"Federal dollars have bankrolled some of humanity's biggest breakthroughs. What happens when they disappear?"
"Gabriel Filippelli got the form letter from the U.S. State Department on a Monday morning two and a half weeks ago. Since October, Filippelli has been teaching students and faculty in Pakistan how to use air quality devices to monitor air pollution exacerbated by rising temperatures — a consequence of climate change. The letter from the State Department, which had awarded the $300,000 underpinning the collaboration, said the funding was suspended, effective immediately. The project, it said, “no longer effectuates the priorities of the agency.”
Since President Donald Trump took office on January 20, his administration has sought to pause, eliminate, and claw back federal funding for research across the federal government.
Filippelli, the executive director of the Environmental Resilience Institute at Indiana University, is a poster boy for the on-the-ground effects of these new policies. The review of one of his research proposals at the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, the federal agency that funds and executes medical research, is delayed. Another proposal and four grants at the National Science Foundation, the country’s non-medical science and engineering research agency, are at risk because they contain language related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The institute he directs relies on a $5 million grant from the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, the law Democrats passed in 2022 that directs hundreds of billions of dollars worth of investments to climate and environmental justice projects. The institute has been pulling from that money, which was authorized by Congress, since 2023 — but Filippelli is worried that Trump will try to stop future payments."
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