The Trump Administration Takes Aim at Transportation Research

[marmar]

The Trump Administration Takes Aim at Transportation Research
Researchers warn of a “chilling environment” as studies examining road safety and other topics are killed off and layoffs hit federal agencies.

By David Zipper
February 25, 2025 at 12:46 PM EST


(Bloomberg CityLab) Just after 6 a.m. on Jan. 30, University of Texas urban planning professor Alex Karner opened his computer to find an unexpected email from the Transportation Research Board, a division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Attached to it was a “notice of Termination for Convenience” ordering him to stop all work on his research project.

“I felt my heart sink,” he said.

Barely a week after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, TRB had killed Karner’s two-year, $500,000 project, which explored the equitable access to goods and services across the US. The letter from TRB stated that the subject area ran afoul of Trump’s executive orders removing federal support for programs that support diversity, equity and inclusion.

The Trump administration has wasted little time launching a multipronged assault on scientific research across an array of fields. Mass layoffs have roiled the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Institutes of Health, and the administration has sought to sharply reduce the federal contribution to universities’ “research overhead,” aiming a staggering blow at US higher education.

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“It’s going to have a decimating effect on transportation research — at every level,” said Sandi Rosenbloom, also a planning professor at the University of Texas and a previous chair of the TRB executive committee. ....................(more)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-25/how-trump-is-targeting-us-transportation-research?srnd=phx-citylab

[Irish_Dem]

1. Anything positive for the country must be destroyed.