The Trump administration scientific cuts come for NSF funding
The National Science Foundation, which finances key research in science and engineering, is the last American agency to be disrupted by Elon Musk Doge
Some researchers who receive subsidies from the National Science Foundation US use its Ice Core installations in Lakewood, Colorado, to store samples.
Jim West / Alamy Photo
All new research subsidies have been fixed at the National Science Foundation (NSF) – an action apparently commanded by the Government Department of Effectiveness (DOGE), An initiative by the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk To reduce spending and workers across the United States government.
DOGE also now examines an active research subsidies list Evaluated in February by the NSF For the terms associated with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and considering more than 200 of them for dismissal, members of NSF staff said Nature.
On Monday, three DOGE members arrived at the NSF headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. NSF employees say that DOGE has led hundreds of research proposals approved during a examination process in several stages – but not yet finalized – to be returned to agents of the NSF program, which have been invited to carry out “mitigation work” without further details. Science reported for the first time The arrival of Doge to the NSF this week.
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With a budget of US $ 9 billion, the NSF is one of the largest fundamental research donors in the world. From the start of the second American presidency of Donald Trump, the agency underwent changes inducing the boost: it froze all the payments of grants and then Decle them in February according to the orders of the court; He dismissed his probation employees in February and weeks later rehthered half of ThEM. And earlier this month, the agency Half reducing its graduate research scholarship programOffering only 1,000 positions instead of the usual 2,000.
The NSF was under increased control following the release of A October 2024 report Written by the Bureau of Ted Cruz, a Republican Senator from Texas who now chairs the Senate Science Committee. The report allegedly allegedly allegedly 3,483 research subsidies awarded between January 2021 and April 2024 by the NSF during the administration of the predecessor of Trump, Joe Biden, “went to doubtful projects which favored the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) Tenets”, wasting $ 2 billion. Today, the Democrats of the Committee on Sciences, Space and Technology of the American House of Representatives published an analysis of the Cruz report. The analysis claims the main defects of the report, which suggests that it “endangers the economic and national security of the United States” by “undermining the important work of scientific researchers, educators and institutions”.
An NSF spokesperson says that he “continues to issue awards” and refused to answer Naturequestions. Kush Desai, spokesperson for the White House, said that “Trump administration is committed to ensuring that federal research expenditure complies with the priorities of daily Americans”. Cruz’s office did not immediately respond to NatureComment requests.
To better understand the situation at the NSF, Nature spoke to five staff members, who have obtained anonymity because they are not allowed to speak with the press.
Doge arrives
While DOGE has visited other American agencies in the past two months – in some cases, completely focusing them – NSF employees have retained their collective breath.
But Wednesday, DOGE turned his attention to the NSF subsidies, at the center of the agency’s mission. Documents seen by Nature Show that two members of Doge, Luke Farritor and Zachary Terrell, had access to grant management systems and used this access to prevent subsidies from receiving already approved funding but which awaits the finalization. “This, of course, raises the hairs at the back of our neck in a disturbing way,” said an NSF program agent.
Research projects at the NSF go through several stages before approval. The proposals are first subject to agents of the NSF program with expertise in the scientific field on which they are concentrated. If the proposals succeed with the officers, these staff members then communicate an examination of independent experts outside the agency. Only the strongest applications pass this step – the typical success rate is between 20% and 30%. The Division Directors within the NSF then give final approval and send the subsidies to finalize with the division of subsidies and agreements. This is where subsidies are currently returned.
The proposals that receive final approval are essentially always funded – so far, according to employees. Before the arrival of Doge, the new research prices at the agency had slowed down, against 2024, Science reported. On April 16, they stopped completely.
A report under fire
It is not the first time that Trump has taken office that the NSF has re -examined its subsidies. In February, the agency launched an examination of all its subsidies to ensure that they were not in violation of Trump’s decrees on “Radical and useless” programs And “”genre ideology“”. At that time, he denounced subsidies containing one of the hundreds of words that the Cruz report affirmed were indicators of left -wing ideologies rather than a hard science – like “women”, “black men” and “inequality”. Since 1980, the US Congress has mandated that within the framework of its mission, the NSF should expand the participation of groups underrepresented in science.
The analysis of the Chamber revealed that the report triggered subsidies inappropriately in the institutions which use minorities because the subsidies referred to the minority status of the institution. He also noted that the Cruz report contained a “slew of embarrassing errors”, in particular that he reported subsidies completely unrelated to the Dei initiatives, such as the genomic diversity of rice and female leopard seals. In addition, 14% of the 3,483 subsidies were duplicates, so they were at two accounts.
Zoe Lofgren, an American representative of California and the classification democrat of the Chamber of Sciences, Space and Technology Committee, sent the analysis to the NSF earlier in the day. “It is imperative that the NSF is not intimidated in the acceptance of these empty conclusions and to undermine its process of examining merit by substituting the slander of the Cruz report for the opinion of experts”, ” Lofgren wrote in a letter to the director of the NSF, Sethuraman Panchanathan,.
Most subsidies, according to the analysis, were reported because they included a language on the “broader impacts” of research to society, a compulsory requirement adopted unanimously by the Senate in 2010, before Cruz was a senator, then again in 2017, after him.
Anthony Gitter, computer biologist at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, had a subsidy on the use of in -depth learning for protein modeling reported by the Cruz ratio. It contained a single sentence on the supply of summer research possibilities to under-represented minorities as part of the broader declaration of impact. The Cruz report “plays in the story that universities are these elitist places which house unaccuarian academics who no longer make science,” he said. “But it’s disconnected from data.”
This article is reproduced with permission and was first publication April 17, 2025.