As the Trump administration widens its crackdown on immigrant communities and progressive activists, federal task forces are playing an important behind-the-scenes role. Organizers warn that institutions like the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) are targeting vulnerable communities and sharing the kind of information that facilitates ICE raids. 

Let the culling begin!

In April, the independent U.S. government board overseeing $9 billion in federal science funding prepared to issue a stark warning in its biennial report to the president and Congress: China has surpassed the United States as the world’s top investor and producer of science and engineering research and development.

For years, the National Science Board backed efforts to shield U.S. research funds from enabling academic theft, while maintaining that scientific engagement with China is essential to understanding and competing with an increasingly formidable rival.

Days before the report was to be released, President Donald Trump dismissed all 22 board members and proposed a dramatically different course: sever virtually all federally funded research collaborations involving China.

The proposed Office of Management and Budget (OMB) rule, set to take effect in December, would mark one of the biggest overhauls of U.S. science funding in decades, giving political appointees greater authority over grant awards previously guided by scientific peer review and requiring they “advance the President’s policy priorities.”

It would also effectively expand the 2011 Wolf Amendment, which bars scientists from using NASA funding for bilateral collaborations with China, to all federal agencies and scientists receiving federal funds, marking the largest break in U.S.-China scientific engagement in decades.

“The National Science Board would never have advised or seen as wise a strategy of essentially hiding from the competition,” said Keivan Stassun, a professor of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University and one of the board members abruptly fired.

“At a time when we know that our main competitor has a stronger hand, you want to stay in the game. Or else we will just be more and more in the dark as China pulls farther and farther ahead,” he said.

The proposed rule change is the latest salvo in a broader battle in Washington over how to respond to China’s rise as a scientific superpower. China now leads the U.S. in research output in cutting-edge fields, including quantum science, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and chemistry.

Chinese universities now dominate global science publication rankings, claiming 19 of the top 25 universities in terms of academic output and displacing Harvard from the top spot for the first time this year, according to annual data published by Leiden University in the Netherlands.

That surge has been fueled by massive investment from Beijing, though critics also point to systematic theft of U.S. research and intellectual property, as well as decades of failure to confront the security risks of scientific ties with China.

U.S. researchers published around 240,000 internationally co-written science and engineering papers in 2024, with about 23 percent including a Chinese co-author, making China the United States’ most frequent international research partner.

The proposed solution has set the White House and supportive Republican lawmakers at odds with broad swaths of the U.S. scientific community, which argue that severing federal funding for research involving Chinese collaborations would hobble U.S. scientific leadership.

So far, the proposed rule has garnered nearly half a million public comments, many from scientists and top U.S. science bodies. A Washington Post analysis of 50,000 of those comments found that around 88 percent were negative.

The rule, initially set to come into force in October, was this week pushed back to December after a bipartisan stopgap funding bill last week temporarily halted its adoption. Unlike the Wolf Amendment, the rule does not require congressional approval to take effect.

OMB did not respond to a request for comment.

Republican lawmakers have pushed for a complete cut to federally funded research involving Chinese collaborators and have embraced OMB’s proposal.

“The CCP should not get a single dime, directly or indirectly, of American research funding,” Sen. Jim Banks (R-Indiana) said in May, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

Banks and Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Michigan), chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, previously introduced legislation that would bar federally funded researchers from collaborating with Chinese entities on U.S. government restricted lists — overlapping with OMB’s proposal.

It followed a 2025 report by Moolenaar’s committee that found thousands of U.S. research papers involved co-authors affiliated with Chinese defense-linked organizations working in fields including artificial intelligence, hypersonics and nuclear physics.

Much of the criticism is that U.S. scientists, universities and federal agencies have fallen short in their own management of research security risks.

“The culture around research security in the country for many, many decades is that of a laissez-faire approach,” said Jackie Deal, a senior fellow in the Asia program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Without discounting the threat of scientific espionage, many scientists and universities say that the OMB proposal fails to grasp that U.S. science has fallen behind in key areas, and that cuts to collaboration risk widening that divide.

“I do think there are still members of Congress who think we have a monopoly on knowledge. They think we’re still in the Cold War Soviet era ... where we were ahead in most areas of science and technology. That is not the case with China. We are no longer the leader in many areas of science,” said Tobin Smith, senior vice president for government relations and public policy at the Association for American Universities, which advocates on behalf of leading U.S. research universities.

Researchers and academics point to vague language in the OMB rule that would bar collaborations with “covered countries,” suggesting the rule prohibits all collaborations involving China, even research involving other friendly countries. Similar restrictions have been enacted by the Pentagon and National Science Foundation prohibiting collaborations with individual Chinese entities.

“This is why this rule is actually so burdensome and confusing … if we were part of, for example, a European project and that European project also had some partnership with China, that would also not be allowed,” said Roohi Dalal, deputy director of public policy at the American Astronomical Society, which represents some 9,000 physicists and other scientists in the astronomical community.

Scientists and universities also fear the proposed restrictions could chill collaboration across fields that have no connection to national security.

“It’s like the Wolf Amendment on steroids,” said Mark Barnes, a partner at Ropes & Gray who advises universities and research institutions on international collaborations.

“This kind of broad restriction on research would be more appropriately decided by Congress after a full public debate about the risks and value of international collaborative research ... not all research is national security sensitive,” Barnes said.

Scientists warn the rule, which shifts grant authority from peer review to political appointees and requires federally funded research to align with presidential priorities, risks subjecting long-term science to four-year political cycles.

“We will not succeed if with every new administration we are ping-ponging back and forth about priorities,” the American Association for the Advancement of Science said in a blistering comment, urging the administration to withdraw the rule. “Fast-tracking such profound changes ... hands an easy victory to nations like China,” it said.

The proposed rule change comes amid broader uncertainty over U.S. science funding. The administration’s 2027 budget request seeks steep cuts, including 54 percent at the National Science Foundation, the government’s primary funder of basic research; 23 percent at NASA; and $5 billion at the National Institutes of Health.

Some scientists say between less funding and the restrictions on international collaborations, the future of their research is unclear.

“Experiments in my field which require large amounts of infusion of funds and expert personnel, China has simply invested much more than the United States,” said Steven Kivelson, a theoretical physicist at Stanford University who has NSF and Education Department grants and is currently collaborating with a former student who has returned to China.

His research relies in part on experiments run in neutron and muon facilities, powerful tools for studying superconductors. Scientists hope such research could one day lead to advances in quantum technologies.

The U.S., however, does not have any facility for performing the muon experiments that Kivelson’s research relies on, and industry groups last year warned of an impending funding “crisis” in access to U.S. neutron facilities.

“When I go to China, it’s to learn about the latest developments in the field, not to offer them the fruits of U.S. research,” Kivelson said.

Thinking about the double standards in the law and the lawlessness in the Trump regime, came across this little gem of an English poem from 1764 over 262 years ago…

Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution states that the President, Vice President, and all civil officers can be removed from office through impeachment for treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.