Since January 30, when I last wrote a summary of the Trump Administration’s attacks on science, we have counted at least 84 additional instances of the Trump Administration undermining the role of science in policy and government decision-making. That makes 102 incidents that we’ve tracked so far where the Trump Administration’s actions, decisions, or policies have sidelined or excluded science or undermined federal science processes. Since their return to the White House, the Trump administration has appointed corporate lobbyists and vocal anti-science figures to positions of power, cut federal funding, and removed federal databases and resources and relabeled them with harmful, anti-science rhetoric. All these examples already have, or will have, a direct impact on real people, especially those belonging to marginalized groups, including gender non-conforming people, low-income communities, and communities of color.
My colleagues and I have shared detailed updates on anti-science actions over the past few weeks including on the elimination of different positions and offices across the federal government (like environmental justice, federal emergency response, and weather preparedness), the deletion of environmental justice data, the dismissal and disruption of federal advisory committees (FACs), executive orders (EOs) to exert more presidential power over federal agencies, and how the Endangerment Finding is being threatened. But it’s worth thinking of these not just as individual incidents but as part of a broad, dangerous pattern. Even compared to the previous Trump administration, the pace of abuses of power we’re seeing is unprecedented.
Like my previous summary, this analysis is not exhaustive. Reviewing Month 2 in its entirety would span multiple pages and involve a lot of legal jargon to explain the Administration’s anti-science (and illegal) actions. Even a partial view, however, is shocking, revealing the deep and lasting damage these attacks will do. We will continue to provide updates as the Administration continues its campaign against science in the federal government. It’s also important to note that states and local governments, and organizations – including our very own Union of Concerned Scientists – have challenged the Trump Administration’s actions in court. This is encouraging and necessary, but it can make it more complicated to track how these actions, like the massive firing and rehiring of federal workers, are actually playing out.
Here are some of the White House actions, decisions, and policies we’ve seen in February with negative implications for science, and what they mean for everyday people.
Politicizing, halting, and cutting funding
President Trump’s EOs signed during his first week back in office have thrown what federal funding that would have facilitated scientific knowledge into chaos. As a result of these EOs, federal agencies paused funding flows to universities, non-profit organizations, and other entities in deference to President Trump’s directives. Due to intense backlash, the Trump Administration partially rescinded the funding freeze. However, federal agencies have continued to experience pauses, even after multiple judges have ordered the Trump Administration to resume funding.
For example, the NIH has continued to experience a funding freeze for weeks, impacting FAC meetings, grant dissemination and review panels, and biomedical research. This has halted advances in research ranging from cancer and diabetes to HIV and tuberculosis. As of this writing, grants are still not being awarded by the NIH and health officials have been forbidden from giving public notice of upcoming grant review meetings. If the NIH cannot review grants, they cannot disseminate funding, and researchers at companies and universities across the country cannot conduct life-saving biomedical research on disease and illness prevention and treatment.
Funding cuts have also devastated international foreign aid efforts. The US Agency for International Development (USAID), which accounts for around 1% of the federal budget, was created to help facilitate humanitarian aid across the globe by disseminating funds. These cuts have been justified with heated and flatly dishonest rhetoric from the administration and its allies. Their grants and contracts – money that has been appropriated by Congress – have been severely impacted. Initially, “lifesaving humanitarian work” was supposed to be exempt from the funding freezes, but due to aforementioned EOs, USAID cannot distribute the funds for work related to gender, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), “or other so-called ‘non-life saving assistance,’” regardless of the existing science that shows such work is, in fact, lifesaving. Despite this supposed exemption, and even after receiving orders from a federal judge to pause the illegal funding freeze, foreign aid funds have continued to be frozen for weeks. These freezes have stopped critical clinical health trials focused on preventing and treating infectious diseases and cancer, supporting children’s development and nutrition, and testing the effectiveness of HIV vaccines.
The Trump Administration has also given strict directions to other agencies on what research they can and cannot fund to comply with its EOs. After freezing grant reviews at the end of January, the National Science Foundation (NSF) began to review all grant applications for mentions of prohibited words (e.g., “women,” “people of color”, “activism”, “disability”) that were deemed to be related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) or to climate science. Similarly, the NIH and the NSF have removed grants on accessibility research as well as funding opportunities to encourage participation from researchers and scientists with disabilities. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal agency that researches and reports on timely weather patterns, climate science, and oceanic activity, told its employees to review any existing grants that help fund external climate research for impermissible terms like “climate science,” “environmental quality,” and “pollution.” These actions have already had a negative impact on the amount of research in these areas.
The general uncertainty of federal funding has led universities to pause in their hiring as well as their admissions of graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. This alone can have lasting impacts on who can train in different scientific fields, how many scientists there will be in future generations, and what kind of research will be prioritized.
