"America is slashing its climate research."
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2025/07/31/america-is-slashing-its-climate-research
(#paywalled)

"#Project2025, a blueprint for the second Trump administration published by the Heritage Foundation, a hard-right think-tank, called for a 'whole-of-government unwinding' of previous 'climate fanaticism'. The unwinding is being undertaken with both zeal and an impressively petty attention to detail."

Five major US higher-ed associations have written an open letter to Jay Bhattacharya, director of the #NIH, asking that he "direct the reinstatement of all grants that NIH has terminated under agency directives found by a federal court to be unlawful."
https://www.acenet.edu/Documents/Letter-NIH-Grants-072925.pdf

The letter is signed by the:
* Association of American Medical Colleges (#AAMC)
* Association of American Universities (#AAU)
* American Council on Education (#ACE)
* Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (#APLU)
* Council on Governmental Relations (#COGR)

#Academia #DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter

"Federal data has been disappearing under Trump."
https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/07/28/federal-data-has-been-disappearing-under-trump

"There’s been a 'targeted, surgical removal of data sets, or elements of data sets, that are not aligned with the administration’s priorities,' said Denice Ross…who served until December 2024 as U.S. Chief Data Scientist [and] is now at the Federation of American Scientists. [She] has been tracking these changes. Her current projects to monitor and advocate for federal data under the Trump administration are America’s Data Index and America’s Essential Data. She offered multiple examples of databases that have been altered or taken down entirely."

Wow. University and its president support DEI. Trump admin investigates them. Faculty write a resolution in support of the president and DEI policies. Trump admin investigates those faculty too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/us/justice-department-george-mason-faculty-senate-investigation.html

"In a letter sent on Friday, the Trump administration said it would seek drafts of the faculty resolution, all written communications among the Faculty Senate members who drafted the resolution, and all communications between those faculty members and the office of the university’s president…Free speech advocates quickly denounced the move as an attack on academic freedom."

#Academia #Censorship #DefendResearch #DEI #FreeSpeech #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter

Four kinds of harmful long-term consequences from #Trump cuts to #NIH:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2836433

"First, a reduction in fundamental research, which contributes to discoveries, could slow future innovations. Second, the erosion of human capital due to fewer NIH-funded training and career opportunities may shrink the future biomedical workforce. Third, health care expenditures could increase as greater reliance on private sector research and development increases the costs of medical innovations. Finally, decreased investment in public health and translational research may lead to missed opportunities for disease prevention, further increasing health care expenditures."

"14 Republican senators urge White House to release delayed #NIH funds."
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/25/britt-leads-letter-urging-trump-administration-to-release-delayed-nih-funds-00476872

PS: The real news here is that these are #Republicans. "Suspension of these appropriated funds — whether formally withheld or functionally delayed — could threaten Americans’ ability to access better treatments and limit our nation’s leadership in biomedical science. It also risks inadvertently severing ongoing NIH-funded research prior to actionable results.”

149 employees of the National Science Foundation sent an open letter to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) in her capacity as the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. They seek to publicize their "concern over a series of politically motivated and legally questionable actions by the Administration that threaten the integrity of the NSF and undermine the civil service protections guaranteed under federal law."
https://democrats-science.house.gov/imo/media/doc/AFGE_Local_3403_NSF_Letter_to_RM_Lofgren_REDACTED_Redacted.pdf

h/t @alicejmeadows

PS: There are now open letters protesting Trump admin attacks on science from employees of #NSF (July 21), #NASA (July 21), #EPA (June 30), and #NIH (June 9). Details and links here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y5_fjGPNh4_1Hgc0Q68Hr2vJhVIOK1Qc-KynfIG6fZI/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.muw4nr101zfs

"The National Cancer Institute faces steep budget cuts and a staff exodus."
https://wamu.org/story/25/07/23/national-cancer-institute-budget-cuts/

"The National Cancer Institute [#NCI], the Bethesda-based research center that has helped drive a more than 30% decline in U.S. cancer deaths since 1991, is being targeted by Trump administration’s downsizing…Research grants are also being cut at what scientists describe as unprecedented levels."

