Science policy this week: April 21, 2025

What’s Ahead

The entrance to the headquarters of the National Science Foundation.

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NSF ends DEI and misinformation research grants

The National Science Foundation announced last week that it is terminating grants related to diversity, equity, and inclusion or combating misinformation. The decision applies to grants that involve engaging with people based on characteristics that are protected from discrimination under various laws, such as race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It also applies to research that “could be used to infringe on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advances a preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate.” NSF stated that such grants no longer “effectuate” agency priorities, language that has been used by the Trump administration as a legal mechanism to terminate active awards.

NSF acknowledged in the announcement that one of the statutory goals of its “broader impacts” grant review criteria is to increase the participation of women and underrepresented groups in STEM, but it nevertheless stated that NSF-funded projects may only conduct activities to reach these groups “as part of broad engagement activities” that are “open and available to all Americans.” NSF also stated it will continue to operate programs that broaden participation based on protected characteristics if they are explicitly established in law and “prioritized” in NSF appropriations language. Grantees may expand STEM participation based on non-protected characteristics, such as institutional type, geography, socioeconomic status, and career stage, but NSF cautioned that such characteristics “cannot indirectly preference or exclude individuals or groups based on protected characteristics.” Furthermore, NSF stated that research with a focus on protected characteristics is permissible when such characteristics are “intrinsic to the research question” and the research is aligned with agency priorities.

Reacting to the move, House Science Committee Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) called on NSF to “reverse course immediately” to protect the agency’s integrity. “The American people deserve a scientific enterprise free from political interference, where expert scientists and engineers participate in a merit-based review process to recommend the most innovative and promising research proposals,” she stated. Lofgren also noted that Democratic staff on the committee had just published a rebuttal to a report by Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-TX) that stated that over $2 billion in NSF grants “went to questionable projects that promoted DEI tenets or pushed onto science neo-Marxist perspectives.”

New OSTP director sketches out S&T priorities

In a major speech last week, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios said the Trump administration will pursue novel funding methods, deregulation, and heightened research security measures to achieve U.S. technological preeminence. Kratsios said the U.S. should strive to be “more creative in our use of public research and development money,” specifically calling for greater use of “prizes, advance market commitments, and other novel funding mechanisms, like fast and flexible grants.” He also said deregulation is necessary to enable the construction of more nuclear power plants and to advance transportation technologies such as “supersonic aircraft or high-speed rail and flying cars.”

Kratsios criticized as inadequate the Biden administration’s “small-yard, high-fence” approach to technology security, which emphasized placing strict controls on a relatively small number of cutting-edge technologies. He went on to call for the U.S. to implement “strict and simple export controls and know-your-customer rules, with an unapologetic America-first attitude about enforcing them.” He also expressed support for tightening restrictions on foreign scientists, saying, “To safeguard our intellectual capital, we must restrict foreign access to sensitive data and strengthen oversight of international collaborators.” In the portion of his speech focused on securing research and supply chains, Kratsios emphasized risks posed by China, referring to the country as “both a geopolitical rival and technological competitor.”

Advisory panel terminations reach NSF

The National Science Foundation terminated 12 advisory committees last week, joining a growing list of science agencies that have culled committees in response to a February executive order from President Donald Trump aiming to reduce the size of the federal government. NSF dissolved the advisory committees for its Directorates of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Geosciences, and STEM Education, among others. Five NSF advisory committees will continue to meet as they are required in statute, including one for the new Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships Directorate, which will hold its inaugural meeting on April 28. The other four surviving panels are the Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee, the Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering, and the panels involved in reviewing nominations for the National Medal of Science and NSF’s Alan T. Waterman Award.

Trump administration escalates fight with Harvard

The Trump administration put $2.2 billion of Harvard University’s research funding on hold last week after the institution rejected a series of demands laid out in an April 11 letter signed by three federal officials on the administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism. Those demands extend well beyond anti-semitism measures, such as a requirement that Harvard audit its students, faculty, and staff for “viewpoint diversity.” In announcing the funding freeze, the task force stated that Harvard’s refusal to comply with the demands “reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges – that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws.” Harvard has accused the government of overreaching, stating it will “not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.” Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has also threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, and the Department of Homeland Security has threatened to limit its ability to enroll foreign students. In addition, foreign donations to the university are being scrutinized by the Department of Education, building on probes begun during the first Trump administration.

Event to explore trajectory of science policy under Trump

The upheaval in science policy to date under the new Trump administration will be explored in a webinar this Wednesday afternoon hosted by the magazine Issues in Science and Technology. The panelists are Caroline Wagner of Ohio State University, Carrie Wolinetz of Lewis-Burke Associates, Divyansh Kaushik of Beacon Global Strategies, and Jason Rittenberg of Excel Regional Solutions. FYI Director Mitch Ambrose will moderate the conversation.

Also on our radar

The House CCP Committee issued a report last week that accuses the company DeepSeek of building its AI model on stolen U.S. technology and of collecting data on U.S. citizens for the benefit of the Chinese government. The report recommends increasing AI-related export controls and for the U.S. to prepare for “strategic surprise” in the AI space.
Pacific Northwest National Lab Director Steven Ashby will step down in the coming months. Ashby has led PNNL for 10 years and is moving to a senior leadership position at Battelle, which holds the management contract for PNNL and seven other national labs.
The management and operations contract competition for Jefferson Lab has been reinitiated. A previous competition that ran through 2024 was abruptly cancelled in February by the Trump administration, which extended the current contract through May 2026 to buy time to repeat the competition.
The National Academy of Sciences will hold its annual meeting Friday through Monday. The event will include a symposium on strategies for expanding the capacity of the U.S. high-voltage transmission system.