The National Science Foundation 55 percent budget cut is a deliberate dismemberment of America's innovation engine by Russell Vought and DOGE. This is exactly the type of behavior you would expect from someone seeking to make America weaker ... (1/2)
www.science.org/content/arti...
ATTENTION: NSF GRANT RECIPIENTS
We received a heads up from a trusted source that you should proactively download/print/screen shot any documentation on research.gov pertaining to your NSF awards, both those that are current and any that have closed in the last 5-6 years.
1/n
This statement from the NSF is insane.
Science is, in essence, designed to separate the true from the false.
Understanding how falsehoods spread is key to the scientific endeavor. It is not a violation of free speech to be proven wrong.
Keivan Stassun's program at Vanderbilt is impressive, and it's a real loss that its NSF funding has been cancelled. He was notified of $4 million in funding in January and, of course, that's all gone now, for no good reason.
Can confirm that my NSF grant "How False Beliefs Form & How to Correct Them" was cancelled today because it is "not in alignment with current NSF priorities" Shocking that understanding how people are misled by false information is now a forbidden topic. Our work will continue but at a smaller scale
NSF Grant Termination Information Collection Form Please use this form to submit information identifying specific NSF grants that have been cancelled for any reason after January 20, 2025. We are tracking these grants to increase transparency, organize affected PIs, and facilitate responses, including via litigation. Please share the form as widely as possible with your networks. We are actively building a pipeline to organize these terminations and will soon have a tracker akin to our NIH grant tracker at https://airtable.com/appjhyo9NTvJLocRy/shrNto1NNp9eJlgpA WE WILL NOT DISCLOSE THE IDENTITY OF ANYONE WHO USES THIS FORM TO PROVIDE INFORMATION. We will keep your identity confidential. These resources are maintained by Noam Ross of rOpenSci and Scott Delaney of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, with input and support from additional volunteers. For any questions, please contact Scott Delaney on Signal (sdelaney.84). THANK YOU FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE!
🚨Report your NSF grant terminations! 🚨
We are starting to collect information on NSF grant terminations to create a shared resource as we have for NIH. The more information we collect, the more we can organize, advocate, and fight back! Please share widely!
airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni...
Great work by @NSF canceling 402 wasteful DEI grants ($233M in savings), including $1M for “Antiracist Teacher Leadership for Statewide Transformation”. See the NSF update below. Grant awards will be based on merit, competition, equal opportunity, and excellence.
🧪 DOGE is reporting cancelling 402 NSF grants today.
And let's recap: this is for awards that NSF has **ALREADY** judged as aligned with its mission in law, which includes broadening participation in STEM.
It bears repeating: the law supersedes exec orders. For more: www.aaup.org/sites/defaul...
I’m so angry & heart broken. My NSF CAREER grant was stolen today; dream project supporting science teachers/students as climate justice action researchers, tackling urban heat. Truly transformative, the culmination of my life’s work, we won’t stop, not in this climate crisis. Gonna fight like hell!
This is what happens when the Supreme Court effectively allows a bunch of teenage losers to take over the #NIH payment system.
This is also what Viktor Orban did as he consolidated autocracy in Hungary: he centralized control over money and payments.
This is truly a red alert.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-2/subtitle-A/chapter-II/part-200/subpart-D/subject-group-ECFR86b76dde0e1e9dc/section-200.342
🧪 I just saw a specific NSF grant termination letter and it is FUCKING WILD.
The letter said "not subject to appeal", which is a **blatant** violation of NSF's own policies and broader cross-agency regulations (regulation below): www.ecfr.gov/current/titl...
NSF just opened itself up to lawsuit.
Exclusive: Trump team freezes new NSF awards — and could soon axe hundreds of grants
www.nature.com/articles/d41... #NSF #NASA #NOAA
UPDATE: As confirmation, the number of new NSF awards abruptly dropped to 0 yesterday, after DOGE’s instructions.
# of new NSF awards in recent business days:
April 7 = 53
April 8 = 33
April 9 = 44
April 10 = 14
April 11 = 34
April 14 = 24
April 15 = 28
April 16 = 0 (<— Musk's DOGE intervention)
🚨 Well fuck…
1. DOGE has finally setup shop at NSF this week.
(everything that’s happened at NSF thus far has largely been *without* direct DOGE meddling)
2. NSF is halting making new awards across *all* directorates to rereview proposals for alignment with exec orders.
I learned today that the NSF SBE conference I’m co-organizing in DC in eleven days has been cancelled. This seems to be related to he return of DOGE at the NSF: www.science.org/content/arti...
