Trump cuts the Roil National Science Foundation, alarming researchers: NPR

The Trump administration sharpens its attacks on the National Science Foundation, the government agency, which is a great sponsor of basic science, mathematics and engineering, especially at universities and universities across the country.

The latest Salvo: A Preliminary budget request From the White House, which lowered 4.7 billion US dollars or more than half of the agency's budget of 9 billion US dollars.

The proposal landed on the same day when the NSF said that 344 previously approved grants had been terminated because they “were not brought into harmony with the agency's priorities,” said an email to NPR. This follows two earlier cancellation waves in April, which terminated a thousand awards.

In addition, the agency has now stopped The granting of new awards and the end of the financing of all existing ones, the science journal Nature says. A spokesman for the NSF who asked about this report rejected a statement.

In the midst of all this turbulence, the NSF director Sethuraman Panchanathan left abruptly last week. say “I think I did everything I can.”

It would be “a crisis, just a disaster for the US science,” says so much of the budget of this agency for US science, “says Sudip ParikhChief Executive Officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the largest scientific societies in the world.

He is optimistic that the congress would not go hand in hand with it, but the budget process would probably take months.

In the meantime, the uncertainty would annoy scientists how they can support their laboratories and the students and researchers of the early career who work there.

“This has created this paralysis that I think that she is already hurt us,” says Parikh, who says that when he speaks to scientists, he begins to have an interest in having an “exit plan from these jobs”.

Marianna ZhangA cognitive scientist at New York University, which examines how children form stereotypes and how these stereotypes can be reduced, said that she learned that her two-year scholarship was canceled in an email by NSF, which said that she wrote the word “priorities”. Your work no longer served these priorities, it said.

“I was just deaf,” she says, explaining that she received the e -mail while driving to a science conference and read it. “It was just shocking. I cried, outside on the side of the road.”

“Wider and strange”

Some of the grants initially set diversity, justice and inclusion or examined misinformation or disinformation. These two research categories were previously targeted by Republicans in Congress such as Jim Jordan and Ted Cruz.

But the cancellations did not stop here.

“While things go on, you can see that the range only becomes wider and stranger,” says Noam RossExecutive Director of a non -profit organization called Ropensci, which started a database so that people could report the cancellations of their grants themselves.

“If you only look at this, there is a conference on geometry and topology that has been canceled,” says Ross. “Why was it canceled, right?”

He notes that the grants for the department of this conference may have mentioned scholarships for students from underrepresented communities. In the past, many researchers funded by NSF have been encouraged to explain how their work would promote the commitment in the sciences.

Many of the canceled subsidies focus on education-especially on small, medium-sized, rural or minority-powered universities and universities.

Take the previously financed by NSF Rustblelt -Nna -MeetingFor example. “We really emphasize the students,” says Charles Hoogstraten from the Michigan State University, who realizes that NSF has financed it for many years. “The vast majority of our conversations and a good majority of our posters are given by students.”

For many poorer students who cannot afford to travel, this is one of their only chances to take part in a high -ranking scientific conference, says Hoogstraten. He and his colleagues try to find out what they should do if the financing has been reduced.

Amy HagenA doctoral student at Virginia Tech University went to NSF financing for geology work.

“I applied for, was awarded the scholarship on Thursday and then had it terminated on Friday,” she says.

Growing uncertainty

Kathleen JohnsonA geochemist at the UCI Climate Justice Initiative says that his NSF scholarship is around 1.5 million US dollars a year to make geosciences more diverse and integrative. Now you are able to relieve employees and try to find out how to support the students this summer.

“There is a lot of uncertainty,” she says. “It was really stressful.”

When asked about the impact of all of these cancellations on US scientists, a spokesman for the NSF said that “NSF rejects a comment”.

The White House budget for 2026 states that “Financing for: Climate; Climate Energy, Social, Social Sciences and Economics as well as programs in low priority areas of science” awakens.

“The financing of research for artificial intelligence and quantum information science is maintained at the current level,” it says.

However, the abrupt end of grants with little explanation means that all scientists feel their influence, says Parikh.

“Even people who are not canceled or are not canceled fear that they will be canceled,” he says.

Zhang at New York University says that she wonders whether her future scientific career has to pass outside the United States.

“It's pretty scary what happens,” she says. “I think it also shaken my faith at short notice that all of this happens – but also in the long term.”