Many people have a vested interest in pretending otherwise, but the US research university is globally dominant to an almost unbelievable degree. The typical state university is a football team stapled to a R&D lab with a budget bigger than the entire nation of Belgium.
AHRQ is a no-brainer for anyone interested in better, cheaper healthcare. Congress agrees and has funded it accordingly, but Trump & OMB are hellbent on killing it.
New AHRQ awards by fiscal year:
FY24: 317 (pre-Trump)
FY25: 6
FY26: 0
See more of our curves here: grant-witness.us/funding_curv...
American science right now is basically 10,000 of these stories, all with their own heartbreaking specificity
Lost careers, lost progress, lost discoveries
I feel so sad every day for all we’ve lost and continue to lose 💔
Second time this week that I’m aware of that a news story made a federal funding agency cave and restart a grant process.
A new proposed rule on federal grantmaking — across agencies, this is much broader than research awards — just dropped.
Screenshot from page 48
public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-10817.pdf
Breaking: Judge Jackson blocks NSF from dismantling NCAR. www.courtlistener.com/docket/72496...
Update: The flag on Princeton's grants was removed on June 4, around the same time NSF got this letter from Democrats on the House Science Committee, demanding details. democrats-science.house.gov/imo/media/do...
MIT has lost 500 international grad students relative to last year. Caused directly by the White House.
Closing America's doors to the very best, most brilliant people on the planet is like dropping a bomb directly on America's capacity to innovate. On the prosperity of our children's future.
When the Great Defunding started in 2025, the European Union introduced a "bold" program to attract top scientists from the US, funded at the tune of about ~$500 million spread over 3-5 years. In 2024, the NIH allocated almost twice as that per week.
My co-authors and I surveyed international grad students and postdocs, asking them if they would have come to study in the US if they'd known about the current wave of restrictions on international students.
About half said no.
MIT is already down 20%, more to come.
www.iza.org/publications...
Scott Delaney
Quantian
www.iza.org
Alex Wenzel
Dan Garisto
Dan Garisto
Adrianna McIntyre
This is a paranoid fantasy that the media encourages but it’s actually not true. The US produces a very educated populace.
It’s just that the sheer scale of our R&D requires drawing on the finest talents of a far larger population base via immigration.
Many people have a vested interest in pretending otherwise, but the US research university is globally dominant to an almost unbelievable degree. The typical state university is a football team stapled to a R&D lab with a budget bigger than the entire nation of Belgium.
Michael Clemens
Michael Clemens
YouTube video by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
After our story was published, an HHS official emailed us and said:
"NIH will continue to fund the CREID program. NIAID is currently reviewing applications and will prioritize funding meritorious awards that meet agency priorities. Awards will be made in FY 2026."
We've updated the story.
This skeet will self destruct
“Dr. Antaki, a biomedical engineer, had been building an artificial heart for babies and young children, a pump the size of a AA battery, and he was getting close. But with his research grants stopped, Dr. Antaki slowly drained his lab’s rainy day funds, and he was forced to lay off all his staff.”
House Appropriations released its FY27 bill, again working to eliminate Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), which it calls "duplicative." My friend/colleague @sundermannaj.bsky.social & I wrote on AHRQ's necessity. thehill.com/opinion/heal...
appropriations.house.gov/sites/evo-su...
Important update: This morning NSF removed its internal flags on 3 of the 4 universities (Princeton's remains). We've updated our story to reflect this and the release of the new awards to Harvard and Duke.
This is a paranoid fantasy that the media encourages but it’s actually not true. The US produces a very educated populace.
It’s just that the sheer scale of our R&D requires drawing on the finest talents of a far larger population base via immigration.
Dan Garisto
Emily Mullin
Zoomer Antimillenarian
Kathleen Bachynski
Zoomer Antimillenarian
A network of research centers that was well-positioned to respond to the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo had its funding canceled last year by the Trump administration.
My latest for @wired.com: www.wired.com/story/us-res...
Miranda Yaver
The Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases were launched during the Covid-19 pandemic. The group lost its funding under Trump in part due to conspiracy theories.
2/ The US is incapable of educating its citizens, hence the ~50% immigrants doing R&D. As RoW catches up post colonialism, WWII and neo colonialism, there will still be movement but it will no longer be unidirectional.
China is relatively well placed currently to gain a lot of soft power.
