from the seems-bad dept

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The American academic research engine has long been the envy of the world. Generally well-funded, labs in the United States have been able to attract the best minds who generate breakthroughs and train the next generation workforce that powers the U.S. economy. But since the start of the second Trump administration in January 2025, new federal policies have destabilized the American scientific enterprise.

The disruption generated by the Trump administration’s funding, DEI and visa policies has been well reported by the media. On an individual level, though, what do academic researchers think of all these changes and how have they been directly affected?

We are researchers affiliated with Arizona State University’s scientist opinion panel survey, known as SciOPS, a 5-year research program designed to monitor, understand and improve how scientists communicate with the public. We wanted to know more about the reality inside today’s universities as researchers grapple with Trump administration policies.

Along with our colleagues, we fielded a survey of randomly sampled members of the academic science community participating in the SciOPS panel. We obtained responses from 280 scientists from several fields, including biology, chemistry, civil and environmental engineering, computer and information science engineering, geography and public health from 131 universities.

Our results show dramatic, mostly negative, effects of federal policy changes on researchers, the research system and American competitiveness.

How research in US universities has changed

Any research enterprise thrives because of its ability to fund cutting-edge science and thus attract highly motivated, well-trained people. Since the second Trump administration took office in January 2025, just over half of the scientists in our survey report that their overall funding has declined.

Declines in federal funding have had knock-on effects. Around one-quarter of scientists reported that state and local and university internal funding have also declined. Another 9% reported that internal funding has increased, presumably as universities have provided emergency funds to researchers to support critical studies.

According to the scientists who responded to our survey, Trump administration policies have also affected the scientific workforce pipeline, hampering their ability to recruit internationally and domestically.

We hypothesize that these hiring issues can be related to visa and immigration policies, which make it difficult for international graduate students and postdocs to work in the U.S. or attend international conferences. Just over half of scientists in our survey reported that international students or postdocs have expressed concerns to them about deportation.

Concerns about longer-term career impacts are also to blame for trouble recruiting the next generation of researchers. Over 80% of surveyed scientists reported that graduate students or postdocs on their research team have increased concerns about future job prospects.

These impacts have taken a toll on scientists’ professional work environment and overall outlook. Over two-thirds reported more work-related stress and almost half reported increased workloads since January 2025. About half reported decreased work motivation.

How are scientists and engineers reacting?

We found scientists’ responses to be a mixture of resilience, acquiescence and considering an exit.

While many scientists said they were less motivated at work, most reported no change in their efforts to obtain federal research funding. Small proportions did report successfully increasing their efforts to obtain funding from non-federal sources.

Our survey also asked scientists whether they had taken any self-censoring actions since January 2025 due to concern over potential negative consequences for their work or career. Over half reported having reviewed or adjusted key words in research proposals, and almost half said they’d reframed research topics. Forty-three percent had also cautioned students or collaborators to be careful what they say publicly and more than a third had abandoned plans on one or more research topics.

Although scientists are adopting strategies to cope with the new challenges, nearly two-thirds of the scientists in our sample appear to be considering one or more other career options.

Scientists look to the long term

Scientists and engineers in our sample have strong opinions about the impacts of current U.S. science policy. A large majority (87%) believe the administration’s actions have influenced research priorities more than previous administrations. Most scientists in our survey had a negative opinion of the Trump administration’s overall changes to science policy.

Scientists in our sample believed that administration policies have had a negative effect on the future scientific workforce and the ability of scientists and engineers in the U.S. to produce breakthroughs and discoveries and contribute to national welfare.

Large majorities believe these policies have harmed public perceptions of the integrity of U.S. scientists (85%) and hurt public trust in science (84%).

Academic scientists’ reactions to the Trump administration’s changes to science policy are perhaps not surprising given the perceived level of threat these actions represent to the research community. What is less certain is whether the dramatic changes we are currently witnessing – cuts to grant funding, politicization of research, downsizing of federal agencies, restrictive immigration policies, attacks on the autonomy of higher education and more – are temporary or if they represent the initial phase of a transition to a new research environment with less federal support for American science.

Eric Welch is Professor and Director, Center for Science, Technology & Environmental Policy Studies at Arizona State University and Timothy P. Johnson is Professor Emeritus of Public Administration at University of Illinois Chicago

Filed Under: academics, donald trump, research, science, science policy

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition features a fun soccer topic that World Cup watchers might appreciate. If you’re struggling with the puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: You might build a house with them.

Green group hint: Hoops stars.

Blue group hint: Start your engines.

Purple group hint: World Cup wonders.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Boards.

Green group: Hall of Fame Spurs.

Blue group: Locations of famous auto races.

Purple group: Soccer skill moves.

Read more: The Best and Worst Letters for Wordle, According to the Data

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is boards. The four answers are skate, snow, surf and wake.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is Hall of Fame Spurs. The four answers are Duncan, Gervin, Ginobili and Parker.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is locations of famous auto races. The four answers are Daytona, Indianapolis, Le Mans and Monaco.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is soccer skill moves. The four answers are nutmeg, Olimpico, rabona and stepover.

Amazon has unveiled new changes coming to its all-purpose wall-mounted display, the 8-inch Echo Hub ($180). The Hub, focused on smart home control, now has new graphics and significantly deeper customization, Amazon announced Thursday. 

During normal operation, the Echo Hub usually shows controls for the devices you use the most, including those that use Matter, Zigbee, Thread and Bluetooth connections (as long as they work with Alexa). But you can also move these tiles around, enlarge or shrink them, and you can choose specific devices to add to the home screen for easier access.

A representative from Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

While devices are now grouped automatically by room and function, you can manually create your own groups to add a series of controls to. That includes routines that you may have previously set up.

Another innovation adds more granular controls, which is more useful than it may sound. For example, you can now access supported smart light bulbs, allowing you to dim them from 1% to 100% and to choose specific colors.

If you use Alexa Plus (free with Amazon Prime or $20 per month) and have a Ring AI subscription for Ring security cameras, the Echo Hub can also provide a summary of camera events and video clips of the relevant actions (for example, delivered packages) for up to four feeds at the same time. You can also search through existing security videos directly on the Hub with Alexa voice commands.

These sound like convenient changes for the Echo Hub, but I’d look forward to them coming to Echo Show devices like mine, too. Echo Shows have traditionally had a broader focus than smart home controls, like showing video calls or TV shows, but this new customizable screen sounds better than the news and ads my Show has instead. Hopefully, Amazon will push similar features to other Echo devices.

Anthropic is donating $150 million to place 1,000 AI fellows inside nonprofit organisations across the United States. The programme, called Claude Corps, will pay early-career workers $85,000 plus benefits for a year-long placement where they help nonprofits use Claude more effectively. Applications opened Wednesday and close on July 17.

No college degree is required. Applicants must be 18 or older, hold US work authorisation, and have no more than two years of full-time work experience. The first cohort of 100 fellows starts in October 2026. Subsequent cohorts begin in January and August 2027.

Each of the 400+ host organisations will receive a $10,000 grant and free Claude credits. Anthropic partnered with CodePath, a San Francisco nonprofit that helps first-generation and low-income students enter the tech workforce, to manage recruitment and training.

“We hope this program will expand and become a pillar of our strategy to help humankind realize the benefits of AI while also managing its risks,” said Anthropic President Daniela Amodei.

The programme is modelled loosely on service corps like AmeriCorps and Teach For America, but with a corporate sponsor and a product at its centre. Fellows are trained specifically on Claude. The organisations they serve will build their workflows around Claude. When the fellowship ends, the nonprofits are left with AI infrastructure tied to Anthropic’s ecosystem.

That dual purpose has drawn criticism. Fortune noted the “fox guarding the henhouse” dynamic: a $965 billion AI company is training the nonprofit sector to depend on its own product, funded by a donation that represents less than 0.02% of its valuation. Anthropic frames it as philanthropy. Sceptics see distribution strategy wrapped in a public benefit narrative.

Regardless of the framing, the programme addresses a real gap. Most nonprofits lack the staff, budget, and technical knowledge to adopt AI tools, even when those tools could meaningfully improve operations. Anthropic’s $100M Claude Partner Network, launched earlier, targets enterprises. Claude Corps targets the organisations that cannot afford enterprise partnerships.

The timing is deliberate. Anthropic is preparing for an IPO and positioning itself as the responsible AI company in a field dominated by OpenAI’s commercial aggression and Google’s scale. A $150 million nonprofit fellowship is a narrative play as much as a product play. Whether 1,000 fellows can make a meaningful difference across 400 organisations depends on whether the programme outlasts its PR value. Anthropic’s policy framework, published this week, calls for AI’s benefits to be “broadly shared.” Claude Corps is its first concrete attempt to deliver on that promise.

I just did a quick Google search for SpaceX IPO. How many hundreds of articles are we actually expected to read about this? 

Given the buzz around Friday’s big IPO, there are a few misconceptions worth addressing upfront. While many people view SpaceX as a massive, dominant space enterprise, it’s more complicated than that. 

“In reality, it’s a very successful but fairly small satellite launch company, bolted onto a stagnant money-losing social media company and a money-incinerating AI company, and then sprinkled with a lot of hype about humankind going interplanetary,” said Robin Wigglesworth, editor of the Financial Times’ finance blog, Alphaville. 

In other words, perhaps it’s more akin to a vertically integrated space and communications company with ambitious, high-risk side bets. Sure, at its center, SpaceX is a launch company that designs rockets (like Falcon 9 and Starship) and sells access to space. But around that, it has those related businesses — most notably Starlink, its satellite internet network, and xAI, which SpaceX acquired in February 2026. And since xAI includes the social media platform X and X’s chatbot, Grok, they’re also under the SpaceX umbrella. 

X hasn’t been durable in terms of revenue. And, like most cash-burning AI enterprises, xAI is expensive to run and is reporting very large losses. 

One could say the SpaceX ecosystem revolves around a single goal: building the infrastructure needed for global connectivity and, eventually, space settlement. But a major concern is that SpaceX’s overall package is driven more by hype and momentum than by its proven profitability. 

Wigglesworth said the biggest immediate risk is straightforward: The stock could drop soon after it begins trading. That outcome would affect both the company and investors, though it wouldn’t necessarily signal broader economic trouble. As he noted, IPOs “do badly all the time.” 

In the first few weeks after the IPO, price movements may be misleading. The opening day can be volatile, with banks helping stabilize prices and strong retail demand potentially pushing shares higher. We’ll also see index funds start to buy in, which can help nudge the price up a bit. 

However, as Wigglesworth pointed out, the more meaningful test will come after a month, when the market determines whether there is sustained demand “for a company trading at some of the juiciest valuation multiples we’ve seen in history.”

So here’s another misconception to address: If SpaceX is popular, it’s safe to buy, right? 

I didn’t have to read too many articles to get an answer to that. 

“Popularity and renown are bad indicators for what makes a successful investment,” Wigglesworth told me. “Even good companies can be bad investments at a dumb price.”