Trump

Universities (finally) band together, fight “unprecedented government overreach”

culture, funding, Science, Trump, universities / Tim Belzer / April 23, 2025

We speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education… We must reject the coercive use of public research funding…

American institutions of higher learning have in common the essential freedom to determine, on academic grounds, whom to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom… In their pursuit of truth, faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation.

This is fine, as far as it goes. But what are all these institutions going to do about the funding cuts, attempts to revoke their nonprofit status, threats not to hire their graduates, and student speech-based deportations? They are going to ask the Trump administration for “constructive engagement that improves our institutions and serves our republic.”

This sounds lovely, if naive, and I hope it works out well for every one of them as they seek good-faith dialogue with a vice president who has called universities the “enemy” and an administration that demanded Harvard submit to the vetting of every department for unspecified “viewpoint diversity.”

As a first step to finding common ground and speaking with a common voice, the statement is a start. But statements, like all words, can be cheap. We’ll see what steps schools actually take—and how much they can speak and act in concert—as Trump’s pressure campaign continues to ratchet.

Universities (finally) band together, fight “unprecedented government overreach” Read More »

“Lab leak” marketing page replaces federal hub for COVID resources

CDC, COVID-19, health, Lab leak, SARS-CoV-2, Trump / Tim Belzer / April 19, 2025

After obliterating the federal office on long COVID and clawing back billions in COVID funding from state health departments, the Trump administration has now entirely erased the online hub for federal COVID-19 resources. In its place now stands a site promoting the unproven idea that the pandemic virus SARS-CoV-2 was generated in and leaked from a lab in China, sparking the global health crisis.

Navigating to COVID.gov brings up a slick site with rich content that lays out arguments and allegations supporting a lab-based origin of the pandemic and subsequent cover-up by US health officials and Democrats.

Previously, the site provided unembellished quick references to COVID-19 resources, including links to information on vaccines, testing, treatments, and long COVID. It also provided a link to resources for addressing COVID-19 vaccine misconceptions and confronting misinformation. That all appears to be gone now, though some of the same information still remains on a separate COVID-19 page hosted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While there remains no definitive answer on how the COVID-19 pandemic began, the scientific data available on the topic points to a spillover event from a live wild animal market in Wuhan, China. The scientific community largely sees this as the most likely scenario, given the data so far and knowledge of how previous outbreak viruses originated, including SARS-CoV-1. By contrast, the lab origin hypothesis largely relies on the proximity of a research lab to the first cases, conjecture, and distrust of the Chinese government, which has not been forthcoming with information on the early days of the health crisis. Overall, the question of SARS-CoV-2’s origin has become extremely politicized, as have most other aspects of the pandemic.

“Lab leak” marketing page replaces federal hub for COVID resources Read More »

US Interior secretary orders offshore wind project shut down

Burgum, department of the interior, Energy, offshore wind, Science, Trump, wind energy / Tim Belzer / April 18, 2025

It’s notable that this hold comes despite Trump’s executive order explicitly stating, “Nothing in this withdrawal [of future leasing] affects rights under existing leases in the withdrawn areas.”

GAO undercuts the message

The order alleged there were “various alleged legal deficiencies underlying the Federal Government’s leasing and permitting of onshore and offshore wind projects, the consequences of which may lead to grave harm.” In response to those allegations, the Government Accountability Office began an evaluation of the Department of the Interior’s activities in overseeing offshore wind development. The results of that were made public on Monday.

And the report only found minor issues. Its primary recommendations are that Interior improve its consultations with leaders of tribal communities that may be impacted by wind development and boost “incorporation of Indigenous knowledge.” The GAO also thinks that Interior should improve its methods of getting input from the fishing industry. The report also acknowledges that there are uncertainties about everything from invasive species to the turbines’ effect on navigational radar but says these will vary based on a wind farm’s site, size, and other features, and we’ll only have a clearer picture once we have built more of them.

Notably, it says that wind farm development has had no effect on the local whale population, a popular Republican criticism of offshore wind.

Trump’s animosity toward wind power has a long history, so it’s unlikely that this largely positive report will do much to get the hold on leasing lifted. In reality, however, the long-term uncertainty about offshore wind in the US will probably block new developments until the end of Trump’s time in office. Offshore wind companies have budgeted based on tax incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act, and the administration has suggested they may revoke those in future budgets. And the move by Burgum means that, even if a company clears all the leasing and improvement hurdles, the government may shut down a project for seemingly arbitrary reasons.

