CLIMATEWIRE | Drastic cuts to federal science programs are draining millions of dollars in research funding from universities in Republican-dominated states, testing the support of conservative lawmakers for President Donald Trump’s chaotic reshaping of the U.S. government.
The administration’s downsizing effort — led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — has resulted in thousands of federal employees being fired and the cancellation of billions of dollars in grants at agencies that support research on climate science, public health and other fields.
Those actions — some of which have been reversed by court orders — have sent shock waves through the nation’s scientific research system and led universities in more than a dozen states to limit the number of new students or staff they’ll take on, citing uncertainty about federal funding.
On supporting science journalism
If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
The science-slashing blitz threatens to upend the nation’s research and development pipeline and diminish the flow of innovation that has bolstered local economies and protected communities from the effects of climate change, according to former federal research chiefs.
Republicans lawmakers, who control both chambers of Congress, have largely supported the administration’s science funding cuts — even as they threaten local institutions and the communities that depend on them. But some GOP senators in states with large research universities are beginning to express concern about Trump’s cuts.
“We just want to make sure the money is being deployed as productively as possible,” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina told POLITICO’s E&E News.
His state has seen a 25 percent cut in graduate school admissions at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a hiring freeze at North Carolina State University. Similar cost-cutting measures are expected at Duke University.
Universities and the communities they support are reeling as Trump and Musk move to cancel funding for scientific projects focused on climate change, diversity or other topics they have derided as wasteful and “woke.” The administration is also trying to shut down scientific programs at EPA, NASA and other agencies that work to advance the nation’s understanding of climate change.
While Washington currently spends around $142 billion more per year on research and development than Beijing, the Chinese Communist Party was already narrowing the gap before Trump’s moves began reverberating through the American scientific system.
“U.S. leadership is clearly being compromised by the Trump administration on the false prophecy of saving money,” said Craig McLean, who served as research director at NOAA during Trump’s first term and sparred with the White House over the president’s erroneous hurricane claims. “This will cost the United States money and opportunity, and endanger people’s lives and property.”
McLean and Linda Birnbaum, who led the North Carolina-based National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences from 2009 until 2019, both cited immediate risks the cuts to scientific agencies and programs are creating for farmers, fishers and coastal homeowners.
Rising temperatures will change the types of crops and seafood that can be harvested in communities across the country, a shift that will be more manageable with close study and monitoring, they explained. Increasingly severe weather and rising sea levels also threaten lives and livelihoods, particularly if the Trump administration continues with its dismantling of the National Weather Service, they warned.
Those risks — and the toll on economic development — would grow over time if scientists and innovation shift to Europe or Asia, both former research leaders said in separate interviews.
“I think there’s a lack of understanding in much of the population that science is not static,” Birnbaum said. “Our knowledge evolves, and as that knowledge evolves, it can improve our abilities to take better care of ourselves and have better health.”
The Trump administration disputed that its efforts to more closely oversee U.S. science spending would harm universities or the people who depend on them.
“It’s cutting back on administration so that ultimately more dollars flow into innovative research that’s going to actually produce things,” said a White House policy adviser, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about Trump’s moves on scientific research.
“I mean, I grit my teeth every time I go through lists of things that the Biden administration was funding,” the adviser said. “It’s just constantly waste — and targeted on virtue-signaling stuff for their various interest groups — and has nothing to do with improving innovation or keeping up with China.”
Musk, the world’s richest person who is serving in the Trump administration as a temporary government employee, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Limited GOP pushback
Tillis told E&E News he supports the Trump administration’s funding freeze but said he was encouraging the White House to continue funding for the universities and research institutions in his state, which includes EPA’s largest office. He is running for reelection in 2026 and is facing a primary challenger, Andy Nilsson, who describes himself as “unapologetically MAGA.”
“I hope we’re successful in convincing them that the work that we do at Duke and Chapel Hill, NC State, several other universities across North Carolina, is a worthwhile investment. That’s on me, and we’re communicating that now,” Tillis said.
Indiana Sen. Todd Young, a Republican, also offered measured support for the Trump administration’s science cuts.
“I probably have been the foremost Republican advocate for science and tech spending and investment here in the Senate, so I have concerns,” he told E&E News. “But I’ve been encouraged that we’ve had access to Elon Musk and are able to contact him as particular concerns come up.”
