#defendresearch — Public Fediverse posts

"Self‑censorship, more stress, tougher recruiting – we asked US researchers how the #Trump administration’s science policies have affected them."
https://theconversation.com/self-censorship-more-stress-tougher-recruiting-we-asked-us-researchers-how-the-trump-administrations-science-policies-have-affected-them-280968

#Censorship #DefendResearch #SelfCensorship #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Update. "A leading House Democrat [Jamie Raskin, D-MD] on Tuesday called for an investigation into new whistleblower allegations that the #Trump administration forced #universities it deemed politically incorrect into settling #antisemitism cases despite flimsy or nonexistent evidence."
https://www.chronicle.com/article/universities-were-forced-to-pay-up-despite-little-evidence-of-antisemitism-trump-whistleblowers-say
(#paywalled)

See Raskin's letter to the Justice Department.
https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democrats-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2026-08-18-raskin-to-dhillon-doj-re-title-vi-investigation.pdf

#Academia #AcademicFreedom #Censorship #DefendResearch #Takedowns #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

"Thirty US universities could lose federal funding unless they review and cut foreign academic partnerships the Pentagon considers a national security risk within the next two weeks, under a Pentagon directive aimed largely at ties to Chinese institutions."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/18/pentagon-funding-colleges-harvard

"A Chinese embassy spokesperson told the Associated Press that Beijing opposed the politicization of “normal scientific, educational, and academic exchanges” and urged Washington to “abandon the cold war mentality and foster an open, fair, and non-discriminatory environment” for academic and scientific exchanges between the two countries."

#Academia #Censorship #China #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #Universities #USPol #USPolitics

"Over the past year and a half, at least 28 federal datasets have been deleted and another 338 data collections have been modified, according to an online tracker released last week from dataindex.us, a group of data policy experts, researchers and developers that formed last year to monitor changes to government data."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/aug/18/trump-federal-data-deleted-altered

See the Federal Data Terminations Tracker.
https://dataindex.us/terminations-tracker

#Censorship #Data #DefendResearch #OpenData #Takedowns #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Update. "Judge Dismisses Federal #Antisemitism Case Against #Harvard."
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/08/13/us/trump-news

This is big for many reasons. One is that the #Trump admin has been using litigation about antisemitism to get leverage over unrelated university programs and funding. Another is that it has been aggressive and dishonest in construing criticism of #Israel, and support for #Palestinian rights, as antisemitism.

#Academia #AcademicFreedom #Censorship #DefendResearch #Takedowns #TrumpVResearch #Universities #USPol #USPolitics

Update. After the National Academy of Sciences (#NAS) refused in March to delete the chapter on #climate science from its reference manual for judges…
https://fediscience.org/@petersuber/116250669373977981

…the #Trump admin jacked up the pressure, in part through the juvenile insults on Truth Social. The NAS has now deleted the chapter.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/10/climate/national-academies-climate-chapter-judges.html

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Takedowns #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Update. But the House is not ready to adopt the Senate bill. In part, the two chambers disagree on how to fund the govt. And in part, they disagree on the merits of the #OMB proposal to politicize federally funded research.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senate-funding-bill-continuing-resolution-approved/

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

The Senate is willing to fund the fed govt through December provided the #Trump admin does not finalize or implement the #OMB plan to politicize federally-funded science.
stm-assoc.org/omb-grant-re...

#Bipartisan #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

OMB grant regulation paused by...

Update. In a bipartisan move, the Senate has temporarily blocked implementation of the vile #OMB plan to politicize federally-funded science.
https://stm-assoc.org/omb-grant-regulation-paused-by-congress/

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

"NIH Director Bhattacharya kills more health disparities grants."
https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-director-bhattacharya-kills-more-health-disparities-grants

"NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya is ending two more grants, both for health disparities research at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt)…A grant to social epidemiologist Tamara Dubowitz “will be terminated in full” [and] more cancellations are coming...Her 5-year, NIH-funded study exploring health and socioeconomic factors contributing to cognitive aging and Alzheimer’s in African Americans living in poor neighborhoods in Pittsburgh is nearing completion, and her team has already spent $7 million of the $9.6 million grant. She says neither her project nor the other Pitt grant slated to be killed were given a chance to adjust their research to comply with new NIH priorities Bhattacharya has detailed."

h/t @lschiff

#DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #NIH #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Update. Senate Dems w/ a few Republicans take a step in right direction:

"Senate finalizes funding patch that would block Trump’s grant overhaul."
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/02/senate-finalizes-funding-patch-that-would-block-trumps-grant-overhaul-01021696

"When lawmakers return to the Capitol in September, House Republican leaders must then decide whether to take up the Senate funding patch, which contains a significant rebuke of President Donald Trump — a temporary ban on finalizing the White House proposal to put political appointees in charge of approving grants."

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #OMB #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Update. #ProPublica (@ProPublica) covers many of the good reasons to reject the #OMB proposal, which would politicize federally funded research and limit international collaboration.
https://www.propublica.org/article/federal-science-grants-russell-vought-omb

One of those good reasons is that the OMB rules would have prevented the discovery of the #HiggsBoson, which needed a large, international team.

PS: I used the same example in my comment to the OMB earlier this month. In context: "Good science knows no borders, and many important discoveries are made by international teams. Some notable examples with US funding and participation are the discovery of the Higgs boson (2012), the Human Genome Project (1990-2003), the eradication of smallpox (1980), and the Manhattan Project (1942-1946)."

#DefendResearch #Funding #OMB #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolit

"Federal officials said in court documents that they halted billions of dollars in funding for energy projects to states 'based solely' on whether they backed President Trump in the 2024 election."
www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/b...

#DefendResearch #Meritocracy #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Trump Administration Admits Ca...

