Two months into Donald Trump’s second presidency and many parts of US science – across government, academia, and industry – continue to be hit hard by the new administration’s policies. Science-related government agencies are seeing budgets and staff cut, especially in programmes linked to climate change and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is also causing havoc as it seeks to slash spending.

In mid-February, DOGE fired more than 300 employees at the National Nuclear Safety Administration, which is part of the US Department of Energy, many of whom were responsible for reassembling nuclear warheads at the Pantex plant in Texas. A day later, the agency was forced to rescind all but 28 of the sackings amid concerns that their absence could jeopardise national security. 

A judge has also reinstated workers who were laid off at the National Science Foundation (NSF) as well as at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The judge said the government’s Office of Personnel Management, which sacked the staff, did not have the authority to do so. However, the NSF rehiring applies mainly to military veterans and staff with disabilities, with the overall workforce down by about 140 people – or roughly 10%.

The NSF has also announced a reduction, the size of which is unknown, in its Research Experiences for Undergraduates programme. Over the last 38 years, the initiative has given thousands of college students – many with backgrounds that are underrepresented in science – the opportunity to carry out original research at  institutions during the summer holidays. NSF staff are also reviewing thousands of grants containing such words as “women” and “diversity”.

NASA, meanwhile, is to shut its office of technology, policy and strategy, along with its chief-scientist office, and the DEI and accessibility branch of its diversity and equal opportunity office. “I know this news is difficult and may affect us all differently,” admitted acting administrator Janet Petro in an all-staff e-mail. Affecting about 20 staff, the move is on top of plans to reduce NASA’s overall workforce. Reports also suggest that NASA’s science budget could be slashed by as much as 50%.

Hundreds of “probationary employees” have also been sacked by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which provides weather forecasts that are vital for farmers and people in areas threatened by tornadoes and hurricanes. “If there were to be large staffing reductions at NOAA there will be people who die in extreme weather events and weather-related disasters who would not have otherwise,” warns climate scientist Daniel Swain from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Climate concerns

In his first cabinet meeting on 26 February, Trump suggested that officials “use scalpels” when trimming their departments’ spending and personnel – rather than Musk’s figurative chainsaw. But bosses at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) still plan to cut its budget by about two-thirds. “[W]e fear that such cuts would render the agency incapable of protecting Americans from grave threats in our air, water, and land,” wrote former EPA administrators William Reilly, Christine Todd Whitman and Gina McCarthy in the New York Times.

The White House’s attack on climate science goes beyond just the EPA. In January, the US Department of Agriculture removed almost all data on climate change from its website. The action resulted in a lawsuit in March from the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York and two non-profit organizations – the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Working Group. They say that the removal hinders research and “agricultural decisions”.

The Trump administration has also barred NASA’s now former chief scientist Katherine Calvin and members of the State Department from travelling to China for a planning meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Meanwhile, in a speech to African energy ministers in Washington on 7 March, US energy secretary Chris Wright claimed that coal has “transformed our world and made it better”, adding that climate change, while real, is not on his list of the world’s top 10 problems. “We’ve had years of Western countries shamelessly saying ‘don’t develop coal’,” he said. “That’s just nonsense.”

At the National Institutes of Health (NIH), staff are being told to cancel hundreds of research grants that involve DEI and transgender issues. The Trump administration also wants to cut the allowance for indirect costs of NIH’s and other agencies’ research grants to 15% of research contracts, although a district court judge has put that move on hold pending further legal arguments. On 8 March, the Trump administration also threatened to cancel $400m in funding to Columbia purportedly due to its failure to tackle anti-semitism on the campus.

A Trump policy of removing “undocumented aliens” continues to alarm universities that have overseas students. Some institutions have already advised overseas students against travelling abroad during holidays, in case immigration officers do not let them back in when they return. Others warn that their international students should carry their immigration documents with them at all times. Universities have also started to rein in spending with Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, implementing a hiring freeze.

