Remember when #Trump said, "If we stop testing [for #COVID] right now, we’d have very few cases, if any"? (June 2020)
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/502819-trump-on-coronavirus-if-we-stop-testing-right-now-wed-have-very-few-cases

He's been doing that a lot lately, for example, with greenhouse gas emissions and right-wing violence.

Now he's doing it with #hunger and #foodinsecurity.

"After cuts to food stamps, Trump administration ends government’s annual report on hunger in America."
https://apnews.com/article/trump-ending-america-hunger-report-snap-cuts-750f90757f50ab2d8bc97dfca5a917dd

#Censorship of agency research continues, see the latest at the EPA. This assault endanger all of us--make calls, write letters, talk to people you know! https://defendresearch.org #SciSky #ScholComm #Environment #FreeSpeech #DefendResearch https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/09/20/epa-scientists-research-publications/

"EPA tells scientists to stop publishing studies, employees say."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/09/20/epa-scientists-research-publications/
(#paywalled)

"Staff from the EPA’s Office of Water were summoned to a town hall meeting this week and told to pause the publication of most research, pending a review…The order to reevaluate all manuscripts came from political appointees."

#Trump #tariffs are interfering with inter-library loan.
https://hangingtogether.org/rising-to-the-challenge-how-the-shares-resource-sharing-community-navigated-a-global-disruption-to-international-shipping/

#PersimmonTree ("an online magazine of the arts by women over sixty") just published a series of letters on the Trump admin's censorship of history.
https://persimmontree.org/fall-2025/censoring-history/

From the introduction by the editor, Margaret Wagner: "The federal government’s current review of the Smithsonian Institution’s exhibitions, collections, and private-sector contacts; its threats against many of the nation’s educational institutions; its continuing campaign to purge materials it regards as reflecting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)—which it has deemed anathema—from military academies, national parks, and federal agencies: all seem aimed at erasing elements of the United States national portrait that a relative few of the 347-million-plus members of the U.S. population would have the rest of us, and future generations, forget."

h/t @lschiff

"DOJ Deletes Study Showing Domestic Terrorists Are Most Often Right Wing."
https://www.404media.co/doj-deletes-study-showing-domestic-terrorists-are-most-often-right-wing/
(#paywalled)

"The Department of Justice has removed a study showing that white supremacist and far-right violence 'continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism' in the United States. The study, which was conducted by the National Institute of Justice [#NIJ] and hosted on a #DOJ website was available there at least until September 12, 2025, according to an archive of the page saved by the Wayback Machine. Daniel Malmer, a PhD student studying online extremism at UNC-Chapel Hill, first noticed the paper was deleted."

Here's the archived copy in the Wayback Machine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250911165140if_/https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/306123.pdf

"Early-Career Scientists Face an Uncertain Future."
https://magazine.hms.harvard.edu/articles/early-career-scientists-face-uncertain-future

"Federal funding cuts for scientific and medical research are forcing graduate students and postdocs to rethink long-held career plans."

"Pediatric Brain Cancer Group to Lose Federal Funding."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/well/pediatric-brain-cancer-trial-group.html

"The Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium, an association of 16 academic centers and children’s hospitals dedicated to trials of novel treatments for pediatric brain cancer, directed its members last week to stop enrolling new patients because it had been informed that the consortium would not be eligible to apply for funding beyond March 2026."

"Trump Is Shutting Down the War On Cancer."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/magazine/cancer-research-grants-funds-trump.html

"The Trump administration has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in cancer-related research grants and contracts,…and suspended or delayed payments for hundreds of millions more. It is trying to sharply reduce the percentage of expenses that the government will cover for federally funded cancer-research labs. It has terminated hundreds of government employees who helped lead the country’s cancer-research system…And the president’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year calls for a more-than-37% cut to the National Cancer Institute [#NCI]."

