By Jen­na Out­calt
UConn Jour­nal­ism

The Unit­ed States has long been a leader in sci­en­tif­ic research and a col­lab­o­ra­tor with oth­er coun­tries and state gov­ern­ments on pub­lic health and oth­er sci­en­tif­ic endeav­ors. 

But after a year of mis­lead­ing claims about vac­cines, cli­mate change and oth­er sci­en­tif­ic issues and cuts to research fund­ing, the future of research and reg­u­la­tions on health and the envi­ron­ment has been thrown into tur­moil. 

Tom Kat­souleas, the for­mer pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut, said the Trump administration’s attacks on sci­ence are part of a drift toward author­i­tar­i­an­ism. 

“His­tor­i­cal­ly, author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments have tried to sup­press sci­ence because they have been resources for truth-find­ing, and that is incon­ve­nient for author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments,” said Kat­souleas. 

In the first year of his sec­ond term, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s expan­sive inter­pre­ta­tion of exec­u­tive pow­er has impact­ed pub­lic health pro­grams, envi­ron­ment and clean ener­gy projects and sci­en­tif­ic research. His admin­is­tra­tion has broad­ly imposed its ide­ol­o­gy and rescind­ed funds already approved by Con­gress. The impact has been felt in Con­necti­cut through can­celed projects and threats to research through­out the state.

The Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency can­celled over $92.7 mil­lion in envi­ron­men­tal grants to Con­necti­cut, accord­ing to a map of can­celled fund­ing devel­oped by the Nation­al Resources Defense Coun­cil. The Depart­ment of Ener­gy also can­celled more than 300 ener­gy grants across the coun­try, total­ing over $7.5 bil­lion.  

Con­necti­cut Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Tong has joined over 30 law­suits against the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, with almost a dozen of them fight­ing bat­tles relat­ed to the envi­ron­ment and health. He said the Trump administration’s strat­e­gy was to aggres­sive­ly reduce over­sight on health and the envi­ron­ment and “dec­i­mate the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency and our reg­u­la­to­ry sys­tem, the infra­struc­ture for ensur­ing clean air and clean water” at a moment where “our cli­mate is chang­ing rapid­ly in an adverse way.” 

“Laws don’t mean any­thing unless you have peo­ple who are able to inves­ti­gate and enforce them,” Tong said. “And so if you don’t have an EPA, then nobody’s mind­ing the store.” 

Pub­lic Health 

Trump’s 2024 elec­tion plat­form includ­ed a pledge to make Amer­i­ca healthy again. Once elect­ed, he appoint­ed promi­nent vac­cine skep­tic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.as the sec­re­tary of Health and Human Ser­vices. In Feb­ru­ary, Trump signed an exec­u­tive order estab­lish­ing the “Make Amer­i­ca Healthy Again” Com­mis­sion, tasked with “address­ing the root caus­es of America’s esca­lat­ing health cri­sis.” The commission’s web­site shows a focus on sup­port­ing bet­ter nutri­tion and inves­ti­gat­ing chron­ic dis­eases.  

How­ev­er, state health offi­cials raised con­cerns about the lack of pub­lic health com­mu­ni­ca­tion and reli­able research from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, includ­ing about vac­cines. 

In Sep­tem­ber, Con­necti­cut offi­cial­ly joined sev­er­al states and New York City in cre­at­ing the North­east Pub­lic Health Col­lab­o­ra­tive “to ensure trust in pub­lic health, respond to pub­lic health threats, advance com­mu­ni­ty health and strength­en con­fi­dence in vac­cines and sci­ence-based med­i­cine,” a Con­necti­cut press release said.  

Con­necti­cut Gov. Ned Lam­ont also helped form the Gov­er­nors Pub­lic Health Alliance, a “non­par­ti­san, non-prof­it coali­tion of gov­er­nors that works togeth­er to pro­tect pub­lic health,” with 14 oth­er states and ter­ri­to­ries accord­ing to its web­site. He said in a press release that “states are step­ping up, amid fed­er­al uncer­tain­ty, to ensure our res­i­dents have the infor­ma­tion they need.” 

Robert Miller, the direc­tor of the East­ern High­lands Health Dis­trict, one of 20 health dis­tricts in Con­necti­cut, said he is not look­ing to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for fund­ing as much as he used to “because of its uncer­tain­ty and volatil­i­ty.” 

Cuts to grants for state and local health depart­ments have been felt across the state. Health dis­tricts expe­ri­enced reduc­tions in staffing, can­cel­la­tions of con­tracts and hun­dreds of thou­sands in finan­cial loss­es, accord­ing to reports sub­mit­ted through the state’s fed­er­al impact report­ing sys­tem. 

