The impact of Trump's policies on climate research being felt

A $15 million (about R266.9m) federal grant was supposed to help scientists better understand how the warming climate is harming plants and animals, setting many on paths toward extinction.

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But the Trump administration shelved it earlier this year, miring the research in a holding pattern.

Jacquelyn Gill isn’t sure there’s a way out. The professor of paleoecology and plant ecology at the University of Maine spent hundreds of hours readying the grant proposal, and 13 years before that gathering knowledge about how past changes to Earth’s climate echoed through ecosystems.

But without federal funding, she finds herself at a loss for how to keep building on that work as more species disappear.

More scientists are beginning to feel that crunch.

A budget document the Trump administration recently submitted to Congress calls for zeroing out climate research funding for 2026, something officials had hinted at in previous proposals but is now in lawmakers’ hands.

But even just the specter of President Donald Trump's budget proposals has prompted scientists to limit research activities in advance of further cuts.