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BumRushDaShow

(157,394 posts)
Wed Jun 25, 2025, 03:11 PM Jun 25

Scoop: Trump admin cuts contracts with scientific publishing giant

Source: Axios

10 hours ago


The Trump administration has terminated millions worth of funding for Springer Nature, a German-owned scientific publishing giant that has long received payments for subscriptions from National Institutes of Health and other agencies, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: President Trump and MAGA have made a push to target academic institutions as well as research organizations perceived to be the source of so-called "woke" ideology, including DEI and gender-affirming care policies, by withholding federal funding and in some cases initiating legal action.

State of play: Earlier this year, the Justice Department sent a letter to a Springer publication questioning its editorial practices and accusing the publishing house of acting as a partisan in scientific debates, as well as wrongfully advocating for positions, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.

  • The letter also posed questions about Springer's alleged ties to China, CCP funding and related claims of censorship.
  • At least one other scientific journal, Chest, also received a letter about taking sides in scientific debates, as the Washington Post reported in April.
  • Springer Nature has more than 3,000 journals and publications, and its portfolio includes Nature and Scientific American. The editorial content ranges from science and medical news to peer-reviewed research papers written by scientists. The company went public last October.


  • Prior to the administrative action, Donald Trump Jr. had tweeted "No more taxpayer money for woke publishers!" linking to a Breitbart story about possible cuts to government-funded subscriptions for scientific and medical journals.

    Read more: https://www.axios.com/2025/06/25/trump-cuts-contracts-scientific-publisher
    5 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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    Scoop: Trump admin cuts contracts with scientific publishing giant (Original Post) BumRushDaShow Jun 25 OP
    This is literally insanity obamanut2012 Jun 25 #1
    21st Century Lysenkoism muriel_volestrangler Jun 25 #5
    Nothing says greatness like... -misanthroptimist Jun 25 #2
    Now *THIS* has to be some kind of derangement syndrome. Initech Jun 25 #3
    First they came for? And I wasn't one Iamscrewed Jun 25 #4

    muriel_volestrangler

    (104,227 posts)
    5. 21st Century Lysenkoism
    Wed Jun 25, 2025, 04:45 PM
    Jun 25
    Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (Трофим Денисович Лысенко ) proved to be among Vavilov’s greatest enemies. Born a peasant in 1898, he secured a position at the Kiev Agricultural Institute and began a career in agricultural science. Lysenko’s “scientific” ideas rejected the then-growing concepts of Mendelian genetics (he even denied the existence of genes), instead believing that traits acquired by an organism during its life are passed to its offspring. Ironically, Nikolai Vavilov supported Lysenko in his early experiments with wheat.

    Lysenko’s ideas aligned well with Soviet concepts of societal change and he rose rapidly, ultimately becoming a favorite of Joseph Stalin. When Stalin asked agronomists to solve the famine issues Vavilov gave a timeline of no less than ten years to breed crops that could produce enough in harsh growing conditions; Lysenko promised no more than five years. Stalin backed Lysenko; with this influence, Lysenko purged the Soviet academy of Mendelian geneticists and any others who opposed his concepts. Hundreds, if not thousands, were imprisoned and no small fraction were killed.

    Lysenkoism – as his theories became known – was an unmitigated disaster. Instead of solving famine, it grew worse. Millions starved as Lysensko’s methods were enforced by the government. Mao Zedong brought Lysnkoism to the People’s Republic of China in 1958; estimates of the people who died in the resulting Great Chinese Famine are as high as fifty-five million.

    After Stalin’s death, the regime under Nikita Kruschev in the 1950s and 1960s finally fully abandoned Lysenkoism - but the damage was done.

    https://exhibits.library.cornell.edu/cultivating-silence/feature/collapse-of-reason
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