President Donald Trump has moved aggressively to dismantle woke ideology in the federal government, but there is one holdout where our tax dollars are still funding the woke mind virus: contracts with America’s National Academies. It’s time for the president to cut them off.
Among his first acts back in office, Trump signed two executive orders to end diversity, equity, and inclusion policies across the federal government. He sent the Department of Government Efficiency into federal agencies to root out wasteful, fraudulent, and downright harmful spending and federal contracts. This effort was a historic success and shocked the Left by cutting off a massive amount of funding for their professional activist class. Last summer, Congress approved $10 billion in spending cuts recommended by DOGE.
Yet the federal government continues to fund DEI policies and other woke nonsense by contracting with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which are chartered nonprofit organizations, not government agencies.
NATIONAL ACADEMIES MUST STRIKE BIASED CLIMATE CHANGE GROUP DESIGNED TO INFLUENCE FEDERAL JUDGES
The National Academies are not directly funded by Congress, nor are they controlled by the president. Nevertheless, the federal government bankrolls their activities by paying them millions of dollars in contracts per year, usually for consulting. Last fiscal year, which began under former President Joe Biden, the federal government paid the National Academy of Sciences $132 million.
Just how woke are the National Academies? In recent years, they have published studies calling to curtail “militarized policing” and praising the Black Lives Matter movement for shifting public discourse. They have held events as recently as 2024 to promote DEI in federal agencies and in science. A 2023 report from the NAS said that “racism is embedded in our society.” The National Academies even published research supporting sex change operations for children from workshops promoting transgender ideology.
The National Academy of Sciences specifically supports decarbonizing the economy, cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and the National Academy of Medicine even published a paper praising Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. NAS gave a college $1 million to create “a curriculum focused on environmental justice and climate change.” NAS President Marcia McNutt publicly criticized Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord and boasted in 2021 that the National Academies had “written more reports on climate change … than just about any other single topic.”
The Academies have even attempted to influence the judiciary by publishing a notoriously biased chapter, written by known climate activists, for the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. The chapter has been removed, but it is still available on the NAS website.
As recently as August, the National Academies fast-tracked a review to “inform” the Trump administration’s rollback of Biden-era climate policies, arguing that harms to humans from greenhouse gas emissions are “beyond scientific dispute.”
The list goes on and on. It is no wonder that, in addition to the taxpayers, left-wing megadonors and dark money groups also fund the Academies. These include Arabella Advisors’ New Venture Fund, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Hewlett Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and even the Collective Action Fund. The National Academies also receives funding from groups involved in climate change advocacy, such as Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy, the Nature Conservancy, and ClimateWorks.
Trump and his allies are taking action to fight back. DOGE has already cut more than $40 million in contracts with the National Academies, and the House Appropriations Committee Republicans have warned agencies to “use caution when entering into new agreements with [the National Academies] and…consider alternative means for obtaining objective scientific review” due to “the lack of objective nonpartisan research methods, including inaccurate references to data and removal of panel participants.”
Nevertheless, some Trump administration appointees appear to have let contracts with the Academies continue. According to public reporting, the Departments of Transportation and War appear to be relying on the National Academy of Sciences for scientific and technical consulting. In the modern information age, the National Academies no longer have a monopoly on such expertise. There are plenty of other sources of scientific advice in the private sector. There is no reason for the government to continue relying on a source that has repeatedly discredited itself through obvious, consistent bias.
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES ARE POLITICALLY CORRUPTED
If the National Academies want to continue producing biased reports, then they can get Soros and his friends to pay for them. But if they want to do business with the American people, then they must be fair and objective. The Academies can go woke and go broke, or they can reform and get back to their mission. Either way, it would be better than the Biden-era policy of forcing our tax dollars to fund woke insanity.
The president’s appointees are doing heroic work to protect our tax dollars from funding left-wing activists and promoting ideology. But as we enter another federal budget season, the administration and Republicans in Congress need to finish the job. It is time for the federal government — accountable to the voters — to teach the Academies a lesson.
Mark Meadows served as White House Chief of Staff from 2020 to 2021, was a North Carolina congressman from 2013 to 2020, and was chairman of the House Freedom Caucus from 2017 to 2019.