Trump Administration’s Continued War Against Science, Research, Public Health and the Rule of Law – Part 9

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. We should be prepared for significant work to be undertaken after the 2026 midterm elections and the general election in November 2028. This series is a pathfinder to identify what must be restored or recreated and relaunched, if possible, when we commence the hard work of rebuilding our government. The Nation sums up the scale of the work that awaits us:

We Need to Prepare for the Mammoth Task of De-Trumpification. The Nation April 20, 2026. The damage he and his cronies have wrought could take decades to repair, particularly when it comes to science and public health…The De-Trumpification of buildings and other edifices of our narcissist in chief, and the melting down of his commemorative gold coins, will fill many of us with joy, but the effects of this monster’s reign will be long-lasting. There will be a long road to recovery, in many cases, with damage that will take decades to repair. In public health, biomedicine, and other sciences alone, we have a generational task ahead of us. Just to rebuild what we’ve lost will take a “Marshall Plan” for these fields. Whole agencies have been decimated; divisions dissolved, thousands of civil servants who made these places run fired, data erased, key bodies like the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices populated by cranks and quacks, others like the US Preventive Services Task Force put in limbo, and study sections and advisory councils at NIH thrown into disarray. Procedural rat-fucking has slashed the number of grants funded, while capable leaders are replaced by cronies and ideologues, often with little professional expertise or experience.

Our road to rebuilding is a long one. This article, the ninth in a series focusing on the Trump administration’s strategy of normalizing relentless attacks on science, healthcare, public health and democratic norms and values, helps define the scope of the work that lays ahead. The attacks are part and parcel of actions executed in rapid succession with little and often no mainstream media coverage, nor oversight action by Congress. Over the course of sixteen months this administration has used Executive Orders, presidential edicts issued via Truth Social that nullify official government communications, and agency wide policies to execute sweeping changes that dismantle the administration, staffing and operations of every federal agency. Make no mistake, this anti-government crusade was launched long before Donald Trump, MAGA and RFK Jr.’s MAHA political movement. Rejection of childhood vaccines and public health guidelines as well as climate denial have deep roots in the GOP and libertarian think tanks. MIT Press articleFrom Anti-Government to Anti-Science: Why Conservatives Have Turned Against Science states: “this distrust was cultivated by conservative business leaders for nearly a century ago…[and] took strong hold during the Reagan administration, largely in response to scientific evidence of environmental crises that invited governmental response. Science – particularly environmental and public health science – became the target of conservative anti-regulatory attitudes. We argue that contemporary distrust of science is mostly collateral damage, a spillover from carefully orchestrated conservative distrust of government.”

This administrations has relied on a voluminous, comprehensively detailed playbook, Project 2025, built upon the goals initiated by Ronald Reagan and his top administration officials, to execute sweeping and dangerous changes. The sweeping success of the Heritage Foundation sponsored Project 2025 was heralded by its President, Kevin Roberts, on June 1, 2026:

Project 2025, the right-wing plan to reshape the United States, has largely become a reality, according to the plan’s architect. The head of a major conservative think tank is now thanking President Trump for carrying out the radical plan since returning to office. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts recently appeared on C-SPAN, where he was asked, “Did the president implement Project 2025 in this first year plus of his second term?” Declaring that Heritage has been presenting “presidential transition projects,” also known as “mandates for leadership,” for incoming presidents since 1980, Roberts explained that “what’s known as Project 2025 was done on such a scale that we proposed 1,913 recommendations. One thousand fifty-five, as we sit here, have been implemented. The person who deserves credit for that is one Donald J. Trump.” The clip of Roberts boasting of the success of the Heritage Foundation’s proposals was reposted on social media by Headquarters, which recently relaunched as a liberal counterweight to conservative initiatives like Project 2025.

Engaged citizens should participate in chronicling each of these changes in detail to effectively counterbalance them and reinstitute the rule of law. During the interim, headlines like these should help drive our efforts to identify the threats that need remediation:

Two of the most prominent anti-vaccine groups, Children’s Health Defense and Informed Consent Action Network, have spent nearly $50 million on legal expenses since 2016, according to a Post analysis of publicly available tax records. Holland’s group spent at least $21 million, with ICAN spending at least $28 million. Some of that money has gone toward fighting vaccine mandates, but it is unclear how much. “There are cases moving towards the Supreme Court from many different corners that are going to bring to a head this conflict and create this legal reckoning,” Mary Holland, head of the anti-vaccine group Kennedy founded, Children’s Health Defense, told a crowd of supporters in D.C. in March. “The truth is on our side, the ethics are on our side, the science is on our side, and the law is on our side. Let us win.”….Two of the most prominent anti-vaccine groups, Children’s Health Defense and Informed Consent Action Network, have spent nearly $50 million on legal expenses since 2016, according to a Post analysis of publicly available tax records. Holland’s group spent at least $21 million, with ICAN spending at least $28 million. Some of that money has gone toward fighting vaccine mandates, but it is unclear how much.

Hospitals See Diseases Resurge as Vaccinations Decline. Doctors in the U.S. are encountering more children with bacterial infections and other serious illnesses, as well as more adults refusing tetanus shots.

The American Medical Association came out swinging this weekend at an executive order President Trump signed Friday that reaffirms intentions to model US childhood vaccine recommendations after those of Denmark—a country with universal healthcare, less diversity, and a population about the size of Maryland’s.

Why Wildfire Experts Are So Worried About This Year’s Fire Season. With a puny snowpack in the Western mountains and a widespread drought, the nation is a tinderbox. A reorganization of federal firefighting efforts and the departure of many staff qualified to join the fight are heightening concern.

We’re now officially in Danger Season 2026—the period between May and October when North America experiences its worst climate impacts—and we should expect disinformation to ramp up on social media and other platforms. It’s the time when maintaining what I call the “safety chain” matters most. When this chain is strong, we have what we need to understand the extreme weather and disasters worsened by climate change that may be coming our way, be ready for them, and recover from them as quickly and humanely as possible. Unfortunately, there’s not a link in this chain the Trump administration, and particularly the Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought, hasn’t weakened by cutting funding, firing scientists, refusing oversight, evading accountability, and spreading outright disinformation. When climate change impacts collide with an anti-science administration whose policies are hurting us economically, Danger Season is triply dangerous.

In light of the five alarm fires that are sweeping across America, both literally and metaphorically throughout our government and society, the thread that is woven into this series is the primary color – red. The entries in each topical section identify a red alert to draw attention to the deletion of foundational institutional knowledge and expertise, data and decades of research – compiled, analyzed and made available to the public who funded it. The first eight articles in this series cataloged a growing tsunami of actions to: eliminate these government repositories as well as the associated jobs of federal employees; terminate billions in research grants to universities and public health organizations; close government agencies including the USAID and the Department of Education; fire or force 10,000 government attorneys out of their jobs; shutter America’s diplomatic missions and curtail foreign diplomacy; defund public broadcasting; and censor museums, the arts, and libraries.

