Freedom 250 seeks $10 million more for July Fourth celebrations : NPR

"It is unacceptable to ask the American people to bail out Freedom 250," he wrote, referring to the group that President Trump created last year to oversee anniversary celebrations, which critics say he did to bypass a bipartisan group that already existed...

 https://www.npr.org/2026/07/30/nx-s1-5913172/freedom-250-july-fourth-10-million

 

New Trump Rule Could Exclude U.S. Scientists From Critical Discoveries — ProPublica

“These experiments take decades to build and require sustained, cooperative international investment,” University of Chicago physics professor David W. Miller wrote in a public comment. “The experiments will continue, without American leadership. … The United States will not just fall behind. It will step aside.”…

 “The United States built the greatest scientific enterprise in human history on a simple idea: fund the best ideas, chosen by the best experts, and get out of the way,” he said in his public comment. “This proposed rule dismantles that principle entirely, and it does so in ways that will cause immediate, concrete, and in many cases irreversible harm to American science.”

 https://www.propublica.org/article/federal-science-grants-russell-vought-omb

Cornyn threatens to block Trump’s ambassadors over AIDS prevention funding - Live Updates - POLITICO

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is threatening to sink the ambassador nominations of two high-profile allies of President Donald Trump unless the White House commits to distributing AIDS funding in Africa...

 https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/07/21/congress/cornyn-pepfar-lake-mastriano-nominations-01006984

 

Arkansas Knew This Private School Harmed Students but Kept Sending Funds — ProPublica

Private School Abuse: At an Arkansas school, a boy was hit by the school’s founder and attacked by classmates in a group session the founder led, prompting a complaint and her arrest. 

State Money Still Flows: Despite a jail term for the school’s founder, The Delta Institute for the Developing Brain continues to operate and Arkansas still sends it public funds. 

Unregulated and Growing: By design, private schools get little oversight in Arkansas even as new opportunities to receive state money have spurred a boom in openings since 2023...

 https://www.propublica.org/article/arkansas-private-schools-vouchers-delta-institute-developing-brain-autism-harm

 

Is the US trying to make scientists’ work so difficult that they simply give up?

It appears that the endgame of the Trump administration’s attacks on science and the research funding ecosystem is similar: grant freezes and administrative disarray at federal funding agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), new layers of project review by political appointees hunting for forbidden keywords such as “disparity” and “marginalized”, and proposed new restrictions to make international collaboration difficult or impossible all point towards a world where it’s just too onerous to do federally-funded scientific research. Is the goal to make scientists simply give up on the endeavor?…

 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/11/trump-administration-scientists-rules

 

Planned Parenthood to target GOP with $47 million midterm blitz - POLITICO

“For millions of Americans, abortion is not a hypothetical election issue, it is part of their everyday lives,” Standiford said. “Abortion and defunding Planned Parenthood are not just highly mobilizing, they are in fact dealbreakers for voters across the political spectrum, and that’s how we’re going to be talking to voters about this issue.”…

 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/08/planned-parenthood-to-target-gop-with-47-million-midterm-blitz-00991419 

Federal judge strikes down HUD’s homelessness policy shift - POLITICO

U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy for the District of Rhode Island, a Trump appointee, wrote in her decision that “the administrative record demonstrates HUD’s failure to consider the harm caused by the funding gaps it created when attempting to eliminate the Housing First approach on an accelerated timeline” and that HUD’s issuance of the policy changes constitutes “arbitrary and capricious action.”… 

McElroy said in her decision that the actions HUD took to “hastily” eliminate the housing first approach in its fiscal 2025 program funding “serve as the hallmark of unreasoned decision making.”

 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/30/hud-homelessness-policy-ruling-00981804

 

Carbon Captured — ProPublica

An investigation by ProPublica and Drilled has found that fossil fuel companies have been funding climate research at prestigious U.S. universities for more than 30 years. Their support has helped amplify the work of scientists who promote the idea that we can stop the climate crisis without breaking our dependence on oil, gas and coal. 

The research produced by those schools in turn shaped global climate models, as well as the policy and technology solutions adopted by governments around the world. 

Ultimately, it fostered a misperception that climate change could be solved without dramatically curtailing fossil fuels — a notion that has delayed emissions cuts by decades...

https://projects.propublica.org/carbon-captured/ 

 

Why Are Florida Taxpayers Funding Catholic Schools?

 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/d_pHz3kikZI

Trump could also tear down the Statue of Liberty, DOJ argues in defense of White House ballroom - POLITICO

The National Trust’s lawsuit argues that the White House grounds, a designated national park, cannot be updated without congressional approval. The park, like Yellowstone, they contend, can’t simply be repurposed at the whims of the administration. 

