"Key sections of the US Constitution deleted from government’s website."
https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/06/key-sections-of-the-us-constitution-deleted-from-governments-website/

"Several sections of Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution appear to have been removed from the official U.S. government website…The changes were made in the past month, according to the Wayback Machine…[The removed] sections largely relate to the powers that Congress has and does not have, as well as limitations on the powers of individual states. The removal includes sections relating to habeas corpus, the powers that protect citizens from unlawful detention…In a tweet posted on Wednesday, the Library of Congress said the sections were missing 'due to a coding error' and expect it to be 'resolved soon.'"

"Pentagon slashes staff of R&D repository by nearly 80%."
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2025/08/defense-tech-office-cuts-staff-down-40/407209/

"The Pentagon will lay off nearly 80 percent of the staff of its Defense Technical Information Center [#DTIC], its repository of research-and-development data and lessons…A total of 40 personnel will be retained at the office."

"Why a #NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose."
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/04/nx-s1-5453731/nasa-carbon-dioxide-satellite-mission-threatened

"The Trump administration has asked NASA employees to draw up plans to end at least two major satellite missions…If the plans are carried out, one of the missions would be permanently terminated, because the satellite would burn up in the atmosphere…The equipment in space is state of the art and is expected to function for many more years…An official review by NASA in 2023 found that "the data are of exceptionally high quality"…The two missions cost about $750 million to design, build and launch… By comparison, maintaining both OCO missions in orbit costs about $15 million per year."

PS: These are two more examples showing that Trump science cuts have nothing to do with efficiency. In one case, we'd destroy a perfectly good satellite. In the other case, we'd switch off the transmission of high-quality data. Taken together we'd walk away from a $750m investment to build and launch the satellites.

"#Harvard President Garber Tells Faculty He Is Not Considering a $500 Million Deal With #Trump."
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/8/3/garber-500-million-trump/

"The University is seriously considering resolving its dispute with the White House through the courts rather than a negotiated settlement…[Garber] said that the suggestion that Harvard was open to paying $500 million is “false” and claimed that the figure was apparently leaked to the press by White House officials."

#Academia #DefendResearch #TrumpVResearch #Universities #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter

"America is slashing its climate research."
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2025/07/31/america-is-slashing-its-climate-research
(#paywalled)

"#Project2025, a blueprint for the second Trump administration published by the Heritage Foundation, a hard-right think-tank, called for a 'whole-of-government unwinding' of previous 'climate fanaticism'. The unwinding is being undertaken with both zeal and an impressively petty attention to detail."

Five major US higher-ed associations have written an open letter to Jay Bhattacharya, director of the #NIH, asking that he "direct the reinstatement of all grants that NIH has terminated under agency directives found by a federal court to be unlawful."
https://www.acenet.edu/Documents/Letter-NIH-Grants-072925.pdf

The letter is signed by the:
* Association of American Medical Colleges (#AAMC)
* Association of American Universities (#AAU)
* American Council on Education (#ACE)
* Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (#APLU)
* Council on Governmental Relations (#COGR)

#Academia #DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter

"Federal data has been disappearing under Trump."
https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/07/28/federal-data-has-been-disappearing-under-trump

"There’s been a 'targeted, surgical removal of data sets, or elements of data sets, that are not aligned with the administration’s priorities,' said Denice Ross…who served until December 2024 as U.S. Chief Data Scientist [and] is now at the Federation of American Scientists. [She] has been tracking these changes. Her current projects to monitor and advocate for federal data under the Trump administration are America’s Data Index and America’s Essential Data. She offered multiple examples of databases that have been altered or taken down entirely."

Wow. University and its president support DEI. Trump admin investigates them. Faculty write a resolution in support of the president and DEI policies. Trump admin investigates those faculty too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/us/justice-department-george-mason-faculty-senate-investigation.html

"In a letter sent on Friday, the Trump administration said it would seek drafts of the faculty resolution, all written communications among the Faculty Senate members who drafted the resolution, and all communications between those faculty members and the office of the university’s president…Free speech advocates quickly denounced the move as an attack on academic freedom."

#Academia #Censorship #DefendResearch #DEI #FreeSpeech #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter

Four kinds of harmful long-term consequences from #Trump cuts to #NIH:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2836433

"First, a reduction in fundamental research, which contributes to discoveries, could slow future innovations. Second, the erosion of human capital due to fewer NIH-funded training and career opportunities may shrink the future biomedical workforce. Third, health care expenditures could increase as greater reliance on private sector research and development increases the costs of medical innovations. Finally, decreased investment in public health and translational research may lead to missed opportunities for disease prevention, further increasing health care expenditures."