Alongside the antiscience crusade, this administration’s attacks on education, in the public and private sector, as well as in the military academy, weaponizing anti-DEI rhetoric, continue to be unprecedented. A flood the zone strategy to apply censorship in the public education system, as well as politicisation of the military, is a key indicator of the broader intent of this administration of curtail civil liberties. As attorney Harry Lipman wrote in his May 28, 2028 Substack: “President Trump signed Executive Order 14185, directing the nation’s military academies to stop “promoting, advancing, or otherwise inculcating” theories deemed “un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist, and irrational”—a list of adjectives so elastic it could mean whatever the administration needed it to mean on any given day. The order’s specific mandates were as revealing as its amorphous prohibitions. Faculty were forbidden from teaching that America’s founding documents are racist or sexist. And they were required, affirmatively, to teach that America and its founding documents remain “the most powerful force for good in human history.” West Point implemented the order through a new Academic Engagement Policy, DPOM 03-24, requiring civilian faculty to obtain prior approval from department heads before many external engagements. The policy subjected every word Bakken wrote or spoke within his area of expertise to administrative review and potential suppression if the content conflicted with Executive Orders or bureaucratic instruction. A companion classroom directive, delivered orally by West Point’s Dean, told faculty to stop sharing their personal opinions while teaching.” A lawsuit challenging this executive order, Bakken v. United States Military Academy, was brought by a civilian law professor who has taught at West Point since 2000. “In its reply to Bakken’s lawsuit, the administration offered a series of institutional arguments—ensuring consistent messaging, alerting leadership to faculty appearances, preparing officials for public questions—while also urging the court to defer to military judgment. U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel found every one of those justifications to be post-hoc rationalization, unsupported by evidence of any actual harm the policy was designed to cure. The real purpose of the policy was to demonstrate, in the words of two of Bakken’s own West Point colleagues—one a departmental head and vice chair of the Faculty Council, the other the head of his own department—“radical compliance” with the new administration, in other words, a way to protect senior West Point leadership by showing their obedience to Trump. The government never seriously disputed that characterization.”

Another key administration strategy is to enforce compliance with Trump’s demand for loyalty to himself and to his political agenda. He asserts that his presidency has the power to determine what is true and require that all proclaim it. A double pronged example of loyalty testing and an attack on the career workforce was initiated in May 2026 by the Office of Personnel Management [OPM] using a proposed Confidential Government Information Nondisclosure Agreement. If employees do not comply with the terms, they can be fired at will. This maximalist assertion of presidential power, as described by Charlie Savage is exemplified by OPMs effort to implement blanket wide NDAs for all federal employees and contractors regardless of security classification. This proposed action is likely to be implemented, with little chance of resistance. Under Trump, the National Labor Relations Board [NLRB] no longer exists to protect federal employees, and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) has been constrained from action on behalf of employees impacted by ongoing reduction in force [RIF] actions. Congress has taken no action to counterbalance the administration’s attacks on federal employees as this administrations presses the limits of its power to dismantle the federal government.

CONTENTS

  1. Medicine, Healthcare, Science, Research and Public Health
  2. Education – DEI – Data – Censorship – Discrimination
  3. Weather, Climate, Disaster Planning and the Environment

Medicine, Healthcare, Science, Research and Public Health

The U.S. National Science Foundation was established as a federal agency in 1950 when President Harry S. Truman signed Public Law 81-507, the “National Science Foundation Act of 1950.” Since then, NSF has supported basic research — research driven by curiosity and discovery — at colleges, universities and other organizations across the country for over seven decades. While NSF has grown and evolved since 1950, its mission has remained the same: “To promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; and to secure the national defense; and for other purposes.”

MIT President: Why so many optimistic scientists are losing heart. High-impact science is being damaged and derailed. Stat, May 27, 2026.

RFK Jr.’s War on Science Is Really a War on Scientists. The Bulwark, May 12, 2026. A unified theory that makes sense of MAHA’s contradictions—and Kennedy’s place in the Trump administration.

Kennedy Is Driving a Vast Inquiry Into Vaccines, Despite His Public Silence [Gift Article]. New York Times, May 11, 2026. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has toned down his public criticism of vaccines, under orders from the White House. But inside his department, a sprawling research effort is a top priority. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said little publicly about vaccines in recent months, at the behest of a White House worried that his unpopular stance will hurt Republicans in November’s midterm elections. But he has not abandoned his quest for evidence that they are unsafe. Working behind the scenes, Mr. Kennedy is spearheading an intense push, across health agencies under his purview, for government scientists and federal data contractors to examine his long-held theory that vaccines are helping to fuel an epidemic of chronic disease, according to multiple people familiar with the effort. They said the wide-ranging inquiry is a top priority for Mr. Kennedy, who sees vaccines as a “potential culprit” in various neurological and autoimmune disorders, including asthma and allergies. It resurrects research into a number of ideas Mr. Kennedy has espoused, including whether vaccines are linked to autism and whether thimerosal, a preservative that has largely been removed from vaccines in the United States but remains in some flu shots, is dangerous. The effort is being led by Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician and vaccine safety expert who rose in prominence during the pandemic as a critic of Covid restrictions and vaccine mandates, and is now the health department’s chief science and data officer. Career scientists at the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are conducting the research alongside contractors who provide statistical expertise and access to millions of patient medical records. The initiative was described to The New York Times by six people who are close to it, all of whom insisted on anonymity because it is not public. The work is raising alarms among some vaccine scholars and critics of Mr. Kennedy, who have long accused the secretary of cherry-picking data and misinterpreting studies to claim that vaccines are unsafe and to limit their use. They fear Mr. Kennedy will use the findings to further erode confidence in vaccines, which the World Health Organization estimates saved 154 million lives over the past half-century. Mr. Kennedy, who came into office saying he would do nothing to discourage people from getting vaccinated, has already taken steps to scale back the number of vaccines children receive. Public health experts complain that by spending money on issues that have already been thoroughly studied, he is taking funds away from research that might answer the very questions he is asking, including what causes autism.

Trump Killed Half Of Obamacare While You Were Sleeping. While Americans were consumed with the Epstein Files Coverup and the Iran War the Trump Regime cut medicare for MILLIONS. Dean Blundell. May 7, 2026.  The Congressional Budget Office says 10 million Americans will lose health insurance by 2034 because of this bill. Add the 4.2 million losing ACA marketplace coverage when the tax credits expire, and you’re looking at 14 to 17 million people losing their health insurance. KFF puts the high end at 16 million. What They Actually Did The cruelty is in the mechanics. Here’s how they killed it without ever saying the word:

  1. Work requirements. Starting late 2026, Medicaid recipients have to log 80 hours a month of work, school, or volunteering — and prove it. Repeatedly. Online. Forever. Here’s the kicker: KFF data shows most Medicaid recipients already work (44% full-time, 19.5% part-time). The rest are mostly caregivers, students, or sick. The work requirement isn’t designed to push people into jobs. It’s designed to push them off Medicaid through paperwork they can’t keep up with.
  2. Eligibility checks every six months instead of yearly. Double the bureaucratic cliff, double the chance you fall off it.
  3. Letting the ACA tax credits expire. These are the Biden subsidies that drove marketplace enrollment from 11 million in 2020 to 24 million in 2025. Congress let them die. KFF says ACA premiums will rise an average of 75% in 2026. Some people will pay 114% more out of pocket. In 12 states, premiums will more than double.
  4. CMS’s “Marketplace Integrity” rule. Shorter enrollment windows. Harder auto-renewals. By CMS’s own admission, 750,000 to 2 million more people will lose marketplace coverage in 2026 alone.
  5. Cutting off lawful immigrants. Refugees. Asylum-seekers. Trafficking victims. People whom the U.S. government formally promised to protect. Gone from Medicaid starting October 2026.

