Warning signs realised: Trump’s war on science and the fight to save American academia

In early March, I warned of authoritarian like attacks on science and universities. Six weeks later and the Trump administration has gone even further than feared.

Six weeks ago, I wrote about how the Trump administration attacks on science and universities are following the authoritarian playbook. I explained why autocracies target science and universities and mapped 35 of the administration’s actions between 20th January and 8th March 2025 to three authoritarian domains:

• Control of science to align with state ideology;

• Undermining the independence of universities / suppressing dissent;

• Maintaining geopolitical / economic goals

I also wrote about what comes next and warning signs to watch out for. Because the administration was acting with such speed and it had only been six weeks since inauguration we didn’t know how far they intended to go.

We are now almost 100 days in and almost all the warning signs are happening. Key parts of US science are toppling. Since 8 March 2025, I’ve mapped another 51 actions attacking science and universities. All actions are available here (worksheet “Science Venn Diagram”) and a high resolution PDF of the Venn Diagram is here.

Let’s dig into what’s been happening and how the actions relate to the warning signs I wrote about six weeks ago.

Control of science to align with state ideology

Is federal funding of new climate science research completely over? Will research into infectious diseases, public health strategies and vaccination be curtailed?

Yes. The administration has cancelled hundreds of grants related to climate change, misinformation, vaccine hesitancy, social sciences, women or inequalities. Budgets for new grants have been paused or slashed across atmospheric sciences (including climate change), physical sciences (even NASA) and health sciences. The National Science Foundation has announced it will no longer fund grants related to combatting misinformation. Health researchers have been advised not to use the term “mRNA” in their funding applications, while funding for new grants has been particularly scaled back for research in infectious diseases and biological systems. Instead the administration is funding studies into links between childhood vaccines and autism – despite there being a wealth of evidence that there is no link between the two.

Will public health advice retreat from proven strategies from pasteurisation of milk to childhood vaccination?

Yes. The measles outbreak in the US continues. RFK Junior, the Health secretary, falsely linked measles to poor diet and encouraged taking vitamin A. Some children have since been hospitalised with vitamin A poisoning. Kennedy has also been at best lukewarm about recommending the only proven effective prevention of measles: the measles vaccine. RFK Junior has instructed the CDC to stop recommending fluoride in drinking water, citing possible health risks despite no evidence of harm at the levels in US water. There are reports that Kennedy is planning to make access to raw milk easier (currently it is illegal to sell across state lines) despite plenty of evidence for the danger of consuming unpasteurised milk. For presumably ideological reasons, the administration is planning to shut down an important suicide hotline for LGBT+ youth.

More broadly, Kennedy’s first budget cut $11 billion from CDC and state/local health programs, with another $40 billion of cuts planned—undermining disease surveillance, outbreak response and routine vaccination efforts. Already a critical CDC programme monitoring infant and maternal health in the US has been shut down because it was considered too ‘DEI’, while a request to support responding to lead poisoning outbreak in Milwaukee was denied due to lack of CDC staff following cuts. The Trump administration killed a landmark pollution settlement in a majority black, low income, area, potentially worsening the health of the community as they live with failing sanitation.

Will the administration seek to censor academic journals directly or support, new, state-aligned ones?

The administration is starting to. Recently, the Department of Justice wrote a letter to the editor-in-chief of the medical journal for the American College of Chest Physicians, implying that the journal was exhibiting bias and seemingly demanding that it publish more ‘alternative viewpoints’. This was followed by similar letters to other top journals including the world’s leading medical journal, the New England Journal of Medicine. The administration has no legal authority over the journals, but this appears to be a worrying form of intimidation.

Undermining the independence of universities and suppressing dissent

For universities, will the administration start attacking individual academics more directly?

This has not yet happened.

Will the surveillance of students be expanded into other areas of protest and will academics be under surveillance too?

Yes. The administration is stepping up its surveillance of students and academics – reportedly using private ‘doxxing’ sites to identify student targets. The administration has started to monitor immigrants’ social media for ‘antisemitic content’, especially those affiliated with universities (including both students and foreign staff). Over 1000 visas of students and recent graduates have been revoked across 40 states, often for no clear reason. Students and academics , including those with green cards, have been detained without warning and without due process.

Will visas for international students and researchers be subject to ideological tests?

Yes. The US administration has ordered consulates to “significantly expand their screening processes for student visa applicants, including through comprehensive social media investigations, to exclude people they deem to support terrorism”. The order includes visa classes for both students (F visas) and academics (J visas) seeking to study or work in the US.

Will the administration try to weaken the independent leadership of universities?

Yes. Trump has significantly escalated his attacks on universities on three fronts.

Direct funding

The Department of Education is investigating over 60 universities on antisemitism claims, threatening to withdraw federal funding. It has already cut federal funding (from millions to (in Harvard’s case) billions of dollars) from universities over transgender policies, Gaza protests, and climate change. The Department of Energy has followed the National Institute of Health by reducing research indirect costs funding to 15% for existing and future grants – directly impacting the ability of universities to carry out research and build the infrastructure required to support physical and medical sciences such as labs or supercomputing facilities.

Other income sources

Last week, Trump signed executive orders that tightened up rules around the declaration of foreign funding for universities (including donations and research funding) and how universities are accredited. The latter sounds boring but is actually momentous and was identified as a “secret weapon” by Trump during his campaign, where he called university leaders “Marxist maniacs and lunatics”. Accreditation is what gives universities the right to award degrees. If universities lose that, they effectively lose their status as universities. Explicit in Trump’s executive order was a threat to remove accreditation from universities that do not align with the regime’s agenda on LGBT+ rights and diversity, equity and inclusion.

Targeted attacks on the most powerful universities

The administration has escalated its attacks on the most elite universities, particularly Harvard. The National Institutes of Health has paused all grant funding to top universities, including Harvard, Cornell and Brown – and NIH has been instructed to not even communicate with those universities. The administration has threatened Columbia with increased oversight over core university functions such as contents of courses and who they hire. It has now turned its attention to Harvard, with targeted attacks becoming more intense as Harvard is publicly fighting back. As well as freezing billions in federal funds, the administration is threatening to withdraw Harvard’s tax exempt status, to ban it from enrolling foreign students, and to impose government oversight of key functions just as it threatened for Columbia.

Summary and the fight back

There can be no doubt that the Trump administration is serious about destroying science in areas it doesn’t agree with, that it is trying to significantly weaken the independence of universities, and that it is stepping up surveillance of students and staff. This is as classically authoritarian as it gets.

The chart below shows the number of actions I’ve logged by each week since inauguration. You can see a flurry of activity at inauguration and then another big spike in early March where many existing ‘non-aligned’ grants are starting to be cancelled and the attacks on universities and foreign students really begins. Then another large amount of activity over the last three weeks – billions more dollars of grants funding ended or slashed from future plans plus an escalation on attacks on universities as they start to fight back.

The key bit in the last sentence is “start to fight back”. Because academia is finally stirring. Unlike Columbia, Harvard has openly defied the Trump administration and has started legal proceedings. This has given other institutions courage. Ten powerful universities are now discussing creating a common defence compact against the administration. An open letter decrying the Trump administration has now been signed by over 150 university leaders. Meanwhile journals are refusing to be intimidated by the Justice Department.

This is the time to support universities, journals and scientific bodies as they scramble to assemble a coalition against the attacks on them. The harm already done will take years to repair — and if things keep getting worse, rebuilding American science and universities will take decades.