Trump Administration’s Science Cuts Come for NSF Funding

The cut of science of the Trump administration comes for NSF funding

By Dan Garisto And nature magazine

All new research grants are frozen in the US National Science Foundation (NSF) – obviously an action ordered by the Department of Efficiency Department (DOGE), An initiative by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk To cut spending in the US government and workers.

Dog is also reviewing a list of active research grants now Evalted by NSF in February For words related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and considering more than 200 of them, NSF staff members have reported Nature,

On Monday, three Dogi members arrived at NSF headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. NSF employees say that DOGE has directed hundreds of research proposals approved during a multi-step review process-but not yet finalized-NSF program officers should be sent back to the officers who have been asked to do “mitigation work” without any other details. Science First reported The arrival of dog in NSF this week.

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With a budget of US $ 9 billion, NSF is one of the largest funds of basic research in the world. From the introduction of Donald Trump’s second US presidential post, the agency has moved through the whiplash-uptake changes: it freeze all the grant payments and then Unfers them in February After court orders; It fired its probationary employees after February and weeks. Half of thEMAnd earlier this month, agency Cut your Graduate Research Fellowship Program by halfOffer only 1,000 posts instead of normal 2,000.

NSF is subject to increased investigation after release October 2024 report Written by Ted Cruise’s office, a Republican Senator in Texas who now heads the Senate Science Committee. The report stated that 3,483 research grants were given by NSF during the administration of Biden, which was Biden’s preceding Biden, “went to suspected projects, which promoted diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) principles,” wasting $ 2 billion. Today, Democrats in Science, Space and Technology Committee of the US House of Representatives Analysis of cruise report releasedThe analysis claims major flaws with reports, suggesting that it “ends the economic and national security of the United States” by suggesting that it “by reducing the important work of scientific researchers, teachers and institutions”.

An NSF spokesperson says it “continues to release the award” and refused to reply NatureQuestion. Kush Desai, a spokesperson of the White House, says that “the Trump administration is committed to ensure that federal research expenses are in line with the priorities of Americans everyday.” Cruz’s office did not respond immediately NatureRequest for comment.

To better understand the situation in NSF, Nature Talked to five staff members who were given oblivion because they are not authorized to talk with the press.

Dog comes

While Dogi visited other American agencies in the last two months – in some cases he completely abolished – NSF employees stopped their collective breath.

But on Wednesday, Dogi focused his attention to NSF grant, agency mission. Documents viewed by Nature Show that two members of Dogge, Luke Fariter and Zachri Tarel have been accessible to grant management systems and the access has been used to prevent the grant that was already approved but finally waiting. “Surely, it raises hair behind our neck,” says an official of the NSF program.

Research projects in NSF undergo several stages before approval. The proposals are first presented to the NSF program authorities with expertise in the scientific field, on which they focus on. If the proposal passes the muster with the authorities, they review a review from independent experts outside the Employee Member Agency. Only the strongest applications pass this stage – the specific success rate is between 20% and 30%. The directors of the division within NSF then give final approval and send grants to finalize with grants and divisions. This is where the grants are currently being sent back.

Proposals receiving final approval are essentially funded – so far, employees say. Before the arrival of Dogge, the new research award in the agency slowed down by half against 2024, Science Has reportedOn 16 April, they stopped completely.

A report under fire

This is not the first time Trump has taken over that NSF has re -examined its grant. In February, the agency began reviewing all its grants to ensure that they were not in violation of executive orders from Trump. “Radical and useless” DEI program And ,Gender ideology,At that time, it was marking one of the hundreds of words, which claimed in the cruise report that there were indicators of leftist ideologies instead of hard science-like “women”, “black men”, and “inequality”. Since 1980, the US Congress has stated that as part of its mission, NSF should broaden the participation of the under-comprehensive groups in science.

House analysis found that the report improperly flagged the grant in minority-service institutions as grants refer to the minority status of the institution. It was also found that the cruise report included “a group of embarrassing mistakes”, which also included that it gave a completely unnecessary grant from the DEI initiative, such as the genomic diversity of rice and female leopard seal. Additionally, 14% of the 3,483 grants were duplicate, so they were double-corrected.

An American representative from California and ranking Democrats on House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Zo Lofgrain sent analysis to NSF today. “It is necessary that NSF is not afraid to reduce its qualification review process by accepting these empty finds and replacing the slander of the cruise report for experts’ opinion,” Lofgrain wrote in a letter to NSF director Sethuraman Panhanathan,

Most of the grants were found in analysis, as they included the language about the “comprehensive impacts” of research to society, an essential requirement was unanimously passed by the Senate in 2010, before the cruise was a senator, and then, after that, thereafter, that was that.

A computational biologist Anthony Gitter at the University of Visconsin -Madison was a grant about using deep learning for flagged protein modeling by a cruise report. It had a single sentence about offering summer research opportunities to reduce minorities as part of the comprehensive impact statement. Cruise’s report “plays in the story that universities are elite places that disturb touch-off-touch academics who are no longer science,” they say. “But it is out of contact with data.”

This article is reproduced with permission and was first published On April 17, 2025,