‘The purpose of the rule is fascism’: scientists fight back against planned Trump research cuts

W hile waiting to board her flight home at Ronald Reagan Washington national airport recently, Colette Delawalla was reviewing a list of possible impacts from a proposed Trump administration rule on controlling federal money, including grants for research. Delawalla, the founder of the group Stand Up for Science, had just completed a three-day visit to Capitol Hill, where she met one by one with more than 30 members of Congress, part of a full-court press the organization has launched in recent weeks, sounding the alarm on the office of management and budget (OMB) proposal. A mother of a toddler, she stopped and thought about the listed example: a clinical trial under way meant to address the issue of parents who become suicidal after an infant death. The trial would likely be made illegal under the new rule, since it includes the sorts of international collaboration the rule prohibits. “I lost it,” she told the Guardian. “I have a two-and-a-half-year-old son at home and thought of what I would do if something happened to him. I just cried.” The rule, proposed by OMB director Russ Vought on 29 May, would place all research and other federal grants under the control of political appointees, rather than scientific or subject-matter experts. Writing on her Substack , former National Institutes of Health (NIH) program official Elizabeth Ginexi quoted the rule as prohibiting anything that “promote[s] anti-American values”. …