Federal workforce slashed
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), an arm of the White House led by Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought, and Elon Musk’s “DOGE,” an informal and legally dubious entity, have initiated a massive series of layoffs and terminations across the federal government under the false premise of saving costs and encouraging government efficiency. To date, thousands of federal workers have been dismissed from their roles, including scientists and researchers. Fear, anxiety, and potentially joining an already flooded job market are only some of the immediate impacts of the uncertainty that now comes with working in the federal government. But we can only guess how these layoffs will impact federal scientists and their fields in years to come. “DOGE” targeted USAID as one of the first agencies to be impacted by the layoffs that have rippled through the federal government over the past few weeks and has been reduced by more than 10,000 employees.
The federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and “DOGE” also promised mass layoffs at the NSF. NSF is a massive grantmaking agency in the federal government that helps fund scientific and technological research and innovation. Around two weeks after this announcement, NSF fired 168 probationary employees, and to date only half of those employees have been reinstated due to a court order. Programs in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were also impacted by layoffs and cuts, including those meant to train future public health experts and scientists and support efforts to mitigate disease outbreaks. Scientists in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) working on medical devices, tobacco, and food and drugs were also dismissed.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has also been a target of mass layoffs, with the threat coming just a week ahead of the follow through. Affected positions included those researching air pollution and toxic chemical regulation as well as environmental justice roles. At the beginning of the month, multiple federal scientists across the EPA overseeing critical public health and research initiatives were demoted, sidelining science in decisions where it should be present. Scientists overseeing research and development, environmental emergency response and cleanup, and grant dissemination were impacted. Loyalists to the new administration are expected to take their place, joining a team of favored corporate interests.
Publicly available data and censorship
To ensure alignment with President Trump’s EO, OPM directed federal agencies to take down thousands of government webpages. Guidance, recommendations, research, and data from the CDC were greatly impacted by this purge. For example, data showing the disproportionate impacts of bullying and negative mental health on transgender students, guidance on HIV prevention for transgender people, and a bi-annual survey on health behaviors of high school students (among many other critical data) were all scrubbed from the CDC website.
After being challenged in court, a judge directed the Trump Administration to undo the removal of health-related government webpages. Since then, we’ve seen webpages on the FDA and CDC’s website restored, but with inhumane and anti-science rhetoric added that echoes the language in President Trump’s EO. This EO sought to eliminate the acknowledgement of intersex and gender non-conforming Americans by the White House in their language, law interpretation, and documentation. Although these groups make up a small percentage of the population, these actions directly impact millions of Americans who self-identify as transgender, nonbinary, or intersex. Removing such resources and data and using cruel falsehoods to describe these marginalized groups of people will only reduce the accessibility of the already limited research on these groups and scientists’ abilities to encourage their health and well-being.
The term “climate change” was targeted on the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) websites. Both agencies flagged whenever this phrase appeared and changed their language to reduce its importance and urgency. In some cases, entire webpages on climate change were deleted from these agency websites. These changes are blatant acts of scientific censorship and can reduce everyday people’s knowledge and perceptions of the dangers of climate change.
Interrupting research and communication
As a result of the Trump administration banning external communications at HHS departments, a CDC report on cow-to-human bird flu transmission was delayed for three weeks. Shortly after, scientists at the CDC were ordered to withdraw any research under review at external scientific journals and to remove themselves from applicable research papers on which they were listed as co-author. The Trump Administration wanted to ensure scientists’ research did not contain any of the prohibited words on sex and gender. This is another way that timely research affecting intersex, nonbinary, and transgender groups has been stopped in its tracks.
Even as this ban began to lift, more restrictions were implemented at the CDC. Any instance of external communication from CDC staff must adhere to President Trump’s anti-trans and anti-DEI EOs. Similar measures of censorship have begun to be used at the FDA, where scientists have been told to stop using a list of words such as “ideology,” “women,” and “disabled” in their external communications–although there is confusion as to where this list originated and how it’s being enforced. Employees at FEMA are also not allowed to speak with members of the media without prior authorization.
As I wrote here, multiple federal and scientific advisory committees have been impacted since inauguration. Since the confirmation of known conspiracy-theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., FACs in HHS have postponed their meetings indefinitely, including the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee. The former committee advises the CDC on how and when different vaccines should be administered, and the latter planned to discuss which viral strains should be included in flu vaccines in next year’s flu season. These cancellations put people in real danger.
What can we do about this?
It’s daunting to see it all at once: at least 84 ways that science has been attacked or undermined over the past month, and at least 102 science attacks since inauguration. We can’t solve problems if we refuse to look at the evidence. We’ll keep a close eye on the Trump Administration, track the ways it undermines science and harms federal scientists, and update you on our fight to defend science. Here are a few ways that you can help us in this fight:
- Join 10k other UCS Supporters and email your Representatives in Congress and ask them to support the Scientific Integrity (SI) Act. The SI Act would put more protections in place that would prevent the unprecedented assault on science that we’ve seen over the last few weeks. Click here to get started!
- Support your local federal scientist by sharing our list of resources with them to help them know their rights and to protect themselves.