US Interior secretary orders offshore wind project shut down Read More »

FTC now has three Republicans and no Democrats instead of the typical 3-2 split

ftc, Policy, Trump / Rejus Almole / April 12, 2025

After declaring the FTC to be under White House control, Trump fired both Democratic members despite a US law and Supreme Court precedent stating that the president cannot fire commissioners without good cause.

House Commerce Committee leaders said the all-Republican FTC will end the “partisan mismanagement” allegedly seen under the Biden-era FTC and then-Chair Lina Khan. “In the last administration, the FTC abandoned its rich bipartisan tradition and historical mission, in favor of a radical agenda and partisan mismanagement,” said a statement issued by Reps. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky) and Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.). “The Commission needs to return to protecting Americans from bad actors and preserving competition in the marketplace.”

Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge thanked Senate Democrats for voting against Meador. “In order for the FTC to be effective, it needs to have five independent commissioners doing the work,” said Sara Collins, the group’s director of government affairs. “By voting ‘no’ on this confirmation, these senators have shown that it is still important to prioritize protecting consumers and supporting a healthier marketplace over turning a blind eye to President Trump’s unlawful termination of Democratic Commissioners Slaughter and Bedoya.”

Democrats sue Trump

The two Democrats are challenging the firings in a lawsuit that said “it is bedrock, binding precedent that a President cannot remove an FTC Commissioner without cause.” Trump “purported to terminate Plaintiffs as FTC Commissioners, not because they were inefficient, neglectful of their duties, or engaged in malfeasance, but simply because their ‘continued service on the FTC is’ supposedly ‘inconsistent with [his] Administration’s priorities,'” the lawsuit said.

US law says an FTC commissioner “may be removed by the President for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” A 1935 Supreme Court ruling said that “Congress intended to restrict the power of removal to one or more of those causes.”

Slaughter and Bedoya sued Trump in US District Court for the District of Columbia and asked the court to declare “the President’s purported termination of Plaintiffs Slaughter and Bedoya unlawful and that Plaintiffs Slaughter and Bedoya are Commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission.”

FTC now has three Republicans and no Democrats instead of the typical 3-2 split Read More »

Trump administration’s attack on university research accelerates

research, research funding, Science, Trump / Paul Patrick / April 10, 2025

Shortly after its inauguration, the Trump administration has made no secret that it isn’t especially interested in funding research. Before January’s end, major science agencies had instituted pauses on research funding, and grant funding has not been restored to previous levels since. Many individual grants have been targeted on ideological grounds, and agencies like the National Science Foundation are expected to see significant cuts. Since then, individual universities have been targeted, starting with an ongoing fight with Columbia University over $400 million in research funding.

This week, however, it appears that the targeting of university research has entered overdrive, with multiple announcements of funding freezes targeting several universities. Should these last for any considerable amount of time, they will likely cripple research at the targeted universities.

On Wednesday, Science learned that the National Institutes of Health has frozen all of its research funding to Columbia, despite the university agreeing to steps previously demanded by the administration and the resignation of its acting president. In 2024, Columbia had received nearly $700 million in grants from the NIH, with the money largely going to the university’s prestigious medical and public health schools.

But the attack goes well beyond a single university. On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced a hold on all research funding to Northwestern University (nearly $800 million) and Cornell University ($1 billion). These involved money granted by multiple government agencies, including a significant amount from the Department of Defense in Cornell’s case. Ostensibly, all of these actions were taken because of the university administrators’ approach to protests about the conflict in Gaza, which the administration has characterized as allowing antisemitism.

Trump administration’s attack on university research accelerates Read More »

USDA cuts could cause long-term damage, reverse hard-won progress

agriculture, climate change, Science, syndication, Trump, USDA / Kris Guyer / April 6, 2025

For decades, environmental and farm groups pushed Congress, the USDA and farmers to adopt new conservation programs, but progress came in incremental steps. With each Farm Bill, some lawmakers threaten to whittle down conservation programs, but they have essentially managed to survive and even expand.

The country’s largest farm lobby, the American Farm Bureau Federation, had long denied the realities of climate change, fighting against climate action and adopting official policy positions that question the scientific consensus that climate change is human-caused. Its members—the bulk of American farmers—largely adhered to the same mindset.