Young said his “constituents expect us to work with the president in identifying waste, fraud and abuse, and identifying new efficiencies in government, so I’m doing that.”
McLean, the former NOAA research leader under Trump, rejected the notion that there is a significant amount of wasteful spending on U.S. scientific work, describing it as “asymptotically close to zero.”
To the Trump administration and its allies, studies that are “different from their political view is waste, or fraud, or the abuse of federal dollars,” McLean said.
Other Republican lawmakers have also hinted at their uneasiness about the chainsaw approach Musk has applied when cutting funds their state universities rely on.
Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama said in a statement to E&E News that while taxpayer money should be spent “efficiently,” she also thinks a “smart, targeted approach is needed in order to not hinder life-saving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions like those in Alabama.”
And Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana has told several news outlets that the funding cuts will make it more difficult for some universities in his home state to continue their research programs.
Still, few Republican lawmakers have expressed outright opposition to the Trump administration’s unilateral science funding cuts, aside from Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the chair of the Appropriations Committee.
Collins has questioned the legality of Musk’s disregard for congressional spending decisions. And last month, she issued a statement criticizing the Trump administration’s “poorly conceived directive” to cap the National Institute of Health’s funding for indirect costs, an effort that universities across the country have challenged in court.
Despite those critical statements, Collins — and all other Senate Republicans — voted to confirm Russ Vought, Trump’s budget chief who has worked closely with Musk to defund congressionally mandated agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Department of Education.
Universities and Democrats speak up
Even as Republican lawmakers defend the funding cuts, some of the universities and researchers they represent are standing up to the Trump administration.
Earlier this month, hundreds of students, scientists and their supporters gathered in Birmingham, Alabama, to protest federal funding cuts that University of Alabama Birmingham officials estimate could cost the institution $70 million each year. The school is one of the country’s top spenders on clinical trials for medical studies.
Duke’s response to the reductions has included “educating policymakers about the value of Duke’s work and our impact on the communities we serve” and “advocating for policies and practices that maintain support for Duke’s priorities and mission,” the university’s president, Vincent E. Price, said in a statement last week.
Louisiana State University President William Tate IV recently estimated that NIH cuts alone could cost the university $12 million in immediate losses, threatening hundreds of research-related jobs.
“This brain drain will have long-term consequences, pushing top talent out of the state and weakening the very foundation of biomedical progress,” he said, adding that “America must lead” on medical research.
Other universities in conservative states that have reportedly rescinded some student admissions this year include Iowa State University, West Virginia University, the University of Nebraska and Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University.
Schools in Democratic-controlled states have also been swept up in the widespread chaos caused by federal science funding cuts, which the administration’s critics warn could lead to a lost generation of scientists.
Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences recently decided to reject all students on the waitlist for its graduate program. And the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School has rescinded admissions for at least one biomedical sciences doctorate program.
Some institutions, like the University of California San Diego, have stated that they can no longer guarantee stipends or other tuition awards to accepted students.* Others have implemented hiring freezes or layoffs. Johns Hopkins University in Maryland recently decided to eliminate 2,000 workers after projecting that it could lose hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding over the next few years. The spending cuts have also forced some universities to eliminate research positions funded by agencies like the NIH.
Democrats are outraged by the moves but mostly powerless to stop them.
“The Trump-Musk administration is burning our future,” said Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor. “We have invested in the education of tomorrow’s scientists for years, and to get to the point where the people who show the most promise for the breakthrough discoveries that will build our future get sidelined is beyond stupid. I just don’t have better words to describe this.”
Universities have limited options to compensate for federal funding losses, said Matt Owens, president of the Council on Governmental Relations, an association of U.S. research institutes. “Unfortunately, all options to deal with federal research cuts are sub-optimal,” he said. “I hope policymakers will focus on building support for sustaining strong and growing research investments to out-compete China and other economic competitors.”
McLean and Birnbaum — both of whom served for decades in Democratic and Republican administrations, including during Trump’s first term — lamented how the president and Musk are politicizing basic scientific research.
“I’ve never seen research as a partisan venture,” said Birnbaum. “The research isn’t being done to serve Republicans or Democrats. Science is done to advance knowledge and improve the well being of people and the planet.”
Reporter Andres Picon contributed.
Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.
*Editor’s Note (3/26/25): Our partners at E&E News have edited this sentence after posting to correct the name of the University of California, San Diego.