"#EPA To Stop Collecting Emissions Data From Polluters."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/climate/epa-emissions-data-collection-halt.html

"The data, from thousands of coal-burning power plants, oil refineries, steel mills and other industrial facilities, is the country’s most comprehensive way to track greenhouse gases…The Friday announcement followed months of efforts by the Trump administration to systematically erase mentions of climate change from government websites while slashing federal funding for research on global warming."

It's not enough for the #Trump admin to …

* freeze and revoke grants to university researchers
* slash agency budgets for future research grants
* cap indirect costs on grants
* tax university endowments, and
* demand huge financial penalties for constitutionally protected activities like demonstrations for Palestinian rights.

Now it wants a cut of university patent revenue.
https://archive.is/yxr9x

Note the rationale: when university patents are based on taxpayer-funded research, the nation deserves a cut, and can get it through the march-in rights allowed by the Bayh-Dole Act.
https://x.com/howardlutnick/status/1953967726135063023/photo/1

But during the pandemic in Trump's first term, he refused to allow march-in rights to reduce prices on vaccines developed with significant infusions of taxpayer funding.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/11/24/938591815/pfizers-coronavirus-vaccine-supply-contract-excludes-many-taxpayer-protections

He refused to do so despite the urging of:
* 46 members of Congress (February 2020), and
https://freepdfhosting.com/20bf1d75af.pdf
* 34 state attorneys general (August 2020).
https://www.oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/Remdesivir%20Letter%2020200804.pdf

In Trump's second term, RFKJr also refused to exercise march-in rights to lower drug prices (January 2025).
https://www.statnews.com/2025/01/31/rfk-jr-trump-hhs-pick-kennedy-march-in-rights-drug-prices/

It hard to avoid concluding that Trump likes march-in rights now because the patents in question are held by universities, not by drug companies.

Here's how censorship is starting to work in US universities:

"A&M Dean removed following student complaints over curriculum."
https://www.kbtx.com/2025/09/09/am-dean-professor-removed-following-student-complaints-over-curriculum/

PS: Watch the video. The student didn't say to the prof, "I think you're teaching something untrue. Can you say more about the evidence?" She said, "You're teaching something that Donald Trump says is untrue." When the student brought her "documentation" to the university president, he fired the prof and the dean of her school.

h/t @lschiff

From #StephenGreenblatt, "We Are Watching a Scientific Superpower Destroy Itself."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/opinion/universities-science-trump-china.html

A few of his points:

* Sputnik (1957) triggered bipartisan support for massive new spending on US research. Southern conservatives worried that feds would use the money to desegregate universities, & barred the govt from dictating curriculum, administration, or hiring. The Trump admin is now conditioning federal funds on precisely those demands prohibited by post-Sputnik federal law.

* While the US was racing ahead on research funding, Soviet science was held back by the influence of Lysenkoism. Today, US research is controlled by people like RFKJr, "a kind of Lysenko lite".

* After decades of generous federal spending, "by the 1990s, American universities had become global cultural icons — envied for their intellectual breadth, celebrated for their academic freedom & eagerly sought after by international students who viewed them as the apex of open inquiry & prestige. The government hadn't intended to create autonomous, cosmopolitan knowledge institutions, but the scale of its investment — & the relative insulation of universities from direct political control — helped to make those institutions into supreme civilizational achievements."

* Just before Trump took office, 8 of the top 10 universities by research publications were American. Today, one is American, one is German, & the rest are Chinese.

Comments from early career researchers (#ECRs) on how Trump policies affect them:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/09/08/1123166/trumps-policy-early-career-scientists/

"Several had waited months for news on an application’s status or updates on when funds they had already won would be disbursed."

"One respondent, whose work focuses on fighting child sexual abuse materials, recalled rewriting a grant abstract '3x to remove words banned' by Senator Ted Cruz."

"As an academic, we have to be very careful about how we voice our personal opinion because it will impact the entire university if there is retaliation.”

"Four respondents said they were worried about their own immigration status, while 16 expressed concerns about their ability to attract or retain talent, including international students."

#PaulKrugman interviews #PeterHotez and #MichaelMann on the Trump assault on science.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/science-under-siege-a-talk-with-peter