Exclusive: how NSF is scouring research grants for violations of Trump’s orders

The US National Science Foundation has unfrozen grant funding, but it continues to scrutinize research projects, sowing turmoil

The National Science Foundation, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, funds about 25% of basic US academic research.Credit: JHVEPhoto/Alamy

The US National Science Foundation (NSF), a major funder of basic academic research, announced yesterday that it has reopened a website that distributes money from research grants to scientists. The move comes after a week of confusion and frustration for NSF-funded researchers in which the agency froze their funding — including for postdoctoral fellowships — and said it was reviewing grants worth billions of dollars to comply with President Donald Trump’s directives to terminate funding for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts and to scrub all federal resources of these terms.

Although the funds are unfrozen after a federal judge issued an order blocking the US government from freezing grant money, the NSF has said it will continue its review.

This whiplash shows that the “United States is not a stable place to be a scientist”, says Julia Barnes, an NSF-funded cultural anthropologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “Scientists funded by the NSF aren’t paid a lot, but we care a lot about the research we do.”

To better understand what is happening inside the NSF and what the future might hold, Nature spoke to six NSF staff members, who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the press. All expressed strong concerns about recent agency decisions, especially to freeze funds.

“People are trying to understand what’s going on,” says one NSF employee. “The freeze in funding was, and continues to be, completely confusing to everyone.”

An NSF spokesperson declined to comment about the agency’s actions and instead pointed Nature to information on the NSF website about its implementation of Trump’s executive orders.

A week of whiplash

In the first hours of his presidency, Trump signed a barrage of executive orders, which are decrees that direct the US government’s actions but that cannot change existing laws. The orders aimed to reshape US policy on climate science, public health, the federal workforce and more. A week later, the Trump administration issued a memo freezing all federal grants. That 28 January memo was temporarily blocked by a federal judge minutes before it would have taken effect, and the White House then rescinded it. But White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on the social-media platform X that Trump’s executive orders on federal funding would “remain in full force”. In response, the NSF froze its funds and cancelled a week's worth of grant reviews, which are used to determine which projects are funded.

To more permanently halt the funding freeze, 22 states and the District of Columbia sued the federal government and its agencies. Two federal judges have since temporarily blocked the funding freeze, hinting that it might be an overreach that lacks proper authority.

There is no clear timeline for how long the judges’ temporary holds will last, but even if they are lifted in an appeal, the NSF could have a hard time legally terminating grants, because their funds are appropriated by the US Congress, meaning they are protected by law, says Deborah Pearlstein, a specialist in law and public policy at Princeton University in New Jersey.

There is another area where the NSF’s actions might butt up against the law. Since 1980, Congress has mandated that the agency seek to broaden participation of underrepresented groups, including women and other minorities, within science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). “The orders are illegal,” says an NSF employee. “The statutory framework of NSF is being violated.”

The NSF spokesperson did not respond to a query about concerns that Trump’s executive orders are at odds with the agency’s responsibilities, as codified in law.

Inside grant review

The NSF has not publicly shared details of how it is continuing to examine research grants and flag those in violation of Trump’s orders, but NSF employees shared documents with Nature clarifying the process.

Around 10,000 research grants have been flagged for review and distributed to various programme directors. Grants in one area of science are being distributed to directors in a separate area of science. For instance, the geosciences division is examining grants from the division of social, behavioural and economic sciences. The grants are being reviewed independently by two staff members instructed to indicate any potential violations of Trump’s orders. They will submit their reviews in a spreadsheet by 5 p.m. today.

Nature has seen the criteria for flagging grants, which call for programme officers to look for “broadening participation” language, foreign assistance, climate science, domestic energy, and “discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI”.

“To see ‘women’ and ‘woman’ and ‘people of colour’ showing up on a spreadsheet over and over and over and over — that was a gut punch,” says one NSF employee.

Action for grants can include cancelling, archiving or modifying them, with a deadline of 7 February. A team of five to eight NSF staff members will then review any revised grants, which will go to the Office of the Director for approval.

“We already reviewed all of these,” says one NSF employee, referring to the fact that grant proposals go through extensive vetting before being funded.“It's really frightening and ridiculous.” Another shares those concerns but says that faced with Trump’s orders, “NSF is doing an honest job, as painful as it can be.”