The lobby of the Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research, where researchers say pauses to federal grants have stifled science. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

Earlier this year, Dr. Avtar Roopra, a professor of neuroscience at UW-Madison, published research that shows a drug typically used to treat arthritis halts brain-damaging seizures in mice that have a condition similar to epilepsy. The treatment could be used to provide relief for a subset of people with epilepsy who don’t get relief from other current treatments.

But even as the culmination of a decade-long project was making headlines as a possible breakthrough for the 50 million people worldwide with epilepsy, Roopra’s research was put on hold because the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under President Donald Trump has stopped reviewing grant requests. 

Now, months after his funding was paused, Roopra says he is facing the choice between cutting corners in experiments to save costs or laying off research staff — which comes with its own loss of years of experience and institutional knowledge. 

“Experiments are being trimmed down,” Roopra says. “So the perfect experiment, which is what every experiment must be, we’re now trying to reanalyze and say, ‘Well, can we get by with less?’ If we do, we’re not going to have the perfect answer, and that’s always a danger.”

Roopra’s lab is currently working on an experiment comparing data from healthy mouse brains to diseased brains and, ideally, he’d have ten of each. But to save costs he now has to use three of each. The result is that the conclusions that can be made from the data are less certain, which only creates more expenses in the long term. 

“What that means is we’ll still get some data, but the confidence we have in our conclusions will be drastically reduced,” he says. “And so any experiments we then decide to do based on that will be on more shaky ground, and experiments further on that will be on even shakier ground. And so you have this propagating knock-on effect, but ultimately, the conclusions you get, they’re going to have to be interpreted cautiously, whereas, if we did the perfect experiment for which we were expecting funds, we would have robust data, robust conclusions. We could move forward, forthright into trials.”

Science is expensive, Roopra says, because results have to be replicated many times. Cutting grant funding, as the Trump administration has done, results in austerity measures at labs and universities. Those budget cuts mean experiments aren’t repeated as many times, which means data isn’t as complete and results in less work reaching the end goal — treatments that improve people’s lives. 

Roopra says that when a patient sees a doctor and is prescribed a drug, that is just the tip of an iceberg, underneath which are the thousands of hours of research and millions of dollars spent at pharmaceutical companies conducting clinical trials and university departments testing theories.

“So it’s actually going to cost everybody more money if we do it this way, because we have to go back,” he says. “And once this moves to clinical trials, which is our goal, if we don’t have the very best, the most solid foundation for doing so, if that trial goes ahead and it fails, it may never be done again. Because trials cost hundreds of millions of dollars, you’ve got to get it right the first time. So that’s what this new normal looks like.”

Roopra’s work is just one research focus in one department on one campus. Wisconsin institutions alone receive about $750 million annually from the NIH. The Medical College of Wisconsin has lost at least $5 million in research grants since Trump took office. 

The cuts affect “every lab, every department, and we’re very biomedical-research centric, but it’s also happening outside of biomedical research,” Dr. Betsy Quinlan, chair of UW-Madison’s neuroscience department, says. “It’s happening in physics and it’s happening in engineering. It’s happening to all research, environmental science.”

Researchers in Wisconsin have had at least $26.8 million in expected grant funding terminated, according to data compiled by Grant Watch, a project to track cuts to grant funding at the NIH and National Science Foundation (NSF). 

“I’ve heard a lot of panic in the community as if the support that the federal government has for science has ended and that science is no longer the priority,” NIH director Jay Bhattacharya said at an event at the Medical College of Wisconsin earlier this month. “One of the reasons I was delighted to be able to come here was to assure people that is not true.”

Nonetheless, among the terminated grants here in Wisconsin are projects to study science misinformation in Black communities, how to engage the public in water stewardship in urban areas such as Milwaukee, the effect of technology on children’s development, the cardiovascular side effects of hormone treatment on transgender men and ways to increase HIV prevention measures among gay men in rural areas. 

“It’s vital that we adopt reforms, real reforms in the research enterprise of this country, so that we depoliticize it, ground it in reality and build a culture of respect for dissent and free speech,” Bhattacharya said.

But discoveries can come from unexpected places, says Quinlan, who warns that the top-down approach to approving research grants that the administration appears to be moving toward will stifle scientific exploration. 

“If the agency says, ‘Here’s a very narrow range of things we will fund,’ it will squash all creativity and real discovery, because real discovery comes when you see something that is unexpected and you follow the unexpected lead,” she says. 

While the cuts to grants are having an immediate impact on research in Wisconsin, there are also concerns about morale among lab staff and a “brain drain” as researchers choose to leave the U.S.  or even abandon science entirely. 