More than 50% of postdocs have been impacted by the first six weeks of the Trump administration's second term. We need to protect funding and opportunities for early career scientists otherwise the US will lose many of its talented and highly-trained researchers www.statnews.com/2025/03/13/p...
This is a thoughtful analysis. In a letter full of true and compelling arguments about the outstanding science NSF funds and believes in, the things that are NOT said speak volumes.
Link to full letter at end of 🧵
(n.b. as ever, this opinion is mine and I do not speak on behalf of any institution)
The president denounced one postdoc's program in his speech to Congress:
Trump’s Upheavals Worry Early-Career Researchers
Help our friends at the NSF:
Seeking scientists based in California who are willing to attest to direct harm caused by NSF firings.
If you’re in the science world, please RT this to widen the net— a lawsuit on the unjust mass firings needs these comments.
(comment briefly here and I’ll follow up!)
See the science we do. A community lab facility serving the USA and the world. Thank you National Science Foundation. m.youtube.com/watch?v=t3RW...
#scicomn
🧪
If you have experienced direct harm to your work/lab/job due to recent changes at US NSF, & are willing to share this on behalf of the Am. Society of Naturalists and NSF, please DM/ email me ASAP (this is time-sensitive) or submit story here sites.google.com/view/scienti...
Please share widely
Elon Musk has shut down a team of tech-savvy civil servants responsible for developing the IRS’s free tax-filing service and improving government websites. As a result, 90 employees were immediately locked out of their devices and informed that their jobs were deemed non-essential.
Yesterday, Congress urgently instructed the National Science Board (governing body of NSF) to:
-Immediately assess the damage already done to NSF
-Hold an emergency NSB session
-Instruct the NSF director to prioritize “[NSF’s ability] to deliver on its statutory obligations” in future actions
Ted Cruz said he’d found $2 billion in “woke” science grants, but his team used keyword searches that flagged things out of context, like a grant to develop a device to treat severe bleeding that mentioned “victims” and “trauma.”
www.propublica.org/article/ted-...
Attention, scientists - do you have a story to share about stopped work or snarled funding? Share here with us -- or reach out on Signal @carojo.55 thewashingtonpost.formstack.com/forms/scient...
thewashingtonpost.formstack.com/forms/scient... the Washington post is collecting info on stopped or frozen scientific research over the last few weeks. 🧪
Scatterplot titled “Empirical Evidence of Ideological Targeting in Federal Layoffs: Agencies seen as liberal are significantly more likely to face DOGE layoffs.” • The x-axis represents Perceived Ideological Leaning of federal agencies, ranging from -2 (Most Liberal) to +2 (Most Conservative), based on survey responses from over 1,500 federal executives. • The y-axis shows Agency Size (Number of Staff) on a logarithmic scale from 1,000 to 1,000,000. Each point represents a federal agency: • Red dots indicate agencies that experienced DOGE layoffs. • Gray dots indicate agencies with no layoffs. Key Observations: • Liberal-leaning agencies (left side of the plot) are disproportionately represented among red dots, indicating higher layoff rates. • Notable targeted agencies include: • HHS (Health & Human Services) • EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) • NIH (National Institutes of Health) • CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) • Dept. of Education • USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) • The National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE), despite its conservative leaning (+1 on the scale), is an exception among targeted agencies. • A notable outlier: the Department of Veterans Affairs (moderately conservative) also faced layoffs despite its size. Takeaway: The figure visually demonstrates that DOGE layoffs disproportionately targeted liberal-leaning agencies, supporting claims of ideological bias. The pattern reveals that layoffs were not driven by agency size or budget alone but were strongly associated with perceived ideology. Source: Richardson, Clinton, & Lewis (2018). Elite Perceptions of Agency Ideology and Workforce Skill. The Journal of Politics, 80(1).
The DOGE firings have nothing to do with “efficiency” or “cutting waste.” They’re a direct push to weaken federal agencies perceived as liberal. This was evident from the start, and now the data confirms it: targeted agencies overwhelmingly those seen as more left-leaning. 🧵⬇️
After 3 years as a rotator at NSF, i became permanent last august (and suddenly on probation despite years of good work). I quit my academic job in January. Today i was unceremoniously fired for “poor performance” (a lie) along with 167 other amazing folks (like Courtney). So unfair & insulting.
NSF employees were unlawfully reclassified from career to probationary, and then fired.
www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...
Upon learning that yesterday would be my last day as a program officer at the National Science Foundation, I shared this parting message with my colleagues. The next few months will be frenetic and stressful for them. Here are some things that you can do to help them with the mission ahead. (1)
