Jon Levy

Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to improve the process of Federal

1. Federal funding for research promotes tech, biomedical, and scientific discovery in the US, and provides training for the sci/tech workforce that has brought immeasurable wealth to the US over the past 75 years.

Today's executive order includes a provision that will obliterate both functions.

Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Stops Wasteful Grantmaking ENDING GRANT ABUSE: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order stopping unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats from wasting taxpayer dollars

I don’t want political appointees from this administration deciding what is meritorious research. But I wouldn’t want political appointees from ANY administration deciding that. That would mark the end of basic research, research with long-term benefits, etc.

www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/...

Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to improve the process of Federal

Well, this is a huge Executive Order power grab...

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

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Climate of Suppression: Environmental Information Under the Second Trump Administration – Environmental Data and Governance Initiative The report Climate of Suppression: Environmental Information Under the Second Trump Administration examines management of federal websites related to environmental regulation in the first six months o...

In a new report, EDGI documents the second Trump administration’s control of federal environmental information in its first 6 months. We found that environmental justice & climate change information have been broadly rewritten & deleted. Learn more: envirodatagov.org/publication/...

Great example of how citizen science measurements of air pollution can be aggregated to provide meaningful regional and national data. At a time when federal data are disappearing or becoming less reliable, locally generated and compiled data will take on increasing importance.

Map of fine particulate matter concentrations across the US today, showing elevated levels downwind of wildfires

Network of PurpleAir monitors captures the widespread and substantial air quality impacts from Canadian wildfires extremely well (screenshot from map.purpleair.com, taken 5 minutes ago)

They lost their jobs and funding under Trump. What did communities lose? We asked those affected by federal climate and environment cuts to reach out. Their stories illuminate how these losses are reverberating across the country.

They lost their jobs and funding under Trump. What did communities lose?

We asked those affected by federal climate and environment cuts to reach out. Their stories illuminate how these losses are reverberating across the country.

grist.org/climate/trum...

#Jobs #Climate #Policy #Politics #DOGE

Scientists Say New Government Climate Report Twists Their Work A new Department of Energy report “fundamentally misrepresents” climate research and leaves out key context, multiple scientists cited in the report tell WIRED.

NEW: i spoke to nine (!) scientists across several disciplines whose work was cited in the new Department of Energy report that downplays the severity of climate change. all of them say their work was misrepresented, cherry picked, and/or lacked context —

Trump Administration Scraps Effort to Pause Health-Research Funding The administration halted and then restarted billions in new research grants flowing from the National Institutes of Health.

UPDATE: The pause was scrapped Tuesday evening after intervention by top White House officials. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Trump Administration Puts New Chokehold on Billions in Health-Research Funding The National Institutes of Health can’t award grants to outside researchers under a new White House restriction.

NEW
The White House is blocking the NIH from awarding new research grants for the rest of the fiscal year

Chokes off billions in research funding

Gift link www.wsj.com/politics/pol... with @nidhisubs.bsky.social

Trump Environmental Protection Agency moves to repeal finding that allows climate regulation President Donald Trump’s administration has proposed revoking a scientific finding that's long been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.

Lead sentence in this article is key - EPA proposes "revoking a scientific finding" that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.

The thing about a scientific finding is that it is based on evidence. You can't revoke it just because it is inconvenient.

apnews.com/article/trum...

Quote from a news article - “The three cheapest electricity sources globally last year were onshore wind, solar panels, and new hydropower, according to an energy cost report by the International Renewable Energy Agency, or IRENA. Solar power now is 41 percent cheaper and wind power is 53 percent cheaper globally than the lowest-cost fossil fuel, the reports said. Fossil fuels, which are the chief cause of climate change, include coal, oil. and natural gas.”

Any time the Administration puts forward a policy to undermine renewable energy, they are increasing our energy bills, harming our health, and damaging our climate, all just to financially reward (and subsidize) a favored industry.

EPA Moves to Ignore Power Plant Carbon Emissions, Deny Climate Science Zeldin is proposing to walk away from regulating carbon emissions from power plants—plus nearly every other source of heat-trapping emissions.