“The biggest problem I think most researchers are facing is the uncertainty and decline in morale that these changes have wrought,” Jo Handelsman, director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, says. “These are extremely real and fairly devastating effects on the research community in terms of what’s already happened, almost every week there’s a wave of NIH termination. No one feels their grant is going to continue for sure. That’s a difficult way to do research.”

For decades, scientists have come from all over the world to work in the U.S. Now cuts to grants and the Trump administration’s harsh immigration policies are changing that. Last week, after decisions from a number of judges, the Trump administration walked back an effort to cancel the visas of 27 students at University of Wisconsin schools. Roopra says those fears hurt research. 

“Every minute that that researcher is worried is a minute they’re not thinking about the science,” says Roopra, whose work has also focused on breast cancer. “And so what it looks like is a continuous, chronic fear, which pushes us to think about maybe looking at other options, which we’d rather not do.”

Jay O. Rothman, president of the University of Wisconsin System, speaks during the UW Board of Regents meeting hosted at Union South at the University of Wisconsin–Madison on Feb. 9, 2023. (Photo by Althea Dotzour / UW–Madison)

As Congress is considering remaking the federal financial aid program, Wisconsin higher education leaders are warning that changes could significantly affect access to its campuses. 

Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman wrote in a series of posts on social media last week that he is “very disappointed” by the potential cuts that could be made to student aid. 

Congressional Republicans recently introduced a 103-page proposal that would overhaul the federal financial aid system with cuts meant to help support the extension of tax cuts. Changes would include reducing eligibility for Pell Grants by requiring students take more credit hours to qualify, capping the total amount of student loans one can take out annually and ending certain student loan programs. 

The proposed changes come alongside the Trump administration’s work to remake the system by moving the student loan portfolio from the Department of Education to Small Business Administration, even as both agencies have had significant layoffs, and seeking to eliminate loan relief for people working to support immigrants and trans kids. 

Rothman said nearly half of the 164,400 students across University of Wisconsin campuses rely on federal aid to access the schools and noted that many of the students receiving the help are first-generation college students and low- to middle-income. He said federal financial aid has helped better the U.S. economy and allowed millions of people to improve their own lives. 

“It makes no sense for the US to narrow opportunities if our country wants to win the global War for Talent. I’m dumbfounded that cutting educational opportunities would even be considered when our economic vibrancy is at stake,” Rothman wrote. “While the UWs are among the most affordable in the nation, many lower- and middle-class families rely upon federal financial aid to make these life-changing educational opportunities real.”

Rothman urged Congress to reevaluate the potential cuts in the federal budget, continuing his advocacy for keeping the UW accessible for current and future students. 

In a letter to the Wisconsin Congressional delegation last month, Rothman noted that in the 2023-24 school year, 91,000 UW undergraduate students — or 59% — received some form of financial aid. The federal government distributed $130 million in Pell grants to about 23.4%, or 26,060 undergraduate students that year, delivering an average award of $5,000. 

During that year, undergraduate and graduate students across the system received nearly $1.5 billion in financial aid, including $634 million in grants, $666 million in loans and $13 million in work-study funding.

“Programs like the Pell Grant and other federal financial aid are critical to ensuring continued access and success for students who choose to pursue higher education,” Rothman wrote to lawmakers. “Indiscriminate cuts whether to research, financial aid or programs that provide student support are ultimately shortsighted and will negatively impact the next generation of Wisconsin’s workforce.” 

Rothman is not the only leader who has expressed concerns about cuts to programs. During a hearing last month, Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities President Eric Fulcomer told state lawmakers that “cutting the Pell Grant or eliminating the Pell Grant would be devastating for our sector.” He said private colleges could be looking at a 27% cut to enrollment.

From left, Megan Hufton, Laurel Burns and Abigail Tessman take part in a roundtable discussion about Medicaid with Sen. Tammy Baldwin, right. The discussion was held Friday, May 2, 2025, at Common Threads, a Madison agency that provides Medicaid-supported services for people with autism and people with disabilities. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Update: GOP leaders in Congress have postponed the release of their proposals for Medicaid, originally scheduled for the week of May 5. 

Ahead of action on Congressional legislation that could provide the first hard details on proposed cuts to Medicaid, Wisconsin lawmakers are urging constituents to push back against cutting health care coverage.

“One of the most powerful things we can do right now is to elevate stories and talk about how compelling a need there is for robust investment in the Medicaid program,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin told a group of Medicaid recipients at a roundtable discussion in Madison on Friday.

Republicans in Congress are trying to extend federal tax cuts enacted in 2017, during President Donald Trump’s first term. Unless renewed, the 2017 tax cuts will expire at the end of 2025.