The governor’s office said in a March press release that the state had lost almost $119 mil­lion from the administration’s can­cel­la­tion of the fed­er­al  Epi­demi­ol­o­gy and Lab­o­ra­to­ry Capac­i­ty grant, which the CDC said was cre­at­ed to sup­port “health infor­ma­tion sys­tems enhance­ments and cross-cut­ting solu­tions for infec­tious dis­ease out­breaks.”  The state’s oth­er major grant loss­es con­cerned vac­cine infor­ma­tion cam­paigns and address­ing health dis­par­i­ties, the press release said. 

The U.S. Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices is respon­si­ble for vac­cine rec­om­men­da­tions for the gen­er­al pub­lic, which can often deter­mine which vac­cines are cov­ered by insur­ance. Since Trump took office, the CDC has stopped rec­om­mend­ing COVID vac­cines for healthy chil­dren and preg­nant women.  

The CDC’s vac­cine rec­om­men­da­tion coun­cil, made up of mem­bers hand­picked by Kennedy after all the pre­vi­ous sit­ting mem­bers were removed, is review­ing child­hood vac­cine sched­ul­ing. It vot­ed on Dec. 5 to roll back rec­om­men­da­tions for Hepati­tis B vac­ci­na­tions. The vac­cines will no longer be offi­cial­ly rec­om­mend­ed to new­borns unless the birthing par­ent tests pos­i­tive for the virus, accord­ing to the CDC. 

The Con­necti­cut Depart­ment of Pub­lic Health did not realign its vac­cine rec­om­men­da­tions with the fed­er­al government’s, releas­ing rec­om­men­da­tions on Sept. 9 that empha­sized vac­ci­na­tion as the “most effec­tive defense” against severe out­comes from COVID-19. 

 Miller said his dis­trict would fol­low state guide­lines to save more lives. 

“I think you can antic­i­pate that there’ll be few­er cas­es of mor­bid­i­ty and mor­tal­i­ty with­in the state of Con­necti­cut and with­in the East­ern High­lands Health Dis­trict as a result of fol­low­ing the sci­ence-based guid­ance pro­vid­ed by the Con­necti­cut Depart­ment of Pub­lic Health,” he said. 

Since Kennedy start­ed as DHHS sec­re­tary, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has shift­ed offi­cial stances on the CDC web­site to reflect his skep­ti­cism about vac­cines and con­tention that they are relat­ed to autism. The CDC web­site was changed to say that “the state­ment ‘Vac­cines do not cause autism’ is not an evi­dence-based claim.”  

“This con­nec­tion has not been prop­er­ly and thor­ough­ly stud­ied by the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty,” the updat­ed web­site said. 

Mul­ti­ple stud­ies have found no con­nec­tion between child­hood vac­cines and autism. The Asso­ci­a­tion for Autism and Neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty released a state­ment say­ing it was “deeply con­cerned” about the changes to the web­page. 

“These edits removed long-stand­ing, evi­dence-based state­ments affirm­ing that vac­cines do not cause autism and sub­sti­tut­ed word­ing that implies uncer­tain­ty,” the state­ment said. “No new sci­en­tif­ic find­ings prompt­ed this shift.” 

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion also released a fact sheet in Sep­tem­ber that point­ed to aceta­minophen, the active ingre­di­ent in Tylenol, as a pos­si­ble cause of autism when tak­en dur­ing preg­nan­cy. Kennedy and Trump dis­cour­aged preg­nant peo­ple from tak­ing Tylenol dur­ing a press con­fer­ence about the fact sheet.  

No stud­ies have proved a causal rela­tion­ship between aceta­minophen use dur­ing preg­nan­cy and autism in chil­dren, accord­ing to the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion. 

Envi­ron­men­tal Health 

In March, the EPA announced the “most con­se­quen­tial day of dereg­u­la­tion in U.S. his­to­ry.” This includ­ed recon­sid­er­ing emis­sion guide­lines on oil and gas, ter­mi­nat­ing the envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice arm and recon­sid­er­ing manda­to­ry green­house gas emis­sions report­ing. 

“Today is the great­est day of dereg­u­la­tion our nation has seen,” EPA Admin­is­tra­tor Lee Zeldin said in a press release. “We are dri­ving a dag­ger straight into the heart of the cli­mate change reli­gion to dri­ve down cost of liv­ing for Amer­i­can fam­i­lies, unleash Amer­i­can ener­gy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more.”    

Tra­cy Bab­bidge, bureau chief of air man­age­ment at the Con­necti­cut Depart­ment of Ener­gy and Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion, said the pace of the dereg­u­la­to­ry agen­da and vast new pro­pos­als is “unlike any­thing we’ve ever seen.” 

