren’t in the “public interest.”

The Manhattan Institute Helped Kill DEI. Now It’s Coming for Protests. Wired, June 2, 2026. – The right-wing think tank is actively pushing “civil terrorism”—increasing penalties for minor crimes committed while people engage in constitutionally protected free speech. A right-wing think tank responsible for the emergence of zero-tolerance policing in 1990s New York City and the Trump administration’s scorched-earth campaign against “diversity, equality and inclusion” programs is behind state-level legislative efforts to classify minor protest-related crimes as “civil terrorism.” The Manhattan Institute, cofounded in 1978 by former Central Intelligence Agency director William Casey, is in the midst of a yearlong campaign to pass state-level legislation reclassifying minor crimes like vandalism, blocking a roadway, or trespassing during a protest as felonies that would carry 18-month prison sentences as punishment. The Manhattan Institute’s push to criminalize forms of nonviolent disobedience as a form of terrorism comes amid a broader Trump administration effort to crack down on leftist organizations, causes, and social movements, while recasting acts of nonviolent civil disobedience as potential crimes.

Dismantling and Destroying Biomedical Research in America

Diabetes researchers ejected from conference after criticizing White House. Five diabetes researchers, including the editor of a leading journal, were removed from the field’s premier conference in New Orleans on Friday morning, after handing out copies of an editorial criticizing the Trump administration’s “dismantling” of the biomedical research enterprise. Washington Post [no paywall] The incident occurred outside a conference hall where a keynote address had originally been scheduled to be given by Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, at a gathering organized by the American Diabetes Association. A group of about 10 researchers, including some of the field’s leaders, were quietly handing out printouts of an editorial published in Diabetes Care, a journal the association publishes, according to three of the participants. Security and police told them to leave at the direction of event organizers and confiscated some of their lanyards and ability to attend the conference…”

More than 300 scientists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) signed an open letter on Monday morning to director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, criticizing the Trump administration over recent moves. ABC, June 9, 2026. The letter, including 92 signed names and 250 anonymous but verified signatories, shares concerns that research is being politicized, global collaboration is being interrupted and that budget and staff cuts have hindered the ability of NIH to do important research. “[W]e dissent to Administration policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe,” the letter reads. “We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources.”

An Open Letter to the American Diabetes Association: Shame on You The Issue. On June 5th, during the early moments of the ADA Scientific Session, several ADA members were forcefully ejected from the meeting, threatened with arrest and had their attendance at the meeting revoked. Their “crime” was that they were passing out an editorial prepared and published by ADA members that appeared in Diabetes Care, an ADA publication, this month. The editorial was critical of government interference in science and the erosion of confidence as the Trump administration has undermined and politicized objective science and is poised to interfere with the approval process. In the main auditorium at the conference, Richard Woychick, PhD, senior advisor for the MAHA strategy to the NIH Director, Jay Bhattacharya (who had cancelled his scheduled appearance at the last minute) was preparing to speak. Dr. Woychick read his remarks from his phone, defending MAHA and the increasingly political oversight of and interference in scientific grant review and generally reassured the audience not to worry about the future of scientific research. Unbeknownst to the audience, our colleagues were being physically removed from the meeting by the police. Later in the morning, the ADA cravenly doubled down, noting in a press release that: “Five registrants were removed from our Scientific Sessions for violating the conference code of conduct, which they agreed to during the registration process. Our conference code of conduct expects that all participants will conduct themselves in a professional and respectful manner. This ensures that the meeting remains safe, productive, and centered on advancing diabetes science.” The encounter was and there was no evidence of disruptive or disrespectful behavior, other than the actions of the conference security. The attack on our scientific community is bad enough, but the seeming endorsement by the ADA of the current administration’s approach to science and of its attacks on freedom of speech is unconscionable. ADA’s removal of members for the “crime” of distributing an editorial published in an ADA journal is unfathomable. ADA leadership owes an apology to those involved in this unfortunate incident and to the ADA membership at large and needs to commit to a policy of freedom of expression and scientific inquiry at all times.

Police Remove Diabetes Experts From Conference for Distributing Critique of Trump Administration. The New York Times. June 5, 2026. Several of those escorted out were scheduled to present at the American Diabetes Association conference this weekend.

