Science at Stake: An Analysis of the National Science Foundation in the New Trump Era

The National Science Foundation is an independent federal agency responsible for supporting fundamental research and education across all non-medical fields of science and engineering. In the past several months of the new Trump administration, the NSF has faced various changes, both through direct policy and due to a new culture of uncertainty surrounding the availability of federal funding for research. In this paper, I aim to evaluate the impacts of the new administration on the NSF and on US science as a whole. Through analyzing news and literature coupled with personal experiences working in science, I find that the NSF has significantly curtailed its usual work via less grant approvals, reducing the size of integral programs, and more. Specifically, I argue that these impacts are most salient for students and early career scientists, and have the potential to significantly erode the position of the US as a global leader in science and innovation.