Guest, “Heck yeah I voted for this and it’s better than I expected” by David Middleton
National Academies, staggering from Trump cuts, on brink of dramatic downsizing
Plan for slashed units and mission to be presented at governor’s meeting next week
Last Saturday, the morning after a news article announced major job losses coming at the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), National Academy of Sciences President Marcia McNutt wrote an apologetic memo to employees. Her statement to STAT that 250 people could lose their positions by summer’s end had come as news to the roughly 1100 NASEM staff. McNutt told staff “no decisions [have been] made” about the number of coming layoffs.
But there’s no doubt that the 162-year-old honorary society, which produces influential reports by committees of independent experts, is headed for dramatic changes.
[…]
The National Academy of Sciences was granted a charter by Congress in 1863 to provide the government with independent, objective advice on science and technology. Its flagship studies have addressed scores of subjects from research priorities for Alzheimer’s disease treatment to shaping the next decade of solar and space physics research. Because the organization does not have congressional funding, it must raise its own money for the studies. Philanthropies fund some, but most are supported by federal agencies. NRC received $200 million in government contracts and grants in 2023, the most recent year for which the number is available. And many of those contracts have been axed by the team of cost cutters at Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
[…]
The DOGE website lists 36 of the canceled NASEM contracts, and Science calculated the total cost of these losses to be more than $25 million. The list includes a $970,000 contract from the Department of Homeland Security to fund statistical research for a new office of homeland security statistics, a $250,000 contract from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for a June workshop on preventing H5N1 bird flu transmission among farm workers and veterinarians, and a $500,000 study on drought and climate change funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
[…]
OK… The National Academies of Science is not funded by Congress taxpayers. However, they largely depend on government contracts, funded by Congress taxpayers, to fund the organization. Since taking office, President Trump and the DOGE team have been taking a chainsaw to government contracts (a campaign promise made to taxpayers)… Therefore the National Academies of Science are on the brink of extinction… Did I get that right? Presumably, the examples of cancelled government contracts listed above are critically important, at least critically important to the National Academies.
- “$970,000 contract from the Department of Homeland Security to fund statistical research for a new office of homeland security statistics”
- “$250,000 contract from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for a June workshop”
- “$500,000 study on drought and climate change funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration”
They couldn’t list any useful or meaningful contracts?
“NRC received $200 million in government contracts and grants in 2023, the most recent year for which the number is available”
That same year, the NRC received $274 million in grants from philanthropic organizations, and exited the year with an endowment of nearly $700 million.
Why should they receive any taxpayer funding?
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