The U.S. government shutdown, about to enter its third week, is beginning to take a toll on American science. Since the start of the lockdown, US President Donald Trump’s administration has canceled funding for clean energy research projects and laid off public health workers. Operations at some federally funded museums and laboratories have been suspended, along with the processing of grant applications by agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Funding for the US government expired on October 1 after members of the US Congress failed to pass a spending bill. Negotiations aimed at breaking the deadlock have made little progress. Lawmakers from the opposition Democratic Party say they will only pass the spending bill if it extends popular health care subsidies, a condition Republicans are unwilling to negotiate. “The longer this goes on, the deeper the cuts will be,” Vice President JD Vance said Sunday.
Staff reductions
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The Trump administration said in a court filing Friday that it would lay off between 4,100 and 4,200 federal employees, a move officially called reduction in force (RIF). The Trump administration cited the lack of a spending bill to justify the layoffs, which are an unprecedented measure during a shutdown. Unions representing federal workers filed suit against the layoffs.
As of Friday evening, some 1,300 staff members at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) received RIF notices, although the notices for 700 were quickly rescinded, according to Local 2883 of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing CDC employees. The layoffs “would harm the nation’s ability to respond to public health emergencies,” a CDC staffer affected by the layoff said Tuesday at a news conference hosted by Local 2883.
News of layoffs during the CDC’s influential National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) has sparked particular concern among epidemiologists. The program has collected health data in the United States since the early 1960s and has helped researchers understand critical public health issues such as the health effects of lead in gasoline.
Asher Rosinger, a former CDC staffer and epidemiologist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, said CDC employees told him the layoffs had decimated the planning arm of NHANES, a team he said is critical to the program’s operation. “This baseline survey may no longer work in the future,” he says.
Double dismissal
Some CDC employees were laid off twice within six months, says mathematical statistician Isaac Michael. At the CDC, Michael and his colleagues ran a survey and database tracking the experience of new mothers in the United States – until the entire team was laid off in April. Several court rulings have preserved their employment status for now, although they are still not allowed to work even after the government reopens. But some of his colleagues have received a second layoff notice in recent days, making their reinstatement unlikely.
If a state experiences another rise in maternal or infant deaths, “we won’t even know there’s a problem because we don’t collect any reliable data and we won’t be able to do anything to help,” Michael says.
Andrew Nixon, communications director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the CDC, said all HHS employees receiving reduction notices have been designated as nonessential by their respective divisions, and that the department will continue to close “unnecessary and redundant entities.”
The administration’s court filing said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would lose 20 to 30 people. Staff members in U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) offices overseeing renewable energy, energy efficiency and other areas also received RIF notifications, a DoE spokesperson said. “These offices are being realigned to reflect the Trump Administration’s commitment to promoting affordable, reliable and safe energy for the American people,” the spokesperson said.
Funding Reductions
Coinciding with the shutdown, the administration also announced a new round of cuts to research projects, adding to billions of dollars in federal research grants revoked since Trump took office in January.
On the second day of the shutdown, the DoE announced it was cutting nearly $7.6 billion in funding for 223 energy projects, many of which supported renewable energy. An analysis by Nature found that the list includes grants to 33 academic institutions, worth a combined $620 million.
Colorado State University in Fort Collins, for example, would lose grants for seven projects, including a $300 million grant to develop technology to reduce methane emissions from small oil wells. The cuts would mean eliminating research positions, Cassandra Moseley, the university’s vice president for research, said in a statement, and would end research “to make the nation’s energy infrastructure safer, more efficient and competitive.”
An overlapping list that has not yet been made public includes 647 projects scheduled for completion, according to media outlet Semafor and others. The DoE did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the subsidy cuts.
The Department of Defense (DOD) said it will pay the salaries of employees furloughed due to the shutdown by drawing on the remaining $8 billion in funds from its research, development, test and evaluation budget, part of which is dedicated to funding science and technology. It’s unclear how this change would affect research, or whether it would be legal to reallocate the money without prior approval from Congress. The DOD did not respond to Naturewonder about the effects on research.
Scientific judgments
The Smithsonian Institution operates more than a dozen museums in Washington, DC, and a series of research centers. It ran out of operating funds on October 12 and closed many of its facilities, including a coastal biology research center in Maryland. Laboratories at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s research division are also closed.
The NIH and NSF, among other agencies, stopped awarding new grants and conducting grant reviews. At NSF, more than 40 review panels in disciplines including astronomy, mathematics and chemistry were scheduled to be held in the first two weeks of October and were canceled.
Non-federal organizations have also been affected. At the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, activities that depend on federal collaborations have been disrupted, says public relations director Suzanne Pelisson. In a statement Monday, the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta said the shutdown was slowing payment for federally funded research and that the university would stop recruiting and take other cost-saving measures if the shutdown lasts beyond Oct. 20.
That scenario is looking increasingly likely: The top Republican in the House of Representatives, Rep. Mike Johnson, predicted 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 published for the first time on October 15, 2025.