Stack it all up, and you’ve got an Affordable Care Act that technically still exists — while every load-bearing wall has been quietly sawed through. Who Actually Uses Medicaid (Spoiler: Probably Someone You Love) Conservatives have spent forty years painting Medicaid as a program for “lazy freeloaders.” The data says otherwise.

National Academies experts denounce Trump’s NSF board purge. Scientific American, May 11, 2026. On Monday [May 10, 2026] some 1,500 members and supporters of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine denounced the White House’s dismissal of the National Science Board (NSB), a long-standing expert board that oversees the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSB was fired without notice on April 24. In the open letter, the signatories—who include 37 Nobel Prize winners—said the NSB’s firing was “an alarming attack on the ability of the US to engage in basic and applied research.” They called on Congress to oppose the move. Since 1950 the NSF has funded U.S. basic research, from astronomy to vulcanology, under guidance of the board, which has historically been filled with “eminent” scientists. The board is designed to be apolitical, and members are appointed to six-year terms by the president. It is required by statute to approve the NSF’s budget, which was $9 billion in 2026. The White House said last year, however, that research grants will now be approved by political appointees. The administration has also proposed to cut the NSF’s budget by about 50 percent in 2027 and to dissolve its social sciences arm.

Here’s the Covid-19 vaccine paper the CDC censored. RFK Jr. and the CDC’s top official, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, don’t want you to read this. Apr 27, 2026. That’s exactly why you should. Earlier this month, The Washington Post broke the news that Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the CDC’s temporary top official, prevented a Covid-19 vaccine effectiveness paper from appearing in the agency’s flagship scientific journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). The manuscript was a typical one for the VISION network, a research collaborative between the CDC, Westat, and multiple US health systems. Since 2019, the VISION network has studied vaccine effectiveness for influenza, RSV, and Covid-19 using real-world data. Its investigations have routinely been published and widely read over the years. The censored paper presents data on the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines during the 2025–2026 season. The results suggest that, in the first few months after vaccination (September–December 2025), this year’s vaccines were 53–55% effective against hospitalizations among the study’s population of adults without immune compromise. But Jay Bhattacharya believes that the public should not see this work—or at least that the CDC should not publish solid science carried out, in part, by its own experts. That’s why we have to read it now. The blocked document (scrubbed of metadata) was obtained by Inside Medicine from a source who wished to be described as “someone close to the study.” “I’m strongly opposed to this kind of censorship,” Dr. Michelle Barron, one of the manuscript’s authors, told Inside Medicine. Dr. Barron, an infectious diseases physician at the University of Colorado, believes the move is an attack against transparency and the usual open scientific process. “It should be out in the world at large for the scientific community to judge it for what it is,” she said.

U.S. Government Will Stop Paying for Test Strips to Detect Deadly Drugs. The New York Times, April 27, 2026. In a letter to states and other grant recipients, the Trump administration says the strips encourage drug use. The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration sent a letter to state health departments and grant recipients saying that test strips, which have been championed by the federal government since 2021, endorse drug use.  A simple strip of treated paper that can swiftly signal whether a street drug contains deadly fentanyl or other contaminants is a common overdose prevention tool, distributed widely on college campuses and at music festivals and community clinics. The federal government has championed test strips since But on Friday afternoon, the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration sent a A copy of the letter was obtained by The New York Times. The sudden policy reversal bewildered and alarmed administrators of programs that have routinely handed out test strips for years, hoping to stave off overdoses and encourage people who use drugs to exercise more caution. The strips can be used to test drugs ranging from crack cocaine to anti-anxiety pills. “Having more information about drugs rather than less can really impact people’s behavior” including stopping them from taking something that might kill them, said Dr. Yngvild Olsen, the former director for the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment at SAMHSA, who now works as a health consultant. “The drug supply now is unbelievably unpredictable,” she said. People might think they are using stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine, she continued, but those drugs are increasingly cut with opioids and dangerous animal sedatives. “So they really need that information. ” “During President Trump’s first month in office, his administration upended much of the flagship global H.I.V. program that had saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Zambia. The Zambian government went into emergency mode, desperate to ensure that people with the virus could continue to receive lifesaving medications. But other crucial aspects of the program had to be scrapped — interventions that had helped stop the spread of the virus and protected the most vulnerable people.” AIDS Creeps Back in Parts of Zambia, a Year After U.S. Cuts to H.I.V. Assistance. “The State Department is negotiating new health assistance funding agreements with countries that used to have U.S.A.I.D. support. These come with conditions, and Zambia’s has proved particularly thorny, because the State Department has tied support for the H.I.V. program to access to the country’s minerals.” (Before scrolling on to the next thing, just think about this for a second. The world’s richest man working with the administration of the world’s richest country is bringing back AIDs, but they will reconsider … for a price.

Trump ousts National Science Board members. Washington Post, April 25, 2026. Members of the independent board that guides the National Science Foundation said they received a notice from the White House that their positions were being terminated. Multiple scientists who serve on an independent board established to guide the nation’s nearly $9 billion basic science funding agency were terminated from their positions Friday by President Donald Trump. Members of the National Science Board, which helps govern the National Science Foundation, were dismissed in a message from the Presidential Personnel Office thanking them for their service, according to screenshots shared with The Washington Post: “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I’m writing to inform you that your position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately.” The National Science Board was establishedin 1950 to guide the governance of the National Science Foundation, in an unusual structure within the federal government that echoes the setup of a company board in the private sector. It helps guide an agency that operates Antarctic research stations, telescopes, a fleet of research vessels and supports basic science research in laboratories across the United States. The NSF has a long history of supporting technology and research that powers many innovations the world relies on today. The agency helped language-learning app Duolingo get its start. NSF research has also helped evolve technology used in MRIs, cellphones and LASIK eye surgery. The board’s members are scientists and engineers from universities and industry and are appointed by the president, but they serve six-year terms, ensuring overlap between different administrations. There are typically 25 members, but some slots are empty — including the NSF director, which has been vacant since the former director who was appointed during the first Trump administration, Sethuraman Panchanathan abruptly resigned a year ago.