"Federal officials said in court documents that they halted billions of dollars in funding for energy projects to states “based solely” on whether they backed President Trump in the 2024 election."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/business/trump-state-grants-canceled.html

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Meritocracy #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Update. Now the National Science Foundation (#NSF) is calling for public comments on a plan to revise its research-funding procedures. Comments are due by August 24.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/06/24/2026-12725/agency-information-collection-activities-comment-request-national-science-foundation-proposalaward

The full text of the proposal is not online for display in a browser. (Why?) But you can download it from this page.
https://www.regulations.gov/document/NSF-2026-OTR-0001-0003

The text is explicit that one purpose of the new proposal is to align the NSF rules with the proposed, new (May 2026) #OMB rules.

Note that the public comment period on the OMB proposal only closed on July 13. OMB is still considering the comments -- which are overwhelmingly negative -- and has not yet made final rules. In that sense, the NSF is unquestionably obeying in advance.

Also note that if many people skip commenting on the NSF plan (say, because they commented on the OMB plan), NSF might infer that not many people care or that opposition to the OMB plan doesn't carry over to the NSF plan. This looks deliberate. It would have been easy for NSF to wait for final rules from OMB.

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Update. #Trump has renewed his attacks on the #climate science manual by the National Academies of Science (#NAS), and now threatens to defund the NAS itself.
https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/totally-discredited-trump-orders-probe-of-national-academy-of-sciences-over-bogus-climate-guidance/

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Major Swiss data-rescue and AI-training project:

"Researchers have copied massive quantities of publicly available #climate and #environmental #data from #NASA onto a Swiss supercomputer to train #AI models—and for safekeeping amid U.S. #funding cuts…It had taken approximately a year to copy the roughly 6 billion files [roughly 100 petabytes]…Going forward, the researchers are also planning to copy large quantities of datasets from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (#NOAA)… All the data copied so far had been publicly available."

#Censorship #DefendResearch #OpenData #Preservation #Switzerland #Takedowns #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

I'm still digesting the new report to Donald Trump by Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, 𝘚𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦: 𝘈 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘎𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘈𝘨𝘦.
https://prod-i.a.dj.com/public/resources/documents/Science-A-New-Golden-Age.pdf

A few initial thoughts:

* It strongly supports science itself and govt funding of science. But it doesn't mention the attacks on science itself and cuts to science funding by the Trump admin.

* It wants research funding to depend entirely on merit. But it doesn't mention the recent OMB proposal to make it depend on the decisions of political appointees trying to advance the president's policy priorities.

* It wants to shift funding from projects to people, which could become another way to defund universities.

* It wants to boost the role of AI in science.

* To facilitate the role of AI in science, it wants to boost support for open data well beyond current levels. But it doesn't mention the many datasets censored or taken down by the Trump admin.

#AI #Censorship #Data #DefendResearch #Funding #OpenData #OSTP #Takedowns #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Update. "Federal agencies that terminated more than a thousand research grants at the University of California last year admitted that they used keywords related to diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy and COVID-19 to screen for projects that ran afoul of the Trump administration’s priorities. It’s an admission that lawyers for the research professors say is proof that the agencies illegally cancelled nearly $2 billion in grants. And that’s a major development in a lawsuit filed by UC researchers against the Trump administration to permanently get their grants back."
https://apnews.com/article/california-research-grants-terminated-keywords-lawsuit-a0ddb01413ecb68d9668490a20be6207

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USLaw #USPol #USPolitics

"#AHRQ Has Begun Canceling Research Grants. Here's What We Know."
https://ahsituationreport.substack.com/p/ahrq-has-begun-canceling-research

"Researchers across the country are receiving official notices that AHRQ [Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality] is ending grants that had already gone months without funding. AcademyHealth is working to document the scope of these cancellations, support affected researchers, and ensure policymakers understand the consequences."

#DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

"Did U.S. scrutiny of foreign research drive prominent geneticist to decline authorship?"
https://www.science.org/content/article/did-u-s-scrutiny-foreign-research-drive-prominent-geneticist-decline-authorship
(#paywalled)

All five US co-authors of a paper with both US and Chinese funding ask to be removed from the author list and moved to the acknowledgments section.

"The outcome offers an example of the gymnastics many researchers are contemplating as they try to cope with growing U.S. government scrutiny of research collaborations, especially those with Chinese institutions."

#China #Collaboration #DefendResearch #Funding #ScholComm #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

The #NSF "plans to claw back around US$500 million that has already been distributed to grant-making divisions". The money will go instead to an unnamed project of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (#OSTP).
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02135-x

#DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Update. "How the American Diabetes Association tried to hide a critical editorial published in its own journal—to no avail."
https://prospect.org/2026/07/10/appeasing-trump-american-diabetes-association-nih-dei/

#Censorship #DefendResearch #FirstAmendment #Medicine #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

"White House deletes thousands of web pages about energy conservation as heatwave slams US."
https://www.theverge.com/policy/961449/white-house-mamdani-heatwave-deletion
(#paywalled)

"The deletions by the Trump administration are broad and indiscriminate. While pages that would support Mamdani’s request to lower thermostats were deleted, so too were pages about water conservation, types of insulation, and its solar decathlon challenge."

Here are preservation copies of the deleted pages in the Internet Archive.
https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/*

#Censorship #Climate #DefendResearch #Takedowns #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Update. So far, so good. But reinstating those #NEH grants is a mess, especially when grantees have incompatible new commitments.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/science-research-policy/2026/06/30/neh-asks-grant-recipients-if-they-still-want

PS: When these complexities mean the grants can't be reinstated, the original #DOGE cuts win. This is like many other #Trump actions: move fast and break things; some cannot be repaired.

#DefendResearch #Funding #Humanities #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

EDIT. I originally linked to the wrong article. Just fixed the link.