Falling behind

Amid the turmoil, the US scientific community is beginning to fight back. Individual scientists have supported court cases that have overturned sackings at government agencies, while a letter to Congress signed by the Union of Concerned Scientists and 48 scientific societies asserts that the administration has “already caused significant harm to American science”. On 7 March, more than 30 US cities also hosted “Stand Up for Science” rallies attended by thousands of demonstrators.

Elsewhere, a group of government, academic and industry leaders – known collectively as Vision for American Science and Technology – has released a report warning that the US could fall behind China and other competitors in science and technology. Entitled Unleashing American Potential, it calls for increased public and private investment in science to maintain US leadership. “The more dollars we put in from the feds, the more investment comes in from industry, and we get job growth, we get economic success, and we get national security out of it,” notes Sudip Parikh, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, who was involved in the report.

Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, meanwhile, has called on the community to continue to highlight the benefit of science. “We need to underscore the fact that stable federal funding of research is the main mode by which radical new discoveries have come to light – discoveries that have enabled the age of quantum computing and AI and new materials science,” she said. “These are areas that I am sure are very important to this administration as well.”

The post US science rues ongoing demotion of research under President Trump appeared first on Physics World.

The Stand Up for Science demonstration at Washington Square Park in New York City on Friday 7 March 2025 had the most qualified speakers, angriest participants and wickedest signs of any protest I can remember.

Raucous, diverse and loud, it was held in the shadow of looming massive cuts to key US scientific agencies including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Other anti-science actions have included the appointment of a vaccine opponent as head of the US Health and Human Services and the cancellation of $400m in grants and contracts to Columbia University.

I arrived at the venue half an hour beforehand. Despite the chillingly cold and breezy weather, the park’s usual characters were there, including chess players, tap dancers, people advertising “Revolution Books” and evangelists who handed me a “spiritual credit card”.

But I had come for a more real-world cause that is affecting many of my research colleagues right here, right now. Among the Stand Up For Science demonstrators was Srishti Bose, a fourth-year graduate student in neuroscience at Queens College, who met me underneath the arch at the north of the park, the traditional site of demonstrations.

She had organized the rally together with two other women – a graduate student at Stony Brook University and a postdoc at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. They had heard that there would be a Stand Up for Science rally on the same day in Washington, DC, and thought that New York City should have one too. In fact, there were 32 across the US in total.

The trio didn’t have much time, and none of them had ever planned a political protest before. “We spent 10 days frantically e-mailing everyone we could think of,” Srishti said, of having to arrange the permits, equipment, insurance, medical and security personnel – and speakers.

I was astounded at what they accomplished. The first speaker was Harald Varmus, who won the 1989 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine and spent seven years as director of the NIH under President Barack Obama. “People think medicine falls from the sky,” he told protestors, “rather than from academics supported by science funding.”

Another Nobel-prize-winner who spoke was Martin Chalfie from Columbia University, who won the 2008 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Speaker after speaker – faculty, foundation directors, lab heads, faculty, postdocs, graduate students, New York State politicians – ticked off what was being lost by the budget cuts targeting science.

It included money for motor neurone disease, Alzheimer’s, cancer, polio, measles, heart disease research, climate science, and funding that supports stipends and salaries for postdocs, grad students, university labs and departments.

Lisa Randall, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University, began with a joke: “How many government officials does it take to screw in a light bulb? None: Trump says the job’s done and they stay in the dark.”

Randall continued by enumerating programme and funding cuts that will turn the lights out on important research. “Let’s keep the values that Make America Great – Again,” she concluded.

The crowd of 2000 or so demonstrators were diverse and multi-generational, as is typical for such events in my New York City. I heard at least five different languages being spoken. Everyone was fired up and roared “Boo!” whenever the names of certain politicians were mentioned.

I told Bose about the criticism I had heard that Stand Up for Science was making science look like a special-interest group rather than being carried out in the public interest.

She would have none of it. “They made us an interest group,” Bose insisted. “We grew up thinking that everyone accepted and supported science. This is the first time we’ve had a direct attack on what we do. I can’t think of a single lab that doesn’t have an NSF or NIH grant.”