Foreign Aid

“A Huge Grab of Power”: Trump Is Defying Congress on Foreign Aid. After the Trump administration upended the world’s largest foreign aid provider last year, terminating thousands of programs and firing nearly all of its staff, its plan for the agency was clear: Eliminate it entirely. ProPublica, June 22, 2026. But because it is a congressionally created agency, President Donald Trump needed lawmakers’ permission to do so. So this year, Trump officials asked Congress for permission to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development and dramatically reduce federal spending on food, medicine and lifesaving work around the world. Congress said no. Lawmakers, who hold the government’s purse strings and have oversight of federal agencies, wanted USAID to remain, even in its diminished form. They detailed precisely how much the State Department should spend on foreign aid and for what, including $9.4 billion on global health to treat and prevent maladies like HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, and more than $5 billion on emergency humanitarian aid. They also insisted on regular, detailed reports about how the administration was spending the money. Trump signed the bill, enshrining their orders into law. Now, eight months into the fiscal year, Trump officials are failing to follow many of those orders, ProPublica has found. Officials have delayed spending on global health, have not issued funds for some projects and have labeled money destined for humanitarian aid as “unallocated” to control how it can be spent, according to a ProPublica review of government records and interviews with legal experts, current and former government employees, and members of Congress. And when lawmakers have asked about their actions, officials often have not responded. The White House and Congress have been battling over federal spending since Day 1 of the Trump administration, setting up a constitutional crisis — a breakdown of the division of power among the three branches of the federal government, according to several legal scholars. Nowhere has that crisis been more visible than with foreign aid. Last year, the administration took the unprecedented step of gutting USAID, terminating thousands of aid programs and letting funding expire, all without permission from Congress. Lawmakers did little to stop it. Now, in defying Congress on foreign aid that Trump himself agreed to spend, the administration is quietly escalating the battle. “It is a huge grab of power from the president, taking powers away from Congress,” said David Super, a professor of law and economics at Georgetown University and a leading scholar on administrative and constitutional law. USAID was created by Congress decades ago as a means of promoting American diplomacy and soft power around the world. As ProPublica previously reported, when Trump officials dismantled the agency last year, stopping payments on thousands of lifesaving programs that provided food, medicine and other supplies to impoverished nations, many people died, including children. Even with USAID in shambles, Congress has made clear that it expects the administration to continue providing foreign aid — in some cases, at nearly the level it did in previous years.

USAID was established in 1961 to end extreme global poverty, promote democracy, and advance U.S. interests. The Bulwark, June 30, 2026. In the five years prior to the second Trump administration, U.S. spending on foreign aid—a figure that includes but is not limited to the work of USAID—ranged from $35.6 billion to $61.2 billion per year, or less than 1 percent of the federal budget. It also typically accounted for over a quarter of total development assistance given by all countries put together. In some twenty developing countries, U.S. aid “equaled more than 10 percent of domestic health expenditure,” according to an analysis from the Center for Global Development; in one case, Afghanistan, American aid equaled three times the domestic health expenditure. In 2024, 50 to 60 percent of Côte D’Ivoire’s AIDS response was funded by the United States. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, that figure was 89 percent. And if we define success as saving lives, USAID was working. Not by itself, but alongside parallel investments by Global South governments, advocacy by people, and economic growth. One study estimates that USAID saved around 92 million lives over the last two decades, including 30.4 million children under 5. Since 1990, the world has more than halved the number of children dying before the age of 5, from 13 million a year to 4.9 million. Between 2000 and 2023, we cut maternal deaths by 40 percent. USAID is an important part of that story. These positive indicators are changing direction for the first time in thirty years. Around 200,000 more children are believed to have died in 2025 than in 2024. Over 1,300 health and family planning clinics have closed globally due to USAID cuts. Thousands of medical professionals were laid off. Studies show an increase in child marriages, violence against women and girls, and civil disorder, including riots and armed battles. Lancet modeling indicates USAID cuts may cause 14 million deaths, including those of 4.5 million children under age 5, by 2030.