But as the realities of climate change have started to hit American farmers on the ground in the form of more extreme weather, and as funding opportunities have expanded through conservation and climate-focused programs, that mindset has started to shift.

“They were concerned about what climate policy meant for their operations,” Bonnie said. “They felt judged. But we said: Let’s partner up.”

The Trump administration’s rollbacks and freezes threaten to stall or undo that progress, advocacy groups and former USDA employees say.

“We created this enormous infrastructure. We’ve solved huge problems,” Bonnie added, “and they’re undermining all of it.”

“It took so long,” Stillerman said. “The idea that climate change was happening and that farmers could be part of the solution, and could build more resilient farming and food systems against that threat—the IRA really put dollars behind that. All of that is at risk now.”

Burk says he plans to continue with conservation and carbon-storing practices on his Michigan farm, even without conservation dollars from the USDA.

But, he says, many of his neighboring farmers likely will stop conservation measures without the certainty of government support.

“So many people are struggling, just trying to figure out how to pay their bills, to get the fuel to run their tractors, to plant,” he said. “The last thing they want to be doing is sitting down with someone from NRCS who says, ‘If I do these things, maybe I’ll get paid in a year.’ That’s not going to happen.”

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

USDA cuts could cause long-term damage, reverse hard-won progress Read More »

Trump annoyed the Smithsonian isn’t promoting discredited racial ideas

eugenics, race, Racism, Science, scientific racism, Smithsonian, Trump / Tim Belzer / March 30, 2025

On Thursday, the Trump administration issued an executive order that took aim at one of the US’s foremost cultural and scientific institutions: the Smithsonian. Upset by exhibits that reference the role of racism, sexism, and more in the nation’s complicated past, the order tasks the vice president and a former insurance lawyer (?) with ensuring that the Smithsonian Institution is a “symbol of inspiration and American greatness”—a command that specifically includes the National Zoo.

But in the process of airing the administration’s grievances, the document specifically calls out a Smithsonian display for accurately describing our current scientific understanding of race. That raises the prospect that the vice president will ultimately demand that the Smithsonian display scientifically inaccurate information.

Grievance vs. science

The executive order, entitled “Restoring Truth And Sanity To American History,” is filled with what has become a standard grievance: the accusation that, by recognizing the many cases where the US has not lived up to its founding ideals, institutions are attempting to “rewrite our nation’s history.” It specifically calls out discussions of historic racism, sexism, and oppression as undercutting the US’s “unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness.”

Even if you move past the obvious tension between a legacy of advancing liberty and the perpetuation of slavery in the US’s founding documents, there are other ironies here. For example, the order slams the Department of the Interior’s role in implementing changes that “inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures” at the same time that the administration’s policies have led to the removal of references to transgender individuals and minorities and women.

Trump annoyed the Smithsonian isn’t promoting discredited racial ideas Read More »

Trump administration’s blockchain plan for USAID is a real head-scratcher

Blockchain, Policy, syndication, Trump, USAID / Rejus Almole / March 24, 2025

Giulio Coppi, a senior humanitarian officer at the nonprofit Access Now who has researched the use of blockchain in humanitarian work, says that blockchain technologies, while sometimes effective, offer no obvious advantages over other tools organizations could use, such as an existing payments system or another database tool. “There’s no proven advantage that it’s cheaper or better,” he says. “The way it’s been presented is this tech solutionist approach that has been proven over and over again to not have any substantial impact in reality.”

There have been, however, some successful instances of using blockchain technology in the humanitarian sector. In 2022, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) ran a small pilot to give cash assistance to Ukrainians displaced by the Russia-Ukraine war in a stablecoin. Other pilots have been tested in Kenya by the Kenya Red Cross Society. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which works with the Kenya team, also helped to develop the Humanitarian Token Solution (HTS).

One representative from an NGO that uses blockchain technology, but wasn’t authorized to speak to the media with regards to issues relating to USAID, says that particularly with regards to money transfers, stablecoins can be faster and easier than other methods of reaching communities impacted by a disaster. However, “introducing new systems means you’re setting up a new burden” for the many organizations that USAID partners with, they say. “The relative cost of new systems is harder for small NGOs,” which would often include the kind of local organizations that would be at the front line of response to disasters.