Pace of N.I.H. Funding Slows Further in Trump’s Second Year – The New York Times, April 22, 2026. he agency has approved far fewer new grants than it did in years past. A renewed effort to screen for disfavored terms and a loss of personnel are contributing. Spending on new medical research by the National Institutes of Health has fallen roughly $1 billion behind the pace of years past, delaying thousands of scientific projects and raising concerns within the agency that it may struggle to pay out the money it was allotted by Congress. Instead of canceling grants en masse, as the N.I.H. did in the first year of this Trump presidency, it is now vetting them before approval with a “computational text analysis tool” that scans for terms including “racism,” “gender” and “vaccination refusal,” according to documents obtained by The New York Times. That tool was meant to formalize a campaign against “woke science” that was initiated last year by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency. But the screening system is now exacerbating a slowdown in research spending: The N.I.H. awarded only about 1,900 new and competitive grants from October to late March, less than half the number it tended to give out by that point in the fiscal year during the Biden administration, an analysis by The Times showed. The heaviest damage to the grantmaking apparatus was done by the protracted government shutdown in the fall, which delayed grant review meetings by months. The N.I.H. has struggled to catch up, and delays are affecting fields far beyond those ostensibly targeted by the administration’s crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion. As of late March, for example, the National Cancer Institute had earmarked only about $72 million for new and competitive research grants, less than one-third of the nearly $250 million it had agreed to spend by that point in a typical fiscal year during the Biden administration, according to The Times’s analysis.

The C.D.C. canceled the publication of a study showing the benefits of Covid vaccines. The New York Times, April 22, 2026.The acting head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has canceled the publication of a study that found that the Covid vaccine sharply cut the odds of hospitalizations and emergency visits last winter, a Health Department spokesman said. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who has been overseeing the agency’s operations in the absence of a director, objected to the study’s design, saying it painted an inaccurate picture of the vaccine’s effectiveness.

CDC won’t publish report showing that covid shots cut likelihood of hospital visits. Washington Post, April 22, 2026. A report showing the efficacy of coronavirus shots that was previously delayed by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been blocked from being published in the agency’s flagship scientific journal, according to three people familiar with the decision. The move has raised concerns among current and former officials that information about the vaccine’s benefits is being downplayed because it conflicts with the views of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. previously delayed by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been blocked from being published in the agency’s flagship scientific journal, according to three people familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The report showed that the vaccine reduced emergency department visits and hospitalizations among healthy adults by about half this past winter. The move, which has not been previously reported, has raised concerns among current and former officials that information about the vaccine’s benefits is being downplayed because it conflicts with the views of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been an outspoken critic of the shots. Kennedy’s vaccine agenda has received pointed questioning from lawmakers during budget hearings that began last week and conclude Wednesday.

Where U.S. science has been hit hardest after Trump’s first year. Washington Post, April 19, 2026. The Trump administration has slashed the number of grants from the National Institutes of Health, with far fewer focused on women, cancer and mental health….A Washington Post analysis found that through March 31, halfway through this fiscal year, the number of competitive grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health is down by more than half compared with the same period last year. Biomedical funding has also undergone a shift, the analysis found, cutting the U.S. research footprint across nearly every major disease area — including fewer grants focused on women’s health, cancer and mental health.

National Science Foundation’s future in limbo as Trump eyes cuts. The Hill, April 19, 2026. The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) future is in limbo as President Trump pushes for more budget cuts and his nominee to helm the research agency awaits Senate confirmation. Since Trump’s return to the White House, the administration has canceled or suspended nearly 1,400 of the agency’s grants, citing changing policy priorities. A series of internal changes, including layoffs and a shifting funding focus, have also contributed to a reduction in the number of new grants issued by the NSF, which funds a quarter of basic scientific research across the country. Former NSF directors and organizations representing grant recipients warn that the dismantling of the agency, which serves as a counterpart to the National Institutes of Health, will ultimately curtail American scientific innovation. “I worry about losing that next generation of researchers just because everything’s so uncertain and there’s just a lot of frustration,” Sarah Spreitzer, the assistant vice president and chief of staff of government relations​​ at the American Council on Education, told The Hill. The NSF’s focus on contributing to “early-stage” or “basic” science, has led to major technological breakthroughs, including the MRI machine, the GPS and artificial intelligence. It’s also funded projects that have advanced the internet, the cellphone, mRNA vaccines and companies like Google. “One never knows if an investment today whose outcome is unknown will lead to a tool everyone can benefit from … or an industry of the future,” said France Córdova, who served as NSF director under both former President Obama and Trump. “That’s why it is so important to invest in basic research.” Trump’s 2027 budget request, released last week, seeks to cut NSF funding by more than 50 percent. The Office of Management and Budget did not return a request for comment on why the administration wants to reduce funding at the agency, but a spokesperson from the NSF said it “reflects a strategic alignment of resources in a constrained fiscal environment.” Previous grant cancellations at the NSF largely revolve around diversity, equity and inclusion, and misinformation or disinformation that the administration stated “were not aligned with agency priorities.” Staffing cuts were made as part of broader cost-cutting efforts made by the federal government to limit bureaucracy. The Trump administration did not return a request for comment on the changes to the NSF’s scope.

Washington Post – no paywall – CDC delays publishing report showing covid vaccine benefits. April 9, 2026. The acting CDC director cited concerns with the methodology, but the design has long been used to test vaccine effectiveness. The acting CDC director cited concerns with the methodology, but the design has long been used to test vaccine effectiveness. The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has delayed publication of a CDC report showing the covid-19 vaccine cut the likelihood of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for healthy adults last winter by about half, according to two scientists familiar with the decision. The scientists spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The move has raised concerns among current and former officials that information about the vaccine’s benefits are being downplayed because they conflict with the views of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been an outspoken critic of the shots. The delay, which has not been previously reported, offers a window into how vaccine policy is being shaped behind the scenes, even as the Trump administration has sought to soften its public posture on controversial actions ahead of the midterm elections. The report had been scheduled for publication March 19 in the CDC’s flagship scientific journal, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the scientists said…”

Three Democratic senators are demanding that Secretary of State Marco Rubio reject what they characterized as a scheme to withhold lifesaving HIV treatment from over a million Zambians, unless the African nation agrees to grant US businesses favorable access to its copper mines, Semafor’s Adrian Elimian reports. April 16, 2026. The senators, including Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, wrote in a letter to Rubio that they are “alarmed by reports” about State proposing to condition both HIV funding and previously pledged economic assistance on Zambia agreeing to favorable economic reforms for US businesses. “We urge you to reject this tactic of economic coercion,” they wrote in the letter shared first with Semafor. A State spokesperson said the department is moving “from a foreign assistance paradigm to an investment and growth paradigm capable of harnessing Africa’s abundant natural resources and latent economic potential.”

MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science. Paul Krugman. April 7, 2026. With all the other terrible news right now, you may not have noticed that Donald Trump is in the process of killing American science. OK, that’s an exaggeration — but not that much of an exaggeration. The Trump administration’s latest budget proposal calls for a gigantic increase in military spending combined with severe cuts to social programs. But as the chart above shows, it also calls for debilitating reductions in research funding. Furthermore, Trump appointees have already been strangling science by sharply reducing the rate at which research grants are approved. Here, for example, is the number of new grants approved by the National Science Foundation:

Two bar charts showing the number of grants issued by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health from 2015 to 2025. In both cases, 2025 is the lowest bar.

