What The Hell America!

THREE DAYS AFTER the National Institutes of Health abruptly announced it would place a strict, low cap on the money it sends to universities and research institutions for the administrative costs of scientific research, the University of Iowa made an abrupt announcement of its own.

The school’s Office of the Vice President for Research declared that going forward, it would pause “the hiring of new Graduate Research Assistants unless they are already budgeted as a direct cost on a funded project.”

The announcement sent shockwaves through parts of academia, providing an alarming demonstration of the impact the NIH cap would have on aspiring scientists. “We were pretty stunned,” the chair of the biochemistry and molecular biology department at a top university told The Bulwark.

NIH’s so-called “indirect cost” cap has since been paused by the courts. And a University of Iowa spokesperson confirmed they’ve put a pause on their policy too. But the spokesman also noted that they were “actively monitoring the developments happening at the federal government level.”

And on that front, they are hardly alone. The prospect that the cap will return, combined with the dramatic cuts that the Trump administration is making at every scientific agency, has generated chaos and uncertainty in the scientific community. The aforementioned department chair noted that his own school had decided to stop bringing on any new faculty. A cellular biology professor at a separate, prominent state university said that they’d reduced the number of graduate school offers by 75 percent and were weighing whether to continue a program to provide summer research opportunities for undergraduate students from smaller colleges, including HBCUs.

“One might ask, ‘Why are they trying to destroy the science training pipeline?’” that professor said. “To what end?”

In the first month of the second Trump administration, the world’s richest man—underinformed, chronically online, and staffed by a coterie of teenaged and twentysomething former engineering interns—has been moving at warp speed to reshape, reduce, and even dismantle the United States government. But while Musk’s rampage has been feverishly covered, the scope of its impact remains largely underappreciated. Experts say it can’t be measured in weeks or months or even in government services affected. Rather, it will be felt over the span of decades and defined in metrics like intellectual talent lost.

Dozens of interviews with top researchers revealed a persistent, overbearing fear that the United States is at the starting point of a massive brain drain. The federal government has long taken an active role in funding basic scientific research, which is financially risky and expensive but critical to discoveries that yield new technologies, including treatments and cures for diseases. Young researchers hoping to find new treatments for cancer, dementia, or other diseases may find that, with government funding curtailed, they may never get the opportunity. Areas of scientific investigation will be cut off as the Trump administration discourages or outright prohibits funding for certain fields of research.

Some may find refuge in the private sector. But those opportunities will be inherently limited—companies built around making profits don’t tend to fund research with long-shot profit-making upside.

Among accomplished researchers, the fear is that this coming generation of scientists will look overseas or leave their fields entirely, endangering America’s multigenerational standard as the leader in scientific research.

“Scientists have survived flat budgets, partisan fights, shutdowns, the politicization of science, and a pandemic. They are a proud, impressive, inspiring, and resolute group,” said Ben Corb, a longtime science funding advocate and current public relations executive in the field. “And even with all that—I’m not sure how the enterprise survives this. Cuts to funding. Decapitating leadership and chopping the next generation off at the knees . . . I fear we’ll lose a generation of talent that will take decades to recover. If we can recover at all.”

The Trump administration has defended its actions by stressing that there is bloat and waste in the federal government’s budgets, including (if not especially) when it comes to scientific research. They have selectively criticized many projects as merely spruced-up attempts to get taxpayer backing behind progressive policy objectives. And they’ve argued that top universities do not need massive amounts of administrative costs covered by the government when they’re sitting on healthy endowments.

But the bluntness of their approach has come with a significant cost, borne not just by universities and others dependent on government grants but by those currently employed by the government.

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Over the past week, thousands of workers in scientific fields have lost their jobs as Musk and DOGE begin emptying the ranks of probationary employees (those who have been on the job for a short period of time and, as a consequence, do not enjoy many workplace protections). The list of affected includes those at the Food and Drug Administration, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Energy, and elsewhere. The National Human Genome Research Institute, which focuses on genomics research, let go about thirty people, a person familiar with the layoffs told The Bulwark.

“It’s causing a significant amount of mental anguish, especially for my probationary colleagues. These are folks fresh out of college, who do excellent scientific research for the country,” one official at NASA told The Bulwark. “I keep telling the folks on my team to try and apply for jobs as a safety net. But I’m just not sure a lot of these people’s skillsets transfer outside of government research, and they joined NASA because like the rest of us, we wanted to do amazing research and serve our country.”

One HHS employee described the sense of menace he and his colleagues felt at work: “It’s like there is an elephant in every room/zoom meeting that is pointing a gun at us.”

It’s not just employees at the beginning of their careers who are being driven from government and taking their expertise with them. It’s senior leaders, too. In the past few weeks, CDC Acting Principal Deputy Director Nirav Shah, NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research Michael Lauer, and longtime NIH Principal Deputy Director Larry Tabak have all resigned. On NIH’s campus, the prevailing chatter is that, soon, a request will be made for all the institute directors to step down.

With leadership being pushed out, funding drying up, morale plummeting, and firings coming by the hour, the question now confronting people beginning their careers in the field of scientific research is not whether the government is there to help them, but whether they can survive its wrath.

Last week, another HHS employee reached out to The Bulwark to relay that many highly qualified people in the employee’s office had determined that staying on was “not worth it for their mental health and destroyed work life balance.” The person who relayed this information was also contemplating an exit, but had decided to wait through the weekend in order to see what incoming Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at a virtual meeting welcoming him to the department.

The chaos and uncertainty didn’t end once HHS had Senate-confirmed leadership in place. On Saturday, the employee sent a follow up note: “Won’t be able to report on the RFK welcome ceremony livestream. I was sent the probationary employee termination email even though my probation period ended in the summer.” Then on Tuesday, another update: They had been sent the termination note in error and were back on the job.

“I’m happy to not have to scramble for a new job on such short notice for sure,” said the employee. “It’s definitely been an emotional rollercoaster, though.”

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