“They just don’t want to go to Congress,” the trust’s attorney, Tad Heuer said, stressing that, under the Constitution, “Congress controls federal property.” 

While other, more modest changes at the White House, such as the installation of tennis courts and a pool, may well have been unauthorized, they were never challenged in court, Heuer said. But the ballroom, which required the demolition of the White House’s entire East Wing, is of a different scale...

 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/05/white-house-ballroom-donald-trump-00951892

Senate Republicans drop plans for $1bn to fund security at Trump’s ballroom

Fears that push for ballroom spending could jeopardize $70bn funding for immigration enforcement…

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/03/white-house-ballroom-funding-republicans

 

President Trump seeks control of science funding : NPR

"Although research has bipartisan support in the US Congress, and trust in science is above 75% across the country, the Trump administration seems as determined as ever to mortally wound the nation's scientific enterprise," Holden Thorp, editor of Science magazine, wrote in an editorial about the proposal… 

"We're asking ourselves whether we wanna repeat that Stalinist situation where people who know nothing about science are the ones who are making the decisions about what's going to go forward," said Snyder. 

Others compared the moment to a period in the United States in the 1950s when government officials scrutinized people's ideology and politics rather than their credentials. 

"Proposed rule would replace scientific merit with McCarthy era politics," read the headline from a statement by the Infectious Diseases Society of America…

 https://www.npr.org/2026/06/03/nx-s1-5844678/trump-science-funding-omb-budget-office-rule-change

 

DOJ fund is ‘being set aside,’ Johnson says amid GOP confusion - Live Updates - POLITICO

The speaker said the Trump administration is also abandoning efforts to secure ballroom money in the pending party-line immigration bill...

 https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/06/02/congress/mike-johnson-doj-weaponization-fund-00946534

 

Facing a Western water crisis, Trump turns to Democrats’ climate law - POLITICO

The sudden willingness to open the federal wallet marks a sharp U-turn for the Trump administration, which froze funding for some of the same efforts last year and has overall sought to claw back billions of dollars of spending from Democrats’ 2022 Inflation Reduction Act…

 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/02/trump-biden-climate-money-colorado-river-ee-00944211

 

Trump administration retreats on 'Anti-Weaponization Fund' - POLITICO

It’s not immediately clear whether pledge to obey the court ruling will be enough to staunch the uproar among Republicans on Capitol Hill, however, as the administration’s immigration agenda hangs in the balance. 

A planned Senate vote on the funding bill was abandoned last month after DOJ announced the creation of the fund, which could be used to pay Trump allies who had been prosecuted under prior administrations. Democrats pledged to force votes on amendments related to the fund, creating a serious political dilemma for congressional Republicans, and they are likely to continue pushing for restrictions to be written into law...

 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/01/trump-weaponization-fund-retreat-00944656

 

Trump pledged to house 6,000 homeless vets. His budget funds zero : NPR

" There's no way in hell you're gonna come here and say $500 million is a down payment, and you can't tell me what the actual cost is," Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin said at the hearing. 

"We're not doing this any longer," he said. "This is corruption, and it's gonna stop now."…

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/28/nx-s1-5836556/trump-homeless-veterans-la 

 

GOP calls off votes after contentious meeting on ‘anti-weaponization’ fund - Live Updates - POLITICO

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who had previously been mum on the settlement fund, issued a biting statement: “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong – Take your pick.”…

 https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/05/21/congress/todd-blanche-gop-weaponization-fund-00932244

 

Federal funding delays are harming science irreparably, researchers say : NPR

"Even as just a citizen of the country, this frustrates me," she says. "It's a loss of investment. It's a loss of momentum for the families that have children that are affected by these tumors. Every month, every week — that matters to them."…

 https://www.npr.org/2026/05/21/nx-s1-5828768/science-funding-cuts-nih-trump-administration

 

Collins pushes back on Trump’s plan to cut health research funding - Live Updates - POLITICO

The Maine Republican pressed Jay Bhattacharya at an Appropriations Health Subcommittee hearing on the White House proposal, which she said would “undermine the foundation of our nation’s global leadership in biomedical research and technological innovation.”…

 https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/05/21/congress/collins-push-back-nih-cuts-00932187

 

House rejects Smithsonian women’s history museum bill after partisan split - Live Updates - POLITICO

New language added in the House Administration Committee last month dedicated the museum to “preserving, researching, and presenting the history, achievements, and lived experiences of biological women in the United States” and prohibited the institution from seeking to “identify, present, describe, or otherwise depict any biological male as a female.”…

 https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/05/21/congress/house-smithsonian-womens-museum-00932675