Sometime in mid-March, the Trump administration continued its attacks on the LGBTQIA+ community by withdrawing more than $125 million worth of research grants from the National Institutes of Health. In total, around 270 grants were cancelled, all of them focused on issues impacting queer Americans.
As Benjamin Ryan and Aria Bendix reported for NBC News, the move “panicked” researchers whose body of work has been “upended.”
Cancellation letters obtained by NBC News often vaguely state that the research in question no longer suits NIH priorities. Some allude to executive orders issued by Donald Trump, including one that effectively bars recognition of transgender identities and another forbidding diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives. Other LGBTQ-focused grants have been swept up in the Trump administration’s broadsides against Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. Academics fear more cancellations as the administration targets Harvard University.
Hundreds of researchers, many of them panicked, have watched as the system that supports their life’s work—to address the myriad health disparities faced by sexual and gender minorities—has been upended. Many of them suddenly face potential unemployment and a job market rendered bleak by the Trump administration’s efforts to downsize funding for academic research.
The cancellation is fully in line Trump administration attacks on researchers in other areas of academia, in addition to overall hostility shown to sexual minorities.
In February, the founder of TrumpFile wrote an urgent warning to LGBTQ+ Americans that the current political climate is toxic and political prosecutions aren’t just a “mere possibility”—they are fully “part of the plan.”
AUTHOR FOOTNOTE
Like I fully get that all legacy-media newsrooms have a whole host of problems, but I urge you to take a long, hard look at this lede sentence:
The nation’s LGBTQ research field is collapsing.
This claim SO missed the mark it’s like NBC News was practicing archery at 30 Rock and the arrow ended up landing somewhere in Topeka. The nation’s research community (including those who dedicated their lives to studying lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer/questioning Americans’ health) is under attack by anti-science goons inside Donald’s enterprise.
Although it’s certainly true that “research is collapsing,” omitting the context of why in the lede sentence (“because of Donald Trump’s sabotage,” or something similar) does a grave disservice to people who get their news from this outlet.
