The Silent Starvation of American Science
This invisible impoundment of funds is doing exactly what Trump’s sweeping budget cuts to science funding were designed to do, just without the messy public debate.
By Jeff Nesbit
When the fiscal year 2026 federal appropriations package finally passed Congress this year, the scientific community exhaled. Congress had rejected the Trump administration’s draconian 30% cuts to federal research and development, settling instead for a 4% reduction. It was widely billed by academic and scientific experts alike as a narrow escape.
We were wrong to celebrate. We’re not experiencing a narrow escape; we’re (still) witnessing a quiet, bureaucratic asphyxiation of American science.
Though Congress controls the purse strings, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) controls the valve. And right now, that valve is being deliberately squeezed shut.
Bypassing the legislative branch’s intent, the Trump administration has weaponized obscure bureaucratic mechanisms — such as tweaking the “Budget Bible” (Circular A-11) — to restrict the release of newly appropriated funds.
The casualties are the engines of American innovation:
The National Institutes of Health (NIH)
As the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research, the NIH is currently operating on life support. Only able to issue new awards using leftover stopgap funds, the agency has awarded just 30% as much in new research grants this fiscal year compared with historical averages.
The National Science Foundation (NSF)
Responsible for a quarter of all federally supported basic research, the NSF saw its grant awards plummet by roughly 25% relative to their usual volume before finally receiving authorization to spend in mid-February.
NASA
The OMB has placed an unprecedented restriction on ten specific science programs — including critical Earth-science satellites and missions to Venus — halting them until the agency justifies their existence to political appointees.
This invisible impoundment of funds is doing exactly what Trump’s sweeping budget cuts to science funding were designed to do, just without the messy public debate.
And the compounding effects of this instability are driving a catastrophic brain drain.
A recent Science magazine analysis revealed that more than 10,000 Ph.D.-trained STEM and health experts left the federal government in 2025. Departures are outpacing hiring by 11 to 1. We have hemorrhaged more than 106,000 years of federal service experience. You cannot dismantle the humming brain of a nation and expect to remain a global superpower.
But the crisis extends far beyond empty laboratories and delayed space missions; it’s an active threat to public health.
Under the leadership of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., ideology is actively supplanting evidence. The consequences are terrifyingly real.
Recently, the CDC funded a $1.6 million Hepatitis B newborn vaccine study in Guinea-Bissau — a trial that circumvented standard ethics reviews, lacked basic conflict-of-interest safeguards, and treated vulnerable children as test subjects for disproven theories. Fortunately, international pressure and on-the-ground investigations halted the trial, but the fact that it was authorized at all is a blaring alarm.
Domestically, the threats are just as acute. The proposed overhaul of the U.S. childhood immunization schedule by HHS leadership seeks to subject proven, safe vaccines — like those for RSV, hepatitis, and meningococcal disease — to unnecessary placebo-controlled trials. Denying children established protection is not the gold standard of science; it’s an ethical violation that will cost lives.
This is why 687 members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (including 10 Nobel laureates) have taken the extraordinary step of urging Congress to support articles of impeachment against Kennedy.
Science is not a partisan issue. It’s the foundation of our safety, our economy, and our future. Yet, in President Donald Trump’s most recent State of the Union address delivered to a nation where more than a quarter of the workforce is employed in STEM fields, the word “science” was conspicuously absent.
The Trump administration is hoping we won’t notice the funds drying up, the experts leaving, and the safeguards failing. They’re banking on the assumption that the intricacies of OMB directives and CDC grant structures are too dense to spark public outrage.
They’re wrong.
On Saturday, the scientific community and its allies will refuse to be silenced. Whether you’re marching in Washington, D.C., or joining the rallies in 32 other cities across the nation, the Stand Up for Science Day of Action is no longer just about securing funding. It’s a demand for democratic accountability. It’s a defense of scientific integrity.
We can no longer afford the luxury of apolitical science when science itself is under political siege. It’s time to take back the lab, take back the data, and take back our future.
Jeff Nesbit was the public affairs chief for five Cabinet departments or agencies under four presidents.
The Felon's administration is not only destroying science, with the help of the American oligarchs they are destroying all information to the American people. Iran and China have banned information from the internet which their leaders don't like. The American oligarchs are simply buying up the platforms where Americans receive their information, preventing Americans from seeing valuable information.
It’s actually not so silent. The effects of not funding scientific research leads to massive job losses and deterioration of human health and poor outcomes in susceptible communities.