Congressional Republicans want to offset $4.5 trillion that extending the 2017 tax cuts will add to the federal deficit over 10 years. Based on their original blueprint, Medicaid has been in the spotlight as a likely target, and this week GOP leaders in the U.S. House are expected to release their first concrete proposals.

Medicaid covers about 1.3 million Wisconsin residents — roughly one in five people in the state, according to the state Department of Health Services (DHS). Those include nearly 900,000 low-income people who have primary health care and hospital services though BadgerCare Plus.

More than 260,000 people who are elderly, blind, or have other disabilities have coverage through Medicaid, including for long-term care in nursing homes or in their own homes or the community. And another 244,000 Wisconsinites have Medicaid coverage through a variety of other special programs.

Extending the 2017 tax cuts will benefit the richest 1% of the population most, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) found.

“In order to give tax breaks for the rich, what do they want to cut? Medicaid. It’s one of the biggest targets,” Baldwin, a Democrat, told participants in the Madison roundtable. “So from the folks who are most vulnerable, to transfer money to those who are billionaires and millionaires and multi-millionaires — it is criminal in my mind. It’s immoral.”

Baldwin’s event was one of two held Friday to highlight Medicaid’s importance in Wisconsin. In Eau Claire, state Rep. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire) convened a discussion that included providers and Medicaid recipients.

Emerson’s discussion was joined via Zoom by Chiquita Brooks-LaSure administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) under former President Joe Biden

“These attacks on the Medicaid program can be devastating if they go through,” Brooks-LaSure told the Wisconsin Examiner in a phone interview. “Not just for the millions of low-income people who need help, not just for the millions of middle-class families who depend on Medicaid — particularly for nursing home care, care in the home to keep you out of the nursing home, and children with special needs, whether it be autism services, whether it be developmental disabilities or physical disabilities.”

The existence of Medicaid helps the overall health care economy in the long run, Brooks-LaSure said.

Under federal law, hospitals must ensure that patients who show up in their emergency rooms are stable before they leave. But if a person’s care isn’t covered, “the entire health care system pays for that.”

Medicaid recipients who met with Baldwin described their anxiety over the prospect of losing coverage.

For Laurel Burns, who was born with no arms, Medicaid has enabled her to have health care for herself and for her two sons, now teens, whom she’s raised as a single mother after their father left.

“Being disabled has been a struggle my whole life. It’s like every twist and turn is up a steep hill,” Burns told Baldwin. Medicaid support, however, has enabled her to have health care at home, including needed assistance with grocery shopping and housekeeping.

She has been able to get a college degree and landed a part-time job working for an insurance agent.

“I would love to work full time, but the job market and being disabled is really difficult to navigate,” Burns said. “With all these cuts and threats to the program, it’s really scary for somebody like me who doesn’t have a large family.”

Megan Hufton, the single mother of two teenage boys who have autism and don’t speak, said that in addition to the support Medicaid has provided her sons as part of the program’s disability services, schools get Medicaid support to help pay for services such as occupational therapy. “I’m very nervous about the future,” Hufton said.

Baldwin’s discussion was held at Common Threads, a Medicaid-funded agency in Madison that provides mental health, rehab and alternative education services.

Liv Lacayo, who works with Common Threads clients and their families, said Medicaid enables them to get routine care so they don’t have to use emergency services as they might have to otherwise.

Without Medicaid, she said, she worries that families would be struggling for support.

Brett Maki, who must use a motorized wheelchair to get around, said Medicaid has made it possible for him to live independently, getting daily help with cooking, cleaning and laundry — “all of the basic necessities that I would need to live my life to the fullest.”

Without that, “I don’t even want to think about what that means,” he said.

The USDA announced earlier this month it was ending a $3 billion program to help farmers use climate-friendly practices. (Preston Keres | USDA)

In the first months of the administration of President Donald Trump, organizations working to keep Wisconsin’s environment healthy have seen cuts to key grant programs. Now they are watching for  Trump’s retreat from environmental protection to hit communities across the state. 

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it was cancelling the Climate Smart Commodities Program — a $3 billion effort to fund projects across the country to improve soil health, sequester carbon, reduce methane emissions and encourage other climate-friendly farming practices. 

Trump administration officials called the program a “Biden era slush fund,” saying that not enough of the money went directly to farmers. The USDA cancelled projects that did not meet three criteria: a minimum of 65% of funds needed to be going directly to producers, grants must have had one producer enrolled by the end of 2024 and at least one payment must have been made to a producer by the end of 2024. 

“The Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative was largely built to advance the green new scam at the benefit of NGOs, not American farmers,” USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement. “The concerns of farmers took a backseat during the Biden Administration. During my short time as Secretary, I have heard directly from our farmers that many of the USDA partnerships are overburdened by red tape, have ambiguous goals, and require complex reporting that push farmers onto the sidelines. We are correcting these mistakes and redirecting our efforts to set our farmers up for an unprecedented era of prosperity.”

