In its first 50 days, the Trump administration made sweeping changes to scientific arms of the government like the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration. The president issued executive orders to terminate all work that was related to DEI, environmental justice and gender inclusivity. In response, research was halted and thousands of people were fired — some of which was reversed. It's a lot to keep track of, so we called in reinforcements. Here to recount it all and analyze what these ongoing changes mean for the future of scientific research in the United States are NPR science correspondents Rob Stein, Pien Huang and Jonathan Lambert. Want to hear more about policy changes affecting science? Let us know by emailing [email protected]! We're also always open to other story ideas you have.Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
What changes did the Trump administration make to scientific institutions?
Got it. Yeah. And where do things stand at the NIH when it comes to grants?
So the NIH had been blocked from reviewing new grants, but that's been partially lifted. So that whole process of reviewing grant applications has restarted to some degree. At the same time, though, a lot of existing grants have been terminated to comply with the president's executive orders, barring anything related to DEI and the LGBTQ community.
And on top of all of that, we have a new potential head of the NIH. Tell me about this person.
Right. Trump picked Dr. Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford to take over the agency. He's a very well-respected health economist with a strong record of high-quality research. But he has also been a vocal critic of the NIH, most notably during the pandemic. He argued against measures like lockdowns.
During his confirmation hearing last week, he promised to create a more open environment at the NIH for what he called dissenting views. And Baudetoria is expected to be easily confirmed. So everyone's waiting to see what he does and bracing for the possibility of more cuts and possibly even a major restructuring. The question is, how radical will those reforms be and how will they be done?
Okay, so that is Baudetoria. The NIH. Let's move on to the CDC. Ping Huang, you are covering the agency responsible for protecting the nation's health, including combating infectious disease. What's going on with the CDC? Yeah.
So a lot of similarities with what you just heard about NIH. So like the NIH, the CDC was hit by a communications freeze. People who had grants with CDC or had calls with them for ongoing outbreaks, couldn't speak with anyone there for a few weeks.
Also, as a result of Trump's executive orders, there was this weekend at the end of January where web pages and data sets started disappearing from the CDC website. You know, this was when references to trans people and pregnant people were taken down, along with some tools that policymakers used to track HIV and STIs and adolescent health. Now, some of that has gone back up.
And in February, a federal judge actually ordered them to put the websites back up.
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