SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The National Science Foundation stopped paying out grant money this week, freezing funds to scientists who had already been awarded grants and others whose grants might have been in the pipeline. The unprecedented move comes as the NSF works to comply with the Trump administration's executive actions, especially those targeting DEI efforts.
Yesterday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order directing the NSF and other federal agencies to essentially unfreeze the funds and gave the government until Monday to inform grantees. Here's a report now from two NPR correspondents, Andrea Hsu and Jonathan Lambert.
JONATHAN LAMBERT, BYLINE: The Trump executive order aiming to end diversity, equity and inclusion efforts is a particular problem for NSF. That's because they're congressionally mandated to weigh how their grants boost the participation of underrepresented groups in science. It's literally a big part of one of the two criteria for every grant approval in any field. And now Trump is effectively saying that they can't do that. Julia Van Etten is a postdoctoral researcher at Rutgers University. She studies how DNA sharing among microbes shapes their evolution.
JULIA VAN ETTEN: This NSF award I got - not a lot of people get this award. I was really honored to get it. I was really excited to work on this project.
LAMBERT: And that grant pays her salary. On Tuesday, she was expecting a paycheck, but that paycheck was canceled by the NSF.
VAN ETTEN: I literally just can't pay my bills. And, you know, I'm very, like, smart with my money, but scientists at this career stage are not paid that well. So we all kind of live somewhat paycheck-to-paycheck. So, like, I was unable to pay my bills. And I will be unable to pay my bills this month if they don't resolve this soon.
LAMBERT: Van Etten's paycheck was canceled as part of a total freeze that started this past week. They stopped reviewing new grants and paying out existing ones. The agency, which has a budget of about $9 billion, funds a wide range of science, from astrophysics to zoology. All that funding was paused.
VAN ETTEN: We've been given no communication from the NSF other than emails that all of our fund dispersal is canceled. So, like, we're under the impression that we're supposed to be working without pay right now.
ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: In Atlanta, India Jackson is also in a bind. She's a physicist who studies events that happen on the surface of the sun, things like solar flares and solar winds that can cause problems for satellites, for radio communications and for our power grid.
INDIA JACKSON: I do research to try to predict when those events will happen so that we could try to prepare for those things. I mean, because we can't stop it (laughter).
HSU: Jackson has always wanted to do research to benefit the public. She's held several internships at NASA. She always keeps in mind that this is taxpayer money. She's grateful Americans pay those taxes.
JACKSON: So that I can do the science that I'm doing so that I can try to protect them.
HSU: She was just a couple of final steps away from receiving her own postdoctoral fellowship from the NSF to further that research. But now, even though she's in the system as recommended, her future as a government-funded scientist is on hold - for how long, she has no clue.
JACKSON: It's very heartbreaking. I have spent years of my life to get to this point. And it's very heartbreaking to know that it's in limbo like this.
HSU: Last fall, she was teaching math and computer science in adjunct positions, including at HBCUs around Atlanta. But the terms of her NSF fellowship would not have allowed her to continue those jobs. And because things looked on track for her to start her postdoc in February, she quit before the semester began. She was a little concerned that the turnover in administration might delay her start, but she never imagined it would come to this.
JACKSON: To be honest, I really didn't think that it would go this way. I didn't really realize how closely tied in scientific research - how closely that is tied into politics.
LAMBERT: It's unclear how long the funding pause will last, though a court order was issued Friday for NSF and other agencies to unfreeze frozen funds. The agency says it's reviewing all of its grants to see how they comply with Trump's orders. Here's Julia Van Etten, the Rutgers scientist, again.
VAN ETTEN: I know this has only been a few days, but I do, like, I do think that this isn't going to stop science, but it's stopping like American science. Like, if my work - like, genome biology moves at a very quick pace, and if my work is delayed for, like, months, for example, someone in another country is going to publish on something very similar.
LAMBERT: That's especially frustrating for Van Etten, given how she felt when she first got this grant.
VAN ETTEN: I felt like that was the government of that time giving me some sort of vote of confidence that my work was important and that it was good for me to accomplish this work, and now I feel the opposite.
LAMBERT: NSF has been around for about 75 years, and in this history, it's received broad bipartisan support. But the flurry of action targeting specific kinds of science and scientists during just the first weeks of the Trump administration has many researchers extremely concerned about the next four years. I'm Jonathan Lambert.
HSU: And I'm Andrea Hsu, NPR News.
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