Lots of signs were on display, many fabulously aggressive and angry, ranging from hand-drawn lettering on cardboard to carefully produced placards – some of which I won’t reproduce in a family magazine.

“I shouldn’t have to make a sign saying that ‘Defunding science is wrong’…but here we are” said one. “Go fact yourself!” and “Science keeps you assholes alive”, said others.

Two female breast-cancer researchers had made a sign that, they told me, put their message in a way that they thought the current US leaders would get: “Science saves boobs.”

I saw others that bitterly mocked the current US president’s apparent ignorance of the distinction between “transgenic” and “transgender”.

“Girls just wanna have funding” said another witty sign. “Executive orders are not peer reviewed”; “Science: because I’d rather not make shit up”; “Science is significant *p<0.05” said others.

The rally ended with 20 minutes of call-and-response chants. Everyone knew the words, thanks to a QR code.

“We will fight?”

“Every day!”

“When science is under attack?”

“Stand up, fight back!”

“What do we want?”

“Answers”

“When do we want it?”

“After peer review!”

After the spirited chanting, the rally was officially over, but many people stayed, sharing stories, collecting information and seeking ideas for the next moves.

“Obviously,” Bose said, “it’s not going to end here.”

The post Demonstrators march for science in New York City appeared first on Physics World.

Physicists in Serbia have begun strike action today in response to what they say is government corruption and social injustice. The one-day strike, called by the country’s official union for researchers, is expected to result in thousands of scientists joining students who have already been demonstrating for months over conditions in the country.

The student protests, which began in November, were triggered by a railway station canopy collapse that killed 15 people. Since then, it has grown into an ongoing mass protest seen by many as indirectly seeking to change the government, currently led by president Aleksandar Vučić.

The Serbian government, however, claims it has met all student demands such as transparent publication of all documents related to the accident and the prosecution of individuals who have disrupted the protests. The government has also accepted the resignation of prime minister Miloš Vučević as well as transport minister Goran Vesić and trade minister Tomislav Momirović, who previously held the transport role during the station’s reconstruction.

“The students are championing noble causes that resonate with all citizens,” says Igor Stanković, a statistical physicist at the Institute of Physics (IPB) in Belgrade, who is joining today’s walkout. In January, around 100 employees from the IPB  in Belgrade signed a letter in support of the students, one of many from various research institutions since December.

Stanković believes that the corruption and lack of accountability that students are protesting against “stem from systemic societal and political problems, including entrenched patronage networks and a lack of transparency”.

“I believe there is no turning back now,” adds Stanković. “The students have gained support from people across the academic spectrum – including those I personally agree with and others I believe bear responsibility for the current state of affairs. That, in my view, is their strength: standing firmly behind principles, not political affiliations.”

Meanwhile, Miloš Stojaković, a mathematician at the University of Novi Sad, says that the faculty at the university have backed the students from the start especially given that they are making “a concerted effort to minimize disruptions to our scientific work”.

Many university faculties in Serbia have been blockaded by protesting students, who have been using them as a base for their demonstrations. “The situation will have a temporary negative impact on research activities,” admits  Dejan Vukobratović, an electrical engineer from the University of Novi Sad. However, most researchers are “finding their way through this situation”, he adds, with “most teams keeping their project partners and funders informed about the situation, anticipating possible risks”.

Missed exams

Amidst the continuing disruptions, the Serbian national science foundation has twice delayed a deadline for the award of €24m of research grants, citing “circumstances that adversely affect the collection of project documentation”. The foundation adds that 96% of its survey participants requested an extension. The researchers’ union has also called on the government to freeze the work status of PhD students employed as research assistants or interns to accommodate the months’ long pause to their work. The government has promised to look into it.

Meanwhile, universities are setting up expert groups to figure out how to deal with the delays to studies and missed exams. Physics World approached Serbia’s government for comment, but did not receive a reply.

The post Physicists in Serbia begin strike action in support of student protests appeared first on Physics World.

As physicists, we like to think that physics and politics are – indeed, ought to be – unconnected. And a lot of the time, that’s true.

