U.S. Budget Cuts Are Robbing Early-Career Scientists of Their Future | Canceled grants and slashed budgets are disproportionately affecting junior health researchers, dealing a major blow to the future of science and society in the U.S.

From the article: As a young doctoral researcher at a university in the southern U.S., Camilo felt like he was finally closing in on his dream of becoming a leader in the next generation of HIV scholars. His recent work has helped hundreds of LGBTQ+ Latino people access HIV prevention programs and preexposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a medication that reduces HIV infection risk. But these lifesaving efforts—and Camilo’s hopes of a career focused on directly helping people in his community—came to a screeching halt one recent Friday afternoon: he opened an e-mail that said a National Institutes of Health grant, vital to his work, had been terminated.

“I saw an image of a floating pair of scissors clipping my future,” says Camilo, who asked to use a pseudonym, citing fear of retaliation.

Since researchers first began receiving grant termination letters in late February, massive chunks of federal funding for science and health have been canceled on a near-weekly basis. The Trump administration has framed these cuts as a way to reduce wasteful spending, refocus research priorities and eliminate ideological bias. Grants have been flagged for containing keywords such as “women,” “diverse,” “minority” and “racially.” Camilo’s research checked all the boxes for the administration’s crackdown on so-called diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) research. He had been expecting the bad news, but when it came, it was still crushing. “You’re losing everything,” he says.

Grant Watch, a project tracking Trump’s scientific funding cancellations, has tallied more than 2,482 terminated NIH grants worth $8.7 billion and 1,669 terminated National Science Foundation grants worth $1.5 billion as of mid-June. An NSF spokesperson declined an interview request from Scientific American but wrote in an e-mail that “we remain committed to awarding grants and funding all areas of science and engineering.” The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to direct requests for an interview for this article. An NIH representative did not respond to a list of written questions but said the agency “is taking action to terminate research funding that is not aligned with NIH and HHS priorities.”

Considering Trump’s age, once again we realize the catastrophic results of gerontocracy

They don’t need no science. Not when the love of their sweet baby jeebus guides them.

Meanwhile ICE just got another 80 billion dollars to detain people in camps. China already won the 21st century and didn’t need to do anything while we fall behind in every metric.