The National Science Foundation is canceling hundreds of grants to left-wing research projects on issues out of step with the Trump administration’s agenda.
Last week, the National Science Foundation ended 701 grant programs for awards not “aligned” with the agency’s goals under President Trump as the White House attempts to stop government agencies from funding left-wing priorities. That followed an earlier round of 402 cancellations in mid-April.
“The NSF’s mission is to promote the progress of science, advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare, and secure the national defense,” an NSF spokesperson told National Review in a statement. “It is our priority to ensure all NSF awards aim to create opportunities for all Americans everywhere, without exclusion of any groups. NSF remains committed to reviewing and funding proposals that are aligned with the agency priorities.”
An NSF statement of priorities emphasizes the value it places on merit and impact when evaluating research. Projects focused on group preferences or impacts on limited subgroups are not aligned with the NSF’s priorities in the Trump administration.
Award cancellations have mainly focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and “disinformation” research, but they are not limited to those two progressive-dominated fields.
As a result, NSF is terminating research projects focused on left-wing ideological concepts including “equity,” intersectionality, “latinx,” and climate change, according to a database of grant cancellations maintained by Dr. Noam Ross of rOpenSci and Harvard research scientist Scott Delaney. The NSF itself has not made available a comprehensive list of canceled grants.
A project to create an “intersectional learning system” to advance “racial equity” in artificial intelligence education and a study “identifying systemic racism” in math teacher education were among the awards the Trump administration canceled.
Other initiatives include building a model to “accelerate transformations for environmental justice,” engaging “rural latinx” in an afterschool STEM program, and researching how “Storywork for Racial Equity in STEM” can be used to teach educators.
“This is exactly the kind of swamp-draining President Trump promised, and America needs,” said Jason Isaac, CEO of the pro-natural gas American Energy Institute. “For years, the National Science Foundation wasted taxpayer dollars on DEI propaganda, climate alarmism, and radical political activism instead of real science.”
“Canceling these grants sends a clear message: our government will no longer bankroll the left’s ideological agenda under the guise of research,” Isaac said. “It’s time to put Americas national interest, economic strength, and scientific excellence first again.”
Numerous canceled research grants involved left-wing perspectives on climate change, such as a grant for “Building Capacity to Institutionalize Equity in Outdoor and Environmental Science Education” and another for “Advancing Indigenous perspectives to address climate vulnerability in the Southwest.”
The NSF also ended awards for research on “Addressing Flood Justice and Equity,” “Indigenous Northern Landscapes,” and other environmentalist studies.
“It is long overdue that we eliminated these wasteful and highly political so-called research grants,” said James Taylor, president of the free market Heartland Institute. “These grants have conditioned their recipients to deliver findings and results that are in line with politically driven agendas like the mythical climate crisis,”
Last year, Senate Commerce Committee chairman Ted Cruz (R., Texas) released a study showing that 27 percent of new NSF grants allocated in 2024 went to leftist projects. Some of the terminated NSF grants were highlighted in Cruz’s report.
Cruz’s study was informed by a database detailing over 3,000 grants worth more than $2 billion in funding. His report classified thousands of NSF grants under various left-wing ideological categories and listed the total amount of funding for each category.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion in the sciences is not solely restricted to the NSF. A recent investigation from higher education watchdog Speech First found that DEI and gender ideology were commonplace in medical school programs nationwide, as National Review previously reported.
The terminated NSF grants are part of a broader effort from the Trump administration to stop taxpayer funds from flowing into left-wing activist organizations and slash needless federal spending.
The Department of Government Efficiency, outwardly led by billionaire Elon Musk, has spearheaded Trump’s push to review agency grants and end the federal government’s grants for left-wing groups. DOGE praised the NSF’s “great work” in canceling the grants and claimed it has saved taxpayers $325 million in the past two weeks.
In a similar fashion, DOGE has moved to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development because of its extensive history of bankrolling leftist causes worldwide.