House Democrats warn against Trump cuts to scientific agencies
Eleven Democratic lawmakers raised concerns Thursday about proposed cuts to the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
'We have dedicated our careers to the pursuit of scientific discovery before coming to Washington, in laboratories and classrooms here on Earth, and in missions that reached far into space,' the lawmakers wrote in a letter to the president.
'We represent millions of Americans who will be deeply impacted by the recent cuts proposed by representatives acting under your authority, and who believe that the federal government has a fundamental obligation to support science and scientists,' they continued.
'With that in mind, we call on you to immediately stop the dismantling of our nation's scientific enterprise,' they added.
The letter was led by Rep. George Whitesides (D-Calif.), who previously served as chief of staff at NASA.
Trump has proposed steep to cuts to scientific agencies in his budget request for fiscal year 2026, including $1.3 billion in cuts to NOAA, $4.7 billion in cuts to NSF, $6 billion in cuts to NASA and $18 billion in cuts to the NIH.
The Democratic lawmakers in Thursday's letter pointed to the importance of research for medical breakthroughs, anticipating and warning about severe storms and boosting American jobs and security in urging Trump to reverse course on the cuts.
They also emphasized the administration's focus on promoting innovation and ensuring American leadership on artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing.
'At a time of great power competition in countering China, scientific research and advancement are more important than ever,' the lawmakers wrote. 'As these competitors increase investments in their innovation ecosystems and research enterprises, we cannot afford to undermine the future of our scientific leadership.'
'We urge your administration to follow the longstanding principle of bipartisan support for the scientific community and national leaders who have made science a national priority, embracing it as a driver of economic growth, public health, and environmental safety,' they added.
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Yahoo
13 minutes ago
- Yahoo
US Sen. Ruben Gallego tours Iowa State Fair but dodges talk of 2028 run for president
U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona toured the Iowa State Fairgrounds on Aug. 8, speaking to Democrats about winning back seats in the 2026 midterms and drawing a crowd of national reporters curious about his 2028 presidential prospects. Gallego's message for Iowa Democrats, in between visits to the butter cow and flipping pork burgers at the Iowa Pork Producers Tent, was to focus on working-class issues, "stop going for the easy votes" and reach out to Republicans. "We have to get out to these rural areas or suburban areas, wherever it is where we're maybe not winning Republicans, and we have to actually start having conversations with them," he said in an interview with the Des Moines Register. "And focus on what they want to talk about. Not what makes us comfortable to talk about." Gallego defeated Republican Kari Lake in 2024 to win his seat in the U.S. Senate, becoming the first Latino senator to represent Arizona. Before that, he served five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. "The reason we got Trump-Gallego voters in Arizona is because we talked about border security," he said. "And we talked about the cost of living and how things were going bad and we needed to work on it instead of being in denial and hoping that we would win." 'Too early' to talk about running for president, Gallego says Gallego's visit to Iowa comes amid a string of his visits around the country that have sparked speculation about a potential bid for president in 2028. More: Why Arizona's Sen. Ruben Gallego is 2028 presidential longshot as he heads to Iowa Gallego will travel to New Hampshire, the traditional leadoff presidential primary state, on Aug. 22. His stops will include the Politics & Eggs breakfast, a staple for presidential candidates, as well as a town hall and a fundraiser, according to WMUR. In May, he held a town hall in Pennsylvania, a key swing state. In his interview with the Register, Gallego acknowledged that, "yes, I've been prepped" to be asked about whether he'll run for president in 2028. "Too early," he said. "Right now, the most important thing is, I need some help in the House and in the Senate. I know how to help Democrats win in really hard states. That's what we're here to do." Gallego also noted that he has a 7-week-old son, his third child, and "that's going to be the focus for the next couple of years." Asked if that meant he was ruling out a presidential bid in 2028, Gallego deflected the question with a joke about U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst's viral town hall comments about Medicaid. "I mean, like, who knows what the hell