The proposed adoption of blockchain technology seems related to an emphasis on exerting tight controls over aid. The memo seems, for example, to propose that funding should be contingent on outcomes, reading, “Tying payment to outcomes and results rather than inputs would ensure taxpayer dollars deliver maximum impact.” A USAID employee, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the media, says that many of USAID’s contracts already function this way, with organizations being paid after performing their work. However, that’s not possible in all situations. “Those kinds of agreements are often not flexible enough for the environments we work in,” they say, noting that in conflict or disaster zones, situations can change quickly, meaning that what an organization may be able to do or need to do can fluctuate.

Raftree says this language appears to be misleading, and bolsters claims made by Musk and the administration that USAID was corrupt. “It’s not like USAID was delivering tons of cash to people who hadn’t done things,” she says.

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

Trump administration’s blockchain plan for USAID is a real head-scratcher Read More »

Judge orders Musk and DOGE to delete personal data taken from Social Security

doge, elon musk, Policy, Trump / Paul Patrick / March 22, 2025

The lawsuit was filed by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; the Alliance for Retired Americans; and American Federation of Teachers. “Never before has a group of unelected, unappointed, and unvetted individuals—contradictorily described as White House employees, employees of either existing or putative agencies (multiple and many), and undefined ‘advisors’—sought or gained access to such sensitive information from across the federal government,” the lawsuit said.

A temporary restraining order preserves the status quo until a preliminary injunction hearing can be held, although the legal standards for granting a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction are essentially the same, Hollander wrote. A temporary restraining order lasts 14 days by default but can be extended.

“In my view, plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success on the merits as to their claim that the access to records provided by SSA to the DOGE Team does not fall within the need-to-know exception to the Privacy Act. Therefore, the access violates both the Privacy Act and the APA,” Hollander wrote.

The SSA has meanwhile been hit with DOGE-fueled budget cuts affecting its operations.

The order

The order says the SSA must cut off DOGE’s access. Musk, Gleason, and all other DOGE team members and affiliates “shall disgorge and delete all non-anonymized PII [personally identifiable information] data in their possession or under their control, provided from or obtained, directly or indirectly, from any SSA system of record to which they have or have had access, directly or indirectly, since January 20, 2025,” it says.

The DOGE defendants are also prohibited “from installing any software on SSA devices, information systems, or systems of record, and shall remove any software that they previously installed since January 20, 2025, or which has been installed on their behalf,” and are prohibited “from accessing, altering, or disclosing any SSA computer or software code.”

The SSA is allowed to provide DOGE with redacted or anonymized records, and may provide “access to discrete, particularized, and non-anonymized data, in accordance with the Privacy Act” under certain conditions. “SSA must first obtain from the DOGE Team member, in writing, and subject to possible review by the Court, a detailed explanation as to the need for the record and why, for said particular and discrete record, an anonymized or redacted record is not suitable for the specified use,” the order said. “The general and conclusory explanation that the information is needed to search for fraud or waste is not sufficient to establish need.”

Judge orders Musk and DOGE to delete personal data taken from Social Security Read More »

UMass disbands its entering biomed graduate class over Trump funding chaos

biomedical, funding, graduate programs, grants, health, NIH, research, Trump / Rejus Almole / March 14, 2025

Many schools are now bracing for steep declines in support. At Duke University, administrators have implemented hiring freezes, scaled back research plans, and will cut the number of admitted biomedical PhD students by 23 percent or more, according to reporting by the Associated Press. The school took in $580 million in grants and contracts from the National Institutes of Health last year.

At Vanderbilt University, faculty were sent an email on February 6 instructing them to reduce graduate admissions by half across the board, according to Stat. The outlet also reported that faculty at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health have reduced admissions.

Faculty at the University of Pennsylvania also reported having to rescind admission offers to applicants and were directed to significantly reduce admission rates, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian. The University of Wisconsin-Madison, too, is shrinking its graduate programs, according to the WKOW.com.

Beth Sullivan, who oversees graduate programs at Duke, told the AP that the shrinking classes mean a shrinking pipeline into America’s medical research community, which dominates the world’s health research fields and is a significant force in the country’s economy. “Our next generation of researchers are now poised on the edge of this cliff, not knowing if there’s going to be a bridge that’s going to get them to the other side, or if this is it,” Sullivan said.

