US government shutdownwhich is about to enter its third week, is beginning to wreak havoc on US science. Since the start of quarantine, the administration of US President Donald Trump has stopped funding clean energy research projects and laid off public health workers. The operations of some federally funded museums and laboratories were suspended, as was the processing of grant applications by agencies such as National Science Foundation (NSF).
US government funding expired on October 1 after members of the US Congress failed to pass a spending bill. Negotiations to end the impasse have made little progress. Lawmakers in the opposition Democratic Party say they will pass the spending bill only if it extends subsidies for public health care, a condition Republicans are reluctant to discuss. “The longer this goes on, the deeper the cuts will be,” Vice President J.D. Vance said Sunday.
Staff reduction
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In a court filing Friday, the Trump administration said it would lay off 4,100 to 4,200 federal workers. This measure is officially called reduction in force (RIF). The Trump administration has cited the lack of a spending bill as justification for the layoffs, which are an unprecedented move during the shutdown. Unions representing federal workers filed a lawsuit over layoffs.
As of Friday evening, about 1,300 employees US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) received RIF notices, although the notices for 700 people were quickly rescinded, according to American Federation of Government Employees Local 2883, the union representing CDC employees. The layoffs “will undermine the nation's ability to respond to public health emergencies,” a CDC official affected by the layoffs said Tuesday at a news conference hosted by Local 2883.
Rumors of layoffs in the CDC's influential National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) have raised particular concerns among epidemiologists. The program has been collecting health care data in the United States since the early 1960s and has helped researchers understand critical public health issues such as health impacts lead in gasoline.
Former CDC official Asher Rosinger, an epidemiologist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, says CDC officials told him the layoffs had decimated the NHANES planning department, a team he says is critical to the program's operation. “This gold standard study may no longer work in the future,” he says.
Double dismissal
According to mathematical statistician Isaac Michael, some CDC employees were fired twice in six months. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Michael and his colleagues conducted a survey and created a database tracking the experiences of new mothers in the United States—until the entire team was laid off in April. Several court orders have maintained their employment status for now, although they are still not allowed to work even when the government reopens. However, some of his colleagues have received a second layoff notice in the past few days, making it unlikely that they will ever be reinstated.
If the state experiences a spike in maternal or infant deaths in the future, “we won't even know there's a problem because we don't collect any reliable data and won't be able to help,” Michael says.
Andrew Nixon, director of public affairs for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the CDC, said all HHS employees who received layoff notices have been deemed nonessential by their respective departments and that the department will continue to close “wasteful and duplicative organizations.”
The administration's lawsuit says the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will lose 20 to 30 people. Staff at U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) offices overseeing renewable energy, energy efficiency and other areas also received RIF notices, a DOE spokesperson said. “These offices are being rebuilt to reflect the Trump Administration's commitment to advancing affordable, reliable and secure energy for the American people,” the spokesperson said.
Funding cuts
Along with the shutdown, the administration also announced a new round of cuts to research projects, adding to the billions of dollars in federal research grants that have been withdrawn since Trump took office in January.
On the second day of the shutdown, the Department of Energy announced that it was cutting funding for 223 energy projects by nearly $7.6 billion, many of which support renewable energy. Analysis carried out Nature found that the list included grants to 33 academic institutions, with a total value of $620 million.
For example, Colorado State University at Fort Collins will lose grants for seven projects, including a $300 million grant to develop technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. methane emissions from small oil wells. The cuts will mean a reduction in research positions, Cassandra Moseley, the university's vice president for research, said in a statement, and will halt research “to make the nation's energy infrastructure safer, more efficient and more competitive.”
The overlapping list, which has not yet been made public, includes 647 projects slated for closure, according to the data. news publication Semaphore And other. The Energy Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the grant cuts.
The Department of Defense (DOD) said it will pay the salaries of employees laid off as a result of the shutdown, using $8 billion of remaining funds from its research, development, test and evaluation budget, some of which is spent on science and technology funding. It's unclear how the shift will affect research or whether it would be legal to reallocate money without prior congressional approval. The Ministry of Defense did not respond to NatureQuestions about impact on research.
Shutdown science
The Smithsonian Institution operates more than a dozen museums in Washington and a number of research centers. On Oct. 12, the company ran out of operating funds and closed many of its facilities, including its coastal biology research center in Maryland. The laboratories of the research division of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are also closed.
The NIH and NSF, among other agencies, stopped awarding new grants and conducting grant reviews. NSF had planned to hold more than 40 review panels in the first two weeks of October in disciplines such as astronomy, mathematics and chemistry, but they were cancelled.
Non-federal organizations were also affected. At the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, activities that depend on federal cooperation have been disrupted, says communications director Suzanne Pelisson. In a statement Monday, Georgia Tech in Atlanta said the closure is slowing payments for federally funded research at the university and that the university will halt hiring and take other cost-saving measures if the closure extends beyond Oct. 20.
That scenario is looking increasingly likely, with the House's top Republican, Rep. Mike Johnson, predicting on Monday that it would be “one of the longest shutdowns in American history.” The previous record holder, in 2019, was 35 days..
This article is reproduced with permission and has been first published October 15, 2025