is going to happen in the next couple of years, right?" he said. "As Joni Ernst said, we could all be dead, too." Past tweet disparaging Iowa Caucuses 'not my finest moment,' Gallego says But his visit to the fair was also dogged by conservative activists from Turning Point USA seeking to draw attention to past social media posts Gallego made disparaging the Iowa Caucuses. "F--- caucuses," he posted on Feb. 4, 2020. "Iowa failed time to move on. #IowaCaucuses." "Love my friends in Iowa and New Hampshire, but time to move on," he wrote in another post on Feb. 14, 2021. "South Carolina and Nevada should start the primaries." Gallego said he made the post because he was frustrated by the fact that the results of the caucuses were not known for weeks after the app failed that the Iowa Democratic Party was using to report precinct results. "The tweet was definitely not my finest moment," he said. "However, you know, it was mostly focusing on the results of that day." National Democrats stripped Iowa of its first-in-the-nation status following the 2020 election, although the party may revisit the presidential nominating calendar before the 2028 election. More: Iowa House Democratic Leader Brian Meyer calls for his party to hold caucuses first in 2028 Gallego said Democrats' presidential nominating calendar will be determined by the Democratic National Committee. "Look, the DNC's got to figure out the calendar. If Iowa is back in front, then it's Iowa," he said. "But overall, fighting for people like here in Iowa or Arizona or anywhere else, you know, we have shared needs, and we have some shared threats," he added. "Like, right now, what's the threat? People are getting kicked off of Medicaid. People are going to get kicked off food stamps." Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart said voters will decide whether Gallego's past comments about the caucuses are a dealbreaker if he decides to run for higher office. "It's up to the voters," she said. "But I would tell you that I talked to him about that. And, you know, I think he recognizes that he was running his mouth, right? And that's one reason why it's really great that he's here in Iowa, because maybe this will give him a different attitude going forward." She said she's "thrilled" candidates such as Gallego are interested in coming to Iowa. "We've had a lot of conversation about Iowa's place in the big picture of first-in-the-nation, etc.," she said. "And candidates get it. They know that Iowa is the place to come. We have a such a strong reputation of being the place where you come to be vetted by honest to goodness ordinary citizens who are smart and savvy and are paying attention, and it gives you an idea of what the pulse of the nation is." Republican Party of Iowa Chair Jeff Kaufmann issued a statement calling Iowa Democrats "out of touch" for welcoming Gallego and saying Iowans "don't need lectures" from him. "Ruben Gallego trashed the Iowa Caucuses, mocked our farmers, and then voted against tax cuts on tips, bigger paychecks and financial relief for seniors," Kaufmann said. "Now he wants a photo‑op at the State Fair? Iowans know better, he's out of touch and out of his depth." Gallego rounds out Iowa State Fair with butter cow visit, pork burger flipping Despite his deflections, Gallego's day at the fair had all the hallmarks of a presidential condender's visit. Des Moines Mayor Connie Boesen took Gallego to try an apple eggroll at her Applishus stand before he kicked off his official schedule by answering questions from reporters. Gallego walked around the fairgrounds with Hart and state Sen. Matt Blake, D-Urbandale. As he strolled, he and Blake chatted about their kids and their military service, and Gallego got some advice about the "science" behind where to stand to get the best picture with the butter cow. "There's a science?" he asked. After seeing the butter cow, Gallego tried an egg on a stick — another Iowa State Fair staple. "Needs a little salsa," he said, before dipping it in some Cookies BBQ seasoning that a volunteer offered him. He stopped to take selfies with several Democratic volunteers at the party's booth in the Varied Industries Building. And he completed his fair tour with a visit to the Iowa Pork Producers Tent to flip pork burgers. At the end of the day, he hinted that it might not be his last visit to Iowa. "You're going to have competitive races no matter what," he said. "I think you're going to have competitive Senate candidates and House candidates and governors. And if they ask me to come back again, yeah, I'll come back again." Stephen Gruber-Miller covers the Iowa Statehouse and politics for the Register. He can be reached by email at sgrubermil@ or by phone at 515-284-8169. Follow him on X at @sgrubermiller. This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Ruben Gallego visits the Iowa State Fair, raising questions about 2028
New York Post
14 minutes ago
- New York Post
