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Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Straws in the Wind - Part 54

From Chemistry World: Employees at the embattled US National Science Foundation (NSF), which supports fundamental research, were all set to follow the lead of workers at two other science agencies and publish a statement warning about concerning developments under the Trump administration. But that effort has been indefinitely delayed... A leaked version of the NSF document echoes similar concerns to those aired by workers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In early June, several hundred current and former NIH employees signed the Bethesda Declaration, which criticized the leadership of director Jay Bhattacharya, who took the agency’s helm in April... A draft of the NIH document, which reportedly was endorsed by the NIH Fellows United union, apparently expressed several concerns including that the Trump administration halted high-quality, peer reviewed grants and contracts at the agency, dismissed crucial NIH staff, terminated key international research collaborations, and took action to enact a blanket 15% cap on indirect costs that the NIH provides to grantees to cover essential facilities and administrative expenses, which courts have temporarily paused amid an agency appeal...

Then, just a few weeks later, current and former EPA employees published their own Declaration of Dissent, which highlighted problems with the leadership of Trump-appointed administrator, Lee Zeldin... In response, Zeldin declared ‘zero tolerance’ for this criticism and reportedly placed 139 of the agency’s workers who signed the document on administrative leave, pending an investigation. Earlier this month, a union representing more than 8000 EPA workers across the US called on Zeldin to reinstate those employees.

Full story https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/national-science-foundation-employees-dissent-declaration-on-indefinite-hold/4021854.article.

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From the Deseret News: The Trump administration’s proposal to significantly cut medical research funding at American colleges could cost the University of Utah $110 million annually — while severely impacting the school’s ability to fulfill its research endeavors. That was the sobering report shared... by University of Utah Vice President for Research Erin Rothwell with the Utah Board of Higher Education. “There will be some hits to the research enterprise,” she said.

Earlier this year, the National Institutes of Health announced a 15% cap on the amount grant recipients such as the University of Utah could request for “indirect” costs — those funds that grant recipients are allowed to use on facility and administrative expenses. The Trump administration has dismissed these expenses as “overhead.”

...As Rothwell reported..., it is a historically seismic moment for the University of Utah’s vast research endeavors. “In terms of grant cancellations, we’ve had 77 grant cancellations,” she said. Many of those cancellations were for grants that had already expended most of their funding...

Full story at https://www.deseret.com/utah/2025/07/18/utah-research-grant-cuts/.

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