Okay. This is some scary stuff.

A news article which appeared in the May 1, 2025 issue of Nature and which was written by Dan Garisto says that the National Science Foundation (NSF) was told on April 30 to stop awarding all funding “until further notice.” This command was sent to NSF staff members in an email.

The email did not provide a reason for stopping the funding.

The NSF is one of the world’s largest supporters of basic science research. It now cannot award new research grants or supply funds for existing grants.

For years I worked in academic research labs. Grant funding is their livelihood. These labs are not businesses; they do not exist to make money. They do not sell anything. If there are no grants, they cannot buy supplies or pay their staff.

In 2007, I was laid off from a research assistant position in a lab in which I had worked for four years because my principal investigator’s grant funding ended. Thankfully, I knew months ahead of time that this was going to happen, so I was able to start looking for a new job months before my last day. Alas, I could not secure a position before my last day, and so I was unemployed for a month before I found one.

This is going to affect the lives of tons of scientists, lab technicians, animal caretakers, and other support staff. Whole scientific departments at universities may have to shut down. Science just isn’t going to get done except for profit.

This sickens me to no end. We are talking about scientists who won’t be able to feed their families, who no longer have health insurance and cannot afford to get sick, who may not have “transferable skills” required to go into another field, who may face age discrimination in the worst way.

Does this administration care?