Source: Nature . Large numbers of existing grants have also been frozen or terminated, especially in the study of infectious diseases. Add to this a sharp drop in visas issued to foreign students, who often play a direct role in research and who help support academic departments that do research: When a political movement believes that ignorance is strength. NBER With all the other terrible news right now, you may not have noticed that Donald Trump is in the process of killing American science. OK, that’s an exaggeration — but not that much of an exaggeration. The Trump administration’s latest budget proposal calls for a gigantic increase in military spending combined with severe cuts to social programs. But as the chart above shows, it also calls for debilitating reductions in research funding. Furthermore, Trump appointees have already been strangling science by sharply reducing the rate at which research grants are approved. Here, for example, is the number of new grants approved by the National Science Foundation:

Trump’s next budget once again calls for massive cuts to science. Ars Technica, April 6, 2026. Congress rejected huge cuts to science in 2026, but Trump is trying again. On Friday, the Trump administration released its proposed budget for 2027. The budget blueprint includes significant cuts to NASA, but it targets even more severe limits for other science-focused agencies, with no agencies spared. The document is laced with blatantly political language and resurfaces grievances that have been the subject of right-wing ire for years. If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because the document is largely a retread of last year’s proposal, which Congress largely ignored in providing relatively steady research budgets. By choosing to issue a similar budget, the administration is signaling that this is an ongoing political battle. And the past year has shown that, even if Congress is unwilling to join it in the fight, the administration can still do significant damage to the scientific enterprise. What’s proposed? Nearly everybody is in for a cut. The hardest-hit agencies, like the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), will see their budgets slashed in half. But even agencies that might be otherwise popular, like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is overseen by Trump allies, will see $5 billion taken from its $47 billion budget. Agencies that have seemingly avoided political controversies, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), would also see their budgets cut by over half. In several cases, the cuts will eliminate major programs. For example, the NSF budget for social science research would be zeroed out; the NIH would lose both the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. In addition, a couple of topic areas are targeted for cuts in multiple agencies. These include efforts to track and/or limit the impacts of climate change, which are targeted for cuts in a variety of agencies. This is what triggered the cuts at NIST. “The Budget slashes wasteful spending at NIST that has long funded awards for the development of curricula that advance a radical climate agenda,” the budget proposal announces. “NIST’s Circular Economy Program exploited grants to universities to push environmental alarmism.” Similarly, programs that tackle disparities due to income or discrimination would also be cut. Even though things like health and environmental disparities based on race have been extensively documented, the budget treats any attempts to study them further or address them as illegal discrimination. In a number of agencies, the administration is also shifting priorities, most notably in the Department of Energy and the NSF, where AI and quantum technologies are now expected to be major areas of focus. The reasoning behind this is unclear, given that these are already areas where private equity has poured large sums of money. It’s notable that, depending on exactly how Congress allocates the budget, these agencies may be able to shift focus to these topics even if they are not explicitly directed to do so by law.

Trump administration’s secrecy on health deals alarms experts, governments. Washington Post, April 6, 2026. A dearth of information has been disclosed about the agreements, fueling speculation that the “America First” approach to foreign aid is exploitative. Washington Post. April 6., 2026. The Trump administration has spent the better part of a year quietly negotiating agreements with poorer nations as it seeks to scale back and reimagine U.S. foreign assistance for efforts like HIV and tuberculosis prevention through a new “America First” global health strategy. To date, 28 deals have been negotiated with foreign governments, mostly throughout Africa. But in a break with precedent, the administration has refused to disclose their full terms publicly. The veil of secrecy has frustrated partner countries and angered transparency advocates, who worry that billions of dollars in U.S. funding — money that’s intended to help combat disease — is being leveraged by the Trump administration as it seeks controversial concessions on unrelated policies in return. Public Citizen, a government watchdog group, has brought a lawsuit demanding access to some of the administration’s global health agreements, arguing that the State Department’s failure to produce the records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request is “unlawful.” The agreements’ public disclosure is essential “to understanding the new foreign aid structure” being built by the State Department and what the United States “expects, or extracts, in return,” said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s access to medicines group.

CDC pauses dozens of types of lab testing during evaluation and in wake of downsizing. AP, April 1, 2026. “The federal government’s disease-tracking agency has paused its diagnostic testing for rabies, monkeypox and a number of other infectious diseases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week posted a list of more than two dozen types of testing that have become unavailable. This is not the first time the CDC has paused some of its lab testing. But it is pausing more kinds of tests than ever before, and it is not totally clear why, said Scott Becker, chief executive officer of the Association of Public Health Laboratories…The pausing of lab testing comes in the wake of the dramatic downsizing of the CDC in the last year through layoffs, retirements, resignations and the nonrenewal of temporary appointments. Staffing fell by 20% to 25%, according to different estimates, and was felt across the agency — including in the laboratories. The poxvirus and rabies labs lost about half their prior staff, and the CDC’s malaria branch was gutted even more, according to the National Public Health Coalition, an organization of former and current CDC workers that formed in the wake of the downsizing…”

The New York Times Gift Article: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has temporarily paused testing for rabies and pox viruses, the family of viruses that includes smallpox and mpox, according to an update to the agency’s website on Monday. The C.D.C. offers testing for dozens of pathogens to assist state and local public health laboratories that are not equipped to conduct them. The organization began evaluating its tests in late 2024 as part of an agencywide review. But widespread layoffs, hiring freezes and resignations have shrunk the number of qualified scientists who can assist state labs. The C.D.C.’s rabies and pox virus teams have lost many of their members. By July, the rabies team will be down to just one person with the clinical expertise to advise state and local officials, and the pox virus team will have none. The teams already have too few members to offer after-hours advice for states as the agency has long done, according to an official with knowledge of the situation who asked to remain anonymous because of fear of retaliation. Several public health experts said they were concerned with the shortage of testing and expertise at the nation’s infectious disease agency. The country faces the threat of emerging diseases such as bird flu and is also preparing for major events, including the World Cup tournament and the celebrations for the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence, that will amass large crowds…”