This isn't "gold standard science", it's crap standard science. Actually, it's not science at all.

blog.ucs.org/julie-mcnama...

Also, like so much these days, this means that state and local government will need to do more to protect the environment and keep people safe. The difference from the pre-EPA days is that many major challenges are no longer local.

Remember more than 80% of US federal career employees work outside of the Washington DC area. EPA is shutting down its scientific research division, which helps keep our air & water safe. It’s overwhelmingly staffed in Cincinnati, Ohio, with ~1000 employees there. The OH & KY Senators don’t care?

Of course - there is no way to replace the expertise at EPA and no one has the mandate to do what they do. No academic department or NGO can replicate IRIS or do all regulatory impact analyses. We just have to up our game as much as we can under impossible circumstances.

Environment and climate often don’t get sufficient mainstream media coverage (with limited exceptions) and are pushed aside on social media platforms. Most people don’t support environmental rollbacks, but most people also don’t know about them. In this moment that somehow needs to change.

E.P.A. Says It Will Eliminate Its Scientific Research Arm

I know so many dedicated and brilliant scientists who work (and I guess now worked) at EPA. The loss of expertise and ability to make science-informed decisions will have lasting damage for our health. Academics and advocates will have to try to fill the gap.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/c...

I am particularly proud of this paper since it was a product of a grant recently terminated by EPA, but where outstanding research staff @busph.bsky.social still brought it to completion. Understanding how floods affect health ought to "effectuate agency priorities".

In the aftermath of the horrific Texas flood and with a major Boston highway underwater today, our new paper is timely. We talk about connections between floods and health and how we can better characterize the extent, frequency, duration, and intensity of floods.

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

300,000 air change measurements?!

Classroom air change averaged 3.0/h (about required), but varied significantly: between schools, within each school and within each classroom throughout the year.

Great work from @patriciafabian.bsky.social's group.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Stay denied by Judge Young in APHA v NIH and State AGs v Kennedy cases.

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

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Warming stripes for Japan

Warming stripes for Australia

Warming stripes for New Zealand

Warming stripes for Papua New Guinea

It's already #ShowYourStripes day in many places like New Zealand, Australia, Japan and Papua New Guinea.

All these countries are warming rapidly. Visit www.ShowYourStripes.info to find your warming stripes with 4 different designs.

Start a climate conversation online or with friends and family?

Chart of temperature change in Boston from 1850 to 2024

As the country bakes in a heat wave, it’s #ShowYourStripes day. With my younger son just graduating from elementary school, it’s sobering to compare how much hotter his world is than when I was his age. Even more sobering to think of what his kids will experience. Time for action!

June 21 is Show Your Stripes Day—a time to spark conversation about how our world is warming.

This video shows how @noaa.gov temperature data for the U.S. is turned into the iconic stripes visualizations you may see shared today and tomorrow.
@edhawkins.org

Judge rules against NIH grant cuts — and calls them discriminatory The decision means that the US biomedical agency has to restore funding to hundreds of research projects, but the government will likely appeal.

After ruling the NIH grant cuts were illegal yesterday, Judge Young, a Reagan appointee on the bench since 1985, ended the hearing with a blistering 15-minute speech.

I've cleaned up my notes — here are his remarks in full. 🧵

What is so sad is that, even if this wonderful outcome somehow happens, it is just the tip of the iceberg. We had a center grant submission that was never reviewed. Other grants were not discussed at study section. And some studies and careers will still be destroyed by the time the money returns.

🚨 BREAKING: Nearly 4 months the NIH cut its first grants, a judge has ruled that the directives and process that led to cuts are arbitrary and capricious.

"The explanations are bereft of reasoning — virtually in their entirety... unsupported by [facts]."

Each of them are VOID and ILLEGAL, he says.

THIS IS IT! THIS IS HUGE!!

PLAINTIFF'S WIN!!

Judge Young rules that the NIH grant terminations at issue in these cases are illegal and therefore vacated. BOOM!

🚨 I'm tuning into the most substantial hearing to date of two lawsuits challenging NIH's termination of thousands of grants.

I'll post some of the major updates here, so follow along.