America's openness leaves Mahmoud Khalil free — to abuse our freedoms
It's a shame we're still debating whether Mahmoud Khalil should be kicked out of the United States, because this hateful zealot should never have been allowed to step foot on American soil in the first place. Khalil, the former Columbia University graduate student who became a poster boy for critics of President Donald Trump's deportation policies, is back in the headlines this week for all the wrong reasons. In a high-profile interview with The New York Times' Ezra Klein, Khalil made a mockery of those who have insisted he's a well-intentioned humanitarian without animus toward anyone. 'It felt frightening that we had to reach this moment in the Palestinian struggle,' he said of Hamas' barbaric Oct. 7 attack on innocent Israeli civilians. Klein asked the gentlest possible follow-up: 'What do you mean we had to reach this moment?' 'Unfortunately, we couldn't avoid such a moment,' Khalil repeated. In a manner that would have been comical were it not for the horrific subject matter, Klein — ever so eager to vindicate his vile guest — afforded Khalil one more chance to describe the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust in a way that didn't make it out to be a vital but tedious chore. But Khalil tripled down. It was, he said, a necessary evil to 'break the cycle' and 'tell the world that Palestinians are here,' you see. This came just weeks after Khalil refused not once, not twice, but three times to condemn Hamas when he appeared on CNN. 'I simply asked and protested the war in Palestine,' he said of the antisemitic uprising he helped lead on Columbia's campus. 'That's my duty as a Palestinian, as a human being right now, is to ask for the stop of the killing in my home country.' Critics exploded with righteous anger. 'Mahmoud Khalil has not been shy about his support for Hamas — a brutal terrorist organization that violently attacks innocent men, women, and children,' observed White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson. 'Calling the massacre of Israeli civilians a 'desperate attempt' is not political speech — it's moral depravity,' submitted NY state Assemblyman Ari Brown of Nassau County. 'Mahmoud Khalil must be immediately deported,' Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) declared. 'He is a chief pro-Hamas terrorist agitator.' The Trump administration has already tried. When Secretary of State Marco Rubio launched deportation proceedings against Khalil in March, he did so by claiming the then-student's anti-Israel protests on Columbia's campus 'undermine US policy to combat antisemitism around the world and in the United States.' Yet even many of Khalil's critics chafed at the federal government targeting a legal resident and green card holder for offensive speech — and a New Jersey court forced his release. The First Amendment is, after all, among Americans' most cherished inheritances. Many free-speech champions expressed reasonable concern that removing Khalil might open the door to a slippery slope of censorship. That concern, though, elides the all-important threshold question: Why was Khalil ever allowed into the United States at all? There are legal, prudential and philosophical arguments for granting all legal residents the powerful protections of the First Amendment. But there's nothing in the Constitution — nor embedded in our longstanding American values — that compels this country to admit hateful ideologues. Khalil is a 30-year-old man harboring palpable bigotries ('Having lived in the Middle East most of my life, unfortunately, the only Jew you hear about is the one who's trying to kill you,' he explained to Klein), and a tribal loyalty that blinds him to the basic moral principles underpinning American life. Not to mention his unfriendly feelings toward the United States itself. 'I had my own reservations about the impact of America on me,' he told Klein smugly. 'As a Palestinian or as a Syrian refugee in Lebanon, America's influence in the Middle East was very negative.' The United States is an open-minded, benevolent nation predisposed to accepting people of myriad cultures from across the globe. That's an honorable instinct, and most of the time it's the right one. But a line has to be drawn to protect the national interest. And if that line is so weak and vague as to permit the entry of someone unable to condemn kidnapping, torture, murder and rape for political purposes, it's no line at all. It's 'Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,' as Emma Lazarus put it. Not 'Give me your bigots, your knaves / Your privileged yearning to drive Jews into the sea.' Now that he's here, Khalil has the right to promote his hateful, anti-American worldview in as many 'progressive' media outlets as are willing to amplify it. But he does so as a living testament to both the virtues of America — and the failures of its immigration system. Isaac Schorr is a staff writer at Mediaite.
