Scientists Lose Jobs and Funding After Trump Administration Cuts to Research

Thousands of jobs have been terminated or frozen at federal agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Park Service and the Environmental Protection Agency following some of the deepest cuts to U.S. science funding in decades by the Trump administration. Proposed budgets for this year include major cuts to organizations like NASA and the National Science Foundation.

A Harvard University professor who studies aging lost almost all his research funds in May when the White House retaliated against the university after it refused to comply with demands for sweeping changes to its operations. The White House cut off billions of dollars in research grants and contracts. The professor was preparing to lead a panel discussion when he received an email stating: "You are receiving this email because one (or more) of your projects have been terminated per notice from the federal funding agency." The panelists he was about to interview had also lost their funding.

The Horticulture Innovation Lab, which was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, received notice that its work was no longer of interest to the American government and needed to shut down. The lab was one of the only organizations focused on fruit and vegetable research. The lab funded scientists in West and East Africa, South Asia and Central America to work with farmers on soil requirements, increasing production, and innovating around post-harvest issues. The lab invested in small-scale, low-energy cooling and drying technology and conducted social science research on increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables and ensuring that women's livelihoods increased from traditionally women's crops. The lab had to lay off its entire staff of 10 people at the University of California, Davis, in the middle of ongoing experiments.

These cuts, some of them seemingly indiscriminate, have led to chaos and demoralization across the scientific community. An editor on the Health and Science desk stated: "For whatever the stated reason by the Trump administration, this is having a huge negative impact on the American scientific enterprise, which is one of the signature accomplishments of the United States in the last 60 or 70 years. The nation has been a paragon of excellence in research, and as a supporter of research. And that landscape is changing drastically."