"Delta Think’s Survey Results: What 13,000 Researchers Revealed About the Fallout from US Funding Cuts."
https://www.deltathink.com/delta-thinks-survey-results-what-13-000-researchers-revealed-about-the-fallout-from-us-funding-cuts

"62% of US authors across all disciplines expect to publish fewer articles in the next 1–2 years, citing policy and funding challenges…50% of international authors across all disciplines indicated that it is now important to them to submit their manuscripts to non-US journals."

"Why are data nerds racing to save US government statistics?"
https://archive.is/7gF5f

"After watching data sets be altered or disappear from U.S. government websites in unprecedented ways after President Donald Trump began his second term, an army of outside statisticians, demographers and computer scientists have joined forces to capture, preserve and share data sets, sometimes clandestinely. Their goal is to make sure they are available in the future, believing that democracy suffers when policymakers don’t have reliable data and that national statistics should be above partisan politics."

"#EPA drafts rule to strike down landmark climate finding."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/07/22/endangerment-finding-epa-climate/

"The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to rescind a landmark 2009 legal opinion that greenhouse gas emissions put human health at risk, which underpins many of the government’s actions to combat #climate change…A decision to completely rescind the endangerment finding is still a draft proposal and could be subject to change…The draft would also eliminate all resulting limits on motor vehicle greenhouse gas emissions."

"Court Strikes Down NIH's Unlawful Termination of Research Grants on Topics Including DEI and Gender Identity."
https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/court-strikes-down-nihs-unlawful-termination-of-research-grants-on-topics-including-dei-and-gender-identity

"In a sweeping rebuke, a court ruled that #NIH’s actions targeting research involving 'disfavored' topics and populations were unlawful, arbitrary, and capricious, and therefore void."

We're losing #OpenAccess to #weather #data on the #NOAA web site. But #HamRadio operators can still access it directly from the #satellites. They can even decrypt most of it with a new #OpenSource decoder. Here's how.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/21/ssmis_satellite_decoder

PS: Very grateful to geeks.

Climate denial by erasure

Good point: When the #Trump admin takes down #climate #data, lays off climate scientists, cuts climate research funding, and terminates climate grants, that "isn’t climate denial in the traditional sense. The days of loudly debating the science have mostly given way to a campaign to withhold the raw information itself. 'I don’t know if we’re living in climate denial anymore,' said #LeahAronowsky, a science historian at Columbia Climate School. 'We have this new front of denial by erasure.' "
https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/why-the-federal-government-is-making-climate-data-disappear

"Trump Proposed Slashing the National Science Foundation’s Budget. A Key Senate Committee Just Refused."
https://www.chronicle.com/article/trump-proposed-slashing-the-national-science-foundations-budget-a-key-senate-committee-just-refused
(#paywalled)

"The Senate Committee on Appropriations voted 19-10 on [July 17] to keep funding for the National Science Foundation and other federal science agencies nearly intact for the 2026 fiscal year."

"Doctors in Elected Office Are Turning Their Backs on Science."
https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/116567

"In our research looking at legislators from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana during the 2023-2024 state session, we found that some of these experts were actually supporting unfounded vaccine-limiting public health measures…Doctors and veterinarians predominately voted along party lines and not for public health measures. They scored the worst when it came to voting for anti-vaccine legislation compared to nurses and other healthcare professionals…This betrayal of science is not limited to state legislatures. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a gastroenterologist, supported Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s appointment as Health and Human Services secretary, placing the nation's public health infrastructure in the hands of a man who compared government promotion of vaccines to fascism during the Holocaust."

"How your research can survive a US federal grant termination. Researchers in the United States are filing appeals, seeking court remedies, turning to philanthropy and starting GoFundMe campaigns."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02007-w