Trump Is Gutting LGBTQ+ Research. It's Going to Cost Us All.

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Draconian cuts driven by the Trump administration's relentlessly anti-science attitude have provided the GOP with a golden opportunity to undermine left-leaning academics—and science's burgeoning diversity, equity, and inclusion focus more specifically. Nowhere do the GOP's anti-DEI and anti-science postures converge more vividly than in its antagonism toward LGBTQ+ people. But Republicans' shortsighted defunding crusade won't just hamstring much-needed research and programming for this socially and medically vulnerable group . It'll stifle innovations that frequently flow from this research space into others and support the health and well-being of everyone.

Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has rooted out sources of support for LGBTQ+ research and programming. Trump's derision for “ gender ideology ,” his anti-queer dog whistle to the manosphere, has been highly disruptive to the work of researchers who are part of, or who intimately collaborate with, this population to better understand the broad, disproportionate health challenges it faces . The previously plentiful National Institutes of Health grants that LGBTQ+ researchers like me relied on to advance our work are simply no longer available —or are now incredibly fragile or difficult to sustain —due to NIH officials' sweeping research cuts and ongoing flirtations with Big Brother–styled purity tests . And it's just a matter of time before the negative impacts from the Trump administration's unprecedented assault on science extend beyond LGBTQ+ researchers to those they study.

And LGBTQ+ people have historically played a critical role as both researchers and the researched. Alfred Kinsey, a bisexual biologist at Indiana University, was a compelling, if controversial, voice on all things sex. He helped illuminate things we today take for granted about sexual identity—and things we do and don't do in the bedroom. Kinsey also pioneered complex surveying and interviewing methods that are now widely applied throughout STEM. For his troubles, Republican legislators in Indiana have repeatedly aimed to defund and shutter his namesake, the Kinsey Institute .

Much of the vital research done in the 1990s on the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which has claimed the lives of over 700,000 people in the US , paved the way for deep reductions in infections and deaths from the disease, including among an incalculable number of heterosexual people. In the late 2000s, the US government vigorously supported the development of Truvada , a revolutionary prevention treatment for people at high risk of contracting HIV. The government did it to the tune of an estimated $143 million investment in research and support, a bargain considering the epidemic's exceptional financial toll . And this month, the Food and Drug Administration approved Yeztugo , a twice-a-year preventive HIV shot that builds upon Truvada's already stunning success. These gains simply wouldn't have been possible without the nation's embrace of research on and with LGBTQ+ individuals.

People who identify as LGBTQ+ represent just 9.3 percent of the US population . Yet, according to an analysis from the New York Times conducted in early May , half of the NIH grants that were eliminated at that point focused on this population. So it's not surprising that, since the Trump administration began shuttering the funding streams that have allowed American science to become a singular force, many LGBTQ+ research studies—and researchers like us who lead these studies—have been at a complete standstill.

Axed research initiatives in our field have focused on things ranging from mental health wellness—LGBTQ+ populations have higher levels of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder than cisgender straight people —to hormone therapy, which can help trans people better connect with their true identities. These are just several burgeoning spaces being advanced to help LGBTQ+ people in “normalizing” their social experience and reducing the stress that comes with the inability to do so. But the benefits of these kinds of research aren't limited to them.

Our lab's research, for example, has focused on the pilot development of adigital app aimed at providing gender-affirming voice therapy . We curated it in conjunction with LGBTQ+ individuals in our communities, hoping to eventually create a free, open-source tool that can help people like them fill the gap between their current voice and the one they desire. But the science and vision that drives our work, unlike Trump's rigid views on DEI, isn't so black-and-white. Voice disorders affect more than 11 percent of Americans . The same research we're doing to support trans and gender-nonconforming people, which we now find virtually impossible to locate NIH grants to fund, could also assist lung cancer survivors , seniors , and anyone else with impaired speech.

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But peruse LinkedIn, and you'll find legions of (former) researchers like us detailing how their grants have been defunded or their funding pipelines abruptly severed. Elsewhere on the web, you'll find researchers delivering pleas in op-eds to legislators asking for them to make the bleeding stop. But the public sentiment has been more subdued, arguably bordering on indifference, enabling our political leaders' inaction.

One poll, conducted in April , showed that 90 percent of respondents regularly use research-derived information pertaining to things like weather forecasts, food recalls, and air quality. But only 10 percent of respondents in that same poll believed that the Trump administration's dramatic research cuts would disrupt their ability to continue leveraging this science.

It would be overly simplistic and unfair to say that the mixture of apathy or unawareness animating the public's feelings about science is unfounded. Scientists, after all, aren't known for their messaging. In a 2024 Pew poll, only 4 percent of respondents said that scientists are good communicators . Often operating in ivory tower silos and echo chambers, we scientists do an incredibly poor job of explaining to the public what and why we're studying, our methodology, and the potential advantages of our work. That naturally leaves room for everyday people to feel as if research is a haughty, fringe, and costly enterprise whose benefits they're thoroughly excluded from.

But the agitation fomenting this feeling is both beginning to go ways. While much has been said about Americans' low trust in science, especially since COVID , it's obvious that scientists are losing faith in the American people and the anti-science policies that they appear to embrace or willfully ignore. According to a poll conducted in March by the academic journal Nature , 75 percent of US–based scientists note that they are considering leaving the country for a place like Europe or Canada to pursue other professional opportunities. Their mulling comes at a time when the US, which is in the midst of multiple public health crises and a technological arms race with China, can ill afford a brain drain .

If the US is to have any hope of retaining its edge as a research powerhouse, scientists will need to regain the trust of the public by better articulating the merit and fruits of our work for Americans writ large. Of course, this can't be accomplished without a concerted, simultaneous effort to depoliticize science. A history lesson on how we got to this point will go a long way toward achieving this and recovering the osmosis that has long made our diverse scientific ecosystem a gold standard to the rest of the world.