“I think it real­ly has impact­ed the fed­er­al-state coop­er­a­tive rela­tion­ship and our abil­i­ty to real­ly mean­ing­ful­ly engage in some of these pro­pos­als,” Bab­bidge said. 

Changes in fed­er­al rules can affect states like Connecticut’s abil­i­ty to enforce pol­lu­tion stan­dards, accord­ing to Emma Cimi­no, deputy com­mis­sion­er of envi­ron­men­tal qual­i­ty at DEEP. She said DEEP is “mon­i­tor­ing that close­ly to under­stand what those changes mean for us and the work we do and the tools we have avail­able to us at the state lev­el.” 

She said the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has been show­ing signs of want­i­ng to dis­man­tle laws meant to main­tain a healthy envi­ron­ment. 

“I think in gen­er­al, what we’ve been see­ing this year has been a real roll back on some of the fed­er­al rules around the Clean Air Act, and I think we’re see­ing sort of sim­i­lar, less aggres­sive­ly, but we’re cer­tain­ly see­ing sim­i­lar kind of sig­nal­ing around the Clean Water Act,” Cimi­no said.  

Cimi­no said fed­er­al dol­lars were also less of a guar­an­tee under the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. but the agency is tak­ing steps to keep fed­er­al fund­ing already promised to the state. Con­necti­cut announced in Octo­ber that it would join 21 oth­er states and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia to sue the EPA for the can­cel­la­tion of solar ener­gy grants under the Infla­tion Reduc­tion Act. 

“We’re try­ing not to close the door on fund­ing we have,” Cimi­no said. “We’re work­ing real­ly close­ly with the attor­ney gen­er­al’s office where appro­pri­ate to work through the courts to keep that fund­ing intact and avail­able to us.” 

Sci­ence and Research 

 Of the more than 300 grants can­celled in Sep­tem­ber by the Depart­ment of Ener­gy, twelve projects were based in Con­necti­cut. 

Grants for research in high­er edu­ca­tion were also tar­get­ed. UConn alone lost about $41 mil­lion in grant ter­mi­na­tions and unex­pect­ed lack of renewals, accord­ing to Lind­say DiS­te­fano, the inter­im vice pres­i­dent for research at UConn.  

Among those research­ing the envi­ron­ment, there is a new cul­ture of uncer­tain­ty about the future of research, fund­ing and jobs.  

One such exam­ple is the Con­necti­cut Sea Grant, spear­head­ed at UConn. The ini­tia­tive is one of many state and fed­er­al part­ner­ships for marine research through the Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion. The agency is respon­si­ble for weath­er and cli­mate mon­i­tor­ing as well as coast­line and fish­ery man­age­ment, mak­ing it espe­cial­ly impor­tant to coastal states like Con­necti­cut. In the first year of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, hun­dreds of NOAA employ­ees were fired, re-instat­ed and fired again dur­ing the first year of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, leav­ing employ­ees in a “lim­i­nal state,” PBS report­ed.   

Sec­re­tary of Com­merce Howard Lut­nick began per­son­al­ly review­ing NOAA grants over $100,000, which researchers said caused a delay in the grants sent to NOAA as the agency faced major staff reduc­tions. 

Con­necti­cut Sea Grant Direc­tor Syl­vain De Guise said this meant delayed pay­ments for orga­ni­za­tions like his. 

“It was August by the time we received our first dol­lars for the grant year that start­ed Feb­ru­ary,” De Guise said. 

This fos­tered uncer­tain­ty among those doing envi­ron­men­tal research with the Con­necti­cut Sea Grant, which received about $1.5 mil­lion in core fed­er­al funds last year, accord­ing to its 2024 annu­al report. 

“We have a bunch of employ­ees that are expect­ing to be paid, and then there’s all those lev­els of uncer­tain­ty,” De Guise said. “And we have no answers to a lot of uncer­tain­ty and a lot of anx­i­ety, but then you’re sup­posed to keep doing your job and doing it good.” 

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion is tak­ing a “short-sight­ed” view of ener­gy and the envi­ron­ment, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Tong said. He said the admin­is­tra­tion is choos­ing favored indus­tries, like cryp­tocur­ren­cy and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, over long-term pub­lic health and envi­ron­men­tal well-being. 

“Their strat­e­gy is to break it all apart, blow it up so that the fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies can make as much mon­ey as they pos­si­bly can in the short term,” Tong said. “The future be damned.”

Sara Bedi­gian and Sam Brody con­tributed report­ing to this sto­ry.