Tag Archives: United States Politics and Government

Kelly Brunt wasn’t the only federal employee to be laid off this month while traveling for work. But she was almost certainly the only one whose work trip was in Antarctica. Dr. Brunt was a program director at the National Science Foundation, the $9 billion agency that supports scientific advancement in practically every field apart from medicine. As part of …

The Trump administration stormed into office, loudly firing workers and closing diversity programs. But behind the scenes, it has also brought biomedical research to the brink of crisis by holding up much of the $47 billion the United States spends on the field every year. The world’s leading medical labs can be found in the United States, and they rely …

The Food and Drug Administration has reinstated dozens of specialized employees involved in food safety, review of medical devices and other areas who were laid off last week, according to more than a dozen workers who got called back. The total number of employees recalled was not immediately clear. But a person familiar with the conversations said nearly all of …

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity TV doctor nominated by President Trump to oversee Medicare and Medicaid, has been a relentless promoter of controversial private insurance plans for older Americans. “I’d be signing up,” he told viewers, directing them to a call center in an episode that is still available on his YouTube channel. What Dr. Oz did not tell the …

Elon Musk threw federal workers into further confusion and alarm on Saturday when he ordered them to summarize their accomplishments for the week, warning that a failure to do so would be taken as a resignation. Shortly after his demand, which he posted on X, civil servants across the government received an email from the Office of Personnel Management with …

Tyler Nelson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida, studies the neurobiology of pain, a choice partly motivated by his own frustrations with a neuromuscular disability. Last October, he applied for a grant at the National Institutes of Health that, if awarded, would support his dream of someday running his own lab. But, earlier in February, he learned that …

Even by Washington standards, the second Trump presidency has begun in frenetic fashion: mass firings at federal agencies, tariff threats against allies and foes alike, and haggling over how to get a Republican budget through a narrowly divided Congress. Business leaders and corporate investors are confident that things will turn out fine, at least for them. “Markets aren’t showing all …

As the reality sets in that the United States is drastically diminishing its foreign assistance to developing countries, an urgent conversation is starting among governments, philanthropists, and global health and development organizations. It is centered on one crucial question: Who will fill this gap? Last year, the United States contributed about $12 billion to global health, money that has funded …

The Trump administration has blocked key parts of the federal government’s apparatus for funding biomedical research, effectively halting progress on much of the country’s future work on illnesses like cancer and addiction despite a federal judge’s order to release grant money. The blockage, outlined in internal government memos, stems from an order forbidding health officials from giving public notice of …

A federal judge on Friday agreed to extend an order blocking the National Institutes of Health from reducing grant funding to institutions conducting medical and scientific research until she could come to a more lasting decision. Judge Angel Kelley of the Federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts had temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s cuts from taking effect earlier …