The Horrors That Could Lie Ahead if Vaccines Vanish. ProPublica. March 27, 2026. “Researchers at Stanford University modeled how many people could die or be disabled in 25 years if vaccines for polio, measles, rubella or diphtheria were no longer available. Before vaccines, death and disability stalked children. Then shots turned once-common infections into something doctors only read about in textbooks. When immunization rates drop, however, plagues from the past can come roaring back, as measles has in American communities where parents decided not to vaccinate their children. Imagine what would happen if even the people who wanted shots couldn’t get them. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who founded an antivaccination group, is considering changes that could prompt the handful of companies that make most shots for American children to stop selling them here. Over the last year, he has been transforming a government that long championed the lifesaving benefits of vaccines into one that questions their safety here and around the world. Shortly after Kennedy was nominated, questions swirled over how he might overhaul America’s immunization system. Two Stanford University researchers wondered how many people would suffer if vaccination rates dropped or shots became entirely unavailable for four of the most infamous diseases: polio, measles, rubella and diphtheria. Outbreaks often start when an American catches one of these illnesses abroad and returns home. So epidemiologists Mathew Kiang and Nathan Lo, who is also an infectious diseases doctor, built a model to simulate how the four contagions could spread from sick travelers based on each state’s vaccination rates. Since a sizable chunk of the population is currently vaccinated, some of the infections wouldn’t get a foothold right away. But over time, as more babies are born and not vaccinated, a larger share of the population would become susceptible. The professors ran thousands of simulations for each disease, producing a range of possible outcomes. From there, they figured out the average number of deaths and disabilities over a 25-year period. Their model shows that at current vaccination rates, the nation is already teetering on the brink of an explosion in measles cases — one that would be virtually wiped out with just a 5% increase in vaccination. But if current rates drop by half, all four diseases could return. The researchers’ modeling of the worst-case scenario assumes a quarter century where no one could get the shots. It doesn’t account for the likelihood of parents going abroad to find vaccines or politicians intervening to ensure drugmakers offer them again. But the results demonstrate in stark terms how vital shots are and what’s at stake if policy changes interfere with Americans’ ability to vaccinate their kids…So ProPublica decided to illustrate what a future without vaccines could look like.

Education, DEI, Data, Censorship, Discrimination

The Integrity of Public Access to Federal Data: Evaluating Disruptions to Open Government Data, 2025-2026. Open government data is a cornerstone of transparency, productivity, accountability, and evidence-based policymaking in the United States (US) and abroad. Open government data enables researchers, journalists, policymakers, and the public to monitor government performance, accelerate discovery, evaluate programs, and safeguard democratic institutions. These data represent an important, non-excludable and non-rivalrous, public good. Yet over the past decade, open government data has faced growing threats, including program disruption from funding shortfalls, political interference, and an erosion of trust government. In the last year alone political interference led to the manipulation, suppression, or outright removal of federal data assets on topics ranging from climate change, to economics, to LGBTQ+ issues, to public health. This interference threatens to undermine public trust in federal data by limiting the ability of civil society to hold government accountable, eroding the trust businesses hold in federal statistical data, and revoking access to one-of-a-kind data resources to researchers for innovation and discovery. This report provides an analysis of the integrity of public access to federal open government data assets during the disruptions to the federal data ecosystem during 2025 and early 2026. Here, data integrity is defined as the “maintenance of, and the assurance of, data accuracy and consistency over its entire life-cycle”, of which public access to open government data assets is assumed to be essential. The report clarifies the scale and mechanisms of data disruptions, discusses specific threats to data integrity, highlights exemplar cases of data disruption from federal agencies, and delivers a transparent methodology for reproducing auditing routines used in this assessment. The evidence used in this report was derived from multiple sources, including news reports, academic literature, materials from civic society and government oversight organizations, interviews with experts, archives, and government sources.

Trump makes a bad student loan program worse, The American Prospect, May 28, 2026. Today on TAP: On June 1, student debts will become even more of an encumbrance. On June 1, student debts will become even more of an encumbrance. Cory Doctorow has coined a terrific word and concept: enshittification. Doctorow used it primarily to describe how platform monopolies like Amazon, Google, and Apple begin by being useful to both consumers and advertisers and business partners, then start screwing consumers, then advertisers and business partners. Blinding complexity and nontransparency is part of the enshittification. But the concept describes more and more of the large systems that Americans have to deal with, such as health care and retirement accounts. Today’s example is student loans. The program is thoroughly enshittified, byzantine in its complexity, and a source of punitive debt for the young. According to the Department of Education, less than 40 percent of borrowers are currently in active repayment and nearly 25 percent are in default. Changes ordered by President Trump to take effect June 1, with the main purpose of punishing universities, will add to the stresses. The Federal Direct Loan Program will have new, lower limits. These changes eliminate the Direct PLUS Loan that have allowed graduate or professional students to borrow “the cost of your education for the academic year, minus any estimated financial aid you receive each academic year” with 8.94 percent interest. This will be replaced by new unsubsidized loans, with lower limits. The new annual limit will be $20,500 for graduate students and $50,000 for professional students, with an aggregate limit of $100,000 for graduate students and $200,000 for professional students. Parent PLUS loans, for undergraduates, also have new limits, of $20,000 per year with a $65,000 aggregate limit per dependent student. In addition, Trump’s Education Department is making several technical changes that will require students, indebted graduates, and parents to shift repayment plans, typically with higher costs to them. You can read about it here. Some basic numbers: Under the direct federal student loan program, an undergraduate student under age 24 may borrow $5,500 as a freshman, $6,500 as a sophomore, and $7,500 as a junior or senior. That doesn’t sound like a lot of money. And compared to the average cost of attending a private college, it’s not. The average sticker price—tuition, fees, room and board—is now about $65,000. Even the average discounted price after student aid is included is about $36,000, or $144,000 for four years. Even so, a student who borrows the relatively meager maximum of $31,000 will end up paying $350.42 a month for ten years. Where does the student get the rest?

Department of Labor Tells Employees to Report Anyone Prioritizing DEI. Wired, May 26, 2026.  An email reminds workers they can report behavior that predates Donald Trump’s second inauguration. One employee tells WIRED it felt like a “reminder to narc on your coworkers.” Late last week, employees at the Department of Labor received a long email strongly urging them to file whistleblower complaints and report instances of “diversity, equity, and inclusion”-related discrimination or retaliation. In short, employees were told to alert the government of DEI compliance in any way. The email, sent on Friday and viewed by WIRED, felt like it was a “reminder to narc on your coworkers for doing DEI,” says a DOL employee who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. The notice was titled “Reporting DEI-Related Discrimination, Retaliation, and Related Whistleblower Disclosures” and came from a “DOL Guidance and Information” email account. It was not signed by any particular member of DOL leadership. “DEI-related discrimination occurs when any employment action (hiring, promotion, training access, mentoring, assignments, awards, etc.) is motivated in whole or in part by an employee’s or applicant’s race, color, sex, national origin, religion, or other protected characteristics,” states the email. Further details about what exactly constitutes “DEI-related discrimination” included “restricting networking events or professional development to specific racial, sex, or ethnic groups”; “awarding recognition, compensation, or opportunities based in part on contribution to ‘diversity goals’ rather than metrics”; and “any preference or disparate treatment justified by ‘diversity’ or ‘equity.’”