Elections

Federal judge bars Trump from implementing proof of citizenship requirement to vote. AP, June 24, 2026. A federal judge on Wednesday permanently barred President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing most of his first executive order on elections, part of which sought to require people to show documentary proof of citizenship when they register to vote. The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper in Boston effectively converts a preliminary injunction she issued a year ago, in which she temporarily blocked many of Trump’s efforts to overhaul elections, into a permanent ban. Casper rejected the Republican administration’s argument that the lawsuit to block the changes brought by Democratic state attorneys general was premature because the rules had yet to be put in place. Instead, she agreed that the Constitution gives states and Congress the authority to regulate elections, and that Trump’s requirements violated the separation of powers.

Slashing Federal Funding For States

The Trump administration is threatening to withhold tens of millions of dollars in federal homeland security funds from states unless they adopt a sweeping set of election changes, according to multiple sources and internal documents obtained by CNN. CNN, June 22, 2026.The move is part of President Donald Trump’s campaign to root out alleged voter fraud — despite studies showing it’s far rarer than he claims — and exert more federal influence over how elections are run. It comes as multiple states have passed laws that seek to prevent the federal government from interfering with elections. Under new rules governing several homeland security grant programs, states must take a number of steps, including phasing out certain electronic voting systems and moving to hand-marked paper ballots. They must also run their voter rolls through a controversial Department of Homeland Security citizenship verification database. If not, states would lose out on some funding from DHS. These grants, expected to total more than $1 billion in the current fiscal year, are one of Washington’s main vehicles for helping state and local governments prevent terrorism, protect infrastructure and prepare for major disasters. For years, the DHS grants, which states apply for, have required that at least 3% of the funds be spent broadly on election security. But the new guidelines, which CNN obtained and are expected to go out to states later this month, impose a set of mandatory reforms and steep penalties for noncompliance. States that refuse would lose 20% of the grant money — potentially millions of dollars in security funds.

Continued Attacks on Federal Government Employees and Agency Missions – Loyalty to Trump Required

How Trump allies turned a consumer watchdog into a political weapon. The administration that tried to kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has found a new use for it: advancing political goals. Washington Post, June 8, 2026. The Trump administration came to Washington last year seeking to shutter the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog agency that had survived industry anger, Republican opposition and years of legal challenges. A year in, a much smaller bureau is still standing and has been remade to advance the president’s political goals. The bureau has begun to probe a class of smaller, mostly nonprofit lenders that Russell Vought, the acting director of the bureau, has characterized as unduly “woke.” On Friday, the bureau issued guidance that could make it harder for immigrants in the country illegally to obtain mortgages and credit cards. Meanwhile, the bureau’s public website invites consumers to complain if they have been refused service — or “de-banked” — for political or religious reasons, reflecting a priority of the administration and its allies in the conservative movement and the crypto industry.

Also The CFPB is Correcting Flaws to Restore Integrity and Utility to the Consumer Complaint System – [Note – the following statements from this agency press release is not factual – The consumer complaint portal has long been plagued by issues that severely limit its effectiveness in addressing consumers’ complaints and practical utility of its information. Recently, the CFPB has taken multiple concrete actions, including with Credit Reporting Agencies, to address these issues and is continuing its work to increase effectiveness of the process, while aligning it with the statutory authorities.

FACTS about CFPB prior to Trump administration – The CFPB has returned $21 billion+ in the forms of monetary compensation, principal reductions, canceled debts, and other consumer relief resulting from CFPB enforcement ($19.6 billion) and supervisory ($1.4 billion) work to more than 205 million consumers or consumer accounts. Learn more about the CFPB’s work by the numbers. 

U.S. General Services Administration released the Elimination, Optimization and Automation (EOA) Handbook, a practical guide for federal leaders seeking to improve operational efficiency, strengthen mission delivery, and reduce administrative burden through process improvement and emerging technologies. The handbook compiles lessons learned and best practices from implementation efforts launched during the first Trump Administration. Drawing from operational deployments at GSA, the Department of Education, and NASA, it provides agency executives with tools and strategies to improve operations and automate repetitive tasks so employees can focus more time on mission-critical responsibilities….The handbook supports President Trump’s priorities of improving government efficiency, strengthening accountability, and accelerating the responsible adoption of emerging technologies across federal agencies.  It also reflects GSA’s continued focus on improving how government services are delivered, with an emphasis on speed, clarity, and practical execution rather than process for process’s sake.  The handbook outlines approaches agencies can use to:

  • Eliminate unnecessary or duplicative activities
  • Expand employee capacity for higher-value work
  • Optimize workflows and mission-support operations
  • Automate repetitive tasks…”

SCIENCE, BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH, HEALTHCARE

Trump moves “religious freedom” to the center of health policy. Developer, June 30, 2026. The Trump administration is making clear it wants religious refusal claims at the center of federal health policy, not at the margins. HHS has now formally reorganized its Office for Civil Rights to elevate “conscience and religious freedom” enforcement, saying the new structure is meant to protect conscience rights, combat “anti-Christian bias,” and “restore biological truth.”

The Guardian reports that newly-obtained documents show that, contrary to what Kennedy claimed in his confirmation hearing last year, he did travel to Samoa in 2019, when he was chair of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group, in order to study the health of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children. June 25, 2026. Kennedy has denied that the trip was for the purpose of comparing children who had and had not been vaccinated against measles — reportedly a longtime goal of Kennedy’s in order to establish that vaccines were not necessary by using unvaccinated children as guinea pigs.Kennedy’s trip took place in the aftermath of a decline in vaccination rates for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) in Samoa, following the 2018 deaths of two infants who had received tainted vaccines. The Samoan government then temporarily halted the MMR vaccine. Even though it had resumed the vaccination program by the time Kennedy arrived in 2019, officials said his visit boosted anti-vaccine sentiment there. A measles outbreak followed his visit, resulting in 83 deaths, mostly of children. The new documents The Guardian obtained show that, contrary to Kennedy’s repeated claim to the Senate that his trip “had nothing to do with vaccines,” his colleague, Michael Graven, who died in 2022, told Samoan officials during trip planning that he would “evaluate outcomes associated with the recent discontinuity in vaccinations.” After the trip, Kennedy continued to push for such comparative studies, and, as HHS secretary, has pushed the agency to conduct them. (According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, “When a safe, effective vaccine already exists against a disease, giving children in the placebo group no protection against that disease is unethical.”) The New York Times raises additional red flags about whether Kennedy and his aides deliberately hid his anti-vaccine efforts from senators prior to their vote to confirm him. Democrats on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) this week obtained and released a tranche of internal emails from Dr. Debra Houry, who was at the time the chief medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control. Houry told the Times that early in Trump’s term, numerous HHS websites were taken down following Trump’s directive to purge any information he considered to be “DEI.” But before the Senate had confirmed Kennedy, his hand-picked aides at the agency “feared that removing vaccine-related pages might endanger Mr. Kennedy’s chances of being confirmed,” and ordered most of them restored.

Internal emails show how RFK Jr.’s team sought to sway the CDC. CBS News, June 26, 2026. A trove of newly released internal emails offers a new look at how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention navigated some of the most controversial public health decisions of President Trump’s second term — and, at times, chafed at pressure from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his team. The emails span from the administration’s early days — when HHS sought to shut down a flu vaccine advertising campaign — to the dramatic firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez last August. They were formally released Thursday by Democrats on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which said it obtained them from Dr. Debra Houry, the CDC’s former chief medical officer who resigned after Monarez was ousted. The committee’s ranking member, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, argued the emails show Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, “prioritized politics over public health, ignored expert guidance, and endangered people, particularly children.”

