The diamond ring effect as well as Bailey’s beads is seen when the moon is darkened the sun on April 8, 2024 in Fort Worth, Texas. Image: Ron Jenkins/Getty Images

There is nothing like being in its entirety under a total solar eclipse.

“For just a few minutes it feels like the whole world is standing still and yet everything changes,” says Corinne Brevik, physicist at southern Illinois University in Carbondale. The sky darkens, stars come out when the fire in the sun’s corona becomes visible. “It reminds me that we are all part of something so much bigger than ourselves.”

But only part of the country gets this first. For Eclipse 2024, Brevik used money from a National Science Foundation contribution to help middle schools host a living, interactive broadcast that led to children within the road with totality with those around the country outside the road. This meant that thousands of students could share the experience.

“You can literally look at the children looking at the eclipse and hear that moment of“ Whoa! “” She says. “It got many children who would not necessarily have had a chance to see it to observe.”

On Tuesday, Brevik was surprised to know that her contribution was one of over 3,400 NSF contributions marked by Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, such as “Woke dei” research that can promote “neo-Marxist class-war propaganda.”

A database released by Cruz this week formed the foundation of a October report Claiming over $ 2 billion of the NSF budget of $ 9 billion went to “left ideological crusade as” academic research. “The report also contains an appendix containing hundreds of dei-related words. Parts of that attachment are is currently used of the NSF staff to screen thousands of their active contributions to comply with President Trump’s executive order aimed at diversity, capital and inclusion throughout the government.

“It’s frustrating,” says Brevik. “The only goal was to share what happens to everyone. It’s not propaganda; there is no background agenda. Our goal is to help educate our youth.”

Brevik was one of many researchers who expressed confusion about how their basic research was noticed.

The database Included research grants from all corners of the country, large research institutions and small colleges. The list included projects aimed at finding better ways to synthesize new medicines; Study how to make self -driving vehicles safer; Investigate how military service can help more women to conduct science careers; To figure out why some proteins begin to function in ways that can lead to cancer.

“It’s ridiculous,” says Joshua Weitz, a biologist at the University of Maryland whose research was not flagged but who has received NSF grants. “(Cruz) uses its position as a senator to make a great sound about basic research and categorize what is happening in the research and technology sector in this country. If you look at this list you will find things that we should absolutely be proud of financing. “

Many of the research proposals that seem entirely related to Dei were probably flagged because they included languages ​​to broaden women’s participation and underrepresented groups in science, says Weitz, something that Congress has caused NSF to consider in its contribution since the 1990s.

Cruz’s office has not responded to several requests for comment. A press release The accompanying database says “Dei -initiative has poisoned research efforts, eroded confidence in the scientific community and has divided division among Americans … Congress must terminate the politicization of NSF financing and restore the integrity of scientific research.”

Wider effects

Tammie Visintainer, professor of scientific education at San Jose State University, was one of three researchers explicitly called out by Cruz for its work aimed at engaging under -represented students in community -based science.

“I found out through a text from my dean, who said” Let me know if you get any threats, “she says.” It was chilly and alarming … I actually took my name from my office door. It felt like I don’t need people to know where I am. ‘

All NSF grants must deal with how research will affect society, including how they will broaden the participation in science. “It’s one of the two main criteria used by the National Science Foundation to review grants,” says Visintainer. “To be competitive, you have to take care of these things – and should take care of these things – as there are huge issues of inequality, and pretending they are not real are not based on evidence.”

Her NSF grants support a project aimed at helping teachers and students develop community-based scientific research on the causes and effects of extreme heat and city heating islands in race and ethnically different communities, which are hit harder than suburban communities, which tend to be whiter and more prosperous.

“The radical work that is attacked is students who walk around their community, collect temperature data or look at maps and identify a local issue of heat,” she says. The overall goal of her work is to try to understand “How do we get students to see themselves as a researcher or type of science people?”

Kylea Garces, an ecologist at Miami University, has a similar goal. Her contribution is also on Cruz’s list.

Garces was a first generation college student. “I come from a blue collar family, my parents are farmers and construction workers,” she says. Sometimes she struggled to see a place for herself in science.

Later, she won an NSF post doctor to study how fungi interact with plants in ways that can increase resilience under stress. This contribution also supports her efforts to develop ways to evaluate students in collegiate science classes that broaden participation.

In an environmental study class for Nonmajors, for example, her students were able to choose the topic for their final project. A student decided to put together a visual presentation on climate change that she projected behind her punk band when it played.

“I think a lot of mistake is done right now by throwing around” dei “or social justice,” she says. “There is nothing political about wanting students to learn. It is not social justice. It is simply to give all students an opportunity to get a good rating and be able to succeed in their future career.”

The release of Cruz’s database is only the latest in a movement of actions from Republicans in Congress and Trump administration is aimed at the very foundation of American science. Those behind these features, including freezer contributions, cutting off funding and Scrubclaims that they are reinstated in science that has become ideologically extreme.

While NSF says they say cannot stop payments on existing contributions due to deviation with these orders, Freeze on grants At the end of January, many researchers have worried that funding could still be drawn.

Many in the scientific community claim that it is a direct attack on science that will ultimately hurt Americans. “What worries me is that the intention is to disassemble US scientific leadership,” says Weitz. “If you quit this type of work, how should you get the next advanced material or quantum calculation or the next cancer drug or treatment for heart disease?”