The New Yorker:

Across the country, the Trump Administration’s assault on public institutions and its cuts to government funding are forcing scientists to abandon their work and the patients who benefit from it.

By E. Tammy Kim

A few days into Donald Trump’s second term, Emily Williams, a public-health professor at the University of Washington, e-mailed a program officer at the National Institutes of Health, a division of the Health and Human Services Department. “I wanted to touch base with you in light of several recent Federal Executive Orders,” she wrote. Trump had just prohibited “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” in government programs, and Williams had a grant to investigate how Black and Latino military veterans were accessing treatment for opioid-use disorder, compared with their white peers. The program officer oversaw this grant.

Williams is an expert in substance-use disorders and inequities in the delivery of health care. Like most senior research scientists, she is responsible for fund-raising, year by year, to pay herself and the members of her team. She currently relies on a combination of big N.I.H. grants, teaching, and a fractional salary from the Department of Veterans Affairs, making her both a federal and state employee.

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