"14 Republican senators urge White House to release delayed #NIH funds."
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/25/britt-leads-letter-urging-trump-administration-to-release-delayed-nih-funds-00476872

PS: The real news here is that these are #Republicans. "Suspension of these appropriated funds — whether formally withheld or functionally delayed — could threaten Americans’ ability to access better treatments and limit our nation’s leadership in biomedical science. It also risks inadvertently severing ongoing NIH-funded research prior to actionable results.”

149 employees of the National Science Foundation sent an open letter to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) in her capacity as the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. They seek to publicize their "concern over a series of politically motivated and legally questionable actions by the Administration that threaten the integrity of the NSF and undermine the civil service protections guaranteed under federal law."
https://democrats-science.house.gov/imo/media/doc/AFGE_Local_3403_NSF_Letter_to_RM_Lofgren_REDACTED_Redacted.pdf

h/t @alicejmeadows

PS: There are now open letters protesting Trump admin attacks on science from employees of #NSF (July 21), #NASA (July 21), #EPA (June 30), and #NIH (June 9). Details and links here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y5_fjGPNh4_1Hgc0Q68Hr2vJhVIOK1Qc-KynfIG6fZI/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.muw4nr101zfs

"The National Cancer Institute faces steep budget cuts and a staff exodus."
https://wamu.org/story/25/07/23/national-cancer-institute-budget-cuts/

"The National Cancer Institute [#NCI], the Bethesda-based research center that has helped drive a more than 30% decline in U.S. cancer deaths since 1991, is being targeted by Trump administration’s downsizing…Research grants are also being cut at what scientists describe as unprecedented levels."

"Delta Think’s Survey Results: What 13,000 Researchers Revealed About the Fallout from US Funding Cuts."
https://www.deltathink.com/delta-thinks-survey-results-what-13-000-researchers-revealed-about-the-fallout-from-us-funding-cuts

"62% of US authors across all disciplines expect to publish fewer articles in the next 1–2 years, citing policy and funding challenges…50% of international authors across all disciplines indicated that it is now important to them to submit their manuscripts to non-US journals."

"Why are data nerds racing to save US government statistics?"
https://archive.is/7gF5f

"After watching data sets be altered or disappear from U.S. government websites in unprecedented ways after President Donald Trump began his second term, an army of outside statisticians, demographers and computer scientists have joined forces to capture, preserve and share data sets, sometimes clandestinely. Their goal is to make sure they are available in the future, believing that democracy suffers when policymakers don’t have reliable data and that national statistics should be above partisan politics."

"#EPA drafts rule to strike down landmark climate finding."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/07/22/endangerment-finding-epa-climate/

"The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to rescind a landmark 2009 legal opinion that greenhouse gas emissions put human health at risk, which underpins many of the government’s actions to combat #climate change…A decision to completely rescind the endangerment finding is still a draft proposal and could be subject to change…The draft would also eliminate all resulting limits on motor vehicle greenhouse gas emissions."

"Court Strikes Down NIH's Unlawful Termination of Research Grants on Topics Including DEI and Gender Identity."
https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/court-strikes-down-nihs-unlawful-termination-of-research-grants-on-topics-including-dei-and-gender-identity

"In a sweeping rebuke, a court ruled that #NIH’s actions targeting research involving 'disfavored' topics and populations were unlawful, arbitrary, and capricious, and therefore void."

We're losing #OpenAccess to #weather #data on the #NOAA web site. But #HamRadio operators can still access it directly from the #satellites. They can even decrypt most of it with a new #OpenSource decoder. Here's how.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/21/ssmis_satellite_decoder

PS: Very grateful to geeks.

Climate denial by erasure

Good point: When the #Trump admin takes down #climate #data, lays off climate scientists, cuts climate research funding, and terminates climate grants, that "isn’t climate denial in the traditional sense. The days of loudly debating the science have mostly given way to a campaign to withhold the raw information itself. 'I don’t know if we’re living in climate denial anymore,' said #LeahAronowsky, a science historian at Columbia Climate School. 'We have this new front of denial by erasure.' "
https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/why-the-federal-government-is-making-climate-data-disappear