\n <\/p>\n
In just the first weeks of Donald Trump\u2019s second presidency, his administration embarked on making radical changes to US science.<\/p>\n
Officials appointed by the new president started firing thousands of researchers and other government employees. At the same time, it cut billions of dollars of US support for global-health programmes, including dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID). It arrested some scholars from outside the United States as it stepped up efforts to restrict entry into the country and limit political speech. Over the next few months, the US government took steps to exert unprecedented control over universities by withholding federal research funding. The administration cancelled tens of billions of dollars in research grants to universities to force the adoption of policies on hiring and admissions, policing of campuses, curricula and other factors.<\/p>\n
Despite all the negatives, 2025 showcased the power, resilience and universality of science<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The administration has justified its actions by saying that they were necessary to improve science and innovation. \u201cThe Trump administration is committed to cutting taxpayer funding of left-wing pet projects that are masquerading as \u2018scientific research\u2019 and restoring the American people\u2019s confidence in our scientific and public-health bodies that was lost during the COVID era,\u201d White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement to Nature.<\/p>\n
But critics of the administration see these actions as part of a broader plan to bend science for political purposes. \u201cThe attack on science must be seen as one component of a larger attack on information, on facts, on independent analysis,\u201d says John Holdren, a physicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who worked as the science adviser to former US president Barack Obama. \u201cI think Trump sees science as the fortress of the opposition.\u201d<\/p>\n
During Trump\u2019s previous term in office, he encountered resistance from people in his own administration as well as from members of his own party in Congress, which rejected his calls to slash funding for science agencies. This time, that kind of opposition has been more limited, even as his administration ignored spending laws enacted by Congress, which holds the power to decide government funding.<\/p>\n
Will US science survive Trump 2.0?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
But some people and institutions have fought the government over such changes. Harvard University sued the Trump administration after it cancelled billions of dollars in grants amid claims that Harvard had failed to combat campus antisemitism. Several lawsuits have been filed challenging both the administration\u2019s firing of employees and its cancellation of grants. Climate scientists pushed back against the administration\u2019s efforts to deny the threat of global warming. And six former surgeons general who served during both Republican and Democrat administrations published an article in The Washington Post criticizing Trump\u2019s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. They wrote that he was \u201cendangering the health of the nation\u201d by amplifying misinformation and undermining public confidence in medicine and the very public-health agency that he oversees \u2014 the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which includes the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world\u2019s largest biomedical funder.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe consequences aren\u2019t abstract,\u201d the surgeons general wrote. \u201cThey are measured in lives lost, disease outbreaks and an erosion of public trust that will take years to rebuild.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump proposes unprecedented budget cuts to US science<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In just the first weeks of Donald Trump\u2019s second presidency, his administration embarked on making radical changes to US science. Officials appointed by the new president started firing thousands of researchers and other government employees. At the same time, it cut billions of dollars of US support for global-health programmes, including dismantling the US Agency<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[516,81,11364,1569],"class_list":{"0":"post-37502","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-trump","10":"tag-tumultuous","11":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}