NSF slashes research programs to support new tech initiative, insiders say. Science. June 22, 2026. Unexpected shift in funds has meant sharp drop in grants this fiscal year. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is trimming this year’s budgets for hundreds of its traditional basic science programs by 20% to 30% or more even though its overall budget is down just 3%, Science has learned. NSF has not publicly explained the drastic cuts. But sources within and outside the agency, who did not want to be named, say they suspect the goal is to free up funds for a new $1.5 billion initiative, launched last month, meant to turn NSF-funded discoveries into new products and industries. Last month, when NSF announced plans to give perhaps a half-dozen “X-Labs” as much as $300 million each over 6 years, it did not explain where the money would come from. Rumors have circulated for months that NSF was withholding $1 billion or more of the $8.1 billion Congress approved earlier this year for its eight research directorates. An internal memo obtained by Science documents, for the first time, the extent of those cuts in some fields. Julia Phillips, a former member of NSF’s now-defunct National Science Board, is troubled by both the cuts to basic research and the applied focus of the new initiative. “NSF’s mission is to support discovery research, which is also the basis for any new technology,” she says. “This sudden change in direction reflects a total lack of understanding of how science is done.” NSF declined comment. The 18 June memo, from the head of a unit within NSF’s math and physical sciences directorate, told program managers the unit’s budget for this fiscal year, which ends on 30 September, has been cut by 30% from its FY 2025 level of about $260 million. “This [cut] will unfortunately affect all [core] programs as well as centers, facilities, and other initiatives. … We are sorry to share this bad news right before the [Juneteenth] holiday weekend.” The memo also helps explain why the foundation has handed out so few new grants this year compared with last year at this time—just one-eighth of the FY 2025 total through 15 June, the watchdog group Grant Witness has calculated—despite a research budget that is only $220 million less than in FY 2025. “We just learned about our section budget for FY26,” the memo explains. Program managers are cautious about recommending proposals to fund until they know how much money they have to spend. The memo indicates that this year, some units did not learn their actual budgets until mid-June, 5 months after Congress had approved the agency’s FY 2026 appropriation. The memo’s bad news extends beyond the slashed budget. It directs the section’s 15 program managers to stop requesting funding for any proposals, even those that received the highest marks from outside reviewers and program staff, “until we are able to provide more details.” It even suggests staff “pull back any award recommendations in the queue,” a step that makes it less likely they would be funded this year. Program managers would normally rush to tell potential and current grantees about such dramatic changes. But the memo tells program managers to keep their mouths shut. “This information is highly confidential,” it reads. “Please do not communicate anything to PIs [principal investigators].”

Knowledgeable sources within and outside NSF have told Science about comparable cuts in many other units, including 60% for each of the three core research programs within the geosciences directorate. The agency’s biology directorate has been cut by $200 million from its FY 2025 level of roughly $800 million. And some directorates have been hit even harder. NSF is “dissolving” its smallest directorate, which funds social, behavioral, and economic sciences and has made only a handful of awards this fiscal year. The coming months could bring other cuts: For 2 years running, President Donald Trump has proposed slashing NSF’s $1 billion education directorate by nearly three-quarters.

U.S. Science Is in Chaos. “The prevailing emotions among scientists right now are rage and shock.” Scientific American, June 16, 2026. “This compact that has existed since World War II, that made the U.S. the successful, prosperous nation that it is, is being dismantled.

White House Seeks to Impose Political Test on Billions in Federal Grants. The New York Times, June 2, 2026. A new proposal would allow the administration to block grants if they do not satisfy President Trump’s agenda or support what it calls “anti-American” values. The White House is seeking to exert more control over billions of dollars in annual government grants, aiming to restrict a vast swath of funding — in health, housing, science and transportation — so that it primarily serves the purposes and organizations politically aligned with President Trump. While the administration says that its primary goal is to safeguard taxpayer money, its proposal amounts to a major escalation in its attempt to reimagine the nation’s spending, even as Congress and the courts continue to rebuke the president for abusing such powers. Mr. Trump’s ambitions were made clear in a roughly 400-page blueprint that was released to little fanfare on Friday. If finalized, it would require all federal grants to be approved by the president’s political appointees, who must ensure that the money would “demonstrably advance the president’s policy priorities.”

Requiring a new level of agency review over federal grant funds, which essentially formalizes the politicization of U.S. scientific research. The Federal Register, May 29, 2026.

Defense

Donald Trump’s new acting director of national intelligence is ordering cuts on his very first day on the job, as he moves aggressively to carry out the president’s mandate to shrink the country’s national intelligence apparatus. Politico, June 22, 2026.Bill Pulte, who officially started at the intelligence coordination hub Friday, directed ODNI staff late Thursday to pull together a list of about 300 candidates to be fired from the National Counterterrorism Center in the coming weeks, per two people with knowledge of the plans, granted anonymity due to fear of persecution. The NCTC is “staffed by more than 1,000 personnel from across the IC, the Federal government, and Federal contractors,” according to ODNI’s website.

