Phoebe J. Lam

Federal judge temporarily halts Trump's sweeping government overhaul A federal judge in San Francisco issued a two-week restraining order temporarily blocking the Trump administration's sweeping overhaul of the federal government. Her order applies to 20 agencies.

Some good news: temporary restraining order used: www.npr.org/2025/05/09/n...

Exclusive: NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions Changes seen as a response to presidential directives on what research to fund

Exclusive: National Science Foundation staff were told today that the agency’s 37 divisions—across all eight directorates—are being abolished and the number of programs within those divisions will be drastically reduced.

Effective May 5, 2025, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) will decommission its snow and ice data products from the Coasts, Oceans, and Geophysics Science Division (COGS). As a result, the level of services for affected products below will be reduced to Basic—meaning they will remain accessible but may not be actively maintained, updated, or fully supported. This includes Sea Ice Index, Snow Data Assimilation System (SNODAS) Data Products, Glacier Photograph Collection, U.S. National Ice Center Arctic Sea Ice Charts and Climatologies in Gridded Format Gridded Monthly Sea Ice Extent and Concentration, 1850 Onward World Glacier Inventory. If you rely on these products in your work, research, education, or planning, we invite you to share your story at nsidc@nsidc.org. Your input can help us demonstrate the importance of these data sets and advocate for future support.

This is horrible. I don't even know what to say. Some of our most key polar data.

"As a result, the level of services for affected products below will be reduced to Basic—meaning they will remain accessible but may not be actively maintained, updated, or fully supported."

nsidc.org/data/user-re...

ah. my source within NSF tells me that payments for active awards are operating normally, but that they may have put a hold on the issuance of subsequent installments from continuing grants

YouTube video by Association of American Universities Facilities and Administrative (F&A) Costs Explainer

AAU updates their excellent explainer about indirect costs to cover the current attacks...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtqK...

1/2

lawsuit filed yesterday against the NSF IDC cuts! www.aau.edu/key-issues/l...

If you do an NSF advanced award search and restrict to awards made on or after May 1, 2025, you get "Your search did not return any results" (if you enter 4/30/25, you get 19 hits; 4/29/25-->96 hits, so it does seem like they've stopped for now)

US energy department cap on indirect research costs temporarily halted after universities file lawsuit Universities sue DOE after agency suddenly caps indirect research costs at 15%

for DOE: (www.chemistryworld.com/news/us-ener...)
april 11: DOE announces cap
april 14: lawsuit filed (APLU, AAU, ACE, + 9 universities)
april 16: MA district court issued temporary restraining order to prevent DOE from implementing rate cap policy
only 5 days from announcement to restraining order

for NIH:
feb 7: cut announced
feb 10: implementation of cut
feb 10: 3 lawsuits filed by academic inst, NGOs, 22 state attorneys
april 4: federal judge blocked implementation of the cap
ongoing: NIH appealing block
so simplistically applying the same timing: ~2 months from announcement to block

NIH cuts triggered a host of lawsuits: Nature’s guide to what’s next A host of legal claims aim to roll back the Trump administration’s grant terminations, indirect-cost cap and more.

For those of us who didn't follow the drama closely on how the cap on NIH indirect cost played out, but are suddenly very very interested in the wake of the cap on NSF indirect costs, I just found this helpful summary of the NIH timeline: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Did they indicate that this was temporary?

Policy Notice: Implementation of Standard 15% Indirect Cost Rate

Crap: www.nsf.gov/policies/doc...

Screenshot of table showing number of grants and total value terminated by NSF directorate. STEM Education directorate is highlighted, with 417 terminations totaling 322 million dollars. CSV of table: Directorate,No. Terminated,Total Value Biological Sciences,46,"$27,960,075" Computer and Information Science and Engineering,85,"$44,630,113" Engineering,94,"$33,472,485" Geosciences,52,"$36,454,740" Mathematical and Physical Sciences,30,"$6,418,312" Office of the Director,7,"$4,859,738" STEM Education,417,"$322,680,063" "Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences",266,"$77,635,904" "Technology, Innovation and Partnerships",46,"$62,231,309"

UPDATE: We have data on >1000 terminated #NSF grants at grant-watch.us. Thanks to all who have been contributing data the past few days.

We've also added a "Reports" section with some analyses. For NSF, we see that the STEM education directorate has been absolutely pummeled.

Saw an enormous banana slug yesterday that was almost as big as the actual banana I was carrying

Shouldn't the Chips Act supersede new NSF priorities?

There is a public law: Chips Act, title III, subtitle C (Sec. 10328) "The NSF shall make awards to enable institutions of higher education or nonprofit organizations (or consortia of them) to increase the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM studies and careers."

I was forwarded this document (www.aaup.org/sites/defaul...) that lays out a hierarchy of authorities, suggesting that a public law supersedes an EO which supersedes NSF policy.