Later yesterday, President Trump resigned five years ago, Sethuraman Panchanathan, who ran the National Science Foundation. He didn't say why, but it was clear: Trump signed more than 400 active research awards from the NSF last weekend and is urging Congress to cut the agency's $9 billion budget in half.
The Trump administration targets American scientific enterprises, an engine of research and innovation that has been around for decades. It has been in the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and NASA’s reduction or freezing budget. It has fired or allocated thousands of researchers.
Chaos is confusing: Isn’t science a permanent force? Doesn’t it contain diseases? Wouldn't this help us compete with China? Doesn’t this attract the president to say the kind of immigration he wants? In this version of the newsletter, we break the macro mirror to understand the turmoil.
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Research in the United States flourished under a sponsorship system that provided congressional approval funding to universities, national laboratories and institutions. The knowledge factory uses tens of thousands of researchers, attracts talent from around the world and produces scientific breakthroughs and Nobel Prizes.
This is a slow system because science moves slowly. Discovery is often indirect and iterative, involving the collaboration of researchers who require years of subsidized education to become experts. Startups and companies that require a fast return on investment often can’t wait too long or take risks.
Science is capital. Through certain measures, every dollar spent on research returns at least $5.
President Trump has less patience. He has funded university research on AIDS, pediatric cancer and solar physics. (Two prominent researchers are compiling a list of NIH grants and NSF awards.) The government has also abandoned thousands of federal scientists, including meteorologists at the National Weather Service; all preparation experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and black lung researchers at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. A next-generation space observatory that has been built for $3.5 billion in a decade is waiting for a release that may never happen now.
Abandoning scientists
Government officials offer various reasons for the repression: cost cuts, government efficiency, “defending women from gender ideological extremism.” Many grants are cancelled because they contain words, including climate, diversity, disability, transgender or women. Some have caused anger from the government because the application includes a DEI statement requested by the previous government.
No telescope is needed to see where this leads to it. American leaders have traditionally viewed science as an investment in the future. Will this government cancel it? One-third of the Nobel Prize winners in the United States are foreign-born, but immigration crackdowns have swept away scientists like Russian Kseniia Petrova, an aging at Harvard University and now in a detention center in Louisiana. Australian scholars have stopped attending U.S. meetings due to fear of being detained, The Guardian reported.
Now, some American scientists are looking for exports. France, Canada and other countries are courting our researchers. In a recent poll by Nature, more than 1,200 American scientists said they were considering working abroad. The journal’s job search platform is 32% more than the same period last year for overseas positions between January 2025 and March 2025.
Redefine “science”
These are mechanical threats to science – who can get money and work they do. But there are more survival concerns. What the Trump administration is trying to change count As science.
An effort aims to explore what science should show and obtain results agreed with the government. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He doesn't want to study vaccines hesitate. The National Science Foundation said it will no longer fund “research, with the aim of combating misinformation, “false information” and “failure” that could be used to violate the constitutionally protected rights of speech by U.S. citizens.” A Justice Department official accused the famous medical journal of not broadcasting “competitive perspectives.”
Another gambit is the result of suppressing or avoiding the political shutdown of pronunciation, even if the information is not yet clear. The government has removed public data sets on air quality, seismic intensity and subsea geology. Why delete records to cut budgets? Perhaps the data will point to efforts (reducing pollution? Undersea mining restrictions?) that officials may need to do one day. We pursue knowledge to take action: prevent things, improve things. But action is expensive when the Trump administration wants as little as possible. Maybe it's better not to even know.
One affirmative way to turn off knowledge is to question who can collect it. The government is applying it to the same liberal painting scientists in academia, which is what the 2025 project calls “an enlightened, well-educated management elite.” NIH is controlled by a “small portion of high-paying and irresponsible insiders,” the 2025 author wrote. The EPA’s regulatory work “should include so-called civic science” and “leave it to the public to identify scientific flaws and research misconduct.”
In science, just like in a democratic country, there is enough room for doubt and debate. That's what makes it work. But at some point, the call for “further study” became an effort to cover up the facts of inconvenience. This is an ancient script, which was recently exploited by the tobacco industry in the 1960s and fossil fuel companies.
Now, it is being opposed by the government usually against the scientific weapon. Facts are elites, facts are substitutable, and facts are wrong. Once something is true, anything can be true.
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Trump ordered government agencies to prepare for mining the seabed. Almost all other countries oppose this industrial activity in international waters.
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Below, Alan Blinder, who covers education, describes scientific research in Trump’s battle with Harvard. Click to watch the video.
Latest news
Pete Hegseth
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s personal phone number is the one used in recent signal chats and is easily accessible on the internet and public apps in March. Analysts say this may expose the secrets of national security of foreign opponents. Read more here.
At yesterday's press conference, the Times' business editor hints at the radiant odor from the corner of her office. Why? About the food industry, Julie Creswell is writing a story about food dyes, and business people have opened up the Froot cycle in Canada and the United States.
The bowl on the left contains Canadian cereals for meals. Its color comes from the juices of blueberries, watermelons and other fruits. The one on the right, for Americans, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants a synthetic dye that is prohibited.
“Everyone is shocked by the difference in color,” Julie said. Natural dyes were muted. “They are a slight change in beige and the blue is completely gone.”
A light tone deceived our staff, including one who said, “Your mind thinks it’s not that strong – it may be a little stale.” But the business journalist tasted the sample and agreed that the flavors were indistinguishable.
Read Julie's story about the difficulties of food companies in changing dyes. – Adam B. Kushner
Opinion
Robert F. Kennedy Emily may. A severe form of autism limits the life of a daughter.
This is a column David Brooks About Trump’s true power.
Read in the morning
Multitasking: How do bats drink water while flying?
Ask the therapist: “I hate my parents' politics. Should I turn my son away?”
Yesterday clicked most: How to reduce the risk of stroke, dementia and depression.
Yesterday's online trend: Alijah Arenas, the highest recruit in USC basketball and the son of NBA Start Gilbert Arenas, fell into a coma after a car accident.
Life and life: Gretchen Dow Simpson is a highly acclaimed Rhode Island painter whose moody, height-of-the-height geometric images of his beachfront huts, snow-covered farms and other New England life totems are compared with the work of Edward Hopper. They also added coverage to the 58th issue of The New Yorker cover. She died of 85.
Exercise
NFL Draft: The Tennessee Titans chose Cam Ward with the No. 1 cam ward. Heisman champion Travis Hunter will head to Jacksonville.
NBA: The Best Seed Thunder completed its biggest half-time comeback in playoff history, leading the Grizzlies 3-0. The Knicks and the Clippers also won the game.
Theo von is a comedian and host of “Last Weekend,” a video podcast that usually gets millions of views. This is one of the most popular shows in the country. But what is his politics? He is more ambiguous than his “brother-like peers.” This may be why he was so successful, our critic Jon Caramanica wrote. Read more about him.
More information about culture
Ask the morning
After Pope Francis passed away on Monday, we invited morning readers to submit questions about our coverage and what will happen next. Jody Mower, who lives in the Utah Alps, wrote the image in this way, saying, “I moved me with a beautiful and symbolic framework.” She asked, how did Gianni Cipriano “get permission to take pictures from a place like this?”
Gianni lives in Naples and has been a freelance photographer for Times since 2008. “I was thinking, where should I go?” He knew the terraces of the Vatican's previous work, including the 2013 meeting of Francis, so he rose along the dark, narrow spiral staircase. (See his video on Instagram.)
It was about 7:30 pm, and the rosary prayer began and the sun began to set. At first, Gianni was disappointed that the square was dissatisfied. “But the light is magical,” he said. He formed the image to make one of the 140 statues in the square – 99% of us determined it was Saint Andrew Corsini, who died in 1374 and was named famous in 1629, but if you know different, send us an email, which is the possibility of seeing the crowd as a pope.
“It's really a metaphor for what happened that day,” he said of the image. It gives a “sense of soberness and sadness,” he said, “I think it really conveys moments of silence and memories.”
Gianni is one of three photographers covering the funeral of the Times. We will be dispatched on site from the Vatican in Tomorrow's Morning. – Jodi Rudoren
Morning recommendation…