“This is a severe blow to science and the training of the next generation of scientists,” Siyuan Wang, a geneticist and cell biologist at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, told Nature. “With fewer scientists, there will be less science and innovation that drive societal progress and the improvement of public health.”

This post was updated to correct Rachael Sirianni’s job title.

UMass disbands its entering biomed graduate class over Trump funding chaos Read More »

Bitcoin plunges as crypto fans didn’t get everything they wanted from Trump

Bitcoin, Policy, Trump / Rejus Almole / February 27, 2025

The price of bitcoin hit a record high of $109,114.88 during intraday trading on January 20, the day of President Trump’s inauguration, but has plummeted since and went as low as $83,741.94 during today’s trading.

That’s a 23.3 percent drop from the intraday record to today’s low, though it was back over $84,000 as of this writing. Bitcoin had been above $100,000 as recently as February 7, and was over $96,000 on Monday this week.

Bitcoin’s drop is part of a wider rout in which over $800 billion of nominal value “has been wiped off global cryptocurrency markets in recent weeks, as the enthusiasm that swept the crypto industry after Donald Trump’s election victory last year ebbs away,” the Financial Times wrote today.

Bitcoin hit a then-record of $89,623 in November, a week after the election, amid optimism about Trump’s plans for crypto-friendly policies. It hit $100,000 for the first time in early December after Trump announced his planned nomination of Paul Atkins to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Trump made several early moves to support crypto. “After pouring tens of millions of dollars into Trump’s 2024 campaign for president, the crypto industry has been paid back handsomely during his first week in the White House,” CNBC wrote on January 25.

For example, the SEC rescinded a 2022 accounting rule “that forced banks to treat bitcoin and other tokens as a liability on their balance sheets,” a change that is said to make it easier for “regulated institutions to adopt crypto as an asset class that they support on behalf of the clients.”

Trump impact overestimated

But enthusiasm waned as crypto investors apparently expected Trump to do more to boost the market in the five weeks since his inauguration. Traders hoped the US would start buying bitcoin and “rapidly enact new rules to encourage large financial institutions to buy crypto,” today’s Financial Times article said.

“There has been a recalibration of expectations regarding the Trump administration’s crypto stance,” Gadi Chait, investment manager at Xapo Bank, told the Financial Times. Michael Dempsey, managing partner at venture capital firm Compound, was quoted as saying that many crypto enthusiasts “materially overestimated [Trump’s] positive impact on the space.”

Bitcoin plunges as crypto fans didn’t get everything they wanted from Trump Read More »

Trump order declares independent US agencies aren’t independent anymore

independent agencies, Policy, Trump / Paul Patrick / February 19, 2025

The White House fact sheet said the goal of this provision is to ensure that the president and attorney general “interpret the law for the executive branch, instead of having separate agencies adopt conflicting interpretations.”

John Bergmayer, legal director of consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge, said Trump’s order is based on a “unitary executive” theory that “has made its way from the fringes of academia to the halls of power.”

“In this latest Executive Order, the Trump regime purports to seize for itself the power Congress delegated to independent regulatory agencies, and as written, declares the White House’s interpretation of the law as ‘authoritative,’ with no mention of the courts,” Bergmayer said. “Of course, the president is not, and never has been, the final arbiter of what is lawful. Lawyers working for the government owe their allegiance to the American people, not to President Donald J. Trump.”

Trump’s OMB director, Russell Vought, told Tucker Carlson in a recent interview that “there are no independent agencies. Congress may have viewed them as such—SEC or the FCC, CFPB, the whole alphabet soup—but that is not something that the Constitution understands. So there may be different strategies with each one of them about how you dismantle them, but as an administration, the whole notion of an independent agency should be thrown out.”

Extending Trump’s grip

Although the president nominates commissioners and appoints chairs at agencies like the FCC, independent agencies are supposed to make their own decisions. A 2023 report by the Congressional Research Service said an independent agency is “a freestanding executive branch organization that is not part of any department or other agency,” and which has “greater autonomy from the President’s leadership and insulation from partisan politics than is typical of executive branch agencies.”

Other independent agencies include the National Labor Relations Board and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the report said. Laws approved by Congress specify the authority of independent agencies along with the agencies’ “goals, principles, missions, and mandates,” the report said.

Trump order declares independent US agencies aren’t independent anymore Read More »