Certainly, the value of the magnetic moment of the muon or the behaviour of superconductors in a fusion reactor (look out for our feature article next week) have nothing do with where anyone sits on the political spectrum. It’s subjects like climate change, evolution and medical research that tend to get caught in the political firing line.

But scientists of all disciplines in the US are now feeling the impact of politics at first hand. The new administration of Donald Trump has ordered the National Institutes of Health to slash the “indirect” costs of its research projects, threatening medical science and putting the universities that support it at risk. The National Science Foundation, which funds much of US physics, is under fire too, with staff sacked and grant funding paused.

Trump has also signed a flurry of executive orders that, among other things, ban federal government initiatives to boost diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and instruct government departments to “combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs and activities”. Some organizations are already abandoning such efforts for fear of these future repercussions.

What’s troubling for physics is that attacks on diversity initiatives fall most heavily on people from under-represented groups, who are more likely to quit physics or not go into it in the first place. That’s bad news for our subject as a whole because we know that a diverse community brings in smart ideas, new approaches and clever thinking.

The speed of changes in the US is bewildering too. Yes, the proportion from federal grants for indirect costs might be too high, but making dramatic changes at short notice, with no consultation is bizarre. There’s also a danger that universities will try to recoup lost money by raising tuition fees, which will hit poorer students the hardest.

US science has long been a beacon of excellence, a top destination especially for researchers from other nations. But many scientists are fearful of speaking out, scared that they or their institutions will pay a price for any opposition.

So far, it’s been left to senior leaders such as James Gates – a theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland – to warn of the dangers in store. “My country,” he said at an event earlier this month, “is in for a 50-year period of a new dark ages.”

I sincerely hope he’s wrong.

The post US science faces unprecedented difficulties under the Trump administration appeared first on Physics World.

Scientists across the US have been left reeling after a spate of executive orders from US President Donald Trump has led to research funding being slashed, staff being told to quit and key programmes being withdrawn. In response to the orders, government departments and external organizations have axed diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes, scrubbed mentions of climate change from websites, and paused research grants pending tests for compliance with the new administration’s goals.

Since taking up office on 20 January, Trump has signed dozens of executive orders. One ordered the closure of the US Agency for International Development, which has supported medical and other missions worldwide for more than six decades. The administration said it was withdrawing almost all of the agency’s funds and wanted to sack its entire workforce. A federal judge has temporarily blocked the plans, saying they may violate the US’s constitution, which reserves decisions on funding to Congress.

Individual science agencies are under threat too. Politico reported that the Trump administration has asked the National Science Foundation (NSF), which funds much US basic and applied research, to lay off between a quarter and a half of its staff in the next two months. Another report suggests there are plans to cut the agency’s annual budget from roughly $9bn to $3bn. Meanwhile, former officials of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told CBS News that half its staff could be sacked and its budget slashed by 30%.

Even before they had learnt of plans to cut its staff and budget, officials at the NSF were starting to examine details of thousands of grants it had awarded for references to DEI, climate change and other topics that Trump does not like. The swiftness of the announcements has caused chaos, with recipients of grants suddenly finding themselves unable to access the NSF’s award cash management service, which holds grantees’ funds, including their salaries.

NSF bosses have taken some steps to reassure grantees. “Our top priority is resuming our funding actions and services to the research community and our stakeholders,” NSF spokesperson Mike England told Physics World in late January. In what is a highly fluid situation, there was some respite on 2 February when the NSF announced that access had been restored with the system able to accept payment requests.

“Un-American” actions

Trump’s anti-DEI orders have caused shockwaves throughout US science. According to 404 Media, NASA staff were told on 22 January to “drop everything” to remove mentions of DEI, Indigenous people, environmental justice and women in leadership, from public websites. Another victim has been NASA’s Here to Observe programme, which links undergraduates from under-represented groups with scientists who oversee NASA’s missions. Science reported that contracts for half the scientists involved in the programme had been cancelled by the end of January.