Cuts deepen the debate over the politicization of intelligence agencies Washington Post June 26, 2026. Tulsi Gabbard made deep cuts to the intelligence community during her time as director of national intelligence. Her replacement has decided she didn’t go far enough. Acting director of national intelligence Bill Pulte started firing and reshuffling intelligence staff this week, our colleagues Ellen Nakashima and Warren P. Strobel reported Thursday. Gabbard had already cut the staff of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence by 40 percent before she left, and Pulte is carrying out President Donald Trump’s request to cut back even further. Trump’s administration also has plans to sharply reduce the size of the CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies over several years. It’s hard to tell exactly what the impact of these cuts will be, given the intelligence community’s opacity. But experts are concerned that the layoffs are indicative of a broader politicization of America’s intelligence agencies — and pose a threat to lawmakers’ ability to make informed decisions on national security matters. “It’s absolutely critical that [lawmakers] have good intelligence and understand what they’re seeing,” said Elaine Kamarck, the director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution. “They need this to determine budgets, they need this to determine force structures.”

Energy And The Environment

The Trump administration will pay $765 million to abandon four offshore wind leases. The New York Times, June 17, 2026.The government has spent roughly $2.5 billion to cancel offshore wind projects. Invenergy had paid about $800 million for the leases under Biden, and will instead use the money to develop at least five natural gas plants, along with geothermal projects in the West. It’s the Interior Department’s third lease-surrender agreement since March after courts blocked the Trump administration’s attempts to stop five wind farms already under construction.

  • Social Security retirees could face an average $500 monthly cut in 2032 if Congress lets the retirement trust fund run dry, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The group says a projected 24% benefit cut would affect 63 million current beneficiaries unless Congress changes taxes, benefits, or funding before then. (CNBC)
  • The Trump administration is diverting at least $90 million in national park entry fees to Washington, D.C. projects tied to July 4 and America’s 250th anniversary. The money includes $1.6 million for fireworks and $76 million for fountain repairs, even as the park system faces a $24 billion maintenance backlog and recent staffing cuts have already strained basic operations. (Washington Post)

National Park Service Funds Redirected To Commercial Enterprises

The Trump administration is diverting at least $90 million in national park entry fees to Washington, D.C. projects tied to July 4 and America’s 250th anniversary. Washington Post, [no paywall] June 3, 2026. The Trump administration is diverting at least $90 million from entry fees to national parks such as Yellowstone and Yosemite to D.C. to fund a $1.6 million fireworks display — <a “https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2026/05/22/record-breaking-860000-fireworks-planned-trumps-july-fourth-show/” href=”https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2026/05/22/record-breaking-860000-fireworks-planned-trumps-july-fourth-show/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>more than five times as much as what is usually spent on the Fourth of July pyrotechnics display — and $76 million to repair fountains including the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, according to internal agency documents reviewed by The Washington Post. The National Park Service documents reveal the extent of the administration’s increasing spending on high-priority D.C. projects, including efforts to prepare Washington for the 250th anniversary of America’s independence.

Trump Administration Opens Three Protected Pacific National Monuments to Commercial Fishing. Oceans, June 11, 2026. President Donald Trump signed a proclamation to allow commercial fishing in three marine national monuments in the Pacific Ocean – Papahānaumokuākea, the Islands Unit of the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument, and the Rose Atoll Marine National Monument. Marine national monuments are established in areas with pristine ocean ecosystems and abundant fish and other wildlife with the intention of protecting them from harm.

FOOD, NUTRITION AND PUBLIC HEALTH

At least 776,000 children have lost SNAP benefits since Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill took effect. ProPublica, June 17, 2026. While Republican promised that children and the “most vulnerable” would be protected, an analysis of 12 states that report SNAP participation by age found that children accounted for 46% of the 1.67 million people who lost SNAP benefits. USDA data also shows 4.3 million fewer people nationwide received SNAP than a year earlier.

