May 26, 2025 06:37 PM
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/dig...s-00365938
EXCERPT: . . . Why? In a major speech this week, top White House science official Michael Kratsios laid out the rationale for the cuts: He framed them as part of a larger project to get American science on a more efficient, innovative track by de-emphasizing research perceived as overly ideological or non-scientific.
Kratsios, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, cited a NASA requirement for research proposals to “include plans for furthering inclusion goals” as exactly the kind of effort the GOP wants to root out — an intrusion of progressive political goals into totally unrelated research.
To many people who have been watching these cutbacks, that doesn’t come close to explaining the scale or sweep of what Trump is doing.
“If the administration has any goal other than to significantly hurt the U.S. science and research system, it will not achieve that,” Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, told DFD. “This isn’t about cutting a few projects that embraced radical DEI, or making some changes to get a little bit more efficiency. This is actually cutting meat and bone from the entire research enterprise.”
According to a report published today by the New York Times, funding cuts extend far beyond eliminating allegedly “woke” programs like the one Kratsios cited. The National Science Foundation, a key funder of basic scientific and technical research, has been rolled back to its pre-1990 size and ambitions. In perhaps the harshest blow to American researchers, the administration has eliminated more than 1,600 active grants.
Observers from the tech and research worlds have been left gobsmacked, wondering if the administration’s stated rationale of eliminating “wokeness” is a fig leaf for a far more destructive project.
As many people in the sciences will point out, if Trump officials really wanted to tear up the Biden-era playbook for federal grants — taking out diversity, improving accountability — they already have a tool to do it. Federal grants come with extensive requirements already, which are set by … the federal government... (MORE - details)
EXCERPT: . . . Why? In a major speech this week, top White House science official Michael Kratsios laid out the rationale for the cuts: He framed them as part of a larger project to get American science on a more efficient, innovative track by de-emphasizing research perceived as overly ideological or non-scientific.
Kratsios, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, cited a NASA requirement for research proposals to “include plans for furthering inclusion goals” as exactly the kind of effort the GOP wants to root out — an intrusion of progressive political goals into totally unrelated research.
To many people who have been watching these cutbacks, that doesn’t come close to explaining the scale or sweep of what Trump is doing.
“If the administration has any goal other than to significantly hurt the U.S. science and research system, it will not achieve that,” Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, told DFD. “This isn’t about cutting a few projects that embraced radical DEI, or making some changes to get a little bit more efficiency. This is actually cutting meat and bone from the entire research enterprise.”
According to a report published today by the New York Times, funding cuts extend far beyond eliminating allegedly “woke” programs like the one Kratsios cited. The National Science Foundation, a key funder of basic scientific and technical research, has been rolled back to its pre-1990 size and ambitions. In perhaps the harshest blow to American researchers, the administration has eliminated more than 1,600 active grants.
Observers from the tech and research worlds have been left gobsmacked, wondering if the administration’s stated rationale of eliminating “wokeness” is a fig leaf for a far more destructive project.
As many people in the sciences will point out, if Trump officials really wanted to tear up the Biden-era playbook for federal grants — taking out diversity, improving accountability — they already have a tool to do it. Federal grants come with extensive requirements already, which are set by … the federal government... (MORE - details)
