20 January 2026
By Max Kozlov, Jeff Tollefson and Dan Garisto
Grant termination data analysis and visualization by Kim Albrecht
MMore than 7,800 research grants terminated or frozen. Some 25,000 scientists and personnel gone from agencies that oversee research. Proposed budget cuts of 35% — amounting to US$32 billion.
These are just a few of the ways in which Donald Trump has downsized and disrupted US science since returning to the White House last January. As his administration seeks to reshape US research and development, it has substantially scaled back and restricted what science the country pursues and the workforce that runs the federal scientific enterprise.
A year into Trump’s second presidential term, Nature presents a series of graphics that reveal the impact of his administration on science.
Cancelled grants
In an unprecedented move, officials began terminating already-funded grants at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in February, and later at the National Science Foundation (NSF), two of the largest public supporters of scientific research in the United States. A total of 5,844 NIH grants and 1,996 NSF grants were cancelled or suspended.
The Trump administration disproportionally cancelled or froze projects on topics it disfavours, such as misinformation, vaccine hesitancy, infectious diseases and research on people from under-represented ethnic and gender groups, which it has called discriminatory and unscientific.
