Trump Administration Higher Education Cuts Threaten WSU Social Sciences, with Wide consequences

Unpublished, original Reporting

May 15th, 2025

The Trump administration’s research grant cuts and restrictions were meant to pare down government waste, but the effects on social sciences at Washington State University might cost the community even more.

Researcher anxieties have climbed over recent months as the administration’s opaque decision-making process seemed to jeopardize funding for even projects that seemed benign to Trump’s interests. Social sciences were especially vulnerable as culture war talking points and a focus on “efficiency” dominated Trump’s language surrounding academics. 

Social sciences deal with all the aspects of people as they relate to each other. The studies of conflict prevention, health disparities across cultural lines, and substance use prevention all fall squarely into the social sciences, and all correlate with WSU projects for which funding has now been entirely cut. The ramifications echo from Washington to the county and around the world.

Clara Hill, a research staff member at WSU’s research lab for Improving Prevention through Action (IMPACT), had her project’s funds fully approved with federal money through the Washington State Healthcare Authority. The project, the Advanced Prevention Fellowship, hired four fellows to research and practice substance use prevention in local Washington communities. That would have meant on-the-ground work with community members to implement prevention practices based on solid research tailored to their situation, like strengthening mental health resources or support for families. 

Hill had just finished hiring the fellows on March 24th when she got a call two days later from the WA Healthcare Authority with bad news: the federal Department of Health and Human services was revoking all the project funding, effective immediately. Hill was one of about 200 contractors and providers in Washington that the HCA had to order to stop work immediately on projects ranging from substance use prevention to crisis response and housing support, according to a statement from HCA. 

Washington lost $160 million from these cuts in congressionally-approved, COVID-era funding aimed at public health research: the whole country lost almost $11 billion. On April 1, 24 states filed a legal challenge against the HHS and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, arguing that the cancellation of the funds was illegal. A federal judge ordered shortly after that funds be made available for critical services, and that order remains today. However, the required funds are nowhere near the congressionally-approved $160 million, and leave longer-term health initiatives like Hill’s in the dust. 

“I hired them, and then the next week, I had to fire all of them,” Hill said. “One of them, I had to tell while she was literally in the process of moving from Indiana to Washington for this job.”

Because the hiring process already costs money, Hill’s program was left in a deficit as the funds were suddenly revoked. Hill had to find tens of thousands of dollars from other funding sources to pay for the work that it took to hire the fellows — taxpayer money that could have been used for other goals, with none of the benefits.

“It’s really upsetting to think about the direction that the country will be going ideologically, yes, but also from a public health perspective, because you can’t undo this, right? You slash funding for these things and people die,” Hill said. 

With an eye to bringing academia in line with Trump’s preferences, the new administration did not waste any time in freezing or revoking federal grant money to colleges across the country. According to WSU assistant professor Dr. Jacob Lewis, the funding freezes came with hostile intent. 

“Part of it, I think, is a pretty obvious assault on universities more broadly. The Trump administration is hostile to universities. It is targeting universities through executive orders. It is targeting them specifically by removing their, you know, their funding,” Lewis said. When the Department of Health and Human Services attempted a mass consolidation of its agencies, Washington state had over $160 million dollars immediately revoked from public health initiatives, many of which were partnered with research institutions. Across the country, that number topped $11 billion. Meanwhile, health is far from the only aspect of social science the Trump administration has put on the chopping block. 

Dr. Anna Zamora-Kapoor is a newly tenured associate professor working in WSU’s Sociology Department and the Department of Medical Education and Clinical Sciences. She teaches and researches the social causes of health inequalities, and one of her research projects concerns differences in sleep health and cardiovascular health between groups of people. She has not received funds from that project’s federal grant in over six months. The reasoning behind the delay is opaque; its beginnings pre-date the Trump administration, but the research’s dealings with race and equity may have hindered its correction. 

But what Zamora-Kapoor is really worried about is the Trump administration’s plans to cap federal research grant allowance for indirect funds at 15%. 

Indirect funds, as the name suggests, covers aspects of research that are not directly tied to the research itself. For example, while direct funds might cover the test tubes, chemicals, or payment for research participants, indirect costs cover things like the actual building’s rent, utilities, or a printer for administrative purposes. Indirect costs keep the lights on for the research to take place. 

“The lowest percentage of indirect I’ve ever seen in my experience has been 27%, and that was extremely low, and this was for a research center that was off-campus. It was … very efficient,” said Zamora-Kapoor. She said it’s much more usual to see indirect costs in the ballpark of 70% for research-heavy institutions. 

“So when the Trump administration suggests cutting the indirect cost to 15%, this is like saying you will do research without a building. It’s so unrealistic,” Zamora-Kapoor said.

Courts have blocked the Trump administration’s plans for indirect costs twice so far, but Zamora-Kapoor says if the plan does end up going through, it could quickly jeopardize the quality of research or stifle researchers from applying for grants altogether. WSU administration fought for years to orient the school as a university with high research activity, and must keep up that standard if it is to keep that status. But with funding drying up, if researchers cannot get the money, they may just look for alternative careers. In that case, prestige, resources, and opportunity at WSU would shrink, and the surrounding communities just don’t get the benefits of social science research like health disparity research and substance use prevention. 

As a part of the global research community, the social science research at WSU reaches far beyond Washington. Lewis, a tenured assistant professor working in the School of Politics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs, had two projects with two different federal agencies working internationally. Lewis was to oversee data collection for a peacebuilding project in Northern Ghana working with USAID, and he was in charge of the WSU branch of a Department of Defense collaboration with social scientists called the Minerva Project. 

The Minerva Project came about in the aftermath of 9/11, when the Department of Defense decided to work with social scientists to understand how terrorism comes about and how U.S. adversaries can fan its flames. For years since, the DoD has worked with prestigious universities across the countries on different variations of that theme. For WSU’s part, Lewis was to look at how Russia and China might seek to exploit points of social cohesion in African countries to stoke anti-American sentiment and possibly terrorism. 

“There’s pretty big, major power competition throughout Africa. Russia and China are attempting to essentially push Western influence out of Africa. And I mean, they don’t have to try very hard anymore, because we have simply removed ourselves from these areas,” Lewis said. 

When the programs shut down, four graduate students lost their funded lines to research, and WSU missed out on the prestige for the competitive opportunity of working on the Minerva Project. But Lewis said the biggest loss was the U.S.’s influence, efficiency, and ability to defend ourselves and our allies, and that we don’t have a lot of time to lose before we fall behind our adversaries. 

“Closing our eyes doesn’t make us safer, I think is the way I would say it. Closing our eyes doesn’t make us safer,” Lewis said.