New Plan Scales Back C.D.C.’s Work on Diseases Abroad The State Department is taking over much of the control of global health initiatives, for which critics say the department does not have the expertise. Even as the world is racing to contain the deadly Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Trump administration is moving ahead with a plan that could decimate support for programs that detect and snuff out exactly such outbreaks. The new plan, proposed by the State Department, aims to overhaul the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s work on a landmark global H.I.V. program that also helps countries manage surveillance for emerging diseases, strengthen laboratory networks and support childhood immunizations. If the plan goes into effect on Oct. 1 as scheduled, it would effectively shut the agency out of overseeing many global health programs and shift control over the bulk of funds and decisions to the State Department. The changes may sideline the country’s premier experts on global health and could lead to the closure of about a third of its 60 country offices within the next three years, according to some officials with knowledge of the programs. “This is the end of autonomy and independence and long-term capacity at the C.D.C. for work in global health,” said Dr. Atul Gawande, a former head of global health at the U.S. Agency for International Development and a professor at Harvard Medical School. The proposal is intended to diminish the agency’s authority in the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, a program credited with saving 26 million lives since it was created by the administration of President George W. Bush in 2003. Before 2025, U.S.A.I.D. managed more than half of PEPFAR’s budget, and the C.D.C. handled much of the rest. The changes may jeopardize the health of the more than 12 million people on H.I.V. treatment supported by C.D.C. funds, said Dr. Michele Montandon, who led the agency’s team on mother-to-child transmission of H.I.V. until she was laid off in August.

US at War – Elon Musk’s AI

Trump’s Pentagon Admits to Using Elon Musk’s Faulty AI to Conduct Strikes. The New Republic, June 17, 2026. The Department of Defense has now admitted in a sworn court statement that it used Elon Musk’s Grok AI to fire 2,000 missiles at 2,000 separate targets during the Iran war.

FEDERAL EMPLOYEES

National Archives to transition out of three federal records centers. The decision is expected to cut costs and reduce the agency’s real estate portfolio, but it’s not yet clear how the moves will impact NARA employees.

Snapshot Report: Status of the IRS’s Workforce as of January 2026 June 9, 2026 Report Number: 2026-IE-R009 – According to IRS records, 31,273 employees separated, took a DRP offer, or used some other incentive to leave the agency during the one-year period between January 2025 and January 2026. These departures represent approximately 30 percent of the IRS’s workforce and impact certain business units more than others. The IRS began to backfill select positions. As of January 2026, approximately 2,000 employees have been hired. As a result, the net effect on IRS staffing was a decrease of 28 percent. Overall workforce reductions have impacted employees in certain IRS business units and positions (job series) more than others. For example, approximately 33 percent of revenue agents and approximately 32 percent of tax examiners separated from the IRS. Revenue agents conduct examinations (audits) by reviewing financial records of individuals and businesses to verify what is reported. Tax examiners are responsible for reviewing and processing federal tax returns to ensure compliance and accuracy. The following graphics show the business units and job series impacted the most.

E-GOVERNMENT, PRIVACY & SURVEILLANCE

Redesign of US government websites stokes surveillance fears – The Guardian, June 28, 2026: “The National Design Studio, staffed by Doge veterans, installed visitor-tracking software on vital federal website. An opaque White House office staffed largely by veterans of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has quietly rebuilt some of the federal government’s most sensitive websites – for passport applications, voter registration, prescription-drug pricing and children’s savings – in ways critics say appear to violate federal law. The National Design Studio (NDS) was established by a Donald Trump executive order last August, and is led by Trump-aligned Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia and staffed by Doge veterans. A Guardian investigation has found the office has apparently been developing or redeveloping sensitive federal websites, including those connecting Americans with prescription drugs, children’s savings accounts, passports and voter registration. The investigation corroborates and advances earlier reporting by the Drey Dossier, a YouTube investigative outlet. The NDS built and now operates four public federal websites: ndstudio.gov, trumprx.gov, realfood.gov and trumpaccounts.gov. All four ran commercial visitor-tracking software, configured to evade the privacy tools many web users install, and none carry the public filings federal privacy law requires under laws including the Privacy Act of 1974 and the E-Government Act of 2002. Separately, none of the NDS’s spending or its arrangements with outside vendors appears in USAspending, the federal contracting database, raising questions about how it is funded and overseen. Separately, the NDS has also built and runs White House-controlled versions of services the US Congress assigned to other federal agencies, including a passport-application portal that bypasses the state department’s existing site, and a copy of voter-registration site vote.gov. Combined, the sites route sensitive interactions Americans have with their government through infrastructure the White House apparently controls, and outside the reporting and accountability systems that normally cover federal agencies…”

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