The word “Black” has been almost completely removed from a package of bills that have long been viewed as Congress’ main legislative vehicle to address the Black maternal health crisis, frustrating some advocates who feel Black women are being erased from the policy. The 19th News, May 18, 2026. The key change this year is the title. The Momnibus Act — filed in mid-March — was called the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act in 2023; before that it was the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2021 and the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2020. None of the previous packages, which were championed by Democrats, have been enacted. But references to “Black” in the package’s legislative text have also evolved. The 2020 version has more than a dozen, primarily referencing Black women. In the 2021 version, many of those were replaced with nearly a dozen references to “Black pregnant and postpartum individuals.” All those descriptions were removed in the 2023 bill, with the word Black appearing only once across the entire package, referencing a historically Black college or university or other minority-serving institution. Those 2023 changes carried over to the latest version. The legislation — which does not appear to have a path forward in the Republican-controlled Congress — has long been touted as a way to address the United States’ abysmal maternal health mortality rates, as well as the stark disparities for Black women. Maternal mortality rates in the United States surpass all other developed nations. In 2023, there were 18.6 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births in the nation. The rate is far worse for Black women at 50.3; they are three times more likely to die than White women from a pregnancy-related cause, irrespective of income or education. But removing “Black” from the title of the bill comes as the Trump administration attacks initiatives aimed at diversity, equity and inclusion. Advocates worry that the title change is both a signal that racial disparities shouldn’t be at the forefront of discussion — and a warning sign that they won’t be addressed.

The Trump administration is deleting government data. The Guardian, May 7, 2026. From infant deaths to hunger, here are five ways it’s hurting Americans. This information was used to understand the problems Americans face. The consequences of its erasure, experts warn, could affect generations to come. “The Trump administration is deleting government data. From infant deaths to hunger, here are five ways it’s hurting Americans This information was used to understand the problems Americans face. The consequences of its erasure, experts warn, could affect generations to come. When we think of what governments do, we think of everything from building highways to waging war. What they also do is capture the world in the form of information. The US government may be the foremost producer of information in the world. For decades, federal agencies have gathered data on everything from climate risk to the rising cost of childcare. It is information funded by taxes, and that belongs to the American people. This data is often how the government decides what to do: what is a problem, what is a policy priority, what should be funded. It tells the story of America. But over the past year, the Trump administration has been altering and removing decades’ worth of datasets as part of a sweeping campaign targeting so-called “woke programs”, “racial equity”, “gender ideology” and “climate extremism”. This censorship has affected not just datasets, but also a wide swath of federal resources: tools that helped the public access data, ongoing surveys and, perhaps most concerning, the agency staff that made it all possible. Experts warn that Trump’s destruction of the country’s data infrastructure will have lasting impacts on all aspects of life – whether it’s the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to extreme weather, public health departments’ monitoring of harmful new drugs in their communities or how food banks get meals to hungry families. “Federal data touch every corner of American lives,” said Denice Ross, former US chief data scientist under the Biden administration who is now director of federal data policy at the Federation of American Scientists. She also helps run America’s Data Index, a group that monitors changes to federal data. When data disappears, she said, “we might not know or be able to connect the dots for why our lives are getting harder – but our lives will get harder”. Here are five ways Americans will be affected by deleted data…”

Army Shuts Down Social Media Accounts After They Praised Tammy Duckworth’s Service. NOTUS, April 15, 2026. Dan Driscoll, the secretary of the Army, shut down all “Soldier for Life” social media accounts after a post about the senator from Illinois. Dan Driscoll, the secretary of the Army, ordered the deletion of several U.S.-military-associated social media accounts this week after a post celebrating Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth drew negative reactions online. “Soldier for Life” is an official U.S. Army program that connects soldiers, veterans and their families to resources ranging from employment to health care to retirement. The post detailed Duckworth’s life story and her time as an Army lieutenant colonel. She is an Iraq War veteran who lost both of her legs in 2004 after an attack on her Black Hawk helicopter. Chase Spears, a former Army paratrooper and veteran of the war in Afghanistan, was one of many online who criticized Duckworth, calling her “one of the most brazenly hostile partisans to have worn the uniform.” “There are so many warriors worthy of being praised, men and women who didn’t sell their souls along the way. But this is who @SecArmy Dan Driscoll’s Army continues going out of its way to pay homage to,” Spears wrote on X.

CRS Report No. R48889. March 31, 2026. Availability of Federal Data: Policy Considerations for Disclosure, Preservation, and Governance – Federal data can provide valuable information for various audiences—from farmers seeking to protect bats that eat crop-harming insects to local efforts determining where to rebuild to avoid coastal flooding. In 2013, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) described openly available federal data and statistical information as “a valuable national resource and strategic asset” that, when made accessible, discoverable, and usable by the public, “can help fuel entrepreneurship, innovation, and scientific discovery.” Efforts to make federal data more readily available have evolved over time. Such data may have been stored and filed in hard and paper copies and later in software and electronic formats. Today, certain data may be retrieved through agency websites or on Data.gov. Data.gov itself is a case study for open data, intended to demonstrate that making federal data available can help agencies avoid duplicative internal research, enable the discovery of complementary datasets held by other agencies, and empower employees to make better-informed, data-driven decisions, among other benefits. Throughout 2025, media reports have suggested that the availability of federal data has been reduced. Some observers are also tracking the removal of specific datasets, variables, and tools. In parallel, changing public perspectives on data availability may demand new levels of data access, such as making data available for predictable periods of time, in a variety of software-compatible formats, and with appropriate descriptive metadata for easing findability and usability of the information. While statute discusses when and how information is to be added to Data.gov, it does not explain whether and how information may be removed. Although researchers and the public may derive value from being able to trace data over time to determine changes in trends or collection methods, the statute does not explicitly consider versioning requirements for agency data. However, requiring these attributes for Data.gov may help address or clarify difficulties in measuring data availability. Congress may be interested in determining whether there are trends to certain data becoming available or to when data is altered and removed. Such trends may provide insight and direction for Congress to further examine agency activities or make decisions to support new data use cases. Information availability, of which data availability is a type, can be considered the intersection of when and how information is released. Section 3552 of Title 44 of the U.S. Code defines information availability as “ensuring timely and reliable access to and use of information.” Generally, statute and associated OMB guidance contemplates two types of information availability in terms of timing: (1) proactive disclosure and information dissemination and (2) request-based disclosure. Certain types of data have specific requirements in terms of formatting and structure to ensure that the information can be made available and potentially archived. This report examines the variables of federal data availability and its policy underpinnings. The report discusses the state and concept of federal data availability and explains the information life cycle framework. It explains how information may be made available proactively or upon request through existing mechanisms and also explains statutory requirements for information dissemination, preservation, and whether and when information can be removed. The report concludes with policy options for Congress, including a review of efforts to preserve federal data through web captures; examining controls to assess data versioning, sourcing, and modifications; and, finally, considerations for implementing data governance and transparency mechanisms throughout agency structures.

Weather, Climate, Disaster Planning and the Environment

Meet Researchers Holding a 50-Hour Livestream to Sustain Weather & Climate Science, Andy Revkin, June 2, 2026 .I just hosted a pop-up Sustain What conversation with three of the dozens of climate and weather scientists who are running a 50-Hour livestream to boost public appreciation of the observational and analytical science that bolsters societal resilience and boosts understanding of our amazing, and changing, planet. A goal is to sustain federal support for weather & climate science even as the current administration seems deadset on demolishing it. My guests were Clare Singer, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder; Nadir Jeevanjee, a research physical scientist at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory; and Rob Socolow, an emeritus professor focused on interdisciplinary environmental science and engineering at Princeton. Socolow made an important point here about the Trump era appearing to be the end of an arc of American appreciation of science that began with Sputnik and is having its “anti-Sputnik moment”..

Federal cuts are leaving states and locals to pick up weather and flood monitoring responsibilities – are we OK with that? – Balanced Weather, May 5, 2026. Severe weather looks to potentially ramp up Wednesday across the South…federal scientists who oversaw civil engineering projects in small towns around the country prone to flooding disappeared during the Trump/DOGE push to purge government employees from agencies including FEMA, NASA, and USGS.

When EJScreen went dark in early 2025, the U.S. EPA ended access to datasets that everyday people and companies — including the waste industry — used for tracking the impacts of pollution on overburdened communities. But former EPA officials are working with academics, researchers and community activists to develop more advanced and more detailed mapping tools. At a DC Climate Week discussion on Wednesday, speakers highlighted how independent screening tools can inform future environmental policies and help communities advocate for themselves through data, especially as the U.S. EPA now actively discourages environmental justice initiatives.

Trump administration orders dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service. Hatchmag. The headquarters is going to Utah. Every regional office is being shuttered. The research program is being destroyed. April 2, 2026. Late Tuesday afternoon, with the subtlety of a wrecking ball and the morality of a foreclosure notice, the Trump administration announced the most devastating attack on the U.S. Forest Service in the agency’s 121-year history. Not a budget cut. Not a policy shift. Not a “reorganization.” An execution. They’re ripping the headquarters out of Washington and shipping it to Salt Lake City, Utah — the beating heart of the anti-public-lands movement in America. They’re shuttering every single one of the ten regional offices that have governed this agency since Gifford Pinchot built the system over a century ago — and with them, the career professionals who spent entire lifetimes earning the expertise and the authority to push back when politicians came calling with bad ideas and worse motives. They’re destroying more than fifty research facilities across thirty-one states, labs that house decades of irreplaceable long-term science, the kind you literally cannot restart once it’s gone. And they’re replacing all of it — the offices, the scientists, the institutional knowledge, the professional independence — with fifteen political appointees called “state directors,” embedded in state capitals alongside the very governors, legislators, and industry lobbyists who have spent their careers demanding that the Forest Service log more, protect less, and get out of the way. One hundred and ninety-three million acres of your national forests. An area larger than Texas. The largest public land agency in the country. Just handed, on a silver platter, to the people who’ve spent their entire careers trying to destroy it. And they did it with a press release on a Tuesday.

IRS lacks transparent plans to leverage tech in the face of staffing cuts, GAO and employees say. NextGov/FCW. April 23, 2026. The IRS is banking on using technology to do more with fewer employees. But staff inside the IRS say that how the agency will do that — considering that its own IT shop has lost personnel — is still unclear, and Congress’ watchdog says that the IRS still isn’t being transparent about its long-term tech plans. The IRS continues to rely on some systems that date back to the 1960s. It’s been trying to modernize them for decades, and was using some of the money from the Inflation Reduction Act to do so under the Biden administration. Congress has since clawed back most of that funding, and the remainder is set to run out in fiscal year 2028. A few months after President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office, the IRS paused its modernization work to re-evaluate its strategy. IRS leadership said they wanted to rely more on generative artificial intelligence to convert legacy code into modern programming languages, and the agency set a goal to finish most of its tech modernization efforts within two years. Over a year later, the IRS still hasn’t provided the Government Accountability Office with details on its new modernization plan, said David Hinchman, director of IT and cybersecurity at GAO, during a recent roundtable on the IRS.

Today, the Justice Department announced the closure of the National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF), effective March 31, 2026. The NCDF was established in the fall of 2005 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to coordinate disaster fraud complaints from victims across the country. Since its founding, the NCDF processed more than a million complaints, and served as a national hub for disaster fraud referrals to federal, state, and local law enforcement. Over the past two decades, the law enforcement landscape has evolved significantly. Following a 2023 program review, the Criminal Division determined that the NCDF’s intake function was no longer the most effective avenue for pursuing disaster fraud. Many of the NCDF’s original agency partners now operate their own dedicated hotlines, and advances in data analysis have given federal investigators powerful new tools to identify and pursue fraud at scale – particularly the large, multi-district schemes that represent the highest enforcement priorities. This closure will save the Department more than $600,000 per year. Fraud targeting Americans in their most vulnerable moments, whether following natural disasters or during public health crises, is a serious federal crime that the Department of Justice will continue to investigate and prosecute vigorously. Victims of disaster fraud should report their complaints to the appropriate law enforcement agency based on the type of fraud. Reporting information can be found at www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud.

On Friday, the Trump administration released its proposed budget for 2027. Ars Technica, April 6, 2026. The budget blueprint includes significant cuts to NASA, but it targets even more severe limits for other science-focused agencies, with no agencies spared. The document is laced with blatantly political language and resurfaces grievances that have been the subject of right-wing ire for years. If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because the document is largely a retread of last year’s proposal, which Congress largely ignored in providing relatively steady research budgets. By choosing to issue a similar budget, the administration is signaling that this is an ongoing political battle. And the past year has shown that, even if Congress is unwilling to join it in the fight, the administration can still do significant damage to the scientific enterprise. What’s proposed? Nearly everybody is in for a cut. The hardest-hit agencies, like the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), will see their budgets slashed in half. But even agencies that might be otherwise popular, like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is overseen by Trump allies, will see $5 billion taken from its $47 billion budget. Agencies that have seemingly avoided political controversies, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), would also see their budgets cut by over half. In several cases, the cuts will eliminate major programs. For example, the NSF budget for social science research would be zeroed out; the NIH would lose both the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. In addition, a couple of topic areas are targeted for cuts in multiple agencies. These include efforts to track and/or limit the impacts of climate change, which are targeted for cuts in a variety of agencies. This is what triggered the cuts at NIST. “The Budget slashes wasteful spending at NIST that has long funded awards for the development of curricula that advance a radical climate agenda,” the budget proposal announces. “NIST’s Circular Economy Program exploited grants to universities to push environmental alarmism.” Similarly, programs that tackle disparities due to income or discrimination would also be cut. Even though things like health and environmental disparities based on race have been extensively documented, the budget treats any attempts to study them further or address them as illegal discrimination. In a number of agencies, the administration is also shifting priorities, most notably in the Department of Energy and the NSF, where AI and quantum technologies are now expected to be major areas of focus. The reasoning behind this is unclear, given that these are already areas where private equity has poured large sums of money. It’s notable that, depending on exactly how Congress allocates the budget, these agencies may be able to shift focus to these topics even if they are not explicitly directed to do so by law.

Trump’s 2027 budget proposes cuts of: 🔻 $5.8 billion to NIH 🔻 $5.6 billion to NASA 🔻 $4.8 billion to NSF 🔻 $4.6 billion to EPA 🔻 $2.9 billion to CDC 🔻 $1.6 billion to NOAA If these science cuts pass, the US will be a less healthy and less safe place to live.

FY27 NSF budget request.

NIH would get $5 billion cut under Trump’s 2027 budget, but Congress unlikely to go along President wants to axe institutes studying health disparities and alternative medicine

 

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