The impact of the Trump administration’s various directives are playing out at the local level. And as our reporters around the country are telling those stories, they’ve focused not just on institutions, but on communities, too. 

Perhaps nowhere is that focus more vital than when reporting on the potential impacts of the Trump administration plan to reduce the money that universities receive from the federal government to support biomedical research. (The plan would reduce National Institutes of Health funding that covers “indirect costs” of research such as essential facilities, safety checks, and special equipment. Our reporters have covered this in Pittsburgh, Colorado, Puerto Rico, and Chicago, to name a few examples.) States have sued challenging the order, and it’s currently on hold as legal fights play out. 

But the potential impacts are too significant to ignore, and it’s as much an economic and workforce story as it is a higher ed one. 

That’s why I was excited this week to talk to Dr. Alyssa Sinclair, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the researchers behind a project mapping the economic impact of federal research cuts. The goal of Science and Community Impacts Mapping Project is to demystify research, help people understand the funding cuts, and show how they’d affect red and blue states, Sinclair told me. 

While some national media coverage has focused solely on the effects of research cuts at selective, wealthy universities, many other institutions would be hit, too. Sinclair pointed to state universities that “don’t have as much of a buffer to try to weather this storm,” as well as research hospitals, children’s hospitals, small businesses, and startups that also depend on NIH funding.

“We wanted to really emphasize and illustrate to the general public that these cuts will impact communities everywhere,” she said. 

The map is interactive, and can be sorted by county, state, or house district. It illustrates economic and job losses — the team estimates the NIH cuts would cost 68,000 jobs nationally. 

How’d they get that figure? The researchers found active NIH grants in each state and estimated how much funding would be lost if the proposed cap on indirect costs took effect. Then, they used census and commuter-flow data to show how that would ripple out across state and local economies. (More detail on their method here.) 

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A growing number of international students have their visas revoked 

The Trump administration has canceled the legal status of hundreds of international students around the country since the beginning of the month. Our reporters are tracking this at the universities they cover. 

Administrators are often learning of these status changes and visa revocations by checking a government database. (If you are a college leader who wants to talk about the support you’re offering international students at this time, please email me.)  

Here’s a rundown of who’s affected, from several of our reporters: 

• At least 250 students and one professor across Texas (The Texas Tribune) 

• Four international students at Case Western Reserve University (Signal Ohio) 

• A graduate student at IU Indianapolis (Mirror Indy) 

• Several current students and graduates at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, and La Roche University (PublicSource) 

Elsewhere on Open Campus

From Puerto Rico: It’s been years since Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. Yet walk through the library at the University of Puerto Rico, and it is still full of mold, odors, and water-damaged walls, writes Víctor Rodríguez Velázquez, our reporter at Centro de Periodismo Investigativo.  

The library smells rancid — like a damp, dirty rug, Víctor writes. “I stopped studying there because of that smell,” a student, Christopher Acevedo, told him. 

From Texas: A Texas bill would drastically restrict how the state’s public universities teach their students about race and inequality, reports Jessica Priest at the Texas Tribune. Experts say the measure could create a chilling effect on campuses. 

“I really hope people are paying attention because there’s some pretty high-stakes gambles we’re taking,” Neal Hutchens, a professor at the University of Kentucky’s College of Education, told Jessica.

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