Chicago Tribune
14 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
A look at colleges with federal money targeted by the Trump administration
Several elite U.S. colleges have made deals with President Donald Trump's administration, offering concessions to his political agenda and financial payments to restore federal money that had been withheld. Ivy League schools Columbia, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania reached agreements to resolve federal investigations. The Republican administration is pressing for more, citing the deal it negotiated with Columbia as a 'road map' for other colleges. There is a freeze on billions of dollars of research money for other colleges including Harvard, which has been negotiating with the White House even as it fights in court over the lost grants. And on Friday, a White House official said the Trump administration is seeking a $1 billion settlement from the the University of California, Los Angeles. Like no other president, Trump has used the government's control over federal research funding to push for changes in higher education, decrying elite colleges as places of extreme liberal ideology and antisemitism. Here's a look at universities pressured by the administration's funding cuts. Columbia said on July 23 that it had agreed to a $200 million fine to restore federal funding. The school was threatened with the potential loss of billions of dollars in government support, including more than $400 million in grants canceled earlier this year. The administration pulled the money because of what it described as Columbia's failure to address antisemitism on campus during the Israel-Hamas war. Columbia agreed to administration demands such as overhauling its student disciplinary process and applying a federally backed definition of antisemitism to teaching and a disciplinary committee investigating students critical of Israel. Federal officials said the fine will go to the Treasury Department and cannot be spent until Congress appropriates it. Columbia also agreed to pay $21 million into a compensation fund for employees who may have faced antisemitism. The deal includes a clause that Columbia says preserves its independence, putting in writing that the government does not have the authority to dictate 'hiring, admission decisions, or the content of academic speech.' An agreement last month calls for Brown to pay $50 million to Rhode Island workforce development organizations. That would restore dozens of lost federal research grants and end investigations into allegations of antisemitism and racial bias in Brown admissions. Among other concessions, Brown agreed to adopt the government's definition of 'male' and 'female' and remove any consideration of race from the admissions process. Like the settlement with Columbia, Brown's does not include a finding of wrongdoing. It includes a provision saying the government does not have authority to dictate Brown's curriculum or 'the content of academic speech.' The Trump administration suspended $584 million in federal grants to UCLA, the university said this week, after the Department of Justice said the college had violated civil rights 'by acting with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students.' On Friday, a White House official said the Trump administration was seeking a $1 billion settlement from the university. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the request and spoke on the condition of anonymity. UCLA is the first public university to have its federal grants targeted by the administration over alleged civil rights violations. Under a July agreement resolving a federal civil rights case, Penn modified three school records set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and said it would apologize to female athletes 'disadvantaged' by Thomas' participation on the women's swimming team. The Education Department investigated Penn as part of the administration's broader attempt to remove transgender athletes from girls and women's sports. As part of the case, the administration had suspended $175 million in funding to Penn. The administration has frozen more than $2.6 billion in research grants to Harvard, accusing the nation's oldest and wealthiest university of allowing antisemitism to flourish. Harvard has pushed back with several lawsuits. In negotiations for a possible settlement, the administration is seeking for Harvard to pay an amount far higher than Columbia. The White House announced in April that it froze more than $1 billion of Cornell's federal funding as it investigated allegations of civil rights violations. The Ivy League school was among a group of more than 60 universities that received a letter from the Education Department on March 10 urging them to take steps to protect Jewish students or else face 'potential enforcement actions.' Like Cornell, Northwestern saw a halt in some of its federal funding in April. The amount was about $790 million, according to the administration. The administration this week froze $108 million in federal money for Duke. The hold on funding from the National Institutes of Health came days after the departments of Health and Human Services and Education sent a joint letter alleging racial preferences in Duke's hiring and admissions. Dozens of research grants were suspended at Princeton without a clear rationale, according to an April 1 campus message from the university's president, Christopher Eisgruber. The grants came from federal agencies such as the Department of Energy, NASA and the Pentagon.