It is still unclear, however, what impact the Trump administration’s DEI rules will have on the make-up of NASA’s astronaut corps. Since choosing its first female astronaut in 1978, NASA has sought to make the corps more representative of US demographics. How exactly the agency should move forward will fall to Jared Isaacman, the space entrepreneur and commercial astronaut who has been nominated as NASA’s next administrator.

Anti-DEI initiatives have hit individual research labs too. Physics World understands that Fermilab – the US’s premier particle-physics lab – suspended its DEI office and its women in engineering group in January. Meanwhile, the Fermilab LBGTQ+ group, called Spectrum, was ordered to cease all activities and its mailing list deleted. Even the rainbow “Pride” flag was removed from the lab’s iconic Wilson Hall.

Some US learned societies, despite being formally unaffiliated with the government, have also responded to pressure from the new administration. The American Geophysical Union (AGU) removed the word “diversity” from its diversity and inclusion page, although it backtracked after criticism of the move.

There was also some confusion that the American Chemical Society had removed its webpage on diversity and inclusion, but they had in fact published a new page and failed to put a redirect in place. “Inclusion and Belonging is a core value of the American Chemical Society, and we remain committed to creating environments where people from diverse backgrounds, cultures, perspectives and experiences thrive,” a spokesperson told Physics World. “We know the broken link caused confusion and some alarm, and we apologize.”

For the time being, the American Physical Society’s page on inclusion remains live, as does that of the American Institute of Physics.

Dismantling all federal DEI programmes and related activities will damage lives and careers of millions of American women and men

Neal Lane, Rice University

Such a response – which some opponents denounce as going beyond what is legally required for fear of repercussions if no action is taken – has left it up to individual leaders to underline the importance of diversity in science. Neal Lane, a former science adviser to President Clinton, told Physics World that “dismantling all federal DEI programmes and related activities will damage lives and careers of millions of American women and men, including scientists, engineers, technical workers – essentially everyone who contributes to advancing America’s global leadership in science and technology”.

Lane, who is now a science and technology policy fellow at Rice University in Texas, think that the new administration’s anti-DEI actions “will weaken the US” and believes they should be considered “un-American”. “The purpose of DEI policies programmes and activities is to ensure all Americans have the opportunity to participate and the country is able to benefit from their participation,” he says.

One senior physicist at a US university, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Physics World that those behind the executive orders are relying on institutions and individuals to “comply in advance” with what they perceive to be the spirit of the orders. “They are relying on people to ignore the fine print, which says that executive orders can’t and don’t overwrite existing law. But it is up to scientists to do the reading — and to follow our consciences. More than universities are on the line: the lives of our students and colleagues are on the line.”

Education turmoil

Another target of the Trump administration is the US Department of Education, which was set up in 1978 to oversee everything from pre-school to postgraduate education. It has already put dozens of its civil servants on leave, ostensibly because their work involves DEI issues. Meanwhile, the withholding of funds has led to the cancellation of scientific meetings, mostly focusing on medicine and life sciences, that were scheduled in the US for late January and early February.

Colleges and universities in the US have also reacted to Trump’s anti-DEI executive order. Academic divisions at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, have already indicated that they will no longer require applicants for jobs to indicate how they plan to advance the goals of DEI. Northeastern University in Boston has removed the words “diversity” and “inclusion” from a section of its website.

Not all academic organizations have fallen into line, however. Danielle Holly, president of the women-only Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, says it will forgo contracts with the federal government if they required abolishing DEI. “We obviously can’t enter into contracts with people who don’t allow DEI work,” she told the Boston Globe. “So for us, that wouldn’t be an option.”

Climate concerns

For an administration that doubts the reality of climate change and opposes anti-pollution laws, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is under fire too. Trump administration representatives were taking action even before the Senate approved Lee Zeldin, a former Republican Congressman from New York who has criticized much environmental legislation, as EPA Administrator. They removed all outside advisers on the EPA’s scientific advisory board and its clean air scientific advisory committee – purportedly to “depoliticize” the boards.

Once the Senate approved Zeldin on 29 January, the EPA sent an e-mail warning more than 1000 probationary employees who had spent less than a year in the agency that their roles could be “terminated” immediately. Then, according to the New York Times, the agency developed plans to demote longer-term employees who have overseen research, enforcement of anti-pollution laws, and clean-ups of hazardous waste. According to Inside Climate News, staff also found their individual pronouns scrubbed from their e-mails and websites without their permission – the result of an order to remove “gender ideology extremism”.

Critics have also questioned the nomination of Neil Jacobs to lead the NOAA. He was its acting head during Trump’s first term in office, serving during the 2019 “Sharpiegate” affair when Trump used a Sharpie pen to alter a NOAA weather map to indicate that Hurricane Dorian would affect Alabama. While conceding Jacobs’s experience and credentials, Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientists asserts that Jacobs is “unfit to lead” given that he “fail[ed] to uphold scientific integrity at the agency”.

Spending cuts

Another concern for scientists is the quasi-official team led by “special government employee” and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. The administration has charged Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency”, or DOGE, to identify significant cuts to government spending. Though some of DOGE’s activities have been blocked by US courts, agencies have nevertheless been left scrambling for ways to reduce day-to-day costs.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), for example, has said it will significantly reduce its funding for “indirect” costs of research projects it supported – the overheads that, for example, cover the cost of maintaining laboratories, administering grants, and paying staff salaries. Under the plans, indirect cost reimbursement for federally funded research would be capped at 15%, a drastic cut from its usual range.

NIH personnel have tried to put a positive gloss on its actions. “The United States should have the best medical research in the world,” a statement from NIH declared. “It is accordingly vital to ensure that as many funds as possible go towards direct scientific research costs rather than administrative overhead.”

Just because Elon Musk doesn’t understand indirect costs doesn’t mean Americans should have to pay the price with their lives

US senator Patty Murray

Opponents of the Trump administration, however, are unconvinced. They argue that the measure will imperil critical clinical research because many academic recipients of NIH funds did not have the endowments to compensate for the losses. “Just because Elon Musk doesn’t understand indirect costs doesn’t mean Americans should have to pay the price with their lives,” says US senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington state.

Slashing universities’ share of grants to below 15%, could, however, force institutions to make up the lost income by raising tuition fees, which could “go through the roof”, according to the anonymous senior physicist contacted by Physics World. “Far from being a populist policy, these cuts to overheads are an attack on the subsidies that make university education possible for students from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. The alternative is to essentially shut down the university research apparatus, which would in many ways be the death of American scientific leadership and innovation.”

Musk and colleagues have also gained unprecedented access to government websites related to civil servants and the country’s entire payments system. That access has drawn criticism from several commentators who note that, since Musk is a recipient of significant government support through his SpaceX company, he could use the information for his own advantage.

“Musk has access to all the data on federal research grantees and contractors: social security numbers, tax returns, tax payments, tax rebates, grant disbursements and more,” wrote physicist Michael Lubell from City College of New York. “Anyone who depends on the federal government and doesn’t toe the line might become a target. This is right out of (Hungarian prime minister) Viktor Orbán’s playbook.”

A new ‘dark ages’

As for the long-term impact of these changes, James Gates – a theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland and a past president of the US National Society of Black Physicists – is blunt. “My country is in for a 50-year period of a new dark ages,” he told an audience at the Royal College of Art in London, UK, on 7 February.

My country is in for a 50-year period of a new dark ages

James Gates, University of Maryland

Speaking at an event sponsored by the college’s association for Black students – RCA BLK – and supported by the UK’s organization for Black physicists, the Blackett Lab Family, he pointed out that the US has been through such periods before. As examples, Gates cited the 1950s “Red Scare” and the period after 1876 when the federal government abandoned efforts to enforce the civil rights of Black Americans in southern states and elsewhere.

However, he is not entirely pessimistic. “Nothing is permanent in human behaviour. The question is the timescale,” Gates said. “There will be another dawn, because that’s part of the human spirit.”

• With additional reporting by Margaret Harris, online editor of Physics World, in London and Michael Banks, news editor of Physics World

The post US science in chaos as impact of Trump’s executive orders sinks in appeared first on Physics World.