In an aggressive campaign aimed at reshaping federal research priorities, the Trump administration has abruptly cancelled over 1,400 scientific grants—many of them tied to misinformation, online harm, and diversity studies—under the justification of protecting free speech. The sweeping move, spearheaded by multiple federal agencies including the National Science Foundation (NSF), Pentagon, and National Institutes of Health (NIH), has left researchers across the country scrambling for funding and warning of dire consequences for the quality of public discourse, the New York Times reported.
The cuts, totalling more than $1 billion in halted funding, come after an executive order issued by President Trump in January aimed at curbing what he framed as government-sponsored censorship. While the administration claims the defunded projects infringed on First Amendment rights, critics say the campaign is a thinly veiled attack on research that examines harmful or manipulated content online—especially research that has drawn attention to right-wing misinformation.
Grants cut despite lack of evidence of censorship
Researchers say the cancelled studies had no role in censoring speech. Many focused instead on topics such as how false narratives spread on social media or how algorithms amplify misinformation. “That’s really not the nature of our research,” said Marshall Van Alstyne of Boston University, whose team was studying ways to encourage users to verify content before sharing. His project was among the many abruptly terminated.
The NSF defended its actions on its website, saying it would no longer support work that could be used to “infringe on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens.” However, none of the grant descriptions reviewed by experts contained language suggesting government-backed censorship. “It’s possible they saw the word ‘censorship’ and misunderstood the context,” said Eric Wustrow, whose project on avoiding digital censorship in China was also cut.
Impact spreads across institutions and fields
The cancellations have disrupted research at universities in nearly every U.S. state. At New York University, Marianna Zhang lost her grant to study how children develop cultural stereotypes. At Vanderbilt, psychologist Lisa Fazio had her project on how repeating lies makes them more believable axed. “These are the kinds of things Americans want answers to,” Fazio said.
Beyond universities, the NIH also pulled funding from studies on how conspiracy theories hinder public health responses to diseases like cancer, HPV, and Covid-19. The agency offered only a vague reference to “chronic disease” as a new priority, echoing the Trump administration’s health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s slogan: “Make America Healthy Again.”
Democratic pushback and national security concerns
Lawmakers and experts fear the cuts will gut the field of online harm research just as the stakes are rising. A bipartisan study funded by the Pentagon’s Minerva Initiative showed how Russian media stoked anti-U.S. narratives before the Ukraine invasion—research now unlikely to be repeated under the new policy.
A dozen Democratic lawmakers wrote to the NSF last week, calling the cancellations “unparalleled in its hostility to American science.”
With tech companies like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) also pulling back from content moderation, researchers warn the vacuum will allow misinformation to flourish unchecked. “I’m almost certain,” Van Alstyne said, “this is going to lead to a vastly more polluted information environment.”
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