“In effect, every NSF grant right now is canceled.”iStock/Getty Images
The hits to science, and scientists, keep coming under the Trump administration.
This week, the National Science Foundation (NSF), a government agency that funds research across the country, told staffers that “until further notice,” it will stop payments on grants it has already awarded for studies—and stop awarding new ones.
That’s according to a scoop from the science journal Nature, which got its hands on an internal NSF email. The freeze will be “a slow-moving apocalypse,” an NSF-funded scientist told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “In effect, every NSF grant right now is canceled.”
In the past, the agency has funded hundreds of thousands of researchers every year, including technical professionals and students. The NSF did not give a reason for the freeze in its internal email, and it declined Nature‘s request for comment.
The halt to funding is just the latest example of turmoil at the NSF. In February, my colleague Jackie Flynn Mogensen reported that the agency was laying off 10 percent of its employees. In April, it terminated more than 1,000 awards, many supporting work the administration claims is related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, or misinformation and disinformation, as my colleague Henry Carnell reported.
On Friday, the NSF said it was terminating hundreds of additional grants that were “not aligned with agency priorities.” The same day, the White House requested to halve the agency’s $9 billion budget.
Sudip Parikh, who leads the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the largest scientific societies in the world, told NPR that he doubted Congress would approve the White House’s request, but that the budget process could take months. Cutting so much of NSF’s funding, he added, would be “a crisis, just a catastrophe for US science.”