A USDA fact sheet published last year states that 28 Wisconsin-based projects were funded by the program. One of the organizations receiving funding was the Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance, which has worked to protect the Fox and Wolf Rivers — which are connected to Lake Michigan — for more than three decades in the region of the state most densely occupied by industrial agriculture operations. 

On April 22, the Alliance received an official termination notice for two grants it had received through the program to share costs with farmers to institute practices such as cover cropping and no-till planting, according to a statement from the alliance. Both practices help farmers maintain soil health and prevent potentially harmful nutrients such as phosphorus from running off fields and into the local water system. 

The grant funding also supported 10 technical support jobs at county land and water departments, Pheasants Forever and the Wisconsin Farmers Union. The loss of the money has resulted in the cancellation of 37 contracts with farmers, 4,000 acres of planned no-till planting going unfunded and, this fall, 16,000 acres of farmland that may not have cover crops planted. 

In its statement, the Alliance said that government support for programs like these is an investment that helps farmers long term, even if some of the money doesn’t go directly into their hands. 

“We fully support the goal of directing more resources to farmers. In fact, we design our programs with low overhead to ensure dollars go where they matter most,” the Alliance stated. “However, the review process did not account for one important factor: technical assistance is direct farmer support.” 

Just because the money doesn’t go straight to the farmers doesn’t mean they don’t benefit, according to the Alliance.

“Farmers often pay out-of-pocket for the kind of expertise our technical staff provide — support that is essential to the success and longevity of conservation practices,” the statement continued. “Excluding this from the ‘producer-directed’ category overlooks the real-world value of those services. Without that guidance, funding becomes a one-time transaction instead of a long-term investment. Fox-Wolf’s model is built not just on providing financial support, but on ensuring that practices are implemented effectively and sustained over time. That’s what makes our work effective — and why this funding mattered.” 

Jessica Schultz, the Alliance’s executive director, told the Wisconsin Examiner that the goal of the grants was to help the region’s farmers transition to these soil-friendly practices beyond just one season, allowing the organization to help protect the watershed, which is suffering from “excess phosphorus and sediment loading,” in the long term. 

“These practices also improve soil health, but transitioning to a continuous cover system requires a new approach to farm management. This shift can result in short-term yield losses or necessitate investment in new equipment,” Schultz said. “The cost-share provided through our grants would have played a vital role in helping farmers overcome these initial barriers. However, to realize lasting water quality improvements in our rivers and lakes, these conservation practices must be adopted consistently — not just for a single season, but year after year — across the majority of farmland in the basin.”

“The technical assistance offered through our projects was intended to support farmers through this transition, providing both expertise and access to equipment from across the region,” she continued. “Our goal was to foster long-term adoption by equipping producers with the tools and knowledge they need to succeed — not just for one growing season, but for the future health of our local waterways.” 

Climate and sustainability grants worth $100K canceled

The Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance isn’t the only organization that has lost grant funding since Trump’s inauguration. Wisconsin Green Fire has already had two grants, totaling nearly $100,000, canceled, according to Meleesa Johnson, the organization’s executive director. 

The first grant, worth about $32,000, was aimed at working with the Wisconsin Office of Sustainability and Clean Energy to develop resources for local governments seeking to implement climate change mitigation strategies such as improving stormwater management and planting more trees to reduce heat island effects. The second grant was a $65,000 contract with the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service to establish a farm sustainability rewards program. Similar to the alliance’s grant, that program would have given farmers money in exchange for implementing practices such as no-till planting or reducing the use of nitrogen. 

Green Fire had already spent money on getting the farm sustainability program off the ground, and now, according to Johnson, it’s unclear if the organization will be reimbursed. 

“We’re not the only ones,” she said. “There’s a lot of groups out there that have been moving along, doing the work, meeting the benchmarks of contract expectations, and now, well, many of us are, most of us are not being paid for the work that we’ve all begun. So it’s hard. It’s not impossible for organizations to regroup, but it just makes it more difficult.”

Johnson said that this program was about getting money directly to farmers — even if the program’s description used the word “carbon.” 

“First and foremost, this was about getting money into the hands of farmers either already deploying good conservation practices or wanting to, [who] didn’t have the resources to do it,” she said. “This wasn’t about Green Fire. This was about farmers, and we were just developing the metric and the strategies to make sure that high performing farms with good conservation practices were being rewarded for doing really, really good work.” 

Without programs like these, Johnson said, Wisconsin will continue to “see that continual slow degradation of farm fields and water quality.”