NIH Research Fellow Alexander Jordan Lara’s Critique of Donald Trump’s 2016 Presidential Referendum on Fundamental Questions and Human Rights

Global scientific organizations must also show their support, including those who represent young scientists, scientific academies and researchers at risk around the world. We urge them all to speak up for their US-based colleagues — and the crucial work they do — just as they support researchers at risk elsewhere.

Their anxiety was on display at a protest in Washington DC on 19 February, when about 250 graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and research technicians gathered outside the US Department of Health and Human Services to protest against the chaos unleashed by mass layoffs, leadership changes and promises of budget cuts at federal agencies. Alexander Jordan Lara is a research fellow at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research and is part of the National Institutes of Health. Lara’s career is in limbo after his principal investigator, a high-ranking NIH scientist, abruptly retired on 11 February amid the turmoil created by the Trump team’s directives , leaving the fate of the laboratory and its members up in the air.

Some of those orders had been anticipated, including pulling the United States out of the 2015 Paris agreement to rein in global climate emissions and terminating the nation’s membership of the World Health Organization. Others had surprising and immediate ripple effects through the scientific community.

One order tried to define only two biological sexes, male and female, then banned actions that promote or otherwise influence gender ideology. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) removed data from their websites and pulled back manuscript submissions to purge terms related to gender and transsexuality in scientific journals.

On the day after his inauguration on 20 January, Donald Trump signed a lot of executive orders that froze or deleted tens of billions of dollars in funding for research and international assistance. Orwellian restrictions have been placed on research, including bans on studies that mention particular words relating to sex and gender, race, disability and other protected characteristics.

The administration is firing federal employees from national agencies, including those that employ researchers and that rely on research, often in disciplines that are key to protecting public health, the environment and people’s safety and security. It is making sudden and drastic cuts to public spending. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Institutes of Health are some of the respected institutions who have been affected. Meetings of NIH research-grant-review panels were suspended at the start of Trump’s presidency and remain so. The National Archives and Records Administration, the keeper of the country’s official records, is also affected, as are public libraries and museums.

The researcher who requested anonymity said that the principal investigators are suffering because of the funding they get from the US agencies. “Everything is on you to manage your grants and your team,” they say, adding that “there’s a lot of fear of people not wanting to say or do the wrong thing” and therefore lose financial support for their work. It is chaotic and I am losing sleep.

Trump had directives that were unprecedented and his partnership with Musk has flourished. The US Agency for International Development is one of the agencies that will be dismantled due to the work of the pair.

To accomplish this goal, the Trump administration — working through the US Department of Government Efficiency, which Musk reportedly advises — has moved quickly to demoralize and gut the federal workforce, including about 280,000 scientists and engineers. In January, around 75,000 federal employees were offered an e-mail that stated that they would retain their salaries until September and that they would be offered higher productivity jobs in the private sector. In mid-February, layoffs began for probationary employees across the US government — those usually hired into their positions within the past two years, meaning that early-career researchers were particularly affected.

The impact of the financial crisis on young scientists in the U.S.: Suzanne Autrey reveals the frustration of the uncertainty in their research careers

Suzanne Autrey is the first in her family to go to university. She enjoys teaching geology to other first- generation university students at Northern Illinois University. Autrey says that a degree to them does not just change their lives. It changes their lives.

Now, like some other early-career scientists in the United States, Autrey feels her dream of a research career slipping away. The tick-tock of her tenure clock can be heard as she checks the status of two grant applications. The US National Science Foundation is facing the prospect of large budget cuts. Without those grants, she can not do the research needed to support her tenure bid. “I’m dead in the water if I can’t get one,” she says.

That fear radiates beyond employees of federal agencies. The University of Maryland paid a neuroscience PhD student a sum of money through a diversity grant. Popal counts himself lucky: this year’s salary has already been allocated. But the Trump administration has threatened any funding that falls under the rubric of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and Popal is not counting on getting paid next year. He’s looking for other jobs now, especially any that do not rely on federal funds — even if that means leaving science. “I love my research,” he says, “but I cannot afford to lose a pay cheque.”

Faced with that uncertainty, some young scientists might choose to leave the country rather than leave science, says Ginther. But the United States churned out more than 34,000 science PhD graduates in 2023. Some of them will leave the United States to stay in science, but it is unknown if other countries will absorb them. “I don’t know that the world’s scientific enterprise can absorb the potential loss of talent that we’re creating in the United States,” says Ginther.

The instability in the United States is making people think twice about their plans. “I’m worried that four or five months after I move all my stuff there, I’ll be told, ‘Actually there’s no more funding,’” he says. He is looking for work in the United Kingdom.

How, then, should those of us who are part of the global enterprise of education, health, science and engineering respond? One priority must be to denounce these actions, to shout about their negative effects, to support researchers and to defend their ability to work and study without fear for their jobs. Understandably, those who work at federal agencies will probably feel that they can not speak up, but researchers at other organizations, like universities, scientific societies, businesses and labour unions, are allowed to speak up, and must show their support for their colleagues.

There are differing opinions between researchers in scientific fields. Discussion and further study are the best ways to reach a shared understanding. Shutting down scholarship is not a solution.

The U.S. ambassador to the United States will be frustrated by the Trump administration’s exit from the UNSIDA Emergency Plan and the World Health Organization

The agency has put a lot of its staff on leave. Most, if not all, of its buildings are currently inaccessible, as is its website. Although life-saving programmes are exempt from any immediate changes, there are few if any functioning financial systems available to keep the payments going. Funding from the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which has disbursed more than $100 billion for the prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS since 2003, is still up in the air.

At least one million women in countries around the world have lost access to contraceptive care as a result of a 90-day ‘pause’ on funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the world’s largest single-country source for aid, including scientific assistance. In 2023, the United States disbursed $72 billion in international assistance, some 60% of which was provided through USAID.

Trump has also cancelled US federal funding for international climate-change projects, which totalled some US$11 billion in 2024, amounting to around 10% of annual global public climate finance. Alongside his decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, this is a severe blow to tackling climate change, and will delay efforts to boost finance for the countries most affected by global warming.

On the international front, the decision to withdraw from or drastically scale back long-standing commitments will have severe consequences. The United States is often the biggest contributor to global initiatives that are linked to the UNSDGs. The country also provides around one-fifth of the core budget for the World Health Organization (WHO), which Trump has already notified of his intent to leave. Although the United States will not formally depart until next year, the WHO’s more than 8,000 staff members have already been told by director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to put all but essential travel on hold.

It might be that the White House is forced to moderate or reverse some of its decisions if people and organizations keep challenging the administration in the courts. A desire to downgrade, if not eliminate, independent, science-based evidence and expert advice is part of the direction of travel.