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Day by day, how Trump is roiling science and health
STAT is tracking, day by day, what's happened in the words of science and health during the first months of the Trump administration.
It’s hard to remember all the earthshaking decisions and events that have transpired with unprecedented speed in the first few months of the Trump administration. We’re tracking, day by day, what’s happened in the worlds of science and health.
Key
Legal action
Covid
DEI and LGBTQ+
Executive action
Funding cuts and freezes
Job cuts and staffing changes
MAHA
Science
Vaccines
Jump to day 10 — 20 — 30 — 40 — 50 — 60 — 70 — 80 — 90
President signs more than two dozen executive orders, including eliminating DEI programs and freezing USAID contracts and other foreign aid.
Trump administration orders closure of all federal DEI offices, workers placed on leave.
In a sign of the reach of Trump’s orders to eliminate DEI initiatives, the FDA removes information on ensuring clinical trials are diverse from its website.
Administration bars federal funding for NGOs that provide abortions;
withdraws proposed ban on menthol cigarettes; rescinds Biden order to increase abortion access; fires federal inspectors general, including for HHS.
Grant disbursements paused to ensure they comply with executive orders.
Servicemembers dismissed for refusal to take Covid vaccine are reinstated.
Trump signs order prohibiting federal funding for gender-affirming care to those under 19 and calls on the Justice Department to pursue litigation and legislation to stop the practice.
States have difficulty accessing Medicaid funds after Trump halts some federal payments. The administration moves quickly to clarify that the health program shouldn’t be subject to the freeze.
Administration orders agencies to suspend programs that recognize transgender people.
Trump executive orders seen as a strategy to use the threat of lost research funds as leverage to dismantle universities’ DEI programs.
Thousands of government webpages taken down, including CDC databases with information on sexual orientation and gender identity, to remove banned language.
Professional society for microbiologists scrubs diversity content, angering members and showing reach of Trump executive orders.
Opposition to RFK Jr.’s confirmation fades, as key Republican senator acquiesces.
Trump administration announces it will cut indirect costs to universities, capping what it pays for research overhead and administration at 15% of grant amount.
Trump swears in RFK Jr. as HHS secretary and signs EO creating a MAHA Commission, with Kennedy as chair.
Administration starts notifying roughly 5,200 probationary health agency employees of their termination, including drug inspectors, AI experts, and maternal health workers. Many were informed that they were being terminated for poor performance, even though they said they had previously received only strong performance evaluations.
Funds cut for navigators who help people enroll in Affordable Care Act health plans.
Trump orders federal funding be withheld from schools requiring Covid vaccination.
Kennedy announces new guidance specifying only two genders exist, defying biological reality.
National Academies scrubs DEI-related language from pending reports, drawing a letter of protest from scientists.
Freeze on Federal Register listings is being used to block NIH grant funding.
Trump administration starts rehiring fired FDA workers after pushback from industry.
Some study sections resume meeting to review grants, but final funding decisions still in limbo.
Trump executive order calls for more transparency in medical pricing.
A child in Texas who was unvaccinated dies during a growing measles outbreak, the first U.S. measles death in 10 years. Kennedy, a longtime critic of the measles vaccine, appeared to try to downplay the news, saying the outbreak is “not unusual.”
FDA cancels an advisory committee meeting on flu strains for the upcoming season’s vaccine.
New Trump plan on bird flu focuses on economic threat caused by sick poultry rather than the pandemic threat to human health.
In Fox News opinion piece, Kennedy doesn’t endorse measles vaccine.
Amid worsening measles outbreak, Kennedy embraces cod liver oil and other unconventional treatments for measles, says vaccines prevent infection but casts getting a shot as a personal decision.
Judge issues preliminary injunction blocking cuts to indirect costs, a ruling suggesting that plaintiffs seeking to overturn the policy change are likely to eventually succeed.
HHS says CDC will study the debunked link between vaccines and autism.
Kennedy vows to rid foods of red dyes.
Harvard physicians sue over removal of studies including the terms “LGBTQ” and “trans” from a government website.
White House pulls nomination of Dave Weldon for CDC director over concerns his long opposition to vaccines would imperil Senate confirmation.
Administration cuts funding for landmark 30-year diabetes study, apparently as a result of its cancellation of grants to Columbia University.
Longtime head of the National Human Genome Research Institute is first director of an NIH institute to leave agency under Trump.
VA announces it will phase out gender-affirming care.
Most FDA employees are required to return to in-person work, the latest challenge for the agency’s morale and retention efforts.
NIH terminates grants to study HIV prevention drug PrEP.
White House announces suspension of $175 million in grants to the University of Pennsylvania over a transgender athlete.
Vaccine critic David Geier, who was disciplined in Maryland for practicing medicine without a license, chosen to lead a vaccine study looking for a link to autism.
More than $11 billion in federal grants for state and local public health programs canceled. Money had originally been allocated for the Covid-19 response, but was now being used for disease tracking, addiction treatment, and combatting the measles outbreak in Texas.
NIH directs staff to identify grants or contracts that “may be related to any form of censorship,” including any involving “fighting misinformation or disinformation.”
Funding for new Covid-19 treatments canceled.
CDC division for asthma control and lead poisoning prevention eliminated; administration says the work “will continue elsewhere at HHS.”
FDA’s chief tobacco regulator and dozens of other Center for Tobacco Products employees are dismissed, along with most of the staff of the CDC Office of Smoking and Health.
Regulatory leaders and staff across FDA are fired on commissioner Marty Makary’s first official day.
HHS says it’s been ordered to cut 35% of contract spending, including $2.6 billion at NIH.
Trump threatens to withhold $9 billion in federal funding for Harvard University.
Administration says it will pause $510 million in funding to Brown University.
Judge issues permanent injunction against indirect costs cut, paving way for Trump administration appeal.
CDC’s top STD lab is shut by administration, as all 28 full-time workers are fired.
Under pressure from the administration, organizations representing universities and other research institutions announce they are exploring ways to reform the indirect-cost system.
Kennedy says “people should get the measles vaccine” but in the same interview sows doubt about efficacy of some other vaccines, flummoxing scientists.
Head of the American Public Health Association calls on Kennedy to resign.
HHS will “undertake a massive testing and research effort” to determine causes of autism by September, Kennedy tells Trump at a Cabinet meeting. “There’s got to be something artificial out there that’s doing this,” Trump says. “If you can come up with that answer, where you stop taking something, eating something, or maybe it’s a shot. But something’s causing it.”
After layoffs, HHS workers confront chaos as operations become unglued.
Administration says it will freeze $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard after the university rejects demands that it make vast policy changes and submit to federal oversight over its alleged failure to combat antisemitism.
Administration launches probe into pharmaceutical imports, a step seen as a prelude to imposing tariffs on medicines.
Kennedy says he plans changes to a vaccine monitoring system to automate and increase data collection as well as look for negative impacts.
Trump issues executive order aiming to lower health care costs.
White House Office of Management and Budget document leaked, revealing a plan to consolidate NIH into eight institutes and centers and cut its spending by about 40%.
Leading NIH nutritionist Kevin Hall, known for groundbreaking research on ultra-processed foods, retires early, citing political interference and “censorship” by agency officials.
U.S. DOGE Service institutes “Defend the Spend” initiative at HHS agencies including NIH, causing payment backlogs as grant recipients are now required to justify routine drawdowns of awarded money and government officials have to sign off on each, Washington Post reports.
NIH said to have halted awarding of new grants to top universities where existing funding has been frozen, including Harvard and Columbia. Internal email instructs staff not to inform institutions about the decision.
White House trumpets disputed Covid lab leak theory on a webpage that had been devoted to health information about the disease.
Scientific journals receive letters from a U.S. attorney alleging bias and requesting information about editorial practices.
Harvard sues Trump administration over funding freeze, says government’s “attempt to coerce and control” the university is unconstitutional.
Bhattacharya says Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders are “misunderstood” and downplays draft NIH budget calling for a reorganization and massive cuts.
Women’s Health Initiative, which over more than three decades shaped treatment of menopause and osteoporosis, announces it will lose its HHS funding in September, putting its future in jeopardy.
Food companies agree to phase out eight synthetic dyes by the end of 2026 over concerns about behavioral problems in children.
Public health leaders, distrustful of RFK Jr., stand up project to defend vaccines.
