The number of US-based researchers applying to prestigious grants that would see them relocate to Europe has more than doubled in the last year. The trend points toward a potential 'brain drain', and -- according to Evans -- is also a result of the fallout from thousands of research grants being cut since Donald Trump returned to the White House.
“No doubt the uptick is a direct result of the Trump administration’s science policy, and in particular, its attacks on universities and academic freedom,” Evans said.
NASA will have to wait at least a month to launch humans to their deepest point in space in over 50 years, as the launch of Artemis II will be pushed from a possible February window to March at the earliest after a a prelaunch test to fuel the rocket, was terminated because of a liquid hydrogen leak early Tuesday.a
“You want to make sure that you can do all of the things that it takes to get humans safely to and from space without any major operational or infrastructural hiccups,” Evans said. “And so, it's very important that they do these wet tests, that they do all the flight rightness checks.”
In this commentary, Evans is mentioned among public scholars who continue to push back as the Trump administration has terminated research grants, dismissed government scientists without cause and cut science funding. Evans and other academics are continuing to provide evidence and context on consequential topics in the science space.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has long been tasked with identifying and apprehending undocumented immigrants. However, as the agency's center of activity shifts from the border with Mexico to the heart of US cities, federal agents' encounters have turned deadly and been met by protests, public accountability and monitoring campaigns, and heightened tensions on the streets.
"A lot of these militarized practices have existed within immigration enforcement. It's just that they were being deployed in the border where they weren’t necessarily getting the kind of public attention that they are now," said Kelsey Norman, director of the Women’s Rights, Human Rights, and Refugees Program at the Baker Institute for Public Policy in the US.
“The list of impacts is quite long, and it keeps growing,” says Rice University physicist Neal Lane, who notes others: restrictions on immigration, a threatened steep reduction in the overhead payments to universities that support research, and the disappearance of federal data. “It’s an attack on anything that